Old Testament Evangelistic Sermons

Pure gold

Old Testament Evangelistic Sermons
By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Banner of Truth. 268 pages. £12.95 (hardback)

This collection of sermons reveals a side to Dr. Lloyd-Jones with which many may not be familiar. Better known for his apologetics and the protracted logic of his expository works on Paul's letters, we are here compelled to recognise an evangelistic passion of unusual depth.
In the earlier years of his ministry and against the prevailing liberalism of the day, he saw himself principally as an awakener of men to their true condition before God. In a collection of case histories and character studies from the Old Testament he shows us our plight and God's power. These sermons would certainly have made their hearers think with a design to humbling them and driving them to the mercy of God.
Again we note Lloyd-Jones's profound awareness of the times in which he lived and the points of similarity with Israel's history, a master of the timeless principles by which God deals with his world, incidentally. Sermon No. 8 entitled 'Biblical Psychology' makes this point very effectively.
All too often we hear and suspect that some reformed teaching is dull - here we are shown that it need not be, as the Old Testament provides a lively critique of man in the real world in which God is sovereignly involved. I am not saying that these sermons are to be exactly reproduced today. Some were preached over 50 years ago when there was a broadly Christian consensus, and post-modern relativism was some way off, but their impact lies in their depth of insight into human nature in the light of God's character, and their fearless application to the conscience.
What also becomes clear is that the Doctor knew that the mere presence of a man in a Christian church was no guarantee of his right standing with God. As Iain Murray points out in his superb introduction (26 pages): 'The evangelistic use of the Old Testament in the preaching of Dr. Lloyd-Jones . . . 'It was Lloyd-Jones's conviction that the gospel itself is not necessarily the main subject in true evangelistic preaching, rather the main subject must often be the truth which brings home to men and women their need of the gospel. That was exactly how he saw much of the purpose of Old Testament history. Here is a record of people as individuals and as nations. With one voice they tell us that all human existence is the story of weakness, failure and death. Man is a feeble, ruined creature whose inner longing can never be satisfied apart from God. Man aims to restore himself and others to paradise, but he will never succeed. His hopes of final peace can never be fulfilled. This is what the Holy Spirit proves in Scripture and ML-J saw it as the preacher's calling to prove it too. He never had a problem in moving from an Old Testament character to his own day. It is characteristic of his thinking that when, for instance, he is preaching on Adonijah from 1 Kings 1.41, he asserts: 'What explains the story of Adonijah is precisely the same things as explains the lives of hundreds of people living in this present time'.'
Comprising 21 sermons in biblical sequence of their texts, I counted eight preached at Westminster Chapel and the rest were from his years in South Wales. Essential reading for regular preachers though the price may be a little off-putting. As a handle on the relevance and riches of the Old Testament it is a volume many others should appreciate as well. The jacket design hardly inspires, but the contents are pure gold.

Pure gold

Malcolm MacGregor

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