By Chipley Thornton
Special to The Tribune
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor turned preacher in England in the mid-1900’s.
In a day when England’s churches were flailing, God used him to spark a revival in the land.
The spark that ignited the revival was consistent expository preaching.
Perhaps you’ve wondered, “What is expository preaching?” Walt Kaiser defines it as a sermon that takes as a minimum one paragraph of Biblical Text and derives from that Text both the shape (main points and subpoints) and content (ideas & principles) of the message (Walter Kaiser, “The Crisis in Expository Preaching). Lloyd-Jones modeled this definition as closely as anyone.
Lloyd-Jones felt the best way to model expository preaching was to preach through books of the Bible, paragraph-by-paragraph.
He preached 60 consecutive sermons on the Sermon on the Mount (I tried my best but only made it to 19 sermons from it last year!).
But his longest series was a 372-sermon marathon through Romans . . . and he never even made it to the final two chapters!
That is about 7.5 years of Romans if he preached 50 of 52 weeks each year. He stated, “A sermon should always be expository.
In a sermon, the theme or the doctrine is something that arise out of the text and its context” (Lawson, The Passionate Preaching of Lloyd-Jones, 78).
Lloyd-Jones was ever cautious that, if we depart from expository preaching, then we tempt our depraved natures to preach our own message rather than God’s message.
He likened it to his days as a doctor. As a doctor, he diagnosed the condition and dispensed the proper pr
If the answer to those any of those questions is, “No,” then there is a problem. You may be listening to a word from man rather than the Word of God. Lloyd-Jones would call that an “abomination,” . . . and he wouldn’t be kidding around.
Chipley Thornton is a pastor at First Baptist Church of Springville. The church’s website is fbcspringville.com.
11 Comments
Aaron Bruce
I understand where he is coming from. However what God used then is not necessarily what God will use to reach people today. If you think about that and apply it to say, John Wesley for example, the messages he preached brought thousands into the kingdom. Read some of them. I personally don’t believe that they would reach anyone today.
Look at the messages and methods that are bringing people into the kingdom today. Message like those at Church of the Highlands or Life.Church are changing the people of today.
Steve Betts
Scripture should not be JUST a justification for what we are ALREADY comfortable with believing. Scripture should tell us what we OUGHT be believe. We have to LET it.
Kasey Graydon
Maybe if we’re lucky we will live long enough where god will start changing lives with things like Golf instead of boring bible verses.
Chris Amick
I can’t even comment on this. I would love to but I really just shouldn’t
Scott White
Kasey Graydon wow!!! I will pray for you.
Tiffany Badgett Stone
Tiffany Badgett Stone
Chris Amick
Chris Amick
Scott White you need to pray for the first guy. Kasey is being sarcastic
Scott White
Chris Amick
Gotcha… yes i should have said more on the first guy. God’s word hasn’t changed. I would say he still would reach plenty.
Chris Amick
There’s something I don’t think a lot of people understand and at one time I didn’t either. “5 ways to be more like Jesus” or “10 steps to a better marriage”, that’s not the Gospel, that’s a self help message, and if we could help ourselves then we wouldn’t need the Gospel. The Gospel is all that makes a lasting change in someone’s life and that is why John Wesley’s message brought thousands to the kingdom and STILL would today
Judy Popwell Knight
God and God’s Word: the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow*. My understanding is, we share the gospel *, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw or “reach” people. Personal observation is that attempts at usurping the work of the Holy Spirit is producing a person lacking in true commitment.