“Imagination in preaching means being able to understand the truth well enough to translate or transpose it into another kind of language or musical key in order to present the same truth in a way that enables others to see it, understand its significance, feel its power—to do so in a way that gets under the skin, breaks through the barriers, grips the mind, will, and affections so that they not only understand the word used but feel their truth and power.” – DSinclair Ferguson

“A good question for us as pastors to ask ourselves before we get up to preach is, ‘Would Jesus Christ have had to die on a cross for me to preach this sermon?'” – William Willimon

Article: 5 Practical Points for Preachers by Nicholas Batzig – original source – https://www.feedingonchrist.com/blog/post/five-practical-points-of-peaching

This past Tuesday, I had the privilege of giving a pastoral charge to two men coming to be licensed to preach within the bounds of our Presbytery. The charge to those being licensed or ordained is a solemn event, happening only once in a man’s life and ministry. The charge was built largely on the ministry of the Apostle Paul and some of his charges to Timothy and Titus in the pastoral epistles. Though one can only say so much in a three to four minute charge, I carved out five practical points for these men as they enter in on a preaching ministry. Here is the essence of that charge: 

1. Prioritize first preaching to yourself whatever you plan on preaching to others.

John Owen once famously declared, “Truly no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart”. . .Unless “he finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.” We never want to step into the pulpit without having seriously and soberingly preached first to ourselves whatever passage we are preaching to the congregation. When a man does not preach the Scriptures to himself, first and foremost, he will deliver hyper-intellectual, experientially theoretical, or dry and lifeless sermons to the people of God. 

In Lectures to My Students, Charles Spurgeon explained the dire need a minister of the word must have to be so affected by God’s word that he has a burning fire for the proclamation of it within. This will only come as we preach God’s word consistently to our own hearts, the Holy Spirit fanning the flame of love for the triune God and the ministry of His word. Spurgeon wrote, 

“I have such a profound respect for this ‘fire in the bones,’ that if I did not feel it myself, I must leave the ministry at once. If you do not feel the consecrated glow, I beseech you return to your homes and serve God in your proper spheres; but if assuredly the coals of juniper blaze within, do not stifle them, unless, indeed, other considerations of great moment should prove to you that the desire is not a fire of heavenly origin.”

2. Keep Christ and Him crucified and risen central in all your preaching.

The Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nearly every man I have known has began his preaching ministry with this commitment. However, as the years roll on, so many deviate from this and allow themselves to be sidetracked by subjects and emphases that–while they may have roots in the teaching of Scripture–supplant the central focus of Scripture on Christ and the salvation that is in Him alone. As Geerhardus Vos explained,

“It is possible, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, to preach things of which none can say that they are untrue and none can deny that in their proper place and time they may be important, and yet to forego telling people plainly and to forego giving them the distinct impression that they need forgiveness and salvation from sin through the cross of Christ. . . there ought not to be in your whole repertoire a single sermon in which from beginning to end you do not convey to your hearers the impression that what you want to impart to them, you do not think it possible to impart to them in any other way than as a correlate and consequence of the eternal salvation of their souls through the blood of Christ.” 

3. Give yourself to a continual study of biblical, systematic, exegetical, and historical theology. 

In 1 Timothy 4:13-15, the Apostle charged young Timothy, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. . Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. There is so much to learn. The late John Gerstner was once asked how much theological preparation does a man need for effective ministry. He said, “If I knew that I only had five years to live. I would spend four preparing for ministry and one ministering.” Although some might find this statement somewhat lopsided, the point is simple. We need to be men who are continually digging into the Scripture, solid theological works, and the annals of church history. As we do, the Apostle says that our “progress will be evident to all.” We need men who are humble, hungry, and teachable. We should also recognize that this is not merely something we should do in preparation for a preaching ministry–it is something that we will need to do this throughout the entirety of our ministries.

4. Stay single-minded in your commitment to the the gospel ministry, particularly in light of suffering for the sake of the gospel of Christ.

As the Apostle Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:3, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” If we are to have a fruitful and effective ministry of the word and the gospel, we need to stay single-minded to the call of God. Too many ministers have allowed themselves to become preoccupied with civilian affairs. We are not to divide our time between the ministry of the gospel and community organization. We must resist becoming “half pastor/half politician.” Whatever the distracting agendas, the man of God must give himself wholly to that which God has deemed most important.

This is especially the case when hardship or opposition arise because of the word. The Apostle Paul could press though all the challenges, trials, and opposition on account of the word because he remained single-minded in his commitment to the mission of God. In 2 Tim. 2:10, he explained, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.”

5. Watch over your life

In 1 Timothy 4:16, Paul told Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” There are a thousand different ways that Satan seeks to devour ministers–e.g. love of provision, love of praise, love of pleasure, and love of power. Many men have started off strong and then spiritually declined because they stopped keeping watch over themselves. Since we have an irreconciliable war raging within us, the flesh wrestling with the Spirit and the Spirit with the flesh, we need to be especially resolute in mortifying sin and in guarding our hearts.

We can professionalize ministry in such a way and to such an extent that we learn how to hide the true spiritual condition of our hearts. A number of years ago a pastor and theologian I greatly admired for his robust Reformed expositions of Scripture took his own life. It came out that he had been having affairs with women in various related congregations for approximately two decades. During that time, this minister wrote solid books, spoke at major conferences, taught in seminaries, and carried on in regular Lord’s Day preaching and teaching. When some of his ongoing sin came to light, he was asked how he was able to minister while living in unrepentant sin. He replied, “I leaned on my gifts.” That is a sobering thought for any man to whom God has given gifts for preaching and pastoring. A mentor once wisely taught me, “You can lose the ministry and keep your family but you can’t lose your family and keep the ministry.” There is an ever present need to take heed to ourselves. Our lips are always a few steps ahead of our feet. There, we must be resolute in guarding against the multitude of temptations that Satan will seek to use against us. 

Simplicity in Preaching by Kevin DeYoung – original source https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/simplicity-in-preaching/

It’s short and so helpful that I think I can say without exaggeration that every preacher should try to read J. C. Ryle’s Simplicity in Preaching. The 22-page booklet, recently (and inexpensively) reprinted by Banner of Truth, began as an address to a group of clergy at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the latter part of the 19th century.

Before moving to the substance of his lecture (which Ryle reworked into written prose), Ryle starts off with four prefatory remarks:

1. “I ask all my readers to remember that to attain simplicity in preaching is of the utmost importance to every minister who wishes to be useful to souls.” We aren’t useful unless we are understood, and we aren’t understood without being clear and straightforward.

2. “To attain simplicity in preaching is by no means an easy matter.” It’s actually much easier to sound erudite than to be intelligible. Simplicity is hard work.

3. “When I talk of simplicity in preaching, I would not have my readers suppose I mean childish preaching.” Simple does not mean shallow or condescending.

4. “It is not coarse or vulgar preaching that is needed.” Ryle would have us speak as courteous gentlemen, not as uneducated rabble-rousers.

From there, Ryle launches into the body of his address, offering “five brief hints” for simplicity in preaching:

1. “If you want to attain simplicity in preaching, take care that you have a clear view of the subject upon which you are going to preach.” If you aim at nothing, you’ll always hit nothing. If you begin in a fog, you will leave your people in darkness. The goal of the preacher is not to be thought clever, but to be thought clear. This means, according to Ryle, that we should not be ashamed of having divisions in our sermons, nor ashamed of announcing those divisions. “If we would be simple, there must be order in a sermon as there is in an army.”

2. “Try to use in all your sermons, as far as you can, simple words.” This doesn’t mean the preacher can only use words of one syllable or that he cannot teach important terms and definitions. Rather, it means we should avoid unexplained jargon and words that ordinary people never use (like “erudite” perhaps?!). Preachers must not try to impress the learned or fall back into preening seminary-speak. The application of this point will vary from congregation to congregation, but as a general rule Ryle is surely right: the more you use plan common words, the better.

3. “Take care to aim at a simple style of composition.” Beware of colons and semicolons in your discourse. Beware of long sentences and long paragraphs. Try to develop pithy points and memorable sayings. Ryle gives several examples that we would say are Tweet-worthy: “Hell is paved with good intentions.” “Sin forsaken is one of the best evidences of sin forgiven.” “Meddle with no man’s person, but spare no man’s sins.” “One thief on the cross was saved, that none should despair, and only one, that none should presume.”

4. “If you wish to preach simply, use a direct style.” I imagine some homiletics professors may disagree, but Ryle is adamant that preachers should avoid “we” when they mean “I” and stick with “you” when they mean to address the people directly.

5. “You must use plenty of anecdotes and illustrations.” I imagine some of us in Reformed circles have come to be suspicious of illustrations. To be sure, illustrations can overtake an ill-equipped sermon, but the Puritans were constantly using figures, metaphors, and stories. Ryle cautions against elaborate story-telling and stuffing our sermons so full of illustrations that the message becomes a cake “entirely of plums and containing hardly any flour.” And yet, if we follow the example of Jesus, we will find examples and illustrations all around us.

Finally, Ryle finishes the address with four concluding remarks:

1. “We ought to aim not merely at letting off fireworks, but at preaching that which will do lasting good to souls.” We mean to edify, not entertain.

2. “All the simplicity in the world can do no good, unless you preach the simple gospel of Jesus Christ so fully and clearly that everybody can understand it.” Clear sermons don’t save without a clear gospel.

3. “All the simplicity in the world, again, is useless without a good lively delivery.” Be careful: simple sermons can still be boring sermons.

4. “Above all, let us not forget that all the simplicity in the world is useless without prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the grant of God’s blessing, and a life corresponding in some measure to what we preach.” The preacher works hard, so that God might work through us. We still depend on him for power.

Amen and amen. Do yourself and your hearers a favor—take 30 minutes sometime in the next month to read Ryle on preaching.

By Pastor Jeff Wiesner (original source – https://www.9marks.org/article/genesis-exodus-isaiah-oh-my-practical-help-for-preaching-longer-books/)

A fellow pastor recently asked me what I was preaching. After I told him that I was preaching through the whole book of Isaiah, he laughed. “Whoa! Good for you! I could never do that!”

I imagine my brother isn’t alone. Preaching through longer books of the Bible does seem like an impossible task for busy pastors. But contrary to what this brother’s response implied, a commitment to preaching through the Bible’s longest books isn’t only for über-pastors, if such a humorous fiction actually existed. Instead, it arises from a simple conviction that every pastor should share: Faithful expository preaching aims to declare the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), which includes preaching through the longest books in the Bible.

To this end, I hope the following eight “tips” will help preachers delight in the Scriptures as they prepare to preach—and persevere!—through its biggest books.

1. Before you start, read, re-read, and re-re-read the entire book.

Long before preaching through a long book of the Bible, read and re-read the entire book. The longest books in the Bible take two or three hours to read from beginning to end. You can avoid overwhelming yourself by starting several months in advance and blocking off time for one read-through per week.

As you read, pay attention to your heart. Spurgeon warned, “If you cannot catechise [sic] your own heart, and drill a truth into your own soul, you do not know how to teach other people.” Also pay attention to explicit references to other parts of Scripture, influential people and places, repeated words and phrases, doctrinal themes, embedded clues concerning the circumstances of the author’s audience, distinct literary features, and possible transitions between major sections. As you finish your preliminary readings, try to summarizs the book’s central message (its “big idea” or “melodic line”) in a single sentence.

Many challenges associated with preaching through the longest books of the Bible are mitigated by repetitive Bible reading long before the first sermon is written.

2. Outline the entire book.

If expositional preaching aims to make the shape and point of a passage the shape and point of the message, then “expositional outlining” aims for a similar target: make the shape and point of the whole book the shape and point of the outline.

Weeks before your first sermon, identify the major sections of the book. You might also consider summarizing each major section with a brief abstract statement informed by the “big idea” (see above). This will help you synthesize the book’s flow and strengthen your ability to locate the relationship of any particular passage to the author’s overall aim.

Next, outline the various subsections within each main section, moving from general to specific. Resist the urge to take early shortcuts through extra-biblical resources. Your preaching will benefit you and your hearers most when your understanding of the shape and point of the book is the fruit of your own Word-work. Upon completion, you might sharpen your work by comparing it to outlines from fellow preachers, commentaries, or exegetical guides.

Finally, hold your preliminary outline with an open hand. Young preachers, in particular, may need to mortify the pride of perfectionism. Make your outline a “working” copy, knowing that it may change (often) due to additional study over the course of a long preaching series.

3. Be honest about yourself and your congregation.

Before you move from your outline to your preaching schedule, take time to evaluate yourself and your congregation honestly.

Be honest about yourself. 

In other words, assess your ability relative to other responsibilities. In my experience, preaching larger portions of Scripture at once requires more preparation and skill than smaller portions. Likewise, some pastors are more skilled at synthesizing large portions of Scripture in a single sermon than others. If you’re not one of them, that’s okay! Humble yourself and be faithful with smaller portions, even if it means taking more time to preach through the entire book.

Be honest about your congregation.

John Flavel noted, “A prudent minister will study the souls of his people more than the best books in his library, and not choose what is easiest for him, but what is most necessary for them.” What is your congregation’s spiritual maturity? How do you gauge their biblical literacy? Will most of the members present at the beginning of your expositions be there at the end, or is your membership more transient? What long-term goals do you have for instructing your church?

How you answer these and other questions will help determine the appropriate amount of time to spend with your congregation in a long book.

4. Create a preaching schedule,

Based on what you know about yourself and your church, create a preaching schedule from your outline. Plan all of your sermons at once if you plan to preach lengthier portions of Scripture and move quickly through the book. If you decide to preach smaller passages and spend more time in the book, you might plan your sermon schedule one section at a time with strategic breaks in between each section. Taking strategic breaks after many consecutive weeks of preaching will help you pull your head above the proverbial tree-line to plan your schedule for the next major section of the book and make possible changes to your approach. You or another pastor might also use these breaks to preach through a short book from the opposite Testament or on a relevant issue that needs to be addressed before you’re able to finish the book.

5. Begin and end with an overview sermon.

Consider making your first sermon an overview of the entire book (your preliminary reading pays dividends here). Summarize the book’s big ideas, how they testify of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jn. 5:39), and why the book is essential for Christians today. Let your people know, “This is where we are going, why it’s important, and what we might ask God to do in our church through this book.”

Similarly, a concluding overview sermon says, “Let’s look back at where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, how God has used this book in our church, and what it looks like for us to trust and obey His Word moving forward.” You want to fill your congregation with godly anticipation initially, and then help them reflect and give thanks at the end.

6. Recap the book often.

Many of your members will miss multiple Sundays throughout a long preaching series due providential hindrances like illness or travel or sometimes just sinful neglect. Don’t rely too much on them catching up through recorded sermons. Instead, bring them up to speed by regularly recapping what came before and comes after a given passage. Regular in-sermon recaps also help situate your text within the larger framework of the book itself and in the Bible at large. In effect, you’ll catechize your hearers and grow their biblical literacy by repeatedly summarizing the book.

7. Don’t rush repetition.

If you preach through longer books in shorter portions, you’ll inevitably run into repetitive themes that make you feel like you are essentially preaching the same sermon every week. I remember feeling this way halfway through Isaiah’s oracles (chs. 13–27). Looking back, those many weeks of repetition were arguably the most profitable stretch of sermons in the whole book. We are weak and forgetful creatures. God is good to inspire repetition where He knows we need it most. Resist the urge to rush through repetition for the sake of “freshness” or novelty. Sometimes we need to hear the same truths repeated a dozen times in a hundred ways to remember them and be changed by them.

8. Be patient, and stay the course.

You’ll be less intimidated by preaching through long books if you have a long vision for your ministry. Preaching through Genesis or Isaiah may take one to two years or more. But what are a couple of years compared to decades of preaching in the same church? Whatever you decide, an extended vision for ministry will strengthen your commitment to feeding God’s flock from every part of his Word, not just from the parts that are shorter, easier, and more familiar.

A long vision also guards you against distraction. Present controversies and culture wars will clamor for your attention. Don’t allow them to produce reactive and hasty habits in the pulpit. Stay the course. Controversies and culture wars “wither and . . . fade, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isa. 40:8). Steel yourself with this promise and patiently preach “the next text next.” Persevere through long books over many years, trusting in the Lord to establish and strengthen your church by his grace, in his time, and for his glory.

“He will surely do it” (1 Thess. 5:23).

By Jason C. Meyer (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church and associate professor of New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary. Prior to coming to Bethlehem, he served as dean of chapel and assistant professor of Christian Studies at Louisiana College. He is the author of Preaching: A Biblical Theology and a commentary on Philippians in the ESV Expository Commentary.

A Ministry-Shaping Life

I owe more to the ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones than I can put into words. In what follows, I try to summarize some of the most life-changing lessons I have learned from his preaching.

1. Preach the Word.

Lloyd-Jones practiced expository preaching in a day when few practiced it. Through his pulpit ministry many rediscovered the biblical beauty and necessity of expository preaching. In expository preaching, we humbly put ourselves under the text so that the people see that “what we are saying comes out of the Bible, and always comes out of it. That is the origin of our message.”¹ The Doctor stressed that all preaching must be expository because an expository sermon honors what he called the golden rule of preaching.

At this point there is one golden rule, one absolute demand–honesty. You have got to be honest with your text. I mean by that, that you do not go to a text just to pick out an idea which interests you and then deal with that idea yourself. That is to be dishonest with the text.²

2. Preach the Word in the power of the Spirit.

Like Elijah on Mt. Carmel, Lloyd-Jones believed that sermon preparation could prepare the sacrifice in an orderly way, but only God could bring down the fire. The sermon must catch fire to be true preaching. Without the Spirit, a preacher is only reading his notes or repeating words in reliance upon human oratory. The Doctor prized the power of the Spirit in preaching.

“The most romantic place on earth is the pulpit. I ascend the pulpit stairs Sunday after Sunday; I never know what is going to happen. I confess that I come expecting nothing; but suddenly the power is given. At other times I think I have a great deal because of my preparation; but, alas, I find there is no power in it. Thank God it is like that. I do my utmost, but he controls the supply and the power, he infuses it.”³

The secret to his success is that he did not separate light and heat, head and heart, word and Spirit. Lloyd-Jones was a student of history and saw this same pattern in history many times.

What was it that turned the world upside down? Was it just theological teaching? Was it mere enunciation of correct doctrine? Over and above that there was this mighty ‘demonstration of the Spirit and of power.’ How did those people turn the world upside down? The answer is that in the Book of Acts we have an account of a great revival, of the Spirit outpoured. What happened could not have happened otherwise. How did all these churches come into being? Was it merely that the apostles taught correct doctrine? Of course not! It was the Spirit’s demonstration and power which accompanied the correct doctrine. Correct doctrine can leave the church dead; you can have dead orthodoxy, you can have a church that is perfectly orthodox but perfectly useless. Over and above, there was this demonstration, this unction, this authority, this outpouring of the Spirit’s power. It is the only explanation of the astonishing things that happened.⁴

Lloyd-Jones never tired of stressing the necessity of the Spirit for the work of ministry. He often reminded pastors of “how much more” we need the Spirit today than the disciples did in their day.

You would have thought these men therefore were now in a perfect position to go out to preach; but according to our Lord’s teaching they were not. They seem to have all the necessary knowledge, but that knowledge is not sufficient, something further is needed, is indeed essential. The knowledge indeed is vital for you cannot be witnesses without it, but to be effective witnesses you need the power and the unction and the demonstration of the Spirit in addition. Now if this was necessary for these men, how much more is it necessary for all others who try to preach these things?⁵

This process of seeking the Spirit’s power does not start when the sermon manuscript is complete; it must be the focus from the first moment of the preacher’s preparations. He urges us to seek, expect, and yield to this power as the “supreme thing” and to “be content with nothing less.”⁶ Without this emphasis, there is “always a very real danger of our putting our faith in our sermon rather than in the Spirit.”⁷ It seems like I need to hear this warning week-by-week.

3. Preach for the salvation of the people in the pew.

A monumental turning point took place in 1923 while Lloyd-Jones was a medical student at St. Bartholomew’s in London. He began listening to the preaching of Dr. John Hutton, the minister at Westminster Chapel. There was a spiritual power in this man’s preaching that arrested his soul and made him aware of the amazing power of God to save and change lives.⁸ He had never experienced this power at any other church he attended (despite the fact that he had attended church his whole life).

Lloyd-Jones later described his conversion in this way:

For many years I thought I was a Christian when in fact I was not. It was only later that I came to see that I had never been a Christian and became one. . . .What I needed was preaching that would convict me of sin. . . .But I never heard this. The preaching we had was always based on the assumption that we were all Christians.⁹

Preachers preach to make Christ’s name known, not our name known.

That experience marked the rest of his ministry. Lloyd-Jones never assumed that the people in the pews were all Christians. The Lord blessed this approach. The Spirit moved mightily through Lloyd-Jones’s ministry for the salvation of both the most outwardly religious and the most outwardly irreligious. People from every walk of life experienced the life-changing power of the gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). That was the text for his first sermon and he never moved away from it as his guiding principle. Others in his day thought that the decline in church attendance in many places meant that modern man needed more modern attractions like drama.

Lloyd-Jones took a radically different approach. He suspended the drama society. Musical evenings were canceled. He simply preached Christ in the power of the Spirit. He said that Christ was the church’s only attraction. His sermon on Psalm 34:8 (June 28, 1931) testifies to this conviction: “The business of preaching is not to entertain, but to lead people to salvation, to teach them how to find God.”

4. Preach to awaken the conscience, not to soothe the conscience.

He believed that the first work of the Holy Spirit in the pulpit would be to convict people of their sin and to humble them in the presence of God. One should not try to soothe the conscience of those who do not fear God and are not seeking his mercy. “Present-day religion far too often soothes the conscience instead of awakening it, and produces a sense of satisfaction and eternal safety rather than a sense of unworthiness and the likelihood of eternal damnation.”¹⁰

He believed that the Spirit of God would not own that kind of preaching. In so doing, Iain Murray emphasized that Lloyd-Jones went back to a preaching principle that Charles Spurgeon had owned for his own ministry.

In the beginning, the preacher’s business is not to convert men, but the very reverse. It is idle to attempt to heal those who are not wounded, to attempt to clothe those who have never been stripped, and to make those rich who have never realized their poverty. As long as the world stands, we shall need the Holy Ghost, not only as the Comforter, but also as the Convincer, who will ‘reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’¹¹

The church needs to relearn this lesson in every generation. There is nothing new under the sun. The Lord raised up Charles Spurgeon to confront the downward spiral of England into liberalism in the nineteenth century. It became known as the Downgrade controversy. The Lord raised up Lloyd-Jones to deal with the downward liberal slide in the twentieth century. We need more of this kind of preaching in the twenty-first century.

5. Don’t live for preaching.

Lloyd-Jones received a living from preaching, but he did not live for preaching. He testified to this very truth at the end of his life: “I did not live for preaching.”¹² He had a higher love. Being a Christian was the most wonderful thing in the world to him.¹³

He testified powerfully to this truth at the end of his life. Lloyd-Jones became ill and it became very difficult for him to get from his chair to his bed. Friends would come to encourage him and would watch him and become discouraged themselves. They would say, Martyn, you used to be this powerful preacher, a lion in the pulpit, and now you look pitiful–you can hardly make it to your bed. How do you keep from getting discouraged? He would often quote a Bible verse from Luke 10:20:

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

He would then say, “Why should I be discouraged? I am no less saved today than I was when I was preaching. In fact, salvation is nearer than when I first believed.”

Preachers preach to make Christ’s name known, not our name known. We do not rejoice in ministry successes. Let us rejoice in the Lord’s work today, not our own. Let us rejoice in the lavish mercy of Christ toward us that our names are written in heaven!

Notes:

1. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 75.
2. Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 199.
3. Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 299–300.
4. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 13–14.
5. Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 307–308.
6. Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 325.
7. Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 230.
8. Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones 1899–1981 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1982), 46.
9. Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899–1939 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1982), 58.
10. Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones 1899–1981, 130.
11. This quote is from Spurgeon speaking in 1883. Quoted in Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones 1899–1981, 129.
12. Interview with Iain Murray, Logic on Fire Documentary.
13. See Iain H. Murray, Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace (Carlisle, PA: 2008), xi. The Doctor says it in his own words: “Is there anything in the world which is comparable to the privilege of being a Christian?” D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Darkness and Light (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 312.