A Man Set On Fire For Christ's Sake- The Grace of God in the Life and Ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones

In July 1959, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his wife, Bethan, were on vacation in Wales. They attended a little chapel for a Sunday-morning prayer meeting, and Lloyd-Jones asked those present, “Would you like me to give a word this morning?” The people hesitated because it was his vacation, and they didn’t want to presume on his energy. But his wife said, “Let him. Preaching is his life” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 373). It was a true statement. In the preface to his powerful book Preaching and Preachers, he said, “Preaching has been my life’s work . . . to me the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called” (17).  For thirty years he preached from the pulpit at Westminster Chapel in London. Usually that meant three different sermons each weekend: Friday evening and Sunday morning and evening.

At the end of his career, he remarked, “I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching” (Preaching and Preachers, 14). But that was not the way others felt. When J.I. Packer was a 22-year-old student, he heard Lloyd-Jones preach each Sunday evening during the school year of 1948–1949, and he said that he had “never heard such preaching.” It came to him “with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man” (Five Evangelical Leaders, 170).

Physician of Souls

Lloyd-Jones’s path to Westminster was unique. He was born in Cardiff, Wales, on December 20, 1899. He moved to London with his family when he was 14 and went to medical school at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he received his MD in 1921 and became Sir Thomas Horder’s chief clinical assistant. The well-known Horder described Lloyd-Jones as “the most acute thinker that I ever knew” (Five Evangelical Leaders, 56).

Between 1921 and 1923, Lloyd-Jones underwent a profound conversion. It was so life-changing that it brought with it a passion to preach that completely outweighed his call as a physician. He felt a deep yearning to return to his native Wales and preach. His first sermon there was in April of 1925, and the note he sounded was the recurrent theme of his life: Wales did not need more talk about social action; it needed “a great spiritual awakening.” This theme of revival and power and real vitality remained his lifelong passion (Five Evangelical Leaders, 66).

Boldly Proclaiming the Word of God: An Interview with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"In this legendary 1970 interview British journalist Joan Bakewell discusses the biblical truth about man with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Please spend a little time watching it and studying the way Lloyd-Jones proclaims the word of God.

I would like to use something that Lloyd-Jones emphasized in this interview as a launching point to briefly discuss the nature of the authority by which we proclaim biblical truth, and the necessity of us as Christians refusing to compromise or give any ground whatsoever to those who would challenge the truth of the gospel.

One truly striking aspect of this interview is that Bakewell appears to genuinely enjoy interacting with Lloyd Jones. I suggest that she enjoys Lloyd-Jones so much because when she challenges him with questions to which she would expect some kind of attempt to accommodate or compromise with a differing point of view, Lloyd-Jones is utterly and yet winsomely uncompromising.

Lloyd-Jones is necessarily dogmatic about two main points: First, he rejects the secular view that mankind is autonomous, self-determining, and merely a highly evolved animal. He confesses, in opposition to this, the biblical view that man is created in the image of God, and that man was originally created perfect and righteous but sinned against God. As a result, man is a rebel against God, and that is the reason for all of his troubles. He asserts that man can only function truly and be truly happy when he “lives his life under God.” That is, he submits to and obeys God from his heart. That is the purpose for which he was originally created.

Second, Lloyd-Jones asserts that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about giving us a better life or making us more wealthy or comfortable, as it was so often falsely portrayed by segments of the professing church in both his day and still is in ours. The gospel of Christ is about “reconciling us to God”(Rom. 5:10).

10 Things We Should Know About Charles Spurgeon (the Prince of Preachers)

My Favorite Spurgeon Bio

"1. His ministry began in the year of his conversion as a young man.

Spurgeon was raised in a Christian home, but was converted in 1850 at fifteen years old. Caught in a snowstorm, he took refuge in a small Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester. After about ten minutes, with only twelve to fifteen people present, the preacher fixed his eyes on Spurgeon and spoke to him directly:

“Young man, you look very miserable.” Then, lifting up his hands, he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.” Spurgeon later wrote, ‘Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away.’ 1

The ‘Prince of Preachers’ was tricked into preaching his first sermon that same year. An older man had asked Spurgeon to go to the little village of Teversham the next evening, “for a young man was to preach there who was not much used to services, and very likely would be glad of company.” It was only the next day that he realized the ‘young man’ was himself.2

2. He was a man of hard work and huge influence. (Col. 1:29; 1 Cor. 15:10)

He went on to preach in person up to thirteen times per week, gathered the largest church of his day, and could make himself heard in a crowd of twenty-three thousand people (without amplification). In print he published some eighteen million words, selling over fifty-six million copies of his sermons in nearly forty languages in his own lifetime.

3. He was self-consciously a theological and doctrinal preacher.

While Spurgeon is not known as a theologian as such, he was nevertheless a deeply theological thinker and his sermons were rich in doctrine, and dripping with knowledge of historical theology – especially the Puritans.  Some preachers seem to be afraid lest their sermons should be too rich in doctrine, and so injure the spiritual digestions of their hearers. The fear is superfluous. . . . This is not a theological age, and therefore it rails at sound doctrinal teaching, on the principle that ignorance despises wisdom. The glorious giants of the Puritan age fed on something better than the whipped creams and pastries which are now so much in vogue.3

4. He was pre-eminently a theologian and preacher of the cross.

Spurgeon’s was a cross-centered and cross-shaped theology, for the cross was “the hour” of Christ’s glorification (John 12:23–24), the place where Christ was and is exalted, the only message able to overturn the hearts of men and women otherwise enslaved to sin. Along with Isaiah 45:22, one of Spurgeon’s favorite Bible verses was John 12:32: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  For this reason He insisted on celebrating the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. He believed his preaching of the crucified Christ was the only reason why such great crowds were drawn to his church for so many years.

Who can resist his charms? One look of his eyes overpowers us. See with your heart those eyes when they are full of tears for perishing sinners, and you are a willing subject. One look at his blessed person subjected to scourging and spitting for our sakes will give us more idea of his crown rights than anything besides. Look into his pierced heart as it pours out its life-flood for us, and all disputes about his sovereignty are ended in our hearts. We own him Lord because we see how he loved.4  Regeneration, he saw, is a work of pure grace—and those the Lord regenerates, he will indwell.

5. He aimed his ministry and preaching at new birth (as did George Whitefield).

The Polemical Ministry of Charles Spurgeon

Phil Johnson's D. Min lecture on the Polemical Preaching of Charles Spurgeon.

Spurgeon was a topical expositor and often took a short text or phrase from a verse and expounded it in a doctrinal manner.  In his sermons he sometimes departed rather quickly from the context of his stated text.  His sermon content was sound and was well supported with a slew of cross references.  Having said that, it is a homiletic model that preachers today should not try to duplicate.  For one, Spurgeon had a photographic memory and he enjoyed an exceptionally powerful voice.  Concerning his sermon preparation Spurgeon studied all week long.  He filled his mind every week of his Christian life with biblical truth and sound doctrine.  You might say Spurgeon had deep theological wells to draw upon.  Concerning his work ethic, "Spurgeon often labored 18 hours a day. Famous explorer and missionary David Livingstone once asked him, “How do you manage to do two men’s work in a single day?” Spurgeon replied, “You have forgotten that there are two of us.” On Saturday evening at 6pm Charles began to develop his sermon outline that he would then take with him into the pulpit.  Before Spurgeon's sermons were distributed throughout the world (up to 25,000 copies a week) he would edit his transcript.

The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards

The Extraordinary Preaching of Jonathan Edwards

By Dr. Steven J. Lawson

  

I.       The Need For an awakening

II.    The nature of an awakening

III. the leaderS of the awakening

IV. the preaching of EdwaRDS (SUmmarized)

a.    scripture – saturated

b.     god – exalting

c.    Christ – centered

WHY STUDY GREAT PREACHERS FROM THE PAST?

why study great preachers from the past?

Steven J. Lawson

I.             they enlarge our PERSPECTIVE

II.          they prioritize our preaching

III.       they deepen our godliness

IV.       they motivate our study

V.          they sharpen our theology