Lessons from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Cathy Mickels & Audrey McKeever, in their book, Spiritual Junk Food, have these excellent citations by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book, Knowing the Times.  I recommend reviewing these thoughtfully.

There has been a marked tendency in the last years or so to divide up Christian work according to age groups.  I have never been very enthusiastic about these divisions in  to age groups - old age, middle age, youth, children, and so on.  By that I mean that we must be careful that we do not modify the gospel to suit various age groups.  There is no such thing as a special gospel for the young, a special gospel for the middle-aged, and a special gospel for the aged.  There is only one gospel, and we must always be careful not to tamper and tinker with the gospel as a result of recognizing these age distinctions.  p.2

...you must be constant students of the Word of God, you must read it without ceasing.  You must read all good books that will assist you to understand it, and the best commentaries you can find on the Bible.  You must read...biblical theology, the explanation of the great doctrines of the New Testament, so that you may come to understand them more and more clearly, and may therefore be able to present them with ever increasing clarity....  p.12

There have been periods in history when the preservation of the very life of the church depended upon the capacity and readiness of certain great leaders to differentiate truth from error and boldly to hold fast to the good and to reject the false; but our generation does not like anything of the kind.  It is against any clear and precise demarcation of truth and error.  p.39

What we must do is to educate the masses of the people up to the Bible, not bring the Bible down to their level.  One of the greatest troubles in life today is that everything is being brought down to the same level; everything is being cheapened.  The common man is made the standard and the authority; he decides everything, and everything has got to be brought down to him.... Everywhere standards are coming down and down.  Are we to do this with the Word of God?  I say, No!  p.112

We must not mind being thought “narrow”...This charge of intolerance is a compliment.  For, surely, if our position is that in which God has ordained His elect should stand, we must necessarily be intolerant of all that would divert us from it.  p.321

I have discovered over the years that subtraction from the truth is something that members of churches are very, very slow to observe.  I have almost come to the conclusion that the acid test to apply, to know whether a preacher is evangelical or not, is this: Observe what he does not say!  p.321