Who can say whether this preacher or that is the greatest of his generation? Such evaluations are, one is glad to acknowledge, in other hands than our own. There can be no question, however, but that Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a very great preacher indeed; and some do not hesitate to speak of him as among the premier preachers of the church since the Protestant Reformation. Thousands of people all around the world felt themselves stricken with a heavy sense of loss when the Lord took him on the first day of March, 1981.

His Life⤒🔗

The facts of his life are soon told. He was born in Cardiff, South Wales, on December 20, 1899, but was raised till his fifteenth year in rural Cardiganshire. In 1914 he moved with his family to London, where he concluded his basic education at St. Marylebone Grammar School. His medical studies he took at Bart's Hospital, one of London's preeminent teaching hospitals. By the time he was twenty-five Dr. Lloyd-Jones was already working with Sir Thomas Horder in Harley Street, having done so brilliantly in all his medical examinations that his future as a prominent medical doctor and cardiologist was assured.

Other, and we may think better, things were in store for him, however. By 1926 he was committed to the service of the gospel; and in 1927 he became minister of the Bethlehem Forward Movement Church, Sandfields, Aberavon (a congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Wales). After a fruitful and effective ministry there, he was inducted minister of Westminster Chapel, London, as colleague of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan. It was at Westminster Chapel that Dr. Lloyd-Jones did his most notable work as a minister of Christ. There he preached with incomparable power and influence for full thirty years, till his retirement in August, 1968. Upon his recovery from the illness that had necessitated his resignation from Westminster Chapel, Dr. Lloyd-Jones continued to preach throughout the length and breadth of England, Scotland, and Wales. His active ministry only came to an end with a renewed onslaught of illness in mid-1980.

Along with his pastoral ministry Dr. Lloyd-Jones managed to find time for many other tasks as well, all of them related to the preaching and teaching of the gospel. He was long president of the Evangelical Library; frequently of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship; conference speaker in North America, Europe, and South Africa; council member of the China Inland Mission (now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship). He was the inspiration behind the Evangelical Movement of Wales; chairman and leader of the Puritan and Westminster Conferences; helper and adviser to the Banner of Truth Trust; and author of twenty-three volumes, mostly of biblical exposition.

The Preacher←⤒🔗

In a comment upon the occasion of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's death, Prof. Donald MacLeod, of the Free Church College, Edinburgh, wrote of him that he was "known throughout the English-speaking world as one of the greatest preachers since the Reformation." Others have spoken similarly. One has to have spent some time in evangelical circles in Britain to appreciate the stature of "the Doctor," as he was everywhere called, and to understand how it was that he came to occupy his commanding position of influence and leadership. "The church in Britain today is vastly different from what it was in 1927 when Dr. Lloyd-Jones began his ministry in Port Talbot" — these are Donald MacLeod's words.

Conservative evangelicalism enjoys a new, and perhaps dangerous, respectability. There is an interest in the literary heritage of English-speaking Calvinism which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. There has been a significant increase in the number of men preaching the doctrines of grace. These developments owe much to the Doctor — a fact which is all the more remarkable when one considers that he cared little for founding new organisations or establishing new institutions. He gave himself unsparingly to labouring in the word and in teaching.

Prof. MacLeod continues,

That example of total commitment to preaching is his greatest legacy. For it, he turned his back on a brilliant medical career; and from it he refused to be diverted by the plausible attractions of academic life, ecclesiastical management or a literary ministry. 'Preaching,' he said, 'is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called.'

It is as a preacher that he will always be known. And what a preacher he was! I had the privilege of hearing him on a number of occasions. Sometimes he was better than others, no doubt; surely that is always the case with preachers, whether eminent or not. But he was always himself; and he was always passionate; and he was always speaking of Christ. The services at Westminster Chapel were plain by prevailing standards. Perhaps the most notable departure from ancient non-conformist worship in Britain was the organ which was used for public worship. Otherwise the services were very like those described in the Westminster Assembly's Directory for the Public Worship of God. Plainness does not by any means amount to barrenness, however. We need to remind ourselves again and again that this is so. The most elaborate and finely prepared liturgy may be a stench in the nostrils of God — if for no other reason than that it calls attention to itself. Plainness, if it be the simplicity of the evangelical worship of the New Testament, on the other hand, may be redolent with the glory and splendor of the gospel. It certainly was that when Dr. Lloyd-Jones was minister of Westminster Chapel. Worship there was marked by awe, wonder, a sense of the presence of God in the midst of his people, and by the sheer power of the Word. It was an unforgettable experience to be led by the Doctor in prayer. His prayers were by no means ornate, but they were always reverent. He did not thrust himself forward; the preacher did not obtrude himself upon the awareness of the congregation. Rather, a humble servant of Christ gathered the people in his arms, and together they approached the throne of grace in adoration and petition.

When one thinks of Dr. Lloyd-Jones as a preacher the question immediately arises, What made him great in the proclamation of the Word of God? What is a great preacher? The answer to such questions is no easy matter. I think, however, that at least a few suggestions can be put forward.

First, Dr. Lloyd-Jones had received a first-rate education and was gifted with extraordinary natural endowments. He did not ever attend a theological seminary; but his classical British secondary schooling and the discipline of his medical training prepared him for the study of the Scriptures and of theology. All things considered, he was a divine of a very high order. Moreover, he had a brilliant mind, an expressive and resonant voice, an unusual ability to grasp profound ideas and make them understandable in communication, and an incredible presence. He himself would have said, I think, that "presence" in the sense in which we use the term here comes from the inside; it has its roots in theology, in the preacher's own apprehension of what he is about in all its awful dignity and power.

That is certainly true. But David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a born leader of men, and that was nowhere so evidently apparent as when he stood in the pulpit.

Second, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was careful and diligent in his preparation for preaching, in the more general as well as in the more particular meaning of the word. One of the most memorable afternoons I spent during my two years in London was in my own flat on the occasion when I had the privilege of entertaining the Doctor to tea. He was preaching for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the chapel building. Between the services of the day Dr. Lloyd-Jones came next door with me for a light meal and some talk. I recall how impressed I was by his erudition, by his wide reading, and by the penetrating keenness of his mind. He was then in his late sixties, but he had by no means stopped learning, studying, reading, in a broad spectrum of subjects. His intellect was richly furnished with materials which he was able to press into the service of his exposition of the Scriptures. I do not believe that he would have permitted himself the indulgence of appearing in the pulpit without assiduous work beforehand. His view of what took place there was far too elevated for that.

Third, one has to call attention to his remarkable boldness. Donald MacLeod speaks of his "persistent, remorseless application" in preaching. In our part of the country people sometimes say of a preacher who is no longer dwelling in generalities that he has "left off preaching and gone to meddling." There is a very real sense in which one had not begun to preach unless he has "gone to meddling." Of what possible use is abstract preaching, withdrawn from the perceptions and needs of the people, remote from their experience. The strength of Puritan preaching lay, not only in its intensely biblical character, but also in its vital concern to bring the truth home, to apply it, to apply it closely to those who heard. This Dr. Lloyd-Jones did also in a forceful and poignant way, showing neither fear nor favor, exhorting, rebuking, admonishing, because he himself knew the terror of the Lord.

Fourth, I think that no small part of Dr. Lloyd-Jones' power as a preacher lay in his acquaintance with the human scene. He did not preach up the times; rather, he preached Jesus Christ. But he knew the times, and he knew the hearts of his people. I have often thought that his training as a physician stood him in good stead here. Perhaps this comes out most clearly in his excellent book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. There, in the pages of that volume, one finds the pastor speaking, but also the physician — the physician of the body now becomes the physician of the soul. Dr. Lloyd-Jones was anything but a political, psychological, or sociological preacher. And yet it would be impossible to accuse him of irrelevance in his ministry. People came to Westminster Chapel from every background: what a mixed congregation it was, a strangely assorted congregation! But they came to him because they knew that in him they had an under-shepherd who could apply the medicine of the gospel to their lives, and through whose preaching Christ could cure them and make them whole.

Fifth, if he was characterized by anything at all it was by his supreme confidence in the power of the preaching of the Word of God. All the world knows that the Doctor kept to his Bible: it was the basis, the polestar, the foundation for all he said and did during his more than fifty years of preaching. Almost all his published sermons are in the nature of a consecutive exposition of books and passages of Scripture. But more than that, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was instrumental, as few men have been, in reviving faith among the people of his generation in the spiritual dynamic of the Word proclaimed. Once after World War II Emil Brunner attended a service at Westminster Chapel, and afterward exclaimed, "Now that is Reformed preaching!" It was. It was indeed. In his view of preaching the Doctor showed his spiritual kinship with John Calvin whose doctrine of preaching was Lloyd-Jones's own. I sometimes think that the Doctor in a way represented a time between the times with respect to the Christian pulpit. He entered upon his ministry in a day when there was not much conviction that preaching could do anything. In the last few years, especially in quarters where there was once much rejoicing at able and faithful preaching of the gospel, people seem again to have lost their way and to be looking everywhere but in the direction prescribed by the Scriptures for the renewal and health of the church. Perhaps Dr. Lloyd-Jones may remind us even now, though he has been taken away from us, and remind us in a mighty way, that God is pleased by the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe.

Sixth, the Doctor's profound personal experience with the Lord Jesus Christ, and his hearty commitment to him, sustained and supported his whole ministry. For the love of Christ he turned his back upon the fame and plaudits of the world. To him it was no sacrifice at all in comparison with the knowledge of the Redeemer.

Those who wish to know what Dr. Lloyd-Jones himself thought about preaching should read his splendid book Preaching and Preachers. It is an indispensable work, and I should think that a theological student — certainly one in the Reformed tradition — must be ashamed were he to complete his course of study without having read it at least once — and preferably again and again. It is also a book for ministers, and for anyone interested in preaching.

What can we learn from him? We can thank God for him and for the wonderful gift of God to us in him. Most of us who are ministers cannot be great preachers, in the sense that the Doctor was great. But we can be useful men of God and ministers of the imperishable gospel. We who are evangelicals and committed to the Reformed faith not infrequently find ourselves losing confidence in the proclamation of the Word of God. We are exposed to so little that would inspire and encourage us. And we have a hard time taking seriously what the Scriptures tell us about preaching. Can it be that the Lord means for us to rely on what seems in so many ways to be a vain and futile exercise — the more vain and futile in view of what the world is, what it seems to be becoming? But then we listen again to the authentic voice of the preacher: of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, as Paul promises us, speaking through the lips of those men whom he has separated to himself and to his service. We listen to the likes of a David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. And we remember. We remember what preaching is, and what it can do — what it must do when God blesses and uses and empowers it. Then our doubting, fearful hearts are stilled. We know that, till the last little one for whom Christ died has been brought in, the joyful sound will reach to the ends of the earth and will accomplish that where to God sends it.