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A Nation Under Wrath: Studies in Isaiah 5

A Nation Under Wrath: Studies in Isaiah 5
By D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
Kingsway. 190 pages. £7.99
ISBN 0854 767 207

I was a student in London when these sermons was preached towards the middle of the 1960s, and I remember them well. They were indeed a prophetic voice (often a prophetic shout!) to the nation: warning, pleading, denouncing, directing.
What first grasps one's attention is the fact that they are still so contemporary. Statements about our prevailing moral confusion, the gross materialism, the helplessness of the leaders in society, indeed their moral failure in some cases, will have a strong resonance in today's society.
What predominates throughout the series is the supreme relevance of biblical truth to our society. Everything is rooted in Scripture; nothing is left behind in the Bible. Here is no arcane biblicism, but the constant application of God's inspired Word.
The outstanding one of the series in my view (then and now) is the sermon on Isaiah 5.20: 'Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil' (here found as chapter 5 and headed 'Moral Perversion'). It begins with a wide sweep of biblical history, moves into a close analysis of sin and its intensification in modern society, illustrates the situation from recent Reith Lectures (Professor Carstairs) and D.H. Lawrence on the wider scene, and with a moving personal anecdote from his pastoral work, ends with a stirring call to turn to God who alone can change the heart.
These sermons may also act as a corrective to a tendency I have found among some of my fellow Reformed preachers. The tendency is to move from an exposition of Scripture straight into a pietistic and rather privatised application of the doctrine which bypasses the worlds of work, family and TV (the three worlds in which most people live). Lloyd-Jones always starts these sermons with the state of society followed by a biblical explanation of it.
Such preaching reminds us all what preaching ought to be: the Word of God addressed to our times.

Peter Lewis