"What Is The Good News?" on Luke 4:18-19
"The Gospel: Good News" on Galatians 1:8
https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/other-sermons/the-gospel-good-news/
“What Is Christianity”, Matthew 9:10-13, “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
What makes a man a Christian? The question of questions. The question that not only determines how we live in this world, the question that determines our eternal destiny. This of all questions in this uncertain world in which we live is the most we can't afford to make mistakes about this.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
(The Christian) knows that he is a hopeless, vile, condemned, and damned sinner, and that he relies only on the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ died for his sins, that he trusts only to that atoning, reconciling work of Christ, that Christ was his Substitute; and that God in Christ by the Spirit has made a new man of him, and given him a new nature.
Let Everyone Praise the Lord: Psalm 107, “The Salvation of God”
https://www.monergism.com/salvation-god-martyn-lloyd-jones
The glory of the Gospel is this: that you and I not only can do nothing, we are not expected to do anything. He asks nothing of anyone but just this: that you see yourself as you are in the sight of God. That you recognize your sin, your emptiness and your woe. Repentance is all He demands.
Salvation, as it makes no demands on us, depends entirely and only on what God does, what God has done. The essence of salvation is what God has done in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:19-21) The Son of God has done it all. Salvation is a free gift. It is not a programme which we are set on in order to earn forgiveness. God forgives us for one reason only, and that is that He has punished our sins in the person of His own Son. It is not our pleading. It is not our repentance. It is not our works. There is nothing left for you to do except to believe and to see that it was done there and to receive the free gift of salvation. Just turn to Him, cry out unto Him, and He will answer.
"God's Battle, Not Ours"
https://www.monergism.com/gods-battle-not-ours-ephesians-610
We must never lose sight of the fact that salvation is primarily of God. It is God’s great plan, it is God’s scheme. It is something that God is doing. It is something that God has planned and originated. He has initiated the movement and He is carrying it on. This is a fundamental principle of our faith.
“Walking with God Day by Day”
In the council in eternity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit spoke together and planned the salvation of man. The Father stated the great scheme, and the Son accepted the decision that He should be the One to carry out the plan; and then it was equally decided that the Holy Spirit should complete what the Son had done for mankind.
Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, "Is The Gospel Still Relevant?", 1950
The message of the gospel is to tell men that everything necessary for their salvation is to be found in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the only begotten Son of God. He is the full and final revelation of God. It is in Him, His life and His teaching, that we see what man is meant to be, and the kind of life that man is meant to live. It is in His death upon the Cross that we see the sin of the world finally exposed and condemned. It is through His death that we see the only way whereby man can be reconciled to God.
It is from Him alone we can drive new life, and obtain a new beginning. It is only as we receive power from Him that we can live the life that God intended us to live.
Authentic Christianity
The only hope is that God is, and that He is the God who comes down, the God who offers salvation. He sent His only Son into the world, even to the cross, to die, His body to be broken, His blood to be shed, so that "whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
This is Christianity: It is the message that you need to be saved and that God has provided the means whereby you can be saved. It is all His action. It is a supernatural action, a miraculous action. I am not telling you to be good, for I know you cannot be. I am not telling you to read books of philosophy in order to arrive at a knowledge of God and learn how to live— I know it is all useless. My message is that God "hath visited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68).
It is no use anyone telling us to pull ourselves together - that is the one thing we cannot do. We are mastered by lust and passions and evil desires. We need to be delivered (from ourselves). And thank God, He does deliver us. That is our message. It is a transforming power. It changes people.
The Plight of Man and the Power of God
The Gospel works - it is "the power of God unto salvation'. (Romans 1:16) It changes and transforms everything. It brings peace and rest to the soul and victory in live. The Gospel alone faces and exposes, and really deals with, the fundamental problem of man and his needs (cleansing and forgiveness of sin, restoration of our relationship with our Creator Father, power over sin, Satan, the world and self)...it alone has the correct diagnosis and remedy.
The Gospel works for everyone, for anyone, for all...it centres on (what all men) share in common - sin and rebellion against God, failure in our lives, and a sense of shame. It demolishes all distinctions by placing us all together before God.
It matters not who we are nor what we are. There is no such thing as wise and unwise, great and small, learned and ignorant, wealthy or poor. There is no long Jew and Gentile, Barbarian or Scythian, male or female, slave or free. (Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11) God see us all as souls lost and desperate, helpless and forlorn. And he offers all of us the same salvation.
We must rouse ourselves and realise afresh that though our Gospel is timeless and changeless, it nevertheless is always contemporary. We must meet the present situation and we must speak a word to the world that none else can speak.
Lloyd-Jones' address to the 2nd National Assembly of Evangelicals, "Evangelical Unity", Oct. 1966 (He was not invited back)
The Protestant definition of the church is that it is a place where the true doctrine is preached, where the sacraments are properly and regularly administered, and where discipline is exercised.
What then is true doctrine?
(The Evangelical) view of the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God;
our assertion of the unique deity of the Lord Jesus Christ - yes, His virgin birth;
His atoning, sacrificial, substitutionary death;
His literal, physical resurrection;
the miraculous and supernatural;
the person of the Holy Spirit and His work.
These are the doctrines which are essential to salvation; there is the truth that is to be preached, the message which is the first of the true marks of the church. And a church is a gathering of people who are in covenant together because they believe these things; who have experienced their power; who are born again and born of the Spirit, and who give evidence of this in their daily life.
“Essential Doctrines to Salvation”, Great Doctrines of the Bible, Vol. 2
There are certain doctrines that we must believe and there are others about which we are doubtful and about which there may be legitimate disagreement.
What, then, are these things that are essential?
Well, we must believe in God. We must believe about the character of God. If we do not believe that God is holy, we are not Christians. If we do not believe that God is just and righteous, we are not Christians. In addition to believing in the love of God, we must believe in the other attributes that we considered in an earlier lecture (See Volume 1, “God the Father, God the Son”). The Biblical revelation about this holy, righteous God who is the Judge of the universe – that is essential.
It is equally essential that we should believe in our sinful and lost condition.
I am prepared to argue about that – that is absolute.
If we do not know what a sinner is, that we are sinners and have repented, we are not Christians, we cannot be, and there is no value in our saying that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. For what is it to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ unless it is to see that He is the Savior and the Redeemer and the only one.
But what do I need to be saved from?
It is the guilt of my sin in the presence of this holy God. So, I must be clear about the doctrine of sin and my lost state, and my helplessness, and then about the person and work of Christ.
Paul himself gives these essentials in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15: ‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received’ – What? – ‘how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (v. 3). That is the first thing – the Person of Christ and what He has done; the priestly work, the mediatorial work, the atonement.
I do not argue about this.
I know I am described as narrow, but if people do not see that they are saved only by the Blood of Christ, well then, think what you like of me, I cannot see that such people can be Christians.
It is essential. ‘I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified’ says Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Paul ‘placarded’ His death to the Galatians. It was always at the center. This is not a matter to be argued about.
This does not belong to the symmetry of faith but to the integrity of faith, as do also some aspects of this great doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
If you do not believe in regeneration, if you do not see its utter absolute necessity, then I do not see that you have any right to regard yourself as a Christian.
If you do not see that you are so lost that nothing but receiving new life from God can reconcile you and take you to heaven, then you are lacking at a vital point, a point that is integral and belongs to the very integrity of faith.
Those, then, are absolute necessities.
“Puritan Papers”, Vol. 5, 1968-1969, “Can We Learn From History?”
https://www.monergism.com/can-we-learn-history
In 1654 Oliver Cromwell—with his idea of Toleration—and the Parliament called upon the divines to define what should be tolerated or indulged among those who profess the fundamentals of Christianity. In effect they said, we have all these divisions and sects and groups; what are the fundamentals of Christianity on which we can have fellowship together? So a committee was set up and the members of the committee were these: Mr. Richard Baxter, Dr. John Owen, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. Cheynel, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Reyner, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sydrach Simpson, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, Mr. Jacomb. They produced sixteen articles which they felt stated the fundamentals on which, and on which alone, true fellowship is possible between Protestant evangelical people. We have the authority of Richard Baxter for saying that it was Dr. John Owen who worded those articles. Here they are:
1. That the Holy Scripture is that rule of knowing God and living unto Him which whoso does not believe cannot be saved.
2. That there is a God who is the Creator, Governor and Judge of the world, which is to be received by faith, and every other way of the knowledge of Him is insufficient.
3. That this God who is the Creator is eternally distinct from all creatures in His Being and Blessedness.
4. That this God is One in Three Persons or subsistences.
5. That Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and Man without the knowledge of whom there is no salvation.
6. That this Jesus Christ is the true God.
7. That this Jesus Christ is also true Man.
8. That this Jesus Christ is God and Man in One Person.
9. That this Jesus Christ is our Redeemer, who by paying a ransom and bearing our sins has made satisfaction for them.
10. That this same Lord Jesus Christ is He that was Crucified at Jerusalem, and rose again and ascended into Heaven.
11. That this same Jesus Christ being the only God and Man in One Person remains for ever a distinct Person from all saints and angels not-withstanding their union and communion with Him.
12. That all men by nature were dead in sins and trespasses, and no man can be saved unless he be born again, repent and believe.
13. That we are justified and saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ and not by works.
14. That to continue in any known sin upon what pretense or principle soever is damnable.
15. That God is to be worshipped according to His own will, and whosever shall forsake and despise all the duties of His worship cannot be saved.
16. That the dead shall rise, and that there is a day of judgment wherein all shall appear, some to go into everlasting life and some into everlasting condemnation.
What is an Evangelical? is still in print and is the three addresses given by Lloyd-Jones at the 1971 International Fellowship of Evangelical Students conference.
I am a Calvinist; I believe in election and predestination; but I would not dream of putting it under the heading of essential. I put it under the heading of non-essential… You are not saved by your precise understanding of how this great salvation comes to you. What you must be clear about is that you are lost and damned, hopeless and helpless, and that nothing can save you but the grace of God in Jesus Christ and only Him crucified, bearing the punishment of your sins, dying, rising again, ascending, sending the Spirit, regeneration. Those are the essentials… While I myself hold very definite and strong views on the subject, I will not separate from a man who cannot accept and believe the doctrines of election and predestination, and is Arminian, as long as he tells me that we are all saved by grace, and as long as the Calvinist agrees, as he must, that God calls all men everywhere to repentance. As long as both are prepared to agree about these things I say we must not break fellowship.
We must not divide on the question of prophetic interpretation: pre-, post-, a-millennialist, and so on. Not one of them can be proved, so we must not put them into the category of essentials. You have your views; hold them. Let us discuss them together; let us reason together out of the Scriptures; but if we divide on these matters, I maintain that we are guilty of schism. We are putting into the category of essentials what is non-essential.
"Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Arminianism. The Responsibility of Evangelism"
https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/itinerant-preaching/calvinism-hyper-calvinism-and-arminianism/
"Personal Evangelism" A sermon on Ephesians 2:20-22
https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/book-of-ephesians/personal-evangelism/
When you and I become holy, we'll already be evangelists. We won't need a technique or a mechanism when we are holy... It is holy people who evangelize and attract others. And who know how to speak to them.
"The Problem of Evangelism" A sermon on 1 Thessalonians 1:5
https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/itinerant-preaching/the-problem-of-evangelism/
You must have preachers, we must have preachers in these homelands, you must have preachers in other lands. It is the spoken word that has always been honored supremely by the Holy Spirit.
God’s Ultimate Purpose: An Exposition of Ephesians 1 "Chosen in Him"
https://www.monergism.com/chosen-him-ephsians-1-4
A man does not become a Christian by making a decision. He is made a Christian by God, who had marked him out before the foundation of the world and sees to it that he is born and see to it that he believes.
It is God who has chosen in Christ every one who is a Christian (2 Thessalonians 2:13, 1 Peter 1:2); it is God who has predestinated us. (Ephesians 1:4-5) It is a part of God’s purpose that we should be saved. There would never have been any salvation if God had not planned it and put it into execution. It is God who ‘so loved the world’ (John 3:16); it is God who ‘sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.’ (Galatians 4:4)
It is all of God and according to His purpose (Acts 2:23, 2 Timothy 2:9). It is ‘according to the counsel of his own will’ (Ephesians 1:11) that all these things happened.
Preaching and Preachers
The chief thing is the love of God, the love of souls, a knowledge of the Truth, and the Holy Spirit within you.
The Christ-Centered Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Classic Sermons for the Church Today
https://archive.org/details/christcenteredpr0000lloy
I never see Jesus changing the Gospel to suit the people. I see Him changing the people in order to make them fit into His Gospel.
A summary of his position as to essential and non-essential truths is here; by Kevin DeYoung
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/martyn-lloyd-jones-what-is-evangelical_05/
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/lloyd-jones-what-is-evangelical-2/
Lloyd-Jones was not a Dispensationalist; while affirming the obvious periodicity in the Bible according to God's revelation received and believed.
https://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/lloyd-jones-on-dispensationalism/