Preaching & Preachers, Chapter 9: The Preparation of the Preacher

Chapter 9 of Martyn Lloyd-Jones classic book Preaching & Preachers is on the Preparation of the preacher. This is a wonderful chapter with lots of practical advise. The preacher is always preparing in one way or the other. the burden of the message is always on the heart. The whole of our lives are involved in this great work, so the preacher needs to prepare his own soul before he begins to prepare his message. Here are the ways in which MLJ suggests that the preacher prepare himself: 

1. The preacher must prepare himself
1. Don't simply prepare sermons
2. Prepare your own soul
2. The preacher must pray
3. The preacher must read his Bible
1. Read it through at least once a year
2. Read and study one book in particular (apart from sermon preparation)
3. Don't limit your Bible reading to finding sermon material, read for your own soul
4. The preacher must have a balance reading plan including:
1. Devotional reading
2. Puritians, or reading sermons
3. Theological works 
4. Church history
5. Christian biographies, especially of great preachers 
6. Apologetic works
7. General reading for the relief of the mind

MLJ ends the chapter warning against getting your sermons from sermon books. Even when you get ideas from other sources, they need to be digested into your own mind and soul. Then, you preach them in your own words with your own thoughts. You aren't a recording device, repeating what someone else wrote. He closed with a shout-out to music. If it makes you happy and prepares you to think, listen to good music. 

Preaching & Preachers, Chapter 8 The Character of the Message

Lloyd-Jones begins by saying that the pew doesn't control what is preached, but the preacher must be mindful of who he is preaching to and the situation in the church. Preach to the people God has given you, not the people you wish you had. It is wrong to assume that everyone listening to a sermon on Sunday is a Christian, even if they say that they are. Even if you are preaching to Christians, we still need the gospel. Those pretenders will resent hearing the simple gospel again and not abide with it, wanting something else.

"...a number of people seem to go to a place of worship and to a service in order to go home! Their main idea seems to be to get out and to get home. Why do they go at all?"

He said the difficulty with the apostles was not to round everyone up and try to get them to come to church, but their problem was trying to get everyone to go home.

The chapter winds down with some opinions on the authority in the pulpit, and the aesthetics of the preachers attire, the building, and the pulpit.

Preaching and Preachers, Chapter 7: The Congregation

In chapter 7, Lloyd-Jones deals with the congregation in our preaching. Does the congregation dictate what we preach? Do we adapt the message to suitable for the people we are preaching to? Does a preacher who ministers to construction workers, need to be a construction worker to get a fair hearing?

 It's remarkable how he predicted what would happen, churches marketing toward certain sectors, trying to appeal to their hobbies and interests and designing churches and messages to suit their needs. Many of the modern Bible translations have that idea in mind; people can't understand "thee's and thou's" and if we could just a English translation that spoke their language, then they would believe. But look around the English speaking world, who has more translations of the Bible than any other people in history, and you'll see that theory proven wrong. It isn't that they don't understand the words, it is they don't understand the gospel. Our job is explain and teach and pray the Holy Spirit will give men life so they can understand. "These terms [justification, sanctification, glorification,] are peculiar and special to the Gospel. It is our business as preachers to show that our gospel is essentially different and that we are not talking about ordinary matters."

The case is made that Millennials, are some special generation that is so very unlike any generation before and if preachers are going to reach them, then they will have to adapt. This is nothing new. If a 20 something expects the church to change for him because he is too sophisticated to hear the gospel in the ordinary means, then the gospel is exactly what he needs to humble him. 2,000 years of preaching God's word, and we have now come to a generation of people that need a special way of communication, just for them, because they are superior to every other generation?

Of course, you can go to far the other direction, as Lloyd-Jones points out. We can be slaves to tradition. We can act, dress, and talk like we are living in the 1950's and if anyone steps out of that line, they are living in sin. It is the gospel, the message that is the dividing line. We can be stumbling blocks with our traditions, but we cannot budge on the essentials of gospel preaching and Biblical exposition of the truth.

Preaching & Preachers: The Preacher

Chapter 6 of Lloyd-Jones book Preaching & Preachers deals with the preacher himself. We will just examine the first section today, which deals with the call of the preacher. MLJ suggests that the call to the ministry begins with an internal disturbance of spirit when the man desires to preach and then an external suggestion from others that know him and watch him that perhaps God has called him into the ministry. Next there is a concern for the souls of others, that they too know the God of the Bible. He also repeats Spurgeon's advice that if you feel called to be a preacher, try to do something else. Stay out of the ministry, if you can. Only the man that can do nothing else but preach is called to the ministry. Then he should know he must preach, but feel unworthy to the task and almost have to be drug into the ministry.

I'm going to push back a little here because there is really no Scripture for most of this. No where does the Bible say to try not to preach and to try not to serve God in the ministry. Spurgeon's advice sounds very spiritual, but where in the Bible do you find that even hinted? Which preacher (besides Jonah) labors and struggles by telling God, no, I will not preach your word? The Bible tells us that a man will desire the work of the ministry (I Timothy 3:1) and then it is the churches job to confirm this calling by examining the man's life and ministry (I Timothy 3:2-7). If the man is not cut out for preaching and the pastor and the church knows it, then they should stop him.

It seems to me the Biblical pattern is if you desire to preach, go to the church with that desire, go to the pastor and make that desire known. If the church and the pastor believe that you have the knowledge and a sufficient understanding of the gospel, then preach the word and begin to study and prepare, learn how to preach. Find opportunities to preach, in church, out of church, in nursing homes, on the street, etc. If you then see that you were mistaken or the church sees that you don't have those gifts, at least the word of God and the gospel was published. But how else could a church ever decide if a man was fit for pastoral ministry unless he preached? How can you get better at preaching unless you preach? But, to be fair, I'm sure Lloyd-Jones and Spurgeon, because they were great preachers and had much success, had a lot more young men desire to follow them into the ministry than a smaller church would.

Bible Doctrine in Bible Dress

R.L. Dabney made a good point in book Sacred Rhetoric:

"And it is exceedingly instructive to note, that there are three stages through which preaching has repeatedly passed with the same results. The first is that in which scriptural truth is faithfully presented in scriptural garb—that is to say, not only are all the doctrines asserted which truly belong to the revealed system of redemption, but they are presented in that dress and connection in which the Holy Spirit has presented them, without seeking any other from human science. This state of the pulpit marks the golden age of the Church. The second is the transition stage. In this the doctrines taught are still those of the Scriptures, but their relations are moulded into conformity with the prevalent human dialectics. God's truth is now shorn of a part of its power over the soul. The third stage is then near, in which not only are the methods and explanations conformed to the philosophy of the day, but the doctrines themselves contradict the truth of the Word. Again and again have the clergy traveled this descending scale, and always with the same disastrous result."

And then said:

"The generation, unwittingly introduced by the great and good Jonathan Edwards, marks the second; during which the doctrines of grace were not openly impugned, but they were successively stretched into the schemes of metaphysics—the "exercise scheme," the "light scheme," the "greatest benevolence scheme"—which fascinated a people of narrow and partial culture and self-confident temper. The next generation was called to witness the apostasy which turned the truth of God into a lie, and took both the methods and the dogmas of the Socinian and the Pelagian. Let us, my brethren, eschew the ill-starred ambition which seeks to make the body of God's truth a "lay figure" on which to parade the drapery of human philosophy. May we ever be content to exhibit Bible doctrine in its own Bible dress!" 

A Powerful Introduction to Elijah

Winston Churchill once said "opening amenities are opening inanities." He never wasted the good opportunity the opening minutes provided him. A good introduction can draw the listener in and capture his attention. For example, notice how Friedrich Krummacher in his book Elijah the Tishbite sets the scene through word pictures. Not only has he given an apt description of the spiritual times in which Elijah burst into the pages of Scripture, but how he gives us a feel for the darkness of a land given over to idolatry.

“And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” (1 Kings 17:1)
Thus commences the brief record of the prophet Elijah, abruptly setting us at once in the midst of his life. At this very first mention of him we see the whole man living and moving, in spirit and in conduct. This manner of his introduction to our notice is itself remarkable. In the preceding chapters, the inspired historian had, as it were, dug through the wall, and discovered to us the horrible abominations in which Israel, during those melancholy times, was so deeply immersed. Clouds and thick darkness cover the whole land; the images of Baalim and Ashtaroth fearfully gleam on every side; idolatrous temples and heathen altars occupy the sacred soil; every hill smokes with their sacrifices, every vale resounds with the blasphemous yells of a cruel priesthood. The people drink in iniquity like water, and sport in shameless rites around their idols. Alas! alas! how is the glory of Israel departed! how is Abraham’s seed no longer discernible! their light is become darkness, the salt has lost its savour, the fine gold has become dim! And now, while darkness reigns throughout the land; while no cheering star gleams through the universal blackness, on a sudden the history changes, with the words, “And Elijah said.” – The man seems as if dropped from heaven into the midst of this awful night-piece, without father, without mother, without descent, as is written of Melchisedec. Lo, he stands forth in the midst of the desolation, but not without his God. Almost the only grain of salt in the general corruption, the only leaven that is to leaven the whole mass – and that we may learn at once who he is, he commences his career with an unheard-of act of faith, by closing, in the name of his Lord, the heavens over Israel, and changing the firmament into iron and brass. Thanks be to God! the night is no longer so horrible, for a man of God now appears, like the rising moon, in the midst of it."

This was a powerful introduction because it not only gave us the information, but draws us in to make us want the rest of the story.