Lloyd-Jones: A Preacher's Preacher

Article by

Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org

One of the greatest preachers of the 20th century was Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pastor of Westminster Chapel, London for 29 years until his retirement in 1968. He died March 1, 1981. But his writing and preaching continue.

There is very little great preaching today. Most of us are too bent on being good communicators to be good preachers. We are too clever and too funny. Where is the preacher today whom most hearers would put into this category:

We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

What a gift, therefore, that The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recording Trust puts a free audio of one of MLJ’s sermons up for us to hear every week. I think preachers need to hear this kind of preaching as a partial antidote to the relentless trivializing of preaching in our day.

Others will benefit too. When J. I. Packer first heard Lloyd-Jones he said that he had "never heard such preaching." It came to him "with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man" he had known.

Thanks to Tony Ruston and his team for this ministry.