Part 1—Preachers and Preaching, D. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones
Last month,
Nate Whitley, over at A Life of Study blog, sent me an e-mail asking me about what
I might consider to be the best books on preaching. He invited me to write a guest blog for him
on that subject. Because we were in the
middle of our camp schedule, I told him that I would get back to him after we
had cleared all of our camps. During
that period of time, I was able to give some thought to this matter of books on preaching.
Most men who
are involved in the week-in and week-out preparation of preaching clearly
understand the responsibility of reading.
I once heard J. T. Pugh make a statement during one of his messages that
has stuck with me over the years. He
said that a young man approached him one time with the question of what it took
to be a great preacher. Brother Pugh’s
reply to this young preacher resounds even many years after he spoke it. “Young man, to be a great preacher, you will
have to be a great reader!” Obviously
Brother Pugh took that advice to heart for his own life also. Brother Pugh in his “Passing the Mantle”
sermon at General Conference in Columbus in 2006 or so, made some reference to
the fact that he still continued to go to the University of Texas/Odessa branch library on Mondays and work to expand his mind.
At that time, he was well into his eighties.
So, most
preachers understand the necessity to read material that will help them to
expand their mind. If you are not taking
something in, not much will be going out.
First, I owe it to my own spiritual growth to be a man of reclusive
devotion. Not much advancement of spiritual life is
accomplished when you are always around the buzz of life. My belief in this is so much so that I
believe that four hours of my day belongs directly to God in the process of sermon
prep, Bible study, and writing.
Sometimes this is hindered by the obligations of other necessary things
but I feel that rigorous discipline is necessary to keep me on track. Secondly, I have a responsibility to those
who are showing up every week to hear me preach. The church deserves my highest devotion to
the art and craft of preaching and it is through the very force of the
Scriptures that I can inoculate them against the attacks of the devil. Preaching
is important! In fact, I believe that
solid biblical preaching can fix a lot of church problems, if a man is willing
to hang in there with his task.
