Charles Kemp notes, "The great preachers have usually been faithful pastors. The great pastors have very often been effective preachers."

Jonathan Edwards needs to be viewed as a pastor-preacher. There are well over 1000 sermons by Jonathan Edwards. Thomas H. Johnson identified four groups in Edwards' sermons: the disciplinary, the pastoral, the doctrinal, and the occasional (or miscellaneous).

Although Edwards' sermons have been classified into four categories, it is to be assumed in this investigation of his pastoral preaching that all of his sermons are pastoral in nature. Altogether the stress is upon the pastoral, not the comminatory. A study of his sermons reveals his pastoral concern for the growth and development of his parishioners. His heart seemed to be that of a sincere and devoted undershepherd.

When revival came to his church, Edwards had preached a series of expository sermons from 1 Corinthians 13 on love as the sum of all virtues.1 David W. Waanders asserted that:

"It is against this backdrop of revivalism that Edwards' pastoral concern must be seen. He was at heart ... a pastor. Apart from his early notebooks, where he engaged in speculative philosophy to a large degree, most of his writings reflect attempts to deal with practical and pastoral problems. In Freedom of the Will, for example, his dominant concern is to come to grips with and to defeat the Arminian view of freedom which was threatening the faith and life of the church in New England. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections grows out of a pastoral concern for people who were being influenced by extreme expressions of faith and who were becoming unsettled by controversies over the nature of true religion."2

Jonathan Edwards' pastoral preaching was biblical. He was first and foremost a biblical preacher, "a careful exegete and a skilled expositor."3

In his youth, Edwards resolved "to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same."4 He became a serious student of the Bible to obtain an intimate knowledge of its contents. Samuel Hopkins said of Edwards:

"... He studied the Bible more than all other books, and more than most other divines do. His uncommon acquaintance with the Bible appears in his sermons ... He took his religious principles from the Bible, and not from any human system or body of divinity. Though his principles were Calvinistic, yet he called no man father."5

Edwards was at heart a pastor-preacher. Most of his writings reflect attempts at dealing with practical and pastoral problems.

Edwards should not be dismissed as one who only preached imprecatory sermons. Edwards basic appeal was to fear. He preached sermons in such a way because he felt the condition of the church made it necessary to preach the terror of the Lord. It was his conviction that sinful hearts of men and women could be turned only by extremely forceful and painfully direct preaching.