Martyn Lloyd-Jones - Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

by

D. MARTYN LLOYD JONES

VOLUME ONE

HIS volume consists of thirty sermons preached for the most part on successive Sunday mornings in the course of my regular ministry at Westminster Chapel. It is being published for one reason only, namely, that I can no longer resist the pressure brought to bear on me by large numbers of people, some of whom heard the sermons when delivered and others who have read some of them in our church magazine. Such readers will need no word of explanation as to the form in which these sermons are published, but it may well be necessary in the case of others.

These chapters are reports of sermons taken down in shorthand (no tape-recording machine being available at that time). They have been subjected to a minimum amount of correction and alteration, and no attempt has been made to conceal, still less to expunge, the sermonic form. This has been quite deliberate and for several reasons.

I am profoundly convinced that the greatest need of the Church today is a return to expository preaching. I would emphasize both words and especially the latter. A sermon is not an essay and is not meant, primarily, for publication, but to be heard and to have an immediate impact upon the listeners. This implies, of necessity, that it will have certain characteristics which are not found and are not desirable in written studies. To prune it of these, if it should be subsequently published, seems to me to be quite wrong, for it then ceases to be a sermon and becomes something quite nondescript. I have a suspicion that what accounts for the dearth of preaching at the present time is the fact that the majority of printed books of sermons have clearly been prepared for a reading rather than a listening public. Their flavour and form are literary rather than sermonic.

Another characteristic of expository preaching is that it is not merely an exposition of a verse or passage, or a running commentary on it; what turns it into preaching is that it becomes a message and that it has a distinct form and pattern.

Furthermore, it must always be applied and its relevance shown to the contemporary situation.

I am constantly being asked to give lectures on expository preaching. I rarely accede to such requests, believing that the best way of doing this is to give examples of such preaching in actual practice. It is my hope that this volume with its many faults may help somewhat in that respect, but it could not possibly have done so if drastic excisions, and an attempt to produce a literary form, had been made.

Here they are then' warts and all'. Those who are not interested in exposition, and those who have no taste for preaching as such, will probably be irritated by stylistic blemishes, `the art of repetition' for the sake of emphasis, and what are termed `pulpit mannerisms' (as if they were worse than any other kind of mannerism!). All I ask is that they be read and considered for what they are and for what they set out to do.

My greatest hope and desire is that they may in some small way stimulate a new interest in expository preaching. It may encourage preachers to know that such sermons, lasting on an average forty minutes on Sunday mornings, can be preached in what is called a `down-town church' even in these days.

The two people who are most responsible for the appearance of the volume in print are Mrs. F. Hutchings who, almost miraculously, was able to take down the sermons in shorthand as they were delivered, and my daughter, Elizabeth Catherwood. Like many of my fellow preachers I acknowledge that my best and severest critic is my wife.

D. M. LLOYD JONES

March, 1959

-T is a wise rule in the examination of any teaching to proceed from the general to the particular. This is the only way of -avoiding the danger of `missing the wood because of the trees'. This rule is of particular importance in connection with the Sermon on the Mount. We must realize, therefore, that at the outset certain general questions have to be asked about this famous Sermon and its place in the life, thought and outlook of Christian people.

The obvious question with which to start is this: Why should we consider the Sermon on the Mount at all? Why should I call your attention to it and to its teaching? Well, I do not know that it is a part of the business of a preacher to explain the processes of his own mind and his own heart, but clearly no man should preach unless he has felt that God has given him a message. It is the business of any man who tries to preach and expound the Scriptures to wait upon God for leading and guidance. I suppose fundamentally, therefore, my main reason for preaching on the Sermon on the Mount was that I had felt this persuasion, this compulsion, this leading of the Spirit. I say that deliberately, because if I had been left to my own choice I would not have chosen to preach a series of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount. And as I understand this sense of compulsion, I feel the particular reason for doing so is the peculiar condition of the life of the Christian Church in general at the present time.

I do not think it is a harsh judgment to say that the most obvious feature of the life of the Christian Church today is, alas, its superficiality. That judgment is based not only on contemporary observation, but still more on contemporary observation in the light of previous epochs and eras in the life of the Church. There is nothing that is more salutary to the Christian life than to read the history of the Church, to read again of the great movements of God's Spirit, and to observe what has happened in the Church at various times. Now I think that anyone who looks at the present state of the Christian Church in the light of that background will be driven to the reluctant conclusion that the outstanding characteristic of the life of the Church today is, as I have said, its superficiality. When I say that, I am thinking not only of the life and activity of the Church in an evangelistic sense. In that particular respect I think everybody would agree that superficiality is the most obvious characteristic. But I am thinking not only of modern evangelistic activities as compared and contrasted with the great evangelistic efforts of the Church in the past-the present-day tendency to boisterousness, for example, and the use of means which would have horrified and shocked our fathers; but I also have in mind the life of the Church in general where the same thing is true, even in such matters as her conception of holiness and her whole approach to the doctrine of sanctification.

The important thing for us is to discover the causes of this. For myself I would suggest that one main cause is our attitude to the Bible, our failure to take it seriously, our failure to take it as it is and to allow it to speak to us. Coupled with that, perhaps, is our invariable tendency to go from one extreme to the other. But the main thing, I feel, is our attitude towards the Scriptures. Let me explain in a little more detail what I mean by that.