D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a man with one eye on eternity and the other on his times. As such, though his preaching consistently followed a sequential path (e.g., preaching through a book of the Bible), he found creative and compelling ways to weave the Word around current events. For example, while he was preaching a Sunday morning series on “The Kingdom of God,” the country found itself in the midst of a crisis. Called “The Profumo Affair,” it involved the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Secretary for War, John Profumo, over an affair he had with a young women who was at the same time involved with a Soviet Naval Attaché—raising concerns about espionage. U.S. President Kennedy watched this closely for his own reasons as the MacMillan government was nearly brought down (the Prime Minister resigned a few months later for health reasons).
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Tackling such an issue was not hard for Lloyd-Jones. His rich biblical approach enabled him to touch on sensitive issues—even moral and political scandal—in a dignified and responsible way. Never drifting into a morbid fascination with the details of evil, he instead proclaimed the values of God’s Kingdom standing in contrast to the compromises and corruptions of the kingdoms of this world, yet, at the same time remaining a loyal countryman.
9He was a man who could pray in the pulpit for 35 minutes before preaching. He shunned radio work on the BBC because he believed that the medium would not recognize and convey the “unction” that was so precious to him and vital to his ministry. Some who knew him well, and who had observed his mind at work and gifts of leadership and communication, strongly felt that—had he taken another path—he could have been Prime Minister of the nation one day (if Whitefield was his preacher hero, David Lloyd George was his political hero). But, his thinking was certainly akin to that of another great English preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who once said, “If God calls you to preach, don’t ever stoop to be a king!”
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones had to cancel all speaking engagements due to illness in 1979, and he wrestled with health problems for many months. By February of 1981 he was telling his family, “Don’t pray for healing; don’t try to hold me back from the glory.”
On March 1 he went home to be with the Lord. A special day to any Welshman—the first of March is known as “St. David’s Day.”
1. Christopher Catherwood,
Five Evangelical Leaders, 1985.
2. Tony Sargent,
The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, p. 53.
3. Ibid., p. 158.
4. Ibid., p. 151.
5. Warren Wiersbe,
Living with the Giants, p. 187.
6. R.T. Kendall,
The Anointing, introduction.
7. In this next section I quote liberally from
Preaching and Preachers by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Zondervan Publishing House, 1971).
8. Iain Murray,
The First Forty Years, p. 328.
9. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
The Kingdom of God, p. 8.
