Home » Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Tag: Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Some of the Best Sermons I Have Ever Heard, Part 1

Jeremy and I decided that we would dedicate a few posts to sharing our favorite sermons, conference messages, talks, and movies. This post has links to ten sermons that made a big impact on my life. This was inspired by a post we came across HERE. Jeremy will have a list of his own. I decided to limit each speaker to two sermons. I could list dozens of Tim Keller, John Piper, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Jeremy Beck sermons that impacted me in major ways over the years. This list contains sermons by pastors who lived (several are still living) recently enough to be recorded on audio. The list isn’t in any particular order.

If you’ve got a favorite sermon you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.

John Piper, The Pleasure of God in All That He Does HERE
When I first heard this sermon, I was new to the idea of God’s sovereignty. And I was learning about this crazy idea called “Christian Hedonism.” That crazy idea would change my life. In this sermon, John Piper does a wonderful job of showing the absolute sovereignty of God in all of creation and the pleasure of God in all his works. This sermon, along with Piper’s talk, Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?, helped lead me to echo the words of Jonathan Edwards: “Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.”
Fred Craddock, Cloud of Witnesses HERE
Jeremy and I learned about Fred Craddock in 2018. I wish we’d learned of him earlier. During a phone conversation, Jeremy said, “You’ve got to listen to this ‘Cloud of Witnesses’ sermon. It may be the best sermon ending I’ve ever heard.” He was right. Craddock was a master of sermon endings. And the ending of this sermon is not only the best ending to a Craddock sermon I’ve heard, it may be the best ending I’ve heard period. If you want to learn how to end a sermon, study this man’s preaching.
John MacArthur, Making Decisions on Non-Moral Issues HERE
This sermon impacted me because my early years as a Christian were spent in a somewhat legalistic environment that majored on strict ideas about non-moral issues. MacArthur’s distinction between moral and non-moral issues caused a major paradigm shift in the way I think. So many arguments within Christianity happen precisely because we fail to make this distinction.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: General Consideration HERE
Spiritual Depression is probably the best sermon series I’ve ever read or listened to. Every sermon has moments that are pure gold. This introductory sermon is gold all the way through. In it, Lloyd-Jones unpacks what it looks like to preach to yourself when your soul is cast down. I can’t imagine my life had I not heard this sermon.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Christ in the Heart HERE
I remember reading this sermon in Lloyd-Jones’ book, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. Based on Ephesians 3:17, MLJ asks the question, Since the Ephesians were already Christians, why would Paul pray that Christ would dwell in their hearts? MLJ’s answer – there are different levels of Christian experience. Paul is wanting the Ephesians to experience a new level. He uses a wonderful Spurgeon quote, which I’ve used many times in my ministry, to summarize the idea:
My brethren, there is a point in grace as much above the ordinary Christian, as the ordinary Christian is above the worldling. Believe me, the life of grace is no dead level, it is not a fen country, a vast flat. There are mountains, and there are valleys. There are tribes of Christians who live in the valleys, like the poor Swiss of the Valais, who live in the midst of the miasma, where fever has its lair, and the frame is languid and enfeebled. Such dwellers in the lowlands of unbelief are for ever doubting, fearing, troubled about their interest in Christ, and tossed to and fro; but there are other believers, who, by God’s grace, have climbed the mountain of full assurance and near communion. Their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft.
This sermon left me wanting a deeper and more intimate experience of Christ. I think of it often.
Tim Keller, The Word Made Flesh HERE
In this sermon on John 1, Keller does what he does best: He sets forth the glory of Christ in a succinct and clear way. He paints a vivid picture of what it means that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” In taking on flesh, Christ became vulnerable, he became killable, and having done so, he empathizes with us. The story Keller tells about a surgery tech changing the way he treated patients after he became a patient himself and had to lay on the table is one of the best illustrations I’ve ever heard about the empathy of Christ.
Tim Keller, The Longing for Home HERE
Put simply, this sermon made me long for heaven and helped me understand myself better. I’ve been asked why I like Tim Keller’s preaching so much. One of my answers is that he not only addresses “felt needs,” he addresses needs that you don’t even know you feel. The feeling may be lying there almost dormant, then Keller puts a name on it and you realize it’s there. I am quick in recent years to say that I get homesick fairly often. I moved away from home fifteen years ago. But before I heard this sermon, I didn’t realize I was homesick. I felt it, but I didn’t realize I felt it. Keller made me realize that I felt it. I don’t think the word “homesick” is used much anymore, but I think those of us who feel it need to admit it. It’s a feeling we’re supposed to have, and it’s supposed to point us to our need for Christ and our true home in heaven.
Jeremy Beck, This is a Hard Saying, Who Can Listen to It? HERE
This is the sermon that made me ask Jeremy, “What are you doing?” It was powerful. It was biblical. But it was also art. Based on Jesus’ hard saying’ in John 6, Jeremy asks, “Why was Jesus so bold? Why did he show no fear of offending people with his teaching?” His answer: Jesus trusts his father so totally that he absolutely believes that those whom the Father has chosen will come to him. This gives Jesus boldness to speak the truth and demand that believers count the cost before they come to him. Jeremy reinforces this with a great chorus from the movie Whiplash. Every time I find myself struggling or slumping in the faith now, I remind myself, “The next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.”
Jeremy Beck, Troubled to Comfort Others HERE
I vividly remember the first time I heard this sermon. It floored me. Hearing about Spurgeon hearing his own chains clank as he preached to his fellow prisoners. Hearing about a short story writer having to write about her biggest regret in life. Hearing about the purpose God has in our struggles. Hearing about how God comforts us in our chains and biggest regrets so that we can use his comfort to comfort and minister to others. Jeremy likes to say that God wants to take our greatest pain and make it our greatest ministry. He crystallizes that idea in this sermon and actually made me want to live it out.
Francis Chan, Don’t Focus on the Family HERE
This sermon made a big impact on me because of an illustration and an idea. In the illustration, Chan uses a story about a child to show the importance of active obedience to God that goes beyond prayer and Bible study. As for the idea, Chan points us to the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:29: “From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.” This sermon reminded me that as important as the life of a family is, it should never hinder us from doing the work and ministry that God has called us to do. It’s something I have to remind myself often.

Empowertising = Depowertising

Andi Zeisler writes about advertisements catering to feminism. Quotes are from We Were Feminists Once.

On creating needs no one really has:

Here’s the thing we all know about advertising to women: the products aimed their way, from household cleaners to cosmetics to personal-care products, are pitched to solve a problem that in many cases the consumer might not ever know she had until she was alerted to and/or shamed for it (Wait, I didn’t know my armpits were supposed to be sexier!) (p. 25).

On selling back a movement to target groups:

Celebrating [feminist] ads themselves simply celebrates advertisers’ skill at co-opting women’s movements and selling them back [to] us – and then rewards us for buying in (p. 28).

Zeisler makes the argument that when the feminist movement began to gain steam, the corporate world jumped all over it – to sell feminism back to women in a repackaged, reshaped, and gutted form.

The movement’s success has rendered it irrelevant as something to be considered in shaping culture (p. 20).

I’m still working through this book, but the seeming thesis is interesting. If you apply her thoughts on the feminist movements to other movements in culture, including Christianity, here’s what you get. The corporate world co-opts a movement and tries to sell it back to those who are a part of that movement or who might be attracted to it. By the time the product goes through the mediator of the corporate world, it inevitably changes into something that is different from the original movement. In the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, every institution becomes its opposite.

It shouldn’t shock us that corporate Christianity, or as a writer/publisher I know calls it, “the Jesus business,” is a watered down mess. It’s gone through the wrong mediators. And now it’s being sold back to us in a gutted form that has no power to actually shape culture.

Literalists Lacking in Spiritual Understanding

My previous post (HERE) on the disciples’ insight into parables mentioned that there was a point (or points) when they demonstrated real perception into Christ’s teachings. Of course there were times when they didn’t as well. Related to that, in Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ classic book, Spiritual Depression (a personal favorite of mine), he likens the disciples to the blind man (at first only partially-)healed by Jesus, recorded in Mark 8. When Jesus asks the man if he can see, the man responds, “I see men as trees, walking.”

From this, Lloyd-Jones argues that Jesus’ miracle was performed this way intentionally in order to demonstrate a spiritual principle to the disciples. Like the prophet Nathan with David, Jesus was pointing the disciples to this partially-healed man saying, “You are the man.”

MLJ puts it this way:

It is difficult to describe this man. You cannot say that he is blind any longer. You cannot say that he is still blind because he does see; and yet you hesitate to say that he can see because he sees men as trees, walking. What then – is he or is he not blind? You feel that you have to say at one and the same time that he is blind and that he is not blind. He is neither one thing nor the other (p. 39).

He goes on to say that many struggling Christians are like this. It can both appear that they are and are not a Christian. This, however, is not my point in this post. So let me get to it.

MLJ describes the disciples in this way: the event of the healing of the blind man (in Mark’s narrative) is fresh off the heals of a discussion with the disciples about leaven (in which Jesus asks the disciples, “Do you not understand? Do you not see? Do you not remember?'”). Because he told them to beware the leaven of the pharisees, they began talking about literal bread. So, MLJ says, “they were literalists, they were lacking in spiritual understanding.” Jesus proceeds to call them out on this.

A literalist, in this sense, is someone who cannot see beneath the surface of a story or illustration or principle (and perhaps someone who cannot see beneath the surface without detailed explanations; maybe they see eventually, but it takes a lot of work). You might call this being spiritually obtuse.

I try to teach myself, my children, and want to teach my church, to be able to get beneath the surface of a story (a book, a movie, an illustration, and even the Bible itself) to see the Truth that is being conveyed – “to bring out treasures old and new” (Matt. 13:52). Call this insight or discernment or being spiritually-minded or whatever.

Douglas Coupland regularly makes the claim that only 20% of people worldwide are hardwired to recognize irony when they see it. I fear it’s maybe the same or less for Christians being able to recognize Truth when they see it: being able to see the not blind, not seeing man and recognize that we’re looking at ourselves in a mirror. The distortion/illustration is meant to allow us to see more clearly. But we find ourselves being stared down by Jesus as he asks, “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”

Banner of Truth Giveaway

Banner of Truth trust is giving away an entire set of Puritan paperbacks, an entire set of Lloyd-Jones’ commentaries on Romans, and Charles Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students. The more referrals you make the more times you can enter the draw. So, by all means, please use my referral link if you’re interested. You have to answer one question. And I’ll give you a hint. Spurgeon was not from Australia or the United States. Here’s my link:
http://throughtheeyesofspurgeon.com/giveaways/huge-banner-of-truth-giveaway/?lucky=13830

“When the devil finds a person sleeping, he enters. But when Christ finds him sleeping…”

Sin brings one low in desertion. This is a deep abyss indeed. Psalm 88:6, “You have laid me in the lowest pit.” Desertion is a short hell. Song of Solomon 5:6, “My beloved has withdrawn himself and was gone.” Christ knocked—but the spouse was loath to rise off her bed of sloth and open to Him immediately. When the devil finds a person sleeping—he enters. But when Christ finds him sleeping—He is gone. And if this Sun of righteousness withdraws His golden beams from the soul, darkness follows.

-Thomas Watson, The Mischief of Sin

The Puritans (like Thomas Watson) and their ilk were not shy of bringing up passages from Song of Solomon such as the one quoted above and applying them to the Christian life. Octavius Winslow gives us another example:

I sleep, but my heart waketh.’ Here was the existence of the Divine life in the soul, and yet that life was on the decline. She knew that she had fallen into a careless and slumbering state, that the work of grace in her soul was decaying, that the spirit of slumber had come over her; but the awful feature was, she was content to be so. She heard her Beloved knock: but, so enamoured was she with her state of drowsiness, she gave no heed to it – she opened not to him…A believer may fall into a drowsy sate of soul, not so profound as to be entirely lost to the voice of his Beloved speaking by conscience, by the word, and by providences: and yet so far may his grace have decayed, so cold may his love have grown, and so hardening may have been this declension, he shall be content that this should be his state (Personal Declension and the Revival of Religion in the Soul, pp. 21-22).

By the way, I couldn’t recommend Winslow’s book more highly. It is one of my favorites.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was fond of saying that the fact that the Holy Spirit is likened to a dove points to his gentleness and propensity to be grieved and quenched. When he is grieved he withdraws. That is not to say that he withdraws in such a way as to remove himself wholly from the believer’s life. Rather, it is to say that he exercises less influence and offers less consolation and aid.

The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). In the Context of Revelation 3, this was an offer/promise to believers.

The spiritual sleeper, the one who hesitates to answer the door of Christ’s calling, leaves himself vulnerable to Satan. That is Watson’s point. Jesus will not force himself on you. Satan is another story. So get up and answer the door.

I say all of this as a Calvinist of course. I am not saying that God’s effectual call can ever be resisted. It cannot. The point is that the believer who becomes a spiritual sluggard is asking for trouble.

Let’s say you’re married. Your wife is hinting that she needs some time with you. She has her ways of doing this. You should have learned them over the years. Maybe you should have read the Love Languages book. If you are not sensitive to her overtures and subtle pleadings, then your relationship is not going to flourish.

And so, be sensitive to Christ’s knockings. Don’t let sin and sloth put you in such a frame that you are blinded and vulnerable to Satan.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on C.S. Lewis

A commenter on the blog brought an interesting quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones to my attention (one that I had never heard). In his first sermon in his famous series called Revival, the doctor said this:

Do you remember the vogue of CS Lewis? You don’t hear much about him now, but why all the excitement? Ah, here is a philosopher. And it indicates our pathetic faith and belief in these methods, which are nothing but apologetics. As exactly in the beginning of the 18th century they were pinning their faith to Bishop Butler and his great Analogy of Religion…

The doctor is nothing if not irenic! (or not). Interestingly, that comment about C.S. Lewis was edited out of the sermon when it came to be published in book form. I checked again tonight. It’s simply not there. But you can find it at the 39 minute mark of the original recording HERE. This sermon was preached, it appears, in 1959, just four years before Lewis’ death. ‘You don’t hear much about him now…’ would certainly not apply in 2015.

Here is another anecdote about MLJ and Lewis I’ve come across. In The Fight of Faith, the second volume of Iain Murray’s biography of Lloyd-Jones, he records a letter written by the Doctor in 1941 to his wife, which says,

There is nothing special on Thursday but meetings in different colleges. On Friday I am due to have breakfast with William Riddle’s son – a second edition of his father. Then I will go with him to a lecture given by C.S. Lewis (author of The Problem of Pain) an I am to have lunch with Lewis…

In the footnote, Murray writes,

Lewis is said to have valued ML-J’s appreciation and encouragement when the early edition of his Pilgrim’s Regress was not selling well. Vincent Lloyd-Jones [MLJ’s brother] and Lewis knew each other well, being contemporaries at Oxford. ML-J met the author again and they had a long conversation when they both found themselves on the same boat to Ireland in 1953. On that later occasion, to the question, ‘When are you going to write another book?, Lewis replied, ‘When I understand the meaning of prayer’ (p. 52).

Another interesting tidbit was a line from MLJ in Christianity Today in 1963, shortly after the death of Lewis:

C. S. Lewis had a defective view of salvation and was an opponent of the substitutionary and penal view of the atonement.

The purpose of the post is simply to document these statements, so I will end here without further comment.

Update 8/22/17: I found another one:

This comes from a sermon Lloyd-Jones gave right after the death of C.S. Lewis. From Lloyd-Jones’ sermon on Romans 10:9-10 (audio can be found HERE, at around the 15:00 mark). ML-J compares Lewis’ teaching to a dry sort of intellectualism that doesn’t involve the heart, specifically comparing it to Sandemanianism. He summarized that teaching in this way: “if you accepted the teaching [i.e. Christianity or the doctrines of the gospel] with your mind, and were prepared to say so…that was sufficient, even though you felt nothing at all…If you accepted the teaching and were prepared to say so, that saved you, in the absence of any feelings whatsoever.”

There are certain tendencies in this direction even in our own day and generation. I had already purposed to say this before I read in the press last weekend, or heard on the wireless, of the passing of Professor C.S. Lewis. I regret to say this, but that was more or less his teaching also. He believed that you could reason yourself into the Christian faith. The first book he ever published was a book called The Pilgrim’s Regress. And the whole point of that book is to say that by clear thinking, you can think yourself from a rationalist or atheistical position into the Christian position. And he actually, at one time, founded in Oxford what he called the Socratic Club, which used to meet on Monday nights, in which he used to try to show people how to reason themselves into Christianity. ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.’ You cannot do it merely by a process of intellectual reasoning.