Matthew Everhard: The Joy of Jonathan Edwards

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Well, hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

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Thanks for telling a friend, thanks for sharing, thanks for reviewing, and thanks for checking us out at dmwpodcast .com, where you can find out more about the show, more about me, and you can support us too on the

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it's linked up in the description below. Cool, now that the business is out of the way, yeah, everything's going good here.

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I usually do a little dialogue with you guys, if it's just me and you, but we have a special guest on, so I'm going to get right to it.

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He doesn't want to sit through hearing me talk about camping and lake life and all that stuff up here in Michigan that we're getting ready for this summer.

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But it's Matthew Everhart is on the podcast today, he's pastor of Gospel Fellowship PCA just north of Pittsburgh, adjunct professor of evangelism,

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Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, President's Council Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary Pittsburgh, I'm seeing a lot of Presbyterian here, we're going to get along great today, married to Kelly with four children, and he's got a couple books out, and we're going to be talking about his latest one, but he's got

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Holy Living, Jonathan Edwards, 70 Resolutions, Hold Fast to the Faith, Devotional Commentary on Westminster Confession of Faith, didn't know he had that one, going to be purchasing that myself so I can read through that,

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Souls, How Jesus Saved Sinners, and A Theology of Joy, Jonathan Edwards and the Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity, which piqued my interest, and as you guys know,

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I'm pretty selfish, if someone or something piques my interest, I call them up and say, hey, come on the podcast, let's talk about it, and hopefully it brings value and content to you guys as well, so it is

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Matthew Everhart, how are you doing Matthew? Good, what's up everybody, so glad to be on the show, thank you

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Greg for having me. Now do you go by Matthew or Matt? Either one doesn't really matter, just don't call me late for dinner, some people call me

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Matthew, other people call me Matt, I had a guy one time who called me Mark for four years, and I didn't have the heart to correct him, and then finally, like four years in, somebody said, hey

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Matt, and he's, he confronted me, he's like, you let me call you Mark for four years, so it does not matter brother, glad to be on the show, thanks for having me.

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Oh, that's so funny, it is, there is a certain point to where if you let it go for too long, you just have to let it keep going, you're like, well,

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I've seen the guy four or five times, you know, I'm now Mark. Some people are really particular about how their name is said, or how it's spelled, or how it's pronounced, or even that it's the right name,

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I'm just glad that I'm talking to you today, Greg, I feel like it, I'm honored to be, to be with you today, and I do want to hear about your camping experiences, by the way, it sounds amazing.

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Oh, I appreciate that, the only reason I said that is because that Matt and Matthew is the one I get the most pushback on,

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I have a lot of Matthews that go, I am not a Matt, I'm not a doormat, I don't get walked on, it's

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Matthew, and I don't see it that way, but some Matthews do, so I'm glad you're comfortable with that. Well, now that we've got the names out of the, out of the way, kind of, that was kind of like the

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Christian version of pronouns, I think, is that allowed? I think so, yeah. Tell me about this book, because I saw, and first of all, for anyone listening, and I want you to plug your

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YouTube channel while you're on here too, because it's amazing, I just happened to go back and find an old video,

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I say old, but three, four years, which in podcasting years is, internet age is, you know, decades old, it seems like, but I think it was three or four years old, and it was all on explaining the uncovenant theology, and you did such a fantastic job of breaking down those big, deep, theological, kind of, positions into a nice, concise, and I might even say dumbed down version for an idiot like me,

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I went, wow, this is so needed, that was kind of one of the goals of this podcast, and it made me a little depressed,

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I said, oh, there's a gentleman already out there doing it much, much better, so I should just quit now, but instead,

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I said, let's have him on the podcast, and have him bring some of that knowledge, and intellect to the podcast, so I just want to say, the

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YouTube channel has blessed me, and I want you to throw that out there in the course of this episode, so people can go subscribe, and watch it as well, but first and foremost,

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The Theology of Joy, Jonathan Edwards and the Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity, how'd this book come about, because this is a very interesting subject,

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I think. Well, thanks for saying that, and by the way, I do appreciate the plug on the

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YouTube channel as well, it's kind of embarrassing to look at some of those videos, because some of them are, you know, the channel's been around for a while, and a lot of them is before my beard was even gray, back when it was naturally dark, and then there was that embarrassing phase, where I tried to dye it for a little bit, that was so stupid, so now

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I look back at some of those videos, and I just kind of like, ugh, just kind of recoil at looking at myself, that's the unfortunate thing about being a video -based platform, unlike audio, where you kind of sound the same throughout the decades or whatever, but so the book came about in my research for my doctoral dissertation program, now this was back when

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I was living in Florida, I was attending RTS Orlando at the time, and the guy who was kind of leading the doctoral program said a couple things about a dissertation, he said, first of all, pick a topic that when you die, that somebody can say that this really shaped and changed your life, like this was something that captured your heart, because practically, the other thing is, he said, you've got to be able to latch on to some particular topic for multiple years, and be able to research the same thing without getting bored, and so I looked at my own heart, to be honest,

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Greg, and this was, let's see, what year did I graduate?

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Mid -20 teens, I guess, and I was a pastor, I was busy,

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I was stressed, I was stressed when I was at home thinking about church, and when I was at church,

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I was stressed thinking about home, and I looked at my own life, and I kind of did a little check down of the fruit of the spirit, and I started with love, and I said, yeah,

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I definitely have love, I love the Lord, I love Christ, I love my wife, and my kids, and my church, and then

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I went to joy, and I was like, okay, so I have a joy deficit in my heart, and so I thought about the concept of studying happiness or joy, which is one of the great pursuits of the philosophers, it's like one of the all -time philosophical questions, what is the sumum bonum, what is the greatest good, what brings about happiness, all the way back to the

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Greek philosophers, they quested to know what makes the heart happy, you know, Ecclesiastes 2 is about the same thing, and so I latched onto the idea of joy kind of philosophically as a topic, and Jonathan Edwards was the theologian that I had encountered that was just constantly talking about joy and happiness, and so on one hand, recognizing there's something in my own heart that needed it,

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I wanted to study something that was practical to me, I needed joy and happiness, and on the other hand, finding

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Edwards as kind of like my dead mentor, he talked about happiness and joy proliferously, just throughout all his writings, and we can talk about some of those if you want to, but one of the things

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I noticed about Edwards, he's kind of famous for his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an

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Angry God, which is more or less a fire and brimstone sermon, but it's probably not the best piece to describe his entire body of work, because almost everywhere, ubiquitously in his writings and in his preaching, joy or happiness comes into the equation, at least at some point in almost everything he writes, and so I thought, okay, here's the guy,

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I'm going to latch onto Edwards, moreover, his works are so voluminous that you could never even, you know, no one

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Edwards scholar can totally sap all of the writings that he has, because there's just so much content, and so I thought, okay, this is profound, this is real, this is something that a lot of us need in our lives, which is joy, it's one of the fruit of the spirit, and so I'm going to study this, and so that's kind of how

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I got into the topic. Oh, I love that idea too, and for me, you said it's like, it's a philosophical, it's one of the deepest philosophical questions, and one of the reasons why it interests me too, because it does seem to be something that we can really wrestle with, and we'll get into it a little bit here, but I was thinking along the lines of just understanding the difference of happiness and joy, they're two different words, sometimes we use them interchangeably, biblical joy to me, when

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I read through the Bible, seems to be something entirely different than secular happiness, do you touch at all on that book, and those kind of, maybe not that dichotomy explicitly, but do you touch on that, and their joy is something different than just an emotional feeling of gladness or happiness, or am

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I off track there? No, you're definitely on track, and I think that's an Edwardian distinction, is to recognize the difference.

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Now, just a little bit about the term, so you and I, we probably think of joy as being a little bit richer and deeper than the word happiness, okay, so I too mind that distinction,

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I think there is a difference between joy and happiness, as we use those terms commonly today, in Edwards's writing, there is not a distinction between joy and happiness as synonyms, as two words to describe a similar concept, so whether we're using joy or happiness or gladness, or any of the other synonyms here,

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Edwards is basically talking about the same thing, so you can't necessarily parse the words just based on which term he's using, however, he clearly recognizes what you and I would think is the distinction between those two, and that is to say that happiness, as we regard it, is circumstantial, it's something that is brought about usually on some particular occasion by some certain set of circumstances that are pleasing to us, and of course, it tends to fade almost as quickly as it is obtained, so when we think of happiness, we might think of a good glass of wine, or we might think of a good conversation with a friend, or we might think about a beautiful spring or summer day, those kinds of things certainly do bring a kind of happiness into our hearts, but the problem with those things is that the moment that they are obtained, that happiness, that euphoria that it brings into the heart dissipates almost as quickly as those circumstances go away, so just by way of example, you know, we're looking forward to my daughter's wedding, which is coming up, my oldest daughter is going to get married, my first child that's getting married, well, there's so much anticipation of that particular day, and undoubtedly, it will be a great day of joy, but we also expect, as we do all things, to be realistic that that day's happiness will fade at some point as other troubles come into our lives, and that's typically the experience of all human beings.

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However, what Edwards would say is that there is a deeper, richer, fuller joy and happiness that is obtained not by the things of this world, but rather it is obtained and retained in the heart through the spiritual experiential relationship that we have in God through Christ, and so Edwards would say that's actually rooted in the

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Trinity itself, and so that's one of the reasons why the book is titled Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity.

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So without giving away too much in the book, could we unpack that a little bit? So, and I'm going to be honest with you,

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I grew up, I was homeschooled for eight or nine years of my school year age life, and that was back in the 80s when, you know, social services would show up at the door, and why aren't your kids in school, and it was like a really weird thing, and I remember we studied

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Jonathan Edwards in our homeschool curriculum, but I was brought up in a non -denominational spirit -filled church, but more very legalistic, that whole 80s movement of like don't touch it, don't look at it, can't see it,

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God's coming back any second for the rapture, so let's just hunker down and wait, right? So we were, and Calvinists were weirdos, we'll study some of them, and they're great ones like Jonathan Edwards, we'll have a little blurb in history, but for most of my,

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I'm telling you that because into my 20s even, into my early 30s, all I really knew about Jonathan Edwards was that sermon, and he was just the guy that was going to preach mean stuff to you, fire and brimstone, and he really thought you were a horrible sinner, and to understand that he had this really deep understanding of joy and preached on it and taught on it, it really threw me in my early 30s.

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I went, oh my goodness, wait a minute, what was this guy talking about? So in the book you say the joy is rooted in the

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Trinity, what are we saying there when we say look at happiness, joy, circumstantial, yeah, we get that, those are real world things, but now we're talking about something that's kind of maybe intangible to us, how can joy be rooted in the

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Trinity? Yeah, great question. So for Edwards, everything that he talks about and thinks is

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Trinitarian, Edwards is a Trinitarian theologian, as all good Christian thinkers ought to be, and so when

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Edwards is trying to explain the Trinity, he does so in ways that sometimes make

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Reformed theologians a little bit uncomfortable, because when Edwards talks about the

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Trinity, he tends to not use confessional or creedal language as much as we wish he would, because we think, of course, as Reformed people that the creeds and the confessions are very, very helpful, they're the basic ways that we talk about the

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Trinity, and in fact, the creeds and the confessions, they set up those fences or parameters.

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So for instance, we should affirm these things, but anything outside of that, we do well to deny, and so we're very thankful for creeds and confessions, especially as Reformed people,

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Presbyterians in particular, appreciating the Westminster Confession of Faith, but it's a little bit frustrating to study

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Edwards on the Trinity, because he doesn't tend to simply quote and to rehash what the creeds and the confessions already say, although Edwards does say that he could easily affirm the

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Westminster Confession of Faith. Instead, what Edwards does when he describes the Holy Trinity is he tends to describe their relations between the three persons, the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, here's where it gets a little bit weird, okay? So Edwards would say that the

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Father is something like God in the prime, God in his ultimate essence, okay? And so when the

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Father contemplates himself, that is Edwards's explanation for the begottenness of the

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Son. The Son is the beloved, and the Father is the lover. The Father loves his own self -conception, and his self -conception of his identity is, of course, perfect.

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And so this is the way that Edwards tries to explain the fact that the Son of God is begotten of the

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Father, but not created. He didn't come into being at any one particular time, but it's the

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Father's love essentially for his own glory and his own self. So then somebody asks, well, wherein is the

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Holy Spirit? Well, Edwards would say that the Holy Spirit is essentially the joy or the love or the overflow of the

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Father's love for the Son, okay? So it's a little bit strange and certainly non -formulaic to describe it that way, a little bit

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Augustinian in the way that he does that. But Edwards essentially conceives of the

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Holy Spirit as the abundance and the overflow of the joy that the Father has for the

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Son and that the Son has for the Father. And so in Edwardian thought, there's a deep connection there between the human believer and the infilling of the

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Holy Spirit, because as we know, Christians, we are indwelt by the person of the

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Holy Spirit. We are infilled with the Spirit and it's the Spirit who brings about the fruit of the

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Spirit, including love, joy, peace, patience, et cetera. So whenever a believer is experiencing real joy, that is undoubtedly the work and the ministry and the presence of the

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Holy Spirit in our lives. Now, if I could take that one step further, Greg, and just talk about Edwards' understanding of an affection that may help us to kind of ground our understanding of Edwardian theology of joy.

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So for Edwards, again, whenever he describes things, he kind of does it in a way that's truly reformed on one hand, but doesn't tend to use creedal or confessional definitions on the other hand.

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So when Edwards conceives of conversion or regeneration, that change in the heart of the individual as he or she is converted from deadness and sin unto life, one of the things that Edwards really hammers home is this idea that the heart itself is changed.

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And the heart is the seat of what he calls the affections. And by that, he means something deeper than just emotions.

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So emotions, they kind of come and go. Like I'm happy today and I'm mean and angry the next day.

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But no, the affections are the soul's inclination towards on one hand, or it's being repelled from God on the other hand.

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So unbelievers are repelled by God. They're horrified by God.

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They're disgusted by God. But when God converts the sinner, that very affection or that orientation or that inclination of the heart changes.

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So now the person is disposed towards and loves and rejoices in God. So the joy that the believer has at conversion is actually a change of affection.

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It's a change of the whole orientation of the heart from repulsion of God to drawing to love for an admiration towards God in his

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Trinitarian glory. So this is why we begin to feel real joy when we're converted.

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And again, it's not circumstantially derived, but it's that kind of deeper lasting, real joy that is brought about only through the

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Holy Spirit's having taken up residence in the Christian believer's heart. Does that make sense? No, that makes total sense.

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When you were saying that I'm kind of picturing a North and South pole of a magnet, it's the same magnet, but you flip it around to the other side.

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It goes from pushing away to now it's acting as an attractant. So under that kind of definition, then what you're saying is what

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I'm hearing, I hope too, is so true biblical joy cannot be had by an unbeliever.

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They can experience happiness, but the joy that kind of surpasses all understanding that, and I would throw a piece in there, a piece, maybe even in times of trouble to where there is even a happiness in being under persecution.

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I myself have been in times of deep sorrow and persecution, yet I found joy.

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I wasn't walking around with a smile on my face, but there was a joy in my heart of knowing that I rely on the sovereignty of God in my times of trouble, as Spurgeon said, right?

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So is that what we're saying too, that the unbeliever, the unregenerate heart cannot have those things of the

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Holy Spirit producing joy, correct? That's exactly right. That is exactly right. So unbelievers are going to constantly mistake joy and happiness for one another.

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They're going to search for something that tries to bring real peace and purpose and meaning into their life, but by definition, they're always going to be drinking sand because whatever they search for in this life is only going to bring them further pain because the more they try to search for that, which is real and it can be had, but if they search for it in any place other than Christ, it's ultimately going to be unfulfilling.

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So every search of the unbeliever is going to be like running through a maze that ends up taking you nowhere except to back to the starting place again.

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The unbeliever is going to be thwarted every time he tries to fill his life with any kind of real lasting sustenance, whether he pursues it in sex or whether he pursues it in materialism or success or achievement or even religious goods and services, we might say, the works of the law that are only done of the

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They're never going to have that real heartfelt, deep, lasting, sustaining joy that the believer has.

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And this is what actually enables believers to weather the storms of life, whether it's persecution or whether it's disappointments or whether it's physical ailing health, yet the believer has this kind of lasting joy that's able to sustain through the midst of the worst experiences of life.

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And it's only because we have that kind of joy that we see the hope that is at the other end of the tunnel, so to speak.

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So when the revivals, sorry to cut you off there, when the revivals came through in the 1740s, of course,

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Edwards is part and parcel of the great awakening. George Whitfield would be the other person who's probably most connected historically with the great awakening.

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But one of the things that Edwards is realizing is that not only is his church, the church in Northampton, experiencing these infillings of joy and happiness, but this seems to be the regulated experience of the believer as the revivals are pouring across the colonies.

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And Edwards is describing the effect of these joys. It's causing husbands and wives to love each other and to renew their vows.

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It's causing children to rejoice. And he's seen conversions at even a young age. He's seen people want to reconcile with neighbors with whom their relationships had been torn apart and fractured.

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And he's seen all this kind of glorious reconciling of human relationships one to another.

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And he desperately wants everybody to feel the same kind of infilling joy that he and his wife,

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Sarah, who had some very ecstatic experiences in the early 1740s.

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He just wants people to experience and know that kind of happiness. And so interestingly, while Sinners in the

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Hands of an Angry God is a great sermon, and I recommend everybody to read it, it's great. I typically ask people whether or not they read it in high school.

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It used to be everybody had, now most people aren't. And it's a great sermon, but it should be balanced by probably other sermons that Edwards preached.

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For instance, his sermon, Heaven is a World of Love, where it's just as gloriously dripping with eternal joys and eternal love as much as Sinners is rich with warnings and replete with dangers and cautions.

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It's a great sermon too, and those two should probably be read together. Yeah. So we look back at that era, the

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Reformer era, and I see a couple of things. And maybe this is kind of a two -part thought and tell me what you think about this.

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One, I would look back on that and, okay, how can we translate those very pragmatic thoughts and theologies of Jonathan Edwards into today, into 2024, just because I also feel that, well,

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I say feel, not feel, but I think when I talk to a lot of people in Western Christianity and in the

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United States in particular, we have a very, and I say we, I'm saying unbelievers and sometimes even believers alike, but mostly unbelievers have a really good chance of just coasting through a general happiness in a very rich country like the

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United States. We have so many things that can give us circumstantial happiness, right? Just get that job, put in my time, listen to my country music, crack a beer, go out on the boat, go to the race, go to all these different things to where you're just moving through life, coasting from one happy situation to another.

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And you could live a pretty decent, happy life apart from God through His common graces of just what

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He's provided for us in this country. And I feel that's probably one of the great delusions that Satan absolutely loves this day and age is just be happy.

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You don't need to understand that there's actual joy in, as a believer, just fulfill your life with those physical things and those circumstances and things like that.

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So I would say, is it going to be hard for us to take that type of theology to where I would argue the reformers had a much more dismal life.

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The average person had a much more dismal life with economic status and how you died and diseases and how you could be attacked by municipalities and kingdoms and monarchies, all these things.

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How do we translate that into 2024 when we have a non -believing and even a believing world and country that just goes,

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I'm pretty happy, but just skating by. I know many Christians that are just like, Hey, go to church once a week, put in my two hours, you know,

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Hey, we got cookouts coming up. We got this, that, and they've just, you know, circled themselves with these things to give them a, a minimal happiness that they kind of coast by on without ever really knowing spirit filled joy.

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As you explained a few minutes ago, how do we translate that four or 500 years into 2024 for the pragmatically for the believer today or the unbeliever today?

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Yeah. You know, I referenced Ecclesiastes two earlier in, in our, in our discussion here.

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And I think that's such a informative biblical text because the writer there actually does have the opportunity to obtain all of the things that people tend to associate with happiness.

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He has slaves and he has fields and he has riches and he has sex and he has drink, all of these materialistic acts aspects that we would think at least theoretically should be something like a salve to the soul that brings real happiness.

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But the irony of that text is that it doesn't. In fact, what he finds is that it's only a vanity and a chasing after the wind.

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As he, as he says, and throughout Ecclesiastes, there's the steam of that, which is under the sun.

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In other words, everything that, that God has made referencing by irony that which is over the sun, namely, namely

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God. And so the end of the book is that only true purpose and meaning is found in worshiping the true and living

28:02

God, right? Well, it's kind of interesting because this culture that we live in today is essentially the

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Ecclesiastes two culture where we do have access to everything.

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We have access to some of the best medicines. We have access to more entertainment than has ever been possible before in human history.

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There's more need for entertainment though, somewhat ironically. And when we really look at our culture, one of the things that we find is like the writer of Ecclesiastes, those things, though they are had in abundance still have not brought happiness to the unconverted heart.

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And in fact, what we see is exactly the opposite, the dead opposite of what we would think would happen.

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We would think that having all of these materialistic and outlandish opportunities would bring us some kind of a happiness, but rather we have more people that are depressed, more people that are lonely.

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We have more people that are, that are on drugs and alcohol and prescribed medicines, all of these things to try to regulate the kind of happiness that is, it's so tangibly right in front of our face in Christ.

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And yet our culture, of course, in its deadness and ignorance continues to search everywhere.

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But the reality, which is, which is in Christ. Now, one thing I'll throw in here, and I think

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Edwards would probably agree with this. There is a sense in which certain things like weddings or a good bottle of wine or a walk in the park with your friend, those things do have actual happiness, but what they are,

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Edwards would say, I think are typological glimpses of the real. Okay.

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So in Edwards's cosmology, whenever he looks at the physical material universe, the things that are that around us, the trees and the rocks and the hills and the streams and the sunshine and the sunsets, he thinks those things are only glimpses into a more real eternal world.

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Okay. So it's not that they're fake. You can actually be happy if you have a good stake.

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And I recommend that you have a good stake. If you, if you, if you have means to get one, I have it rare or medium rare, you'll probably really like it.

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But those things, what they are is they're like taste tests to the real banquet that is to come in the, in the glories of heaven.

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And so an Edwardsian theory of joy is actually always pointing towards that, which is eternal.

30:30

It's not that a stake can't make you happy. It's that it's typological of the greater banquet meal that is to come.

30:37

And so one of the things that's great about Edwards is he's always pointing us towards eternity. And interestingly, it's the brevity of life, the pain of life, the difficulties and the hardships of life in the 1700s or the 18th century, which makes the relief so clear between that which is lasting and that which is not.

30:58

Yeah. That's so good. You know, I just wrote a blog post for a friend of mine who has a website and was kind of focusing on that.

31:06

I'm an avid hunter. I have acreage in Northern Michigan. I hunt a conservation list.

31:12

I'll be out in a blind or walking fields for hours at a time. And that's usually my time to sit there and go, you know, in the fall to sit there and go, okay, what are we doing next year for the business?

31:21

How am I going to lead my wife and family? What are we doing for our Bible? So let's plan all that out. When you're stuck inside of a little you know, blind for eight hours and you don't have your phone with you and you've removed all distractions.

31:33

The only thing sitting there is your Bible and your bow or your gun and nature in front of you. You can get a lot of things done between you and God.

31:41

And I look out that window every year and I'm just amazed. I watch, I've been watching the same two ravens come back to the same tree for nine years now.

31:50

I watch porcupines and coyotes and cougars and elk and deer and black bear. And I just go, how, how can anyone, well, the

31:59

Bible states it, right? Romans, but there, no one has an excuse. I'm looking into glimpses of eternity.

32:05

It's like the glory of God is so great that even in his creation, even in the fall of sin, his, his glory comes through even in creation because, you know,

32:15

I was out back in my tree last, I have a maple tree in my backyard and I looked up, it's fire red, it's orange.

32:21

And I went, I just had this thought. I looked up, I go, isn't that so pleasing to the eyes yet? That's a cycle of death. That is the cause of the fall of sin that those trees have to die and then rebirth.

32:30

And that whole cycle is because of sin. But yet in that, there's still beauty and glory. And God gives me something pleasing to look at through the eyes.

32:38

It smells good. It looks good, right? It pleases the senses. And I said, praise God for even the common grace of being able to appreciate those things.

32:46

And I'm, I'm kind of tracking with what you're saying. Edward was saying, I look at those things, even in nature and see a glimpse, a little taste of, of eternity, of, of God's glory.

32:57

And I find no man without excuse, anyone with two sets, any, any senses, ears, eyes, smell, whatever.

33:03

You have no excuse not to know that there is a creator, much like Roman says.

33:09

And it sounds like kind of that's where Edwards was even on joy. Look at, you're experiencing all these little tastes and touches of, of glory.

33:20

Why settle for just happiness or why settle for just what's in the unbelieving world?

33:25

Is that kind of where he was going with that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm just like praising

33:32

God for what you said there, brother. I really appreciate that. You know, let me just drop a couple of recommendations for anyone who's maybe interested in Jonathan Edwards and reading up on him, because one of the great things about being an

33:42

Edwards scholar is that it's all of his stuff is free online. There's a website called edwards .yale

33:49

.edu. And I'd almost rather have your listeners go there even than getting my book as much as that, that would be great because all of Edwards' stuff is for free there.

34:00

And so if you're interested, let me just drop a couple of recommendations first in volume 11. Okay. So there's 26 printed works in the

34:06

Yale editions, but there's more than that online. Volume 11 is his work on types and typology.

34:13

He has a book called shadows or images of divine things. And that's where Edwards has these great little vignettes, things that he sees in the created world.

34:23

And he looks through each one, almost like it's a window into eternal realities. So I would call them like sermon illustrations, but actually

34:32

Edwards had kind of this interesting cosmology where he believes that the material world is like spiritual windows into doctrinal or theological truths.

34:41

So you could read that, or at least just kind of flip through it as something really interesting to see how

34:46

Edwards looks at the natural order of creation. Okay. So there's that that's volume 11. Volume four is one of my favorite volumes because that's the volume that's focused on the great awakening itself.

34:57

Those would be his three big treatises that he writes in the 1740s about the great awakening.

35:03

So he has a short work called a faithful narrative, which tells about his local church in North Hampton in 1735.

35:11

He's got another piece called distinguishing marks of the work of the spirit, which was a revival sermon.

35:17

And then he has his larger work, some thoughts on the revival, which is essentially

35:22

Edwards is telling of the whole period of, of the great awakening and it's, and all of its riches in terms of revivalism.

35:29

So that's volume four. Volume two is the religious affections where Edwards describes that change of the heart that I was talking about earlier.

35:38

When a person is converted to Christ, the affections change. And if anyone's going to read anything from Jonathan Edwards, religious affections will come across as rich, devotional, enjoyable, beautiful material for, for you to read.

35:54

And there's a lot of content about joy in that particular work. Okay. So there's that.

36:00

Volume 16 is his personal writings, like for instance, his diary and his resolutions, which he wrote when he was very young, age 19 or 20, some great stuff there, as well as his letters.

36:11

And then of course, there's all the miscellanies in the sermon. So I would just send all of your listeners and viewers over to edwards .yale

36:19

.edu. You can get everything he ever wrote for free. You can send it to your own Kindle or put it on your phone.

36:25

You can make Google docs or word docs out of it and just read it on your own time. Other than that, yeah, it's, it's good to be an

36:33

Edwards scholar. There's a lot out there to enjoy. Okay. So when they're done doing that and they're thoroughly confused and they want something that's a little more concise and a little more pinpoint on joy, where can they find your book?

36:45

And can you, can you throw out the socials where everyone can find you and include YouTube in that so that people can watch you and what you do there?

36:52

Cause I just think what you're on your YouTube sessions are just amazing. Thank you so much.

36:58

I really appreciate that. Well, my YouTube channel is just my name, Matthew Everhard. And again, I'm the pastor of gospel fellowship

37:03

PCA. If you're anywhere North of Pittsburgh, please come check us out in real life. You can follow me at X or as it's formerly called

37:11

Twitter at Matt underscore Everhard is my name. All my books are on Amazon.

37:17

And if you're going to read anything that I wrote, you know, you could start with souls, how Jesus saves centers.

37:23

It's a very short primer on the gospel. It's the blue book. The black covered book is called hold fast to faith.

37:29

It's a devotional commentary on the Westminster confession of faith. It's not an academic commentary.

37:35

If you're looking for something really deep on the Westminster, that's not the book for you. There's better stuff out there. But if you want to read through the

37:42

Westminster confession, maybe for the first time, or you're new to reform theology, and you just kind of want to know what

37:47

Presbyterianism is all about hold fast to faith would be my book on that. This is the book we've been discussing right here.

37:54

Edwards on joy. Now it's available in print and an audible form. So if you're a book listener, you want to listen to it while you drive or while you're hunting in the blind.

38:04

It's about 10 hours. That's probably my magnum opus that I've written at least on, on Edwards and his theology, all on Amazon.

38:11

And we will link that up you guys for you. You can click through right on the episode wherever you're listening or watching to this.

38:17

There'll be links in the description. All right, Matthew. So we didn't discuss this, but I think you passed the litmus test.

38:23

We like to take a learned men and bring them down to our level and play a game called fresh 10, where we ask you 10 fresh questions to get to know you a little bit better.

38:33

You don't know what they are. They're rapid fire. Would you want to stick around for another three or four minutes and play with us? Absolutely. I got all day.

38:39

Let's do it. All right. Matthew Everhart on fresh 10. Here we go. All right, here we go.

38:55

Fresh 10 questions with Matthew. First question, what city and state did you grow up in and how did that affect your childhood?

39:03

Ah, yes. I was born in Akron, Ohio, and I grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

39:09

For me, the best city in the world. Cuyahoga Falls is still my hometown. I love it to this day. All right.

39:14

We're not too far apart here. I'm in Southeastern Michigan. So there you go. I'm familiar with the area. Midwest brother.

39:21

So number two, what's your favorite funny story to tell people or maybe about yourself or about something else, maybe an icebreaker, a joke when you meet new people or you're around friends, what's your go -to?

39:35

There's this hilarious time, and I tell this in every marriage counseling I do, where my wife and I were having our first Thanksgiving together and we had a fight about sweatpants on the way to the

39:45

Thanksgiving dinner. And I got so mad about sweatpants. I punched the horn on my car and I bent the connector so that we had to drive all the way through Akron with a horn blaring the entire time, pulled up next to a police officer at one point, pulled up next to some homeless guys on the red lights and had to drive all the way through town with my horn just blaring.

40:05

So I talk about early married life and the trials of sweatpants with that story.

40:11

That police officer's going, what's going on here? Like, I hate sweatpants. He's all confused. Yeah, exactly right. All right.

40:17

Question number three, the flux capacitor is fluxing. You're in the DeLorean. We're going, are we going back in time to visit our great, great, great grandkids or great, great, great grandparents?

40:26

Are we going forward in time to visit our great, great, great grandkids? Where are we going? That's so tough. That is so your eschatology sometimes has something to do with this.

40:35

My post mills, they love going forward to see how, you know, what they built. Well, as an optimist, yeah,

40:43

I'm an optimistic, a millennialist. So I'll go back. I'll go back. I'll go back and meet some of my ancestors.

40:48

I had a guy called Uriah Everhard who wrote the Everhard family book. And he was also a pastor.

40:54

He was an itinerant gospel evangelist. He wrote on horseback 50 ,000 miles on horseback preaching the gospel.

40:59

I think I'd go back to him and say, hello. All right. Question number four, moving right along. What's something people would be surprised to know about you?

41:08

Maybe something they don't know, a hobby, a skill you have, you know. Hardcore skateboarder.

41:14

My ankles are getting a little bit too old now. I'm 48 years of old, 48 years of age, but I was hardcore skateboarder back in the day.

41:23

Kick flips, jump ramps, half pipes, vision streetwear. If any of that rings a bell, then

41:29

I'm your guy. Yeah, it does. That is awesome, man. See, I wouldn't have known that. Question number five, top three bands or music albums that have influenced your life the most, or if you just have one, but at least give us one album or band or song or something that you look back and go, yeah, that was influential in whatever way.

41:47

Oh man, that's so tough. Gosh, I'm not much of a music guy to be completely honest.

41:52

And I'll make everybody kind of cringe when I tell you that I set my radio to the 90s channel.

41:58

I graduated in 1995, so anything in the 90s is good for me.

42:04

There you go. That's good enough for you. All right. Favorite thing to do when you just want to relax. What's your go -to when you're like,

42:10

I just need an hour to myself. I want to relax. What are you doing? Take a walk, take a walk.

42:16

We live on the backside of a college campus, so my wife and I like to go for nice walks through the woods or on the walking path.

42:22

All right. Question number seven. What do people misunderstand about you the most?

42:27

What is something maybe they assume and you go, no, you're misunderstanding that. I'm not a jerk. I'm really a nice guy.

42:33

That's what it is. Right. So I have a dry sense of humor and a lot of my jokes don't work with people.

42:38

So I think I'm hilarious, but some people say that I never smile. So my students say that I don't smile.

42:44

And I think it's just because they're not getting my sense of humor. Yeah, no, I get it. My wife told me once,

42:49

Greg, no one loves your jokes more than you. That's right. So number eight, if you could sit down for a cup of coffee with any historical figure outside of Christ, who would it be and why?

43:03

Well, of course it'd be Jonathan Edwards. I mean, that kind of goes for taken for granted there.

43:10

Yeah, absolutely. Halfway through that question, I went, I think I know what the answer is going to be. Yeah. All right. Two more. Here we go.

43:15

Question number nine. What is a movie you've watched multiple times? And I ask it that way because when I say, what's your favorite movie?

43:21

People go, oh, I can't pick a favorite, but if I, but if I can get you to say what movie you've watched multiple times, generally, that's the one you like.

43:28

You sit down, you can go through it. You don't have to skip through. You can just watch it a couple of times over a course of a couple of years. What would that movie be?

43:35

A hundred percent. It's the movie Braveheart. I have the soundtrack. I know every scene of the movie just by listening to the soundtrack.

43:42

Such a good movie. Awesome. Oh my gosh. That gets you riled up. Yep. All right.

43:49

Last question. Here we go. What is a book outside of the Bible, and it can be one of your books if you want, that everyone should at least pick up and read once in their life?

43:59

Oh my goodness. Oh, that's so hard. Oh, well, I just actually, on my YouTube channel, I put out a series of videos in which

44:06

I give my top 100 books. So if you want to know the answer to that in long form, I gave my top 100 in order from 100 down to one.

44:14

But if you, if you want to know the answer, number one is Pilgrim's Progress. I think it's one of the all -time greatest books.

44:19

And you have cheated yourself in life if you have not read Pilgrim's Progress at some point. No, that's such a good answer.

44:26

And such a great book. It's very well rounded. Stands the test of time. All right, there we go. That's Fresh 10 with Matthew Eberhardt.

44:43

We love having Presbyterians on and play rap for him, you know, let him sit through that intro. It's good stuff.

44:49

So Matthew, let's give you the final word and then we'll get out of here. So if someone's listening right now and they said, yeah, that's all good stuff.

44:55

Sum it up for me in 30 seconds on joy. What would you tell them? If you want to be happy in life, root your heart in the

45:05

Lord Jesus Christ, trust in him with all of your heart, all of your soul. Marry young if you can, have as many children as possible.

45:15

Make sure you're in a Bible -believing church. And if you're north of Pittsburgh, come check us out, Gospel Fellowship PCA. I love it.

45:22

All right, Matthew, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this. Appreciate it. And I should say at the end of the show too, we got connected because of the

45:30

Reformed Podcast bracket that went very well and you were not included in it, but guess what? You're going to be included in it next year.

45:36

And it wasn't because you don't have a great podcast and YouTube channel and all that. You were just outside of my sphere of influence at the time, but next year

45:43

I'm looking for big things from you, big things. And you're going to be in the planning process. Now that I complained that I wasn't in it,

45:50

I'm probably going to underperform and I'll probably be eliminated in the first round. It doesn't matter.

45:55

You're going to be in the planning process. I'll be reaching out to you. I've got a couple other guys and we've got some cool things coming with that too.

46:01

For those listening who took part in that, I've got a guy who makes custom six foot welded trophies with bronze and steel.

46:09

And he goes, Hey, I would love to make something for you. So it's going to grow. We're going to have this awesome trophy. We're going to have people that you don't even,

46:16

I can't talk about it right now, but you're going to be in that planning process because you brought some things to my attention early in it, which

46:21

I really appreciate it, which then turned me onto your YouTube channel. I'm like, where's this guy been in my life, my whole life.

46:27

So it was just, it was providential. It was a blessing. I appreciate you being so kind and gracious through that.

46:33

And then being able to come on today and talk to us. I really do appreciate it. You got it, man. I'm bringing the fire next year. Let's go.

46:39

All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of dead men walking podcast. As always, you can find us at dmwpodcast .com

46:46

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47:03

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47:11

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