Click HERE to listen to this sermon excerpt from D. Martyn LLoyd-Jones.
hat was the sort of preaching you had from the Protestant Reformers. What kind of preaching? Prophetic preaching, not priestly preaching. What we have today, you know, is what I would call "priestly preaching"—very nice, very quiet, very beautiful, very ornate. Sentences turned beautifully; prepared carefully.
That's not prophetic preaching. No, no! What is needed is authority!
Do you think that John Knox could make Mary Queen of Scots tremble with some polished little essay? These men didn't write their sermons with an eye to publication in books. They were preaching to the congregation in front of them. They were anxious and desirous to do something, to effect something, to change people. It was authoritative. What was it? It was proclamation. It was declaration.
Is it surprising that the church is that she is today? We don't believe in preaching any longer, do we? You used to have long sermons here in Scotland. I'm told you don't like them now, and woe be unto the preacher that goes on beyond 20 minutes.
I was reading coming up in the train yesterday about the first principal of Emmanuel College in Cambridge. He lived just at the end of the 16th century. His name was Chatterton. He was preaching on one occasion, and after he preached for two hours, he stopped, and he apologized to the people. He said, "Please, forgive me. I've got beyond myself. I mustn't go on like this."
And the congregation shouted out, "For God's sake, go on!"
You know, I'm beginning to think that I shan't have preached until something like that happens to me. Prophetic, authoritative, proclamation, declaration. A preaching that didn't respect persons, that wasn't anxious to play to the gallery, or to the intellectuals wherever they may sit. And certainly not our modern idea of having a friendly discussion. Have you noticed it? Less and less preaching on the wireless programs. Discussions! "Let the young people say what they think."
How interesting! Let's win them by letting them speak, and we'll have a friendly chat and discussion. We'll show them that, after all, we are nice, decent fellows, there's nothing nasty about us, and we'll gain their confidence. They mustn't think that we're unlike them. So of course, if you're on the television, you start by producing your pipe and lighting it. You show you're like the people—one of them.
Was John Knox like one of the people? Was John Knox, a matey? Friendly? Nice chap you can have a discussion with?
Thank God he wasn't. Scotland would not be what she has been for four centuries if John Knox were that kind of man.
And can you imagine John Knox going to have tips and training as to how he should conduct and comport himself before the television cameras? To be nice and polite and friendly and gentlemanly? Thank God prophets are made of sterner stuff.
And Amos. Or Jeremiah. Or John the Baptist in the wilderness—camel hair shirt. A strange fellow. "A lunatic," they said. "He's mad!" And they went and listened to him because he was a curiosity. And there, as they listened, they were convicted.
Such a man was John Knox, with the fire of God in his bones and in his belly. And he preached as they all preached—with fire, and power. Alarming sermons; convicting sermons; humbling sermons; converting sermons. And the face of Scotland was changed. And your greatest epoch in your long history came to pass. There, as I see it, were the great and outstanding characteristics of these men.
What was the secret of it all?
Well, it wasn't the men, as I've been trying to say, great as they were. It was God. God in his sovereignty, raising his men, and God knows what he's doing. Look at the gifts he gave John Knox as a natural men. Look at the mind he gave to Calvin. Look at the training he gave to Calvin as a lawyer to prepare him for his great work. Look at Martin Luther, that volcano of a man. God, preparing his men in the different nations and in the different countries.
And of course, before he even produced them, he'd been preparing the way for them. Let's never forget Wycliffe—John Wycliffe. John Hus. Let's never forget the Waldensians and all the martyrs of those terrible Middle Ages. God was preparing the way, and then he sent his men at the right moment. And the mighty events followed.
. . . . . . . .
The God of John Knox is still there, and still the same. And thank God, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Oh, that we might know the God of John Knox.
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