Category: Heroes

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

What it means, in other words, is that the salvation of a single soul is the most wonderful thing that God has ever done.  He has surpassed and eclipsed everything.  All His ways are matchless, godlike and divine; the creation, providence, the manifestation of power over Pharaoh and his hosts, the manifestation of His wrath – all these things are manifestations of the glory of god.  But they are nothing when you put them beside what God has done in the redemption of man.  Even creation becomes nothing when you put it beside this; providence is nothing, punishment is nothing; everything is eclipsed here.  This, the Bible teaches us, is indeed the very wonder of heaven itself.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 226

Now the ultimate truth about God, his ultimate attribute, if we may so speak, is glory.  We talk about the power of God, His omnipotence, His Omniscience and His omnipresence, and all these various other attributes, but of course ultimately what makes God God is His glory!  You cannot describe it; you cannot define it!  All the Bible itself does is to give us some kind of description of men and women who have had a glimpse of the glory of God; they fall to the ground and they feel utterly unworthy.  Glory!  What is it?  Well all I know is that it is perfect light, perfect love; it baffles description.  So that everything that God does is in some shape or form the manifestation of His glory.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 224

Is that not, generally, the trouble in most arguments?  You watch the next time you see two people having an argument!  If you just sit and listen to them, you will notice that neither is really listening to the other; he is waiting for the other to stop; indeed he is ready to interrupt him.  And that is precisely what so many people do with the scriptures.  They have never really allowed the Scriptures to speak to them; they are so anxious to give their opinion.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 128

What, then, is a covenant?  Well, a covenant in the Bible is a sovereign act of God’s grace in which He pledges Himself to do something.  There is not a single instance or illustration in the Bible of God meeting with the people and, as the result of a kind of bargaining discussion, God and the people agreeing for their mutual benefit to do certain things.  Covenant in the Bible is always something that is entirely and solely and only from God’s side.  God moved by nothing in us at all, but entirely by His own grace and His own eternal love comes to the people and He says, ‘I am going to do so and so and I pledge Myself that I will do it.’  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 54

On Romans 9:1-3:

[W]hat we have here in these two great and mighty men of God, Moses and the Apostle Paul, is such an intense concern for the glory of God and for the souls of men that the feel it to the extent, that they come nearest of all to that mind which was in Christ Jesus when he gave himself as an offering for sin that others might be saved.  It is difficult for us to understand this, is it not?  The famous old commentator Bengal said, ‘It is not easy to estimate the measure of love in a Moses and a Paul, for our reason does not grasp it, as a child cannot grasp the courage of warriors.’  These men so knew something about the burden of souls, that they were capable of using expressions that fill us with a sense of astonishment and amazement – expressions which have often led lesser minds to criticize them and to misunderstand them.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 22

Next we must look at this phrase ‘more than conquerors’.  Not only says the Apostle, shall nothing separate us from His love to us; in all these things which try to separate us we are ‘more than conquerors’ with respect to them.  This is what he is particularly concerned to emphasize.  In every case his argument has been reductio ad absurdum.  He is not content merely answering objections, he ridicules them; and he does it here.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 8, p. 444

How pathetic and hopeless is the position of people who think that they safeguard the love of God by denying the substitutionary theory of the atonement, who say that our Lord did not cry out in an agony, and who imagine that the measure of the love of God is that God says, ‘Though you have killed my only Son, I still love you, and am still ready to forgive you’!  They believe that they safeguard and magnify the love of God by denying the truth concerning the wrath of God, and that God must and does punish sin.  I hope I have shown what they actually do is to detract from the love of God.  The love of God is only truly seen when we realize that ‘He spared not his own son”…  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 8, p. 396