In July 1959 Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his wife Bethan were on vacation in Wales. They attended a small chapel for a Sunday morning prayer meeting and Lloyd-Jones asked the participants, “Do you want me to preach this morning?” People hesitated because it was their vacation and they didn’t want to disturb their rest. But his wife said, “Let him preach, is this his life?” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 373). It was a real statement. In the preface to his powerful book Preaching and Preachers, he said, “Was preaching my life’s work? For me, is the work of preaching the highest, greatest, and most glorious call to which one can be called? (17).
Many called him the last of the Calvinist Methodist preachers because he combined Calvin’s love of truth and sound reformed doctrine with fire and passion for 18th-century Methodist renewal (Five Leaders Evangelical, 55). For thirty years he preached from the pulpit of westminster Chapel. in London. This usually meant three different sermons each weekend: Friday night and Sunday morning and evening.
- At the end of his career.
- He remarked.
- “Can I honestly say you wouldn’t cross the street to hear me preach?(Preaching and Preachers.
- 14).
- But that’s not how others felt.
- When JIPacker was 22.
- ” a one-year-old student.
- He heard Lloyd-Jones preach every Sunday night during the 1948-49 school year.
- And said he had “never heard of such a preaching.
- “What came to him with the force of an electric shock brought more than any other man.
- At least one of his listeners.
- A sense of God?(Five Evangelical Leaders.
- 170).
Lloyd-Jones’ trip to Westminster was unique. Born in Cardiff, Wales, on 20 December 1899, he moved to London with his family at the age of 14 and studied medicine in St. Bartholomew’s. S, where he obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1921 and became assistant director of the clinic. By Sir Thomas Horder. The famous Horder described Lloyd Jones as “the most insightful thinker I have ever met” (Five Evangelical Leaders, 56).
Between 1921 and 1923, Lloyd-Jones underwent a profound conversion. He was so transformative that he brought such a passion for preaching that he completely surpassed his vocation as a doctor; felt a deep desire to go back to Wales and preach. His first sermon took place in April 1925, and his preaching was the recurring theme. of his life: Wales no longer needed to talk about social action; needed “a great spiritual awakening. “This theme of awakening, power and true vitality has been his lifelong passion (Five Evangelical Leaders, 66).
He was called to become pastor of Bethlehem Forward Movement Mission Church in Sandfields, Aberavon, in 1926, and the following year married one of his former medical students, Bethan Phillips. During their lives together, they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Ann.
His preaching was known throughout Britain and the United States. It was popular, of course, doctrinally sound, logical and fiery. In 1937 he preached in Philadelphia and G. Campbell Morgan was there. He was so impressed that he felt compelled to have Lloyd-Jones. as a partner at Westminster Chapel in London.
Lloyd-Jones and G. Campbell Morgan were joint ministers until Morgan’s retirement in 1943, then Lloyd-Jones became the sole preaching pastor for nearly 30 years. So many people were attracted to the clarity, power, and doctrinal depth of her preaching that in 1947, Sunday morning attendance was about 1,500 people, and Sunday night’s attendance was 2,000 people. She wore a black dress from Geneva and didn’t wear tricks or jokes. Like Jonathan Edwards, two hundred years earlier, he held the audience for the weight and intensity of his vision. truth.
Lloyd Jones became ill in 1968 and took this as a sign to retire and devote himself more to writing. He continued to write for about twelve years and died in peace on March 1, 1981.
From the beginning to the end of its life, Lloyd-Jones’ department was a demand for depth in two areas: depth of biblical doctrine and depth of vital spiritual experience. Light and warmth. Logic and fire. Word and spirit. Time and again, he fought on two fronts: on the one hand, against dead institutional intellectualism, formal, and, on the other hand, against superficial, superficial, entertainment-oriented and man-centered emotionism. Jones, the only hope of a lasting solution was God-centered historical awakening.
When the alarm goes off, it’s visible. It’s not just a quiet subjective experience in the church. Things happen that keep the world sitting and paying attention. This is what was so important to Lloyd-Jones. Me was overwhelmed by the corruption of the world and the weakness of the Church. And I thought the only hope would be a dazzling thing.
Today’s Christian Church fails and fails miserably. It’s not enough to be orthodox. You must, of course, be Orthodox, otherwise you will not receive the message . . . We need authority and authentication . . . is it very clear that we live in an age when we need special authentication – in other words, we need a renewal. (The Sovereign Spirit, 25).
Awakening, for Lloyd-Jones, was a kind of demonstration of power that authenticated the truth of the gospel into a desperately hardened world. What weighed so heavily on Lloyd-Jones’ heart was that the name of God was justified and his glory manifested. in the world. ” Should we be anxious?” said, “To see something happen that will paralyze nations, all peoples, and make them stop and rethred?”(Awakening, 120).
Lloyd-Jones himself had enough extraordinary experiences to let him know that he was better off being open to what the sovereign God could do. For example, Stacy Woods describes the physical effect of one of Lloyd-Jones’ sermons.
“In an extraordinary way, God’s presence was in this Church. Personally, I had the impression that a hand was pushing me into the bank. At the end of the sermon, for some reason the organ wasn’t ringing, the doctor left the pulpit and everyone was completely still, without moving. It was almost ten minutes before people seemed to find the strength to stand up, and without speaking to each other they left the Church in silence. I have never witnessed or experienced preaching with such a fantastic response from the congregation. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 377).
Another illustration comes from her early days in Sandfield: a woman who had been a well-known spiritual medium came to her church one night and later, after her conversion, testified:
“As soon as I entered this chapel and sat down with the people, I realized a supernatural power. I was aware of the same kind of supernatural power I was used to in our spiritual meetings, but there was a big difference; I had the feeling that power in his chapel was pure power (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 221).
Lloyd-Jones knew from the Bible, history, and his own experience that the extraordinary work of the Spirit challenges any precise categorization. He said: “The ways in which the blessing comes are almost infinite. We must be careful not to restrict or restrict them. (Joy Unspeakable, 243).
These are remarkable lessons from britain’s leading spokesman for the reformed cause over the past generation. So he doesn’t think Lloyd-Jones was a charismatic unknown, he was careful to express his desicncant with Pentecostals and charismatics as he knew them.
Unlike the many charismatics of his time, for example, he insisted that revival had a solid doctrinal basis; that the Holy Ghost is sovereign and comes and goes on its own terms; that those baptized with the Holy Ghost do not necessarily speak in languages; and that spiritual experiences are never in favor of themselves, but always by power in the witness and glory of Christ. On this last point, Lloyd-Jones wrote, “The supreme proof of all that claims to be the work of the Holy Ghost is John 16:14?”Will you glorify me?” (The Sovereign Spirit, 106).
But, after saying all this as a warning and balance, Lloyd-Jones returns to the firm affirmation of openness to the supernatural demonstration of power that the world so desperately needs. Of those who sit down and point out the charismatic excesses of good. people, he says, “God has mercy on them!Is it better to be too fululous than carnal, presumptuous and dead?”(The Sovereign Spirit, 83).
What is Lloyd-Jones’ advice when we try to navigate between non-critical and non-biblical credulity on the one hand and resistance to the extinction of the Spirit on the other?
Your basic counsel is that we cannot do anything to produce a true awakening, and therefore we must work in prayer, be patient, and set no time limits for the Lord (Joy Unspeakable, 139, 231, 247). can do more than just pray. Elsewhere, Lloyd-Jones mentions his appreciation for a DLMoody prayer asking “A prepared heart?”(Joy Unspeakable, 220). If a prepared heart is important, there are other means of grace besides prayer that purify the heart and make it more and more in keeping with Christ, one would think of the meditation of the scriptures, the exhortation of other Christians, the mortification of sin, etc. .
But not only that, Lloyd-Jones teaches that the Spirit can be extinguished by certain forms of arid institutionalization. With regard to the death of formal churches, he says:
It is not that God has withdrawn, it is that the church in its “wisdom” and cunning has institutionalized, extinguished the Spirit, and made almost impossible manifestations of the power of the Spirit (The Sovereign Spirit, 50).
Now, is this a powerful statement from those who believe in the sovereignty of the Spirit?That some forms of institutionalization can make manifestations of the power of the Spirit “almost impossible. “If the Spirit, in its sovereignty, suffers from being hindered and extinguished, as Lloyd-Jones (and the Apostle Paul!) say, then it is not entirely right to say that we can do nothing to pave the way for his coming. We just can’t get him to come. Or, to put it another way, although it seems that we cannot bring the Spirit with power, we can do things that would generally prevent it from coming.
Lloyd-Jones puts us on the right track with one of his many beautiful final exhortations:
We decided together to beg him and ask him to do it again, not that we can have an experience or an emotion, but that his powerful hand be known and his great name be glorified and magnified among the peoples (Awakening, 117).