Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, we are returning to our faithful friend, Jonathan Edwards, into a sermon

he preached in 1739.

In 1739, Edwards was very busy.

He was preaching a massive sermon series, one of my favorite sermon series of his history

of the work of redemption.

It's banned most of the year, but somewhere along August, Edwards stepped aside from his

sermon series, which by the way is 30 sermons on half a verse out of Isaiah.

So some of you might be in churches where your pastor takes a long time to go through

a book, but imagine if your pastor took 30 sermons to go through one half of a verse.

Well, you might want a little break, and Edwards might want a little break.

So in August, he stepped aside from that series and preached a sermon entitled Deacons

to Care for the Body Ministers for the Soul.

The occasion was the ordaining of several deacons for the work of the ministry there in the

church at North Hampton.

He took for his sermon text, not a half a verse, but four verses out of Romans chapter

12, that speaks of the gifts that were given, Edwards notes, that the business, as he calls

it, of prophesying, teaching, exhorting, ruling, all those belong to the office of pastor

or sometimes called bishop, that would be what is in Presbyterian terms, the teaching

elders and the ruling elders of the church.

But the other businesses that are mentioned in that text, ministering, giving, showing

mercy, Edward sees those as falling under the category of Deacon.

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