Category: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the most influential preachers of the century.  A few weeks before he died, someone asked him how, after decades of fruitful ministry and extraordinary activity, he was coping now he was suffering such serious weakness it took much of his energy to move from his bed to his armchair and back.  He replied in the words of Luke 10:20: ‘Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’  In other words, do not tie your joy, your sense of wellbeing, to power in ministry.  Your ministry can be taken from you.  Tie your joy to the fact that you are known and loved by God; tie it to your salvation; tie it to the sublime truth that your name is written in heaven.  That can never be taken from you.   Lloyd-Jones added: ‘I am perfectly content.’  – From A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D.A. Carson

The problem of life, my friends, is not individual sins but Sin itself, the whole background – the thing itself, the desire process which is the cause of all these local and minor manifestations and eruptions.  And that is our problem.  We are not here to teach and lecture men and women about individual sins you may control and conquer.  You are still an sinner, your nature is still evil and will remains so, until by the death of Christ and the resurrection you are born again and receive a new nature.  Our trouble is that our nature is evil; it really does not matter how it may manifest itself.

What is our duty then?  Well, it is this.  Before we talk to anyone we must find out first whether he believes in Christ or not.  Is he a new man?  If he is not, then he is still struggling with flesh and blood.  Are we to lecture him on his sins and to preach morality to him?  No, we are to preach Christ to him and do all we can to convert him, for what he needs is a new nature, a new outlook, a new mind.  It is no use our expecting to find figs on a thorn bush, however much we may treat and care for it.  The trouble is the root.  We are wasting our time and neglecting our duty by preaching morality to a lost world.  For what the world needs is life, new life, and it can be found in Christ alone.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, From D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years by Iain Murray, pp. 159-160

There is nothing that so controls the height of joy as the depth of the realization of our sinfulness, our utter hopelessness as we are by nature.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 351

Now here the Apostle at ounce gives us a general test.  Whatever else the gospel is, it is ‘glad tidings’!  Here is the comparison – ‘How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of great joy!”  Sometimes people think that I have suddenly gone mad if I announce Christmas hymns at some other time of the year.  But I have not!  I do it deliberately in order to introduce this very theme – and why should we not sing these hymns all year round?  Why should we leave them only to that particular time of the year?  The gospel in its fullness should be constantly in our minds.  It is glad tidings, good news!  – D. Martyn loyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 299

Now, in parenthesis, let me say here that when you come across a subsection such as this, or even a verse which seems to you on the surface to be difficult, and you say to yourself, ‘Why does he say that here?  What is the connection?’  Then a very good principle to follow is not to spend too much time with the immediate connection.  Go further back!  Look at the larger context, and very often that will give you the key to the solution of your immediate problem.

Let me use an illustration here.  In athletics, if you come up against a particularly high hurdle that you have to jump, you take a longer run!  If you want to vault over it, you go further back.  You do not try to lift yourself up over this very high hurdle from where you are on the ground.  The further back you go, the longer your run, and the momentum will carry you over.  That is a very valuable principle in the exposition of Scripture and in the elucidation of some of these problems with which it presents us.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 253

So you do not become a Christian in cold blood, unmoved, undisturbed.  You do not sit down in a detached manner and say, ‘Well, I have agreed with that doctrine, and therefore I am a Chrsitian.’  Not at al!  You have been through these stages – conviction, repentance, fear, desire for deliverance, recognition of Him, casting yourself upon Him, thankfulness and praise, glorying in Him, greeting His truth, desiring to know more and more about it!  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 174

[I]n the vast majority of instances, the word heart in Scripture means the centre, the very innermost citadel, of the personality.  Or, if you like, it means the whole personality.  So when the Scripture says that with heart we believe that God has raised Him from the dead, it means that with the whole of our being we believe that.  ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness’: with the whole of his personality, not merely his feelings, not merely his intellect, but the totality of everything that he is.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 14

Our main problem is not our particular sins.  The main problem of every person born into this world is the problem of his standing before God.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 53

Remember context is…

People complain about the dwindling congregations and how the churches are going down. Why are people ceasing to attend places of worship? Why is it,that last Sunday night I noticed that, while the places of worship in Cardiff were only sparsely attended, the trains coming from Porthcawl and other sea-side places were packed out. Why did these people spend their day at the seaside and in other places rather than in the House of God worshipping? Well, the answer is perfectly plain. They obviously prefer to be at seaside and feel that they get greater benefit there than they do in their chapels and churches. Now it is no use arguing with people like that, it is no use our telling them that they really do not get greater benefit there, because they honestly believe that they do… What I feel like saying to these trippers is this: if you honestly believe that you derive greater benefit by spending your day in the country than you do by attending a place of worship, well then, go to the country. Don’t come here if you honestly feel that you could do better elsewhere. Unless you feel that something is being offered and given to you here which no other institution can offer or equal, well then, in the name of Heaven, go out into the country or to the sea-side. The church of Christ is a church of believers, a common association of people banded together by a common belief and a common love. You don’t believe? Well, above all, do not pretend that you do, go to the country and the sea-side. All I ask of you is, be consistent. When someone dies in your family, do not come to ask the church in which you do not believe to come to bury him. Go to the sea-side for consolation… – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years by Iain H. Murray

Also, I know my photo comparison may not be the best (here is a better one), but does it not seem that the Doctor bears a strinking resemblance to Victor Garber?

We must not be ashamed of being a remnant, weak and small; this is God’s way.  In a sense it can even become a privilege.  We must cease to think in terms of numbers, we must think in terms of the purpose of God and the purity of the witness and the testimony.  God will preserve this seed.  He will carry it on in spite of everything, thank God, if we belong to the faithful remnant.    – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 326