The Christ-Centred Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Classic Sermons For The Church Today

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783591688
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

This anthology, carefully compiled and edited by Lloyd-Jones's daughter and grandson, begins with a general introduction to his life and ministry, followed by a selection of his sermons from the 1930s to the late 1960s, arranged in chronological order. Each sermon is preceded by an introduction detailing when it was preached, what Lloyd-Jones was doing at the time, why the historical context gave rise to the sermon, and how its message relates to the world today.
The collection includes sermons from 1939 (at the start of World War 2); the early 1950s (on the Sermon on the Mount) - when, as J. I. Packer put it, Lloyd-Jones was on a 'plateau of supreme excellence'; 1959 (on revival; preached again in 1980 as his last ever sermon); 24 November 1963 (two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy); and 1968 (the final sermons at Westminster Chapel).
This powerful volume presents Lloyd-Jones's prophetic preaching anew for contemporary Christians, and will help them understand and appreciate his enduring influence and the biblical truths for which he stood.

1

NO SUBSTITUTE

(1969)
From Preaching and Preachers

This is a book about Christ-centered preaching. For that reason the great majority of chapters in our volume will be the sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, as outlined in this book’s introduction.

However, we do need to know what Dr. Lloyd-Jones actually meant when he employed that term. Thankfully, he has given us a detailed answer in Preaching and Preachers, a book still in print well over five decades after the original lectures were given.

As he goes into some depth in “No Substitute,” there is not as much need for as full an introduction here as will be the case with subsequent chapters. For him, preaching and giving a lecture were two totally different things—one a God-ordained way of proclamation, the other a human institution. This is why he had the very high notion of what he did Sunday by Sunday and on Friday evenings at Westminster Chapel. He was proclaiming God’s Word, not just giving a stream of good ideas that had by chance come to him during the week or while reading the news.

Pastor-teacher is one of the spiritual gifts of the New Testament, and thankfully it is one of those whose continual validity is never contested. It is as vitally necessary in our time as it was in the time of the apostle Paul! Being a preacher was not a human vocation but a calling from God himself. It was God’s means of communication, and that being the case there was no possible substitute for it.

Today there is a renaissance in the centrality of preaching, for which we can be thankful to God! But simultaneously there are those who announce that we must find new ways of “doing church” because twenty-first-century people can no longer cope with the supposedly old and outdated methods of the past. A biblically based, Christ-centered defense of preaching has therefore never been more important.

No one can speak more eloquently on this than the Doctor himself. Let the words that now follow transform you as they did those who heard them spoken in 1969 and the many who have been changed by them since.

In our first lecture I laid down a proposition that preaching is the primary task of the church and therefore of the minster of the church, that everything else is subsidiary to this and can be represented as the outworking or the carrying out of this in daily practice. What I am doing is to justify this proposition, and I am doing so, particularly, in view of the tendency today to depreciate preaching at the expense of various other forms of activity. Having laid down the proposition, I have tried to substantiate it by evidence from the New Testament and also from the history of the church.

I now want to go a step further and to suggest that this evidence from the New Testament itself, supported and exemplified by the history of the church, leads us to the conclusion that the ultimate justification for asserting the primacy of preaching is theological. In other words, I argue that the whole message of the Bible asserts this and drives us to this conclusion. What do I mean by that? Essentially I mean that the moment you consider man’s real need, and also the nature of the salvation announced and proclaimed in the Scriptures, you are driven to the conclusion that the primary task of the church is to preach and to proclaim this, to show man’s real need, and to show the only remedy, the only cure for it.

Let me elaborate that a little. This is the very essence of my argument. I am suggesting that it is because there are currently false views with regard to these matters that people no longer see the importance of preaching. Take the question of the need, man’s need.

NOT A MERE SICKNESS

What is it? Well, negatively, it is not a mere sickness. There is a tendency to regard man’s essential trouble as being a sickness. I do not mean physical sickness only. That comes in, but I mean a kind of mental and moral and spiritual sickness. It is not that; that is not man’s real need, not his real trouble! I would say the same about his misery and his unhappiness, and also about his being a victim of circumstances.

These are the things that are given prominence today. There are so many people trying to diagnose the human situation; and they come to the conclusion that man is sick, man is unhappy, man is the victim of circumstances. They believe therefore that his primary need is to have these things dealt with, that he must be delivered from them. But I suggest that is too superficial a diagnosis of the condition of man and that man’s real trouble is that he is a rebel against God and consequently is under the wrath of God.

Now this is the biblical statement concerning him; this is the biblical view of man as he is by nature. He is “dead in trespasses and sins”; that means spiritually dead. He is dead to the life of God, to the spiritual realm, and to all the beneficent influences of that realm upon him. We are also told that he is “blind.” “If our gospel be hid,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:3– 4, “it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” Or as Paul puts it again in Ephesians 4:17ff., man’s trouble is that his understanding is darkened because he is alienated from the life of God through the sin that is in him. Another very common biblical term to describe this condition of man is the term “darkness.” You have it in John 3:19: “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” And in 1 John 2:8 you find the same idea worked out. Writing to Christians he says that “the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” The apostle Paul uses the same idea exactly in Ephesians 5:8. He says, “Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.” These are the terms that express the biblical diagnosis of man’s essential trouble. In other words we can sum it up in one word by saying that it is ignorance. All the terms such as “blindness” and “darkness” are indicative of ignorance. And according to this biblical view of man all these other things, such as unhappiness and misery, even physical illness, and all the other things that torment and trouble us so much are the results and the consequences of original sin and the fall of Adam. They are not the main problem; they are consequences or symptoms if you like, manifestations of this primary, this ultimate disease.

THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SAVES

That being the picture of man’s need, it is not surprising that when you turn to the biblical account of salvation you find that it is put in terms that correspond to this expression of the need. The apostle describes salvation in these words: it means “to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). It is the will of God that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is a knowledge of the truth. In 2 Corinthians 5:19–20 he says that the message that has been committed to the preacher, who is an “ambassador for Christ,” is to say to men, “be ye reconciled to God.” You find it again in the practice of the apostle. We read in Acts 17:23 of him preaching in Athens and saying, “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” They were ignorant though they were philosophers, and he is the one who can teach them and give them light in this matter.

I am simply showing that the biblical teaching concerning salvation is that it is the result of bringing men to this “knowledge” that they lack, it is dealing with this ignorance. Paul talks about preaching “all the counsel of God,” and Peter had the same idea when he says that Christians are people who have been called “out of darkness into [God’s] marvellous light.” Now these are the biblical terms, and they all, it seems to me, indicate that preaching always comes first and is given priority. If this is the greatest need of man, if his ultimate need is something that arises out of this ignorance of his, which in turn is the result of rebellion against God, then what he needs first and foremost is to be told about this, to be told the truth about himself, and to be told of the only way in which this can be dealt with. So I assert that it is the peculiar task of the church, and of the preacher, to make all this known.

I would emphasize the word peculiar—you can use the word exceptional if you like or special. The preacher alone is the one who can do this. He is the only one who is in a position to deal with the greatest need of the world. Paul says of himself in 1 Corinthians 9:17 that “a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.” That is what he was called for—this “dispensation of the gospel,” this message, had been given to him. And you have the same thing expressed in a very glorious statement in the third chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, verse 8: “Unto me,” he says, “who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” This is his calling, this is his task. He has said before that all this “in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5). This is the message: “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3:9–10).

My whole contention is that it is the church alone that can do this, and it is the preacher therefore who alone can make it known. He is set apart by the church, as I am going to show, to serve this particular function, to perform this particular task. This is the thing that is given primacy and is emphasized, and it must surely of necessity be the case. The moment we realize man’s true need and see the only answer, it becomes clear that only those who are in possession of this understanding can impart this message to those who lack it.

THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH

Let me work this out a little. There are other agencies in the world that can deal with many of the problems of mankind. I mean by that things like medicine, the state, other religions and cults, psychology and various other teachings, and political agencies. These are all designed to help and to relieve, somewhat, the human condition, to ease the pain and the problem of life and to enable men to live more harmoniously and to enjoy life in a greater measure. They set out to do that, and it is not part of our case to say that they are of no value. We must observe the facts and grant that they can do good, and do much good. They are capable in a measure of dealing with these things. But none of them can deal with this fundamental, this primary trouble at which we have been looking.

Not only that, when they have done their all, or when even the church coming down to that level and operating on that level alone, has done her all, the primary trouble still remains. So I would lay it down as a basic proposition that the primary task of the church is not to educate man, it is not to heal him physically or psychologically, it is not to make him happy. I will go further: it is not even to make him good. These are things that accompany salvation, and when the church performs her true task she does incidentally educate men and give them knowledge and information, she does bring them happiness, she does make them good and better than they were. But my point is that those are not her primary objectives. Her primary purpose is not any of these; it is rather to put man into the right relationship with God, to reconcile man to God. This really does need to be emphasized at the present time because this, it seems to me, is the essence of the modern fallacy. It has come into the church, and it is influencing the thinking of many in the church––this notion that the business of the church is to make people happy, or to integrate their lives, or to relieve their circumstances and improve their conditions. My whole case is that to do that is just to palliate the symptoms, to give temporary ease, and that it does not get beyond that.

I am not saying that it is a bad thing to palliate symptoms; it is not, and it is obviously right and good to do so. But I am constrained to say that though to palliate symptoms or to relieve them is not bad in and of itself, it can be bad, it can have a bad influence and a bad effect from the standpoint of the biblical understanding of man and his needs. It can become harmful in this way: by palliating the symptoms you can conceal the real disease. Here is something that we have to bear in mind at the present time because, unless I am greatly mistaken, this is a vital part of our problem today.

Let me use a medical illustration. Take a man who is lying on a bed and writhing in agony with abdominal pain. Now a doctor may come along who happens to be a very nice and a very sympathetic man. He does not like to see people suffering; he does not like to see people in pain, so he feels that the one thing to do is to relieve this man of his pain. He is able to do so. He can give him an injection of morphine or various other drugs that would give the man almost immediate relief. “Well,” you say, “surely there is nothing wrong in doing that. It is a kind action; it is a good action. The patient is made more comfortable; he is made happier and is no longer suffering.” The answer to that is that it is well-nigh a criminal act on the part of this doctor. It is criminal because merely to remove a symptom without discovering the cause of the symptom is to do a disservice to the patient. A symptom after all is a manifestation of a disease, and symptoms are very valuable. It is through tracking the symptoms and following the lead that they give that you should arrive at the disease that has given rise to the symptoms. So if you just remove the symptoms before you have discovered the cause of the symptoms, you are actually doing your patient real harm because you are giving him temporary ease that makes him think that all is well. But all is not well; it is only a temporary relief, and the disease is there, is still continuing. If this happened to have been an acute appendix or something like that, the sooner it is taken out the better, and if you have merely given the patient ease and relief without dealing with it, you are asking for an abscess or something even worse.

That, surely, gives us a picture of a great deal that is happening at the present time. This is one of the problems confronting the Christian church today. This affluent society in which we are living is drugging people and making them feel that all is well with them. They have better wages, better houses, better cars, every gadget desirable in the home. Life is satisfactory and all seems to be well, and because of that people have ceased to think and to face the real problems. They are content with this superficial ease and satisfaction, and that militates against a true and a radical understanding of their actual condition. And, of course, this is aggravated at the present time by many other agencies. There is the pleasure mania and television and radio bringing their influence right into the home. All these things persuade man that all is well; they give him temporary feelings of happiness, so he assumes that all is well and stops thinking. The result is that he does not realize his true position and then face it.

Then you have to add to that the giving of tranquilizing drugs and the taking of so-called pep pills and hypnotics. People live on these, and all this, very often, not only has the effect of concealing the physical problem but also, and still more serious, the spiritual problem. As man is content with this temporary relief, he tends to go on assuming that all is well and eventually ends in a crash. The form that the crash is taking so often today is drug addiction and so on, and there are many who cannot continue to do their work without this alternation of pep pills and hypnotics, tranquilizers and stimulants. I suggest that many of these agencies to which the church seems to be turning today, instead of carrying out her primary task of preaching, are ultimately having that same kind of effect. While they are not bad in and of themselves, they can become bad, and truly harmful, by concealing the real need.

The business of the church and the business of preaching—and she alone can do this—is to isolate the radical problems and to deal with them in a radical manner. This is specialist work; it is the peculiar task of the church. The church is not one of a number of agencies, she is not in competition with the cults, she is not in competition with other religions, she is not in competition with psychologists or any other agency, political or social or whatever it may chance to be. The church is a special and a specialist institution, and this is a work that she alone can perform.

THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

I want to support this contention by certain other statements. Here, for instance, is one that to me has an almost amusing aspect to it. These proposals that we should preach less and do various other things more are of course not new at all. People seem to think that all this is quite new and that it is the hallmark of modernity to decry or to depreciate preaching and to put your emphasis on these other things. The simple answer to that is that there is nothing new about it. The actual form may be new, but the principle is certainly not a new one at all; indeed it has been the particular emphasis of this present [twentieth] century.

Take all this new interest in the social application of the gospel and the idea of going to live among the people and to talk politics and to enter into their social affairs and so on. The simple answer to that is that until the First World War that was the real vogue in most western countries. It was then called “the social gospel,” but it was precisely the same thing. The argument was that the old evangelical preaching of the gospel was too personal, too simple, that it did not deal with the social problems and conditions. This was a part, of course, of the liberal, modernist, higher-critical view of the Scriptures and of our Lord. He was just a perfect man and a great teacher, a political agitator and reformer, and the great exemplar. He had come to do good, and the Sermon on the Mount was something that you could put into acts of Parliament and turn into legislation. So you were going to make a perfect world. That was the old liberalism of the pre-1914 period. The very thing that is regarded as so new today, and what is regarded as the primary task of the church, is something that has already been tried, and tried with great thoroughness, in the early part of the twentieth century.

The same is true of various other agencies that are coming into the life and activity of the church. What is advocated today as a new approach was practiced by what was then called the institutional church; and this, once more, was done with considerable thoroughness. There were all sorts of cultural clubs in the churches, and the church became the center of social life. There were organized games and clubs of various descriptions. All this was given a most thorough trial in the pre-1914 period.

But we are entitled to ask, surely, whether they worked, how effective they were, and what they led to. The answer is that they proved to be failures. I am not so aware in a detailed way of the position in the United States, which I know is somewhat different from that in Great Britain, but I have no hesitation in asserting that what was largely responsible for emptying the churches in Great Britain was “social gospel” preaching and the institutional church. It was more responsible for doing so than anything else. The people rightly argued in this way: if the business of the church was really just to preach a form of political and social reform and pacifism, then the church was not really necessary, for all that could be done through the political agencies. So they left the churches and went and did it, or tried to do it, through their political parties. That was perfectly logical, but its effect upon the churches was most harmful.

That can be illustrated and shown equally well at the present time. There are two preachers in London who are great advocates of this political-social interest of the church in the man of the world and who contend that this is the way to win him and to help him and to make him a Christian. It is most interesting to notice that these two men who are most given to this teaching in Britain have small congregations on Sundays in their churches in the very heart and most accessible part of London. These are facts that can be verified, and that this should be the case is not at all surprising. People say to themselves that there is no need to go to church to hear that kind of thing. You can get it daily in the newspapers and in the political a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 No Substitute
• 2 The Narrowness of the Gospel (Matthew 7:13–14)
• 3 The Final Answer to All Our Questions (Romans 8:28)
• 4 Is the Gospel Still Relevant?
• 5 Practicing the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:28–29)
• 6 Mind, Heart, and Will (Romans 6:17)
• 7 My Purpose and Method (Deuteronomy 29:29)
• 8 The Christian Message to the World (Ephesians 2:4)
• 9 The Purpose of Revival (Joshua 4:21–24)
• 10 The Spirit Himself Bears Witness (Romans 8:16)
• 11 The Only Hope (1 Corinthians 6:9–11)
• 12 He Is Our Peace (Galatians 6:14)
• 13 Where Art Thou? (Genesis 3:9)
• 14 Seeking the Face of God (Psalm 27)
• 15 Why Christ Had to Suffer (Acts 8:30)
• 16 With Him in the Glory (John 17:24)
• 17 More Than Conquerors (John 4:28–30)
• Sources
• Notes