“His belief was that the passage at hand was the Word from God which had to be preached on that occasion. His sentiments ran close to the Reformed Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, that the preaching of the Word of God is the word of God. Thus Lloyd-Jones’s close alignment of preaching with prophesying; without …
Which Can, Of Course, Be Taken Wrong
Dr. Lloyd-Jones believed preaching involved communication through personality” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 187).
Each Sermon Should Be a One-Off
“The summary was especially for the benefit of those for whom the address would be a one-off and not part of a series. Each sermon had to be self-contained and able to stand on its own feet, even though it was part of a prolonged series” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 183).
Almost an Abomination
“But what of Lloyd-Jones’s system? Here, we must be careful. He eschewed methods and was curtly dismissive of homiletics. Before forty ministerial students, he unveiled his suspicions when he put up the rhetorical question — ‘What can be said for homiletics?’ His revealing reply was ‘Not much’! On another occasion he was to refer to …
Two Pulpit Strengths
“There is a sense, as Lloyd-Jones would have affirmed, in which a man cannot be taught to preach. He is a preacher or he is not a preacher. But assuming that he is, his skills can be enhanced by a studied attempted at the two strengths which DML-J exhibited above all others: an enlightened mind …
One Form of Pulpit Abuse
“Lloyd-Jones protested against the use of the pulpit as what he called ‘a coward’s castle’ into which a man might retreat to vent his spleen on his enemies or simply as a place where he can express his own view” (Sargent, A Sacred Anointing, p. 149).
Always Persuasive at the Time
“Charles Spurgeon tells of the most extreme case, the man who ‘preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it, they all declared he never ought to enter it again'” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, …
A Structural Servant
“Tricks of homiletics were repugnant to Lloyd-Jones. This does not mean he had no interest in structure. The reverse was the case. But form in a sermon is to be the preacher’s servant and not his superintendent” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 115).
The Smile of God
“There is all the difference in the world between preaching merely from human understanding and energy, and preaching in the conscious smile of God” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, as quoted in Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 79)
In Such a Way as to Catch Fire Itself
“‘Preaching,’ exclaimed Lloyd-Jones, ‘is theology coming through a man who is on fire'” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 62).