Thank You, Mark Dever, For An Incredible Day

In 2003, Mark Dever preached from his pulpit, Jonathan Edwards' [in]famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." A few days ago I downloaded this to my iPod. My co-worker and I listened all the way through Dever's reading of Edwards' glorious sermon.

A few reasons why I recommend that everyone listen to Dever's rendition:

• There is nothing like hearing the sermon delivered audibly, as it was originally heard.
• Dever's sermonic delivery is full of passion, which is often missing from our own reading of the text.
• Hearing the sermon, all at once, from beginning to end is tremendously affecting.

I was so affected in hearing the sermon delivered, that I was literally in tears as Dever preached the following:

How awful are those words, Isaiah 63:3, which are the words of the great God, "I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment." 'Tis perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, viz. contempt, and hatred, and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that he'll only tread you under foot: and though he will know that you can't bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he won't regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he'll crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet, to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

For me, this is literally the most haunting and terrifying image in all of Edwards' sermon. You can find Dever's rendition of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" here. There is nothing quite like being overwhelmed with the holiness of God, contrasted with your own unholiness.