In this sermon transcript, the speaker discusses Martin Lloyd-Jones and his views on caution and warnings in the church. Lloyd-Jones believed that lengthy and forceful cautions can have a negative effect on ordinary people, causing them to be fearful and hesitant in their faith. The speaker also highlights Lloyd-Jones' growing disillusionment with the effectiveness of the church, emphasizing the need for a balance between caution and excitement in preaching. The transcript includes testimonies of people who were deeply impacted by Lloyd-Jones' preaching, describing a sense of supernatural power in his services.

The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org First, a word about sources. Um, they're almost out of these downstairs, but buy what's left. The two-volume biography is where I got everything I know about his life, by Iain Murray, Banner of Truth. And then, these three books are my three sources, basically, for what I'm going to say. Revival, Crossway, Joy Unspeakable, and The Sovereign Spirit, Harold Shaw, publishers in this country. If you want a 20-page outline of his life, Bible Evangelical Leaders by his grandson, real fun book to read about Stott and Lloyd-Jones and Schaeffer and Packer and Billy Graham. Little mini-biographies. I hope you all have, or will have, Preaching in Preachers by Martin Lloyd-Jones. I just dipped into here for a few quotes that seem to me crucial. And, uh, this is the Bible. Which is in everything. In Preaching in Preachers, Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote, Preaching has been my life's work. To me, the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called. And even as I read it again, it makes tingles go up and down my back because God has been privileged to call me to preach. I can't get over the awesome privilege of having been called by the living God to herald his truth. Many called him the last of the Calvinistic Methodist preachers because he had Calvin's love for truth and sound reformed doctrine. He was thoroughly Calvinistic and reformed. And, on the other side, fire and passion. For 30 years, he preached at the Westminster Chapel in London. Usually that meant three times on a weekend. Friday evening, Sunday morning, and Sunday evening. Most of his time then was spent getting ready for that as well as speaking elsewhere during the week. He said at the end of his career, I can honestly say that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching. But most other people who heard him did not share that opinion. J.I. Packer, when he was 22 years old as a student, heard Lloyd-Jones during the 48-49 years and said that he had never heard such preaching. It came to him with the force of electric shock bringing to at least one of his hearers, he said, more of a sense of God than any other man. They did have a kind of falling out later on, which is sort of sad, but Packer never stopped praising Lloyd-Jones. Not to this day. In fact, I recommend the book by Samuel T. Logan called Preachers and Preaching, I believe, something like that. And Packer writes, Why Preach? as the lead essay. And it's dynamite and it's got more of Lloyd-Jones in it. Many of us have felt this electric shock, though we never knew him personally, though we can hear him on tape if you want to. We felt it even coming through his books. I can remember as a student in 1967 going to Urbana with my fiancé, Noel, and hearing George Verwer, as he always does, hold up a book and say, This is the most important book that's been written in whatever amount of time, he says. And he held up in that time the two-volume work by Martin Lloyd-Jones on the Sermon on the Mount, and he said, This is the greatest book that's been written in this century. Well, he had no right to say that because he doesn't read all the books, but I said, That is an amazing statement. I went home, and in the summer of 1968, I read those two volumes through before I went to seminary. That was between college and seminary, and I was never the same again. I was primed for the theology I discovered at seminary by this awesome picture of the Lord. The greatness and weight of spiritual issues is what Packer said very few men have been able to duplicate. Just a real brief sketch of his life. His pathway to Westminster was unique. He was born in Cardiff, Wales, in December 20, 1899. Then he moved to London with his family when he was 14, went to medical school at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, got his M.D. in 1921. His supervisor said he was the most acute thinker that he'd ever known. He had a profound conversion experience during the 1921-23 year, and his passion to preach just exploded so strongly that he left behind the medical career, never to return in any official way. He took a church in Sanfield, Zaburavon, or however you pronounce that Welsh area, and married Bethan Phillips, January 8, 1926, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne, over the course of their marriage. He stayed there, I think, about 12 years, and then he was in Philadelphia preaching, and G. Campbell Morgan was in the audience, sitting at the back, the pastor of Westminster Chapel, and heard this young man preach, and felt, I must seek this man to be my associate at the Westminster Chapel. And he did seek him, and through a series of events got him to come. That was September 1939, and in 1943, G. Campbell Morgan retired, and until 1968, the preaching pastor of Westminster Chapel was Martin Lloyd-Jones. He retired in 1968, worked on his writings for 12 years, as well as speaking, and then he died in his sleep, March 1, 1981. From the beginning of his life, Martin Lloyd-Jones was, in a sense, a cry for depth. If I were to sum up, I almost titled this, A Cry for Depth. If I ever do anything with it, I might title it that. A cry for depth in two areas. One, in biblical doctrine, and two, in vital spiritual experience. So, light heat, logic fire, word spirit. Again and again, he would be fighting on two fronts. He would be fighting against dead, formal, institutional intellectualism, on the one side, and he would be fighting against superficial, glib, entertainment-oriented, man-centered, emotionalism, on the other side. He looked out over the world, and thought it was in an absolutely desperate condition, and he saw the church as very weak and impotent. He said, one wing of the church was straining out the gnats of intellectualism, and the other was swallowing the camels of evangelical compromise and careless, charismatic teaching. And for Lloyd-Jones, the only hope was historic God-centered revival, which is really what I want to talk about this morning. So my aim is this, to talk about the meaning of revival, as Lloyd-Jones understood it, the source, the sort of power he was seeking, what he thought it would look like when it came, and how he thought we should seek it, and then I'm going to be really risky at the end, and ask if he practiced what he preached. More than any other man in this century, I think, Lloyd-Jones has helped recover the historic meaning of revival. Quote, A revival is a miracle, something that can only be explained as the direct intervention of God. Men can produce evangelistic campaigns, but they cannot, never have, produced a revival. And Lloyd-Jones felt it to be a tremendous tragedy that the historic sense of revival as a sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church had been virtually lost by the time he preached about revival in 1959 on the 100th anniversary of the Welsh revival. He said in those lectures, during the last 70 to 80 years, this whole notion of a visitation, a baptism of God's Spirit upon the church has gone. And then he gives this explanation, and with this he begins to part ways with almost the entirety of mainline evangelicalism. The main theological reason that he said there was a prevailing indifference to historic revival and crying out to God for it is because people had come to equate what happened on the day of Pentecost with regeneration. Now let me read the key quote where he describes this view. Yes, it says, Acts 2 was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but we all get that now. It's not him talking, he's quoting the view. And it is unconscious. We are not aware of it. It happens to us the moment we believe we are regenerated. It is just that act of God which incorporates us into the body of Christ. That is the baptism of the Spirit. So it is no use your praying to God for some other baptism of the Spirit or asking God to pour out His Spirit upon the church. It is not surprising that as that kind of preaching has gained currency, people have stopped praying for revival. Revival is when the Spirit comes down, he says, is poured out. And he's crystal clear that it's not the same. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is not the same as regeneration. Here's the key quote. I am asserting that you can be a believer, that you can have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and still not be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is something that is done by the Lord Jesus Christ, not by the Holy Spirit. Our being baptized into the body of Christ is the work of the Spirit. That's the point of 1 Corinthians 12, 13. As regeneration is His work. But this is something entirely different. This is Christ's baptizing us with the Holy Spirit. And I am suggesting that this is something which is therefore obviously distinct from and separate from becoming a Christian, being regenerate, having the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. And so he laments that by identifying the baptism with the Holy Spirit, with regeneration, we have made the baptism of the Holy Spirit wholly non-experimental, as the Puritans would say. That is unconscious. You don't know when it happens. You only can see perhaps some later on moral results from it. That is not, he says, the way it happened in the book of Acts or the way it was experienced in the early church. Quote, those people, this is very powerful now, knowing where he's coming from and who his friends were, those people who say that baptism with the Holy Spirit happens to everybody at regeneration seem to me not only to be denying the New Testament, but definitely to be quenching the Holy Spirit. Now just ponder that statement. Therefore, he would say by implication, virtually the whole evangelical church is quenching the Holy Spirit. That would be Martin Lloyd-Jones' opinion. Somebody told me last night, Dana told me last night, that Warren Wearsby was told by Martin Lloyd-Jones that he asked these sermons not to be published before he died. Well, there's some real clear reasons for that, I would think. He founded the Banner of Truth Publishing House. It is emphatically cessationist. Now, I don't know how he felt about that, but in 1972, after he had retired, they published B.B. Warfield. He's going to emphatically disagree with this book in a moment. And Walter Chantry, the sign of the apostles, his biographer does not do him justice, in my judgment, in the chapter on crosswinds. He doesn't, he does not own up to what Lloyd-Jones is saying. You won't get the straight picture. You must read Lloyd-Jones. Let's talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit now. He believes that this view discourages us, this current evangelical view that equates it with regeneration, discourages us from seeking what the church so desperately needs today, namely, quote, the greatest need at the present time, he says, is for Christian people who are assured of their salvation. But now, he distinguishes, quote, and he uses Thomas Goodwin here, the customary assurance from the extraordinary or unusual or full assurance of faith. Quote, when Christians are baptized by the Holy Spirit, they have a sense of power and the presence of God that they never known before. And this is the greatest possible form of assurance. Now, let me give you the best illustration in the book Joy Unspeakable that liberated my people last spring when I was preaching on this and they were shaking in their pews wondering what in the world was becoming of me. This was a kind of watershed Sunday morning when I shared this illustration. He gets it straight from Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan. This is an illustration of the difference between a customary, happy, good walk with God as a regenerate spirit indwelt person and a person who has been baptized with the Spirit. A man and his little child are walking down the road and they are walking hand in hand. And the child knows that he is the child of his father and this is God and the Christian. He knows that his father loves him and he rejoices in that and he's happy in it. There is no uncertainty about it at all but suddenly the father by some impulse takes hold of the child, picks him up, fondles him in his arms, kisses him, embraces him and showers his love upon him and then he puts him down again and they go walking on their way. That's it, he says. The child knew before his father loved him and he knew that he was a child but oh the loving embrace this extra outpouring of love, this unusual manifestation of it that is the kind of thing the spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And so he says in another place, the baptism of the Holy Spirit carries us not only from doubt to belief but to certainty to awareness of the presence and the glory of God. Now this is revival. Quote, the difference between baptism of the Holy Spirit and revival is simply one of the number of people affected. I would define revival as a large number. A group of people being baptized by the Holy Spirit at the same time. Now watch this. It comes visibly he says. It is not a quiet subjective experience of the church. Things happen he says that make the world sit up and take notice. Now this was tremendously important to Lloyd-Jones. He felt almost overwhelmed by the corruption of the world and by the impotence of the church and he believed the only hope was something stunning stunning quote the Christian church today is failing and failing lamentably. He preached these sermons in the fall of 64 to the spring of 65 just in other words near the end of his ministry four years before he retired. I hear if I'm reading between the lines correctly a growing disillusionment in Martin Lloyd-Jones with the effectiveness of the church even his own church. The Christian church today is failing and failing lamentably. It is not enough to be orthodox. You must of course be orthodox otherwise you have no message. We need authority we need authentication it is not clear is it not clear we are living in an age when we need some special authentication in other words we need revival in other words revival for Lloyd-Jones was a power demonstration that would authenticate the truth of the gospel to a desperately hardened world in fact his description of the world is remarkably contemporary referring to the demonic and to new age kinds of things and then at the end of that quote he says this is why I believe we are in urgent need of some manifestation some demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit now to be fair he cautioned against excessive preoccupation with revival he warns against being too interested in the exceptional and the unusual he said quote don't despise the day of small things don't despise the regular work of the church and the regular work of the spirit but I hear that caution as a gesture that's called for by reality but not the heartbeat of Martin Lloyd-Jones he was increasingly disillusioned with the regular work of the church so that he goes on now I think and says things like this we can produce number of converts thank God for that and that goes on regularly in evangelical churches every Sunday but the need today is much too great for that he rejects steady state regular work as adequate the need today is for an authentication of God of the supernatural of the spiritual of the eternal and this can only be answered by God graciously hearing our cry and shedding forth again his spirit upon us and filling us as he kept filling the early church what is needed still quoting what is needed is some mighty demonstration of the power of God some enactment of the almighty that will compel people to pay attention and to look and to listen and the history of the revivals of the past indicates so clearly that that is invariably the effect of revival when God acts he can do more in one minute than we with all our organizing can do in 50 years and I can't help but wonder if he met my 50 years he so wanted to see this what lies so heavily on Lloyd Jones heart is that the name of God be vindicated and the glory of the Lord manifested in the world quote we should be anxious to see something happening that will arrest the nations all the peoples and call them to stop and think again and that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit the purpose the main function quoting of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to enable God's people to witness in such a manner that it becomes a phenomenon and people are arrested and attracted now note next step which is moving closer and closer into power evangelism spiritual gifts healing miracles prophecy tongues the whole area of signs and wonders Lloyd Jones is talking about power evangelism in terms more careful more clear more strong than John Wimber ever has before John Wimber ever thought of it he says that spiritual gifts are a part of the authenticating work of revival and the baptism of the Holy Spirit we need the result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit which is spiritual gifts in their sign form and it is a supernatural authentication of the message now I'm going to back off here for a minute and reflect with you for a minute about what we reformed types have to come to terms with when we love the word of God and esteem its uniqueness in power when we hear Paul say Jews desire signs Greeks seek wisdom but we preach I can hear people saying that to Wimber we preach you desire signs we preach which is the power of God and I can hear them quote Romans 1 16 the gospel is the power of God unto salvation don't dilute the power of the gospel by compromising it with your signs and wonders as though the gospel were too weak to save sinners can you hear that coming out of banner of truth well it isn't that simple is it and the issue is not contemporary vineyard third wave versus Paul the issue is Paul versus Paul let me try to explain evidently Peter and Paul and Stephen and Philip who would you agree with me were the greatest preachers that the world has ever known evidently they did not think that the attestation of signs and wonders alongside their unparalleled powerful preaching compromised the integrity or the sufficiency or uniqueness of the power of God through the gospel evidently they didn't Lloyd Jones is really impressed by this fact he says if the apostles were incapable of being true witnesses without unusual power who are we to claim that we can be witnesses without such power close quote and when he said that he did not mean simply the power of the word he meant the power of spiritual gifts I'll show you that from a quote quote before Pentecost the apostles were not yet fit to be witnesses they had been with the Lord during three years of his ministry they had heard his sermons they had seen his miracles they had seen him crucified on the cross they had seen him dead and buried they had seen him after he had risen literally in body from the grave these were the men who had been with him in the upper room at Jerusalem after his resurrection to whom he had expounded the scriptures and yet it is to these men he says they must tarry at Jerusalem until they are endued with power from on high the special purpose of this the specific purpose of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is to enable us to witness to bear testimony and one of the ways in which that happens is through the giving of spiritual gifts close quote now here's my answer I wish Lloyd-Jones had given his but I couldn't find it here's my answer to the question that we must come to terms with it is utterly essential of how the power of the word of God relates to the authenticating function of signs and wonders first of all notice the Bible teaches that the gospel preached is the power of God unto salvation 1st Corinthians 123 the gospel preached is the power of God Romans 116 but the Bible also says that Paul and Barnabas quote remained a long time in Iconium speaking boldly for the Lord would you dare to equate anybody's preaching today with that preaching that was powerful preaching they were preaching in Iconium with power speaking boldly for the Lord who bore witness to the word of his grace granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands take all the conflicts today go back to the New Testament and deal with them there don't let anybody tell you it's today versus the New Testament the issue is how could preaching and signs and wonders not compromise each other then not now forget now forget whimber forget everything in the 20th century explain acts explain how you can have the best preaching that ever was preached described as the power of God unto salvation and have alongside it God bearing witness with signs and wonders attesting to his word of grace without saying by that my word is insufficient by itself why did God compromise his word by showing off his power physically that's the issue not today who cares what's happening today it's the Bible that matters now here is my effort to understand the Bible which then maybe would help us today could we not say in putting all this together that signs and wonders that is I mean healings exorcisms and so on signs and wonders function in relation to the word of God as a striking awakening channel for the self authenticating glory of Christ in the gospel that may be the most important sentence that I give you I'll say it again could it be that signs and wonders function as a striking awakening channel along which through which the self authenticating glory of Christ in the gospel moves arrives I say emphatically signs and wonders do not save I say emphatically signs and wonders do not transform the heart I say emphatically the glory of Christ seen in the gospel is the only power that regenerates converts transforms the heart I base that on 2nd Corinthians 3 18 to 4 6 but evidently God chooses at times to use signs and wonders alongside the regenerating word to win a hearing to shatter the shell of disinterest to shatter the shell of cynicism to shatter the shell of false religion and to help the heart fix its gaze on the glory of Christ in the gospel which as 2nd Corinthians 4 4 says is then like God saying let there be light and boom there is a new creature that's my best effort at how to account not for what's happening today but for what was happening in Paul's life and Philip's life and Stephen's life and Barnabas life and Peter's life the greatest preaching accompanied by signs and wonders not the greatest preaching so great it doesn't need signs and wonders therefore we may say emphatically that Lord Lloyd-Jones was not a Warfieldian cessationist quote I think it is quite without scriptural warrant to say that all these gifts ended with the apostles or the apostolic era I believe there have been undoubted miracles since then and when he speaks of the need for revival and for the baptism with the Holy Spirit and for a mighty attestation of the word today it is crystal clear in Lloyd-Jones he meant the same sort of thing as was meant in Acts 14 3 signs and wonders attesting to the word of God quote it is perfectly clear everything is perfectly clear to Martin Lloyd-Jones it is perfectly clear that in the New Testament times the gospel was authenticated in this way by signs and wonders and miracles of the various characters descriptions was it only meant to be true for the early church the scriptures never anywhere say these things were only temporary never you can hear him saying it can't you there is no such statement anywhere close quote he deals with cessationist arguments and says mighty powerful things that I can't imagine Ian Murray would leave out of his biography which he did quote to hold such a view as Warfield held is simply to quench the spirit because Ian Murray was publishing it at the time pushing these views according to their dear father Dr. Jones is the quenching of the Holy Spirit he didn't want to lose his friends anymore than he already was losing them probably and so he didn't want them published until he was gone now he had some experiences of his own that forced him to be open let me tell you some of them one time he was preaching Stacey Wood was there here's his account the account in an extraordinary way the presence of God was in that church I personally felt as if a hand were pushing me through the pew at the entrance of the church at the end of the sermon for some reason or other the organ didn't play the doctor went off into the vestry and everyone sat completely still without moving it must have been almost ten minutes before people seemed to find the strength to get up and without speaking to one another quietly leave the church never have I witnessed or experienced such preaching with such fantastic reaction on the part of a congregation earlier while he was at Sanfields a spirit medium a woman, a witch sort of saw the people going to his church one Sunday evening and followed them, here's her account later when she got saved the moment I entered your chapel and sat down on a seat amongst the people I was conscious of a supernatural power I was conscious of the same sort of supernatural power as I was accustomed to in our spiritist meeting but there was a difference one big difference I had the feeling that the power in your chapel was clean power listen to this talk about what Wayne has been talking about in terms of prophetic uh premonitions January 19, 1940 a friend of his Douglas Johnson had a heart attack and he wrote to his wife immediately when he found out quote, I have a very definite and unmistakable consciousness of the fact that Douglas will be will have complete and entire recovery. That kind of thing as he will know is not common with me. I report it because it is so very definite now that illustrates that he believed in what he called the issue of personal leadings God directly communicating with us today he uses Philip as an example being told to go up to the chariot he uses Paul and Barnabas as an example being told to get off on their missionary journey and here's the quote there is no question but that God's people can look for and expect leadings guidance indications of what they are meant to do men have been told by the Holy Spirit to do something they knew it was the Holy Spirit speaking to them and it transpired that it obviously was his leading it seems clear to me that if we deny such a possibility we are again quenching the Holy Spirit so Lord Jones had the Bible that he dealt with he had history I'm leaving out all that Bible in history basically and he had his own personal experience to confirm in him that there were going to be and ought to be extraordinary things expected when revival came he knew it couldn't be put into categories so he said the ways in which the blessing comes are almost endless we must be careful lest we restrict them or lest we try to systematize them over much or still worse lest we mechanize them now those things I believe are remarkable to read in a man who was the main leader of the reformed awakening in Britain in the last generation he stood for the reawakening of Calvinism and of historic Puritanism founded the banner of truth press which which won't sell his books on that issue now I want to try to show you the sorts of things Ian Murray would show you if he had the chance namely the critique of Pentecostalism as he knew it lest you think he is a charismatic incognito or hidden away there I've got I think about eight of these real briefly one problems with charismatics problems with Pentecostals revival has to have a sound doctrinal base and as he looked around he said everywhere I see the charismatic movement flourishing I see a minimization of the importance of doctrine and the maximization of the importance of immediate experience number two charismatics put too much stress on what they do and not enough stress on the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit to do what he wants when he wants in his way number three charismatic sometimes insist on tongues as a sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit which he says he of course rejects quote it seems to me that the teaching of scripture itself plus the evidence of the history of the church establishes the fact that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not always accompanied by particular gifts number four even more often charismatics claim to be able to speak in tongues whenever they want to this will hit home to dozens of you in this room this criticism here this he argues is clearly against what Paul says in 1st Corinthians 14 18 I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all he says if he and they could speak in tongues at any time they chose then there would be no point in thanking God that the blessing of tongues is more often given to him than to them number five too often experiences are sought for their own sake rather than for empowerment for witness and the glory of Christ which is what he thinks they are for number six charismatic can easily fall into the mistake of assuming that if a person has powerful gifts that person is fit for leadership and is a moral person and he has a long section on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and sanctification and says they're not the same there is no direct connection between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and sanctification therefore being baptized with the Holy Spirit and having particular astounding gifts is no guarantee of moral fitness or giftedness for leadership number seven charismatics characteristic characteristically tend to be more interested in subjective impressions than in the exposition of scripture he says be suspicious of any claim to a fresh revelation of truth which we must somehow distinguish from the Holy Spirit telling us to do things because he said a minute ago that the Holy Spirit does that anybody says he doesn't is quenching the Holy Spirit and yet would be suspicious of fresh revelations number eight charismatic sometimes encourage people to give up control of their reason and to let themselves go what Jones is helpful here he says what you might expect we must never let ourselves go a blank mind is never advocated in scriptures and then this is the best sentence the glory of Christianity is that we can at the one and the same time be gripped and lifted up by the spirit and still be in control and he quotes the passage that the spirits of prophets are subject to to prophets when he says that and the fact that you can stop prophesying and let another speak and so on you now he also turns after that and says some pretty excoriating things about spirit quenchers so to balance the scales we need to say this for those who in his and other churches stood back and sort of pointed their finger at the excesses of the charismatic movement he said God have mercy on God have mercy on it is better to be too credulous than to be carnal and smug and dead so if he had his choice if he had his choice he would go with the gullible it sounds like to me at least in his preaching he said that how to quench the Holy Spirit here's some ways see if they sound familiar this has often happened in a meeting you begin to be afraid as to what is going to happen and to say if I do this what will take place that he says is quenching the Holy Spirit it is resisting his general movement upon your spirit you feel his gracious influence and then you hesitate and are uncertain or you are frightened that is quenching the Holy Spirit certain people by nature are afraid of the supernatural of the unusual of disorder you can be so afraid of disorder so concerned about discipline and decorum and control that you become guilty of what the scripture calls quenching the spirit how did he counsel us then to proceed to seek this is really remarkable is he not I mean do you not hear in this an agenda for what's called the third wave today before there ever was a third wave his advice as to how to proceed is pretty simple quote you cannot do anything about being baptized with the Holy Spirit except to ask for it you cannot do anything to produce it now that I think is a typical Lloyd Jonesian overstatement because he contradicts it pretty quickly nevertheless you should labor in prayer to attain it we must be patient and not set time limits on the Lord he extolled Dwight L. Moody, R.A. Torrey, A.J. Gordon A.T. Pearson for over years seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit till it came he loved Moody's prayer oh God prepare my heart and baptize me with the Holy Spirit but now I would say if a prepared heart is a possible precondition for the baptism as he says it is he liked this prayer are there not other things you can do to prepare your heart reading the Bible listening to the exhortation of other believers veiling yourself of worship mortifying sin I mean the whole means of grace you can't just say prayer is the only thing you can do to prepare your heart to receive the blessing of the Lord not only that he said this is bringing us right down to the nitty gritty of application that institutionalization and certain forms of it can quench the spirit he said it is not that God withdrew it is that the church in her wisdom and cleverness became institutionalized quenched the spirit and made the manifestations of the power of the spirit well nigh impossible is not that a remarkable statement from a Calvinist institutionalization can make the manifestations of the spirit well nigh impossible well nigh impossible if the spirit in his sovereignty I conclude suffers himself to be hindered and quenched as Lloyd Jones and Paul says he does allow himself to be it's not entirely accurate to say there is nothing you can do except pray in order to get yourself ready for the baptism of the Holy Spirit you might do something about this institutionalization thing he's not we're right on the brink now of his consistency and so I'm closing with this subheading did he practice what he preached and I say this with great tentativity and respect and fear and trembling and therefore I'll put them mainly in question forms and then we can interact about your sense this is where the rubber meets the road I think did Martin Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel make a way for the Holy Spirit or did he quench the Holy Spirit I have five things that it seems to me he failed to do that had he been consistent with his principles he probably should have done but I say probably number one his biographer Ian Murray says that the experience meetings I think he means Wesleyan Methodist small groups the experience meetings of the 18th century had disappeared in the churches of England and there was a need for change that's in a context talking about Westminster Chapel and I ask did Lloyd Jones ever make significant changes along those lines did he ever create a really open context for the exercise of spiritual gifts Ian Murray says that in those days the audience at Westminster Chapel was an anonymous group of listeners quote these were the days when strangers did not commonly greet one another in the church so you have 2000 spectators standing in awe of this man's preaching and having their personal lives profoundly affected as J.I. Packer and others have testified but no community of any significant degree it seems to me one wonders if Lloyd Jones took significant steps to turn that tide did he labor for example to create a small group network in his church to minister to one another in the context that would perhaps be institutionally less restrictive I don't know I doubt it second he said I never trained a single convert how to approach others before they did so and he boasted that a preacher worth his salt doesn't have to train people in personal evangelism because they'll learn it from his preaching I just think that's naive I just think that's naive he didn't he didn't get down with the people and train them he didn't hold any practical seminars in fact he would I think have scoffed at helping the Holy Spirit we'll see more of that in a minute did Lloyd Jones really seek the kind of involvement with his people through which the manifestations like those came through the apostles could flow did you hear Wayne yesterday all these hands texts hands hands hands hands where were Martin Lloyd Jones hands they were in his books almost all the time not on his people I think and you know when you stand before a couple thousand people and especially if you stand before ordinary common people and you deliver with articulate forcefulness overwhelming and austere cautions about charismatic excesses I mean you've just about ended it because they're just people I mean if you come across the way he comes across in this book this book the people are going to be just so scared of taking a wrong step that the verbalized institutionalization of caution is going to hold them in bondage it seems to me ordinary people ordinary people interpret long complex warnings and cautions as a red light on experience I'm not saying you can't give cautions I'm just saying when they're wrong forceful complex repeated it has a quenching effect it seems to me number three his grandson Christopher Catherwood says quote he had a special dislike for certain kinds of emotive music I wonder what he meant was it old kind of frothy subjective hymns or was it more contemporary things coming out of the young charismatic movement I'm not sure some of you may have experience to know but it disturbs the attitude with which he speaks of such things bothers me listen to this the spirit does not need our help with all our singing and all our preliminaries I don't know if you would have said it with that kind of snide tone but I just listened to him just a little while this morning so that I could just hear him again let me read it without that and you just supply the attitude the Holy Spirit does not need our help with all our singing and all our preliminaries and working up of emotions if the spirit is the Lord and he is he does not need these helps and anything that tries to help the spirit to produce a result is a contradiction of New Testament teaching now what effect is that going to have on the young pastors who are listening to him they'll get rid of their organs they get rid of their choirs so you have you have a tiny little reformed Baptist movement in this country of about two dozen dead musicless churches because they're so afraid that if you use an instrument or a choir or have a worship leader what Lloyd-Jones warns in this book about worship leaders Dean they take over if you communicate that year after year how can you live out your principles I mean I found this see if you think this is an inconsistency in preaching and preachers in talking about pastors how to keep their heart alive to God and open to the spirit he commends reading read church history read biographies wait a minute what's this helping the Holy Spirit business how come you get off with this reading stuff and don't like music you know why personality pure and simple he was a scholar he was limited by his own self as I am and you are was a great man but very limited I think I ask could not music be in the same category as the reading of a good book which Lloyd-Jones says is perfectly legitimate aid in stirring up the emotions to desire more of the spirit only music would seem to be even more legitimate I think since it not only helps stir up holy desire but also gives vent to true expressions of desire and love and not only that music would seem to have more biblical warrant as an aid in seeking or at least just as much an aid in seeking the fullness of God in worship Ephesians 5 19 and Psalms everywhere so I just wonder that's my third point was his negative attitude on preliminaries we hate that word at Bethlehem and the vineyard hates it I think because those first 30 minutes are crucial and yet today the standard criticism at this church and others is it's just a kind of eastern mystical work up number 4 he seemed not to be willing to be involved in the nitty gritty of cultivating a prayer movement this is risky now I don't have much to go on but Ian Murray quotes him in 1959 some of his people were getting really excited about revival because he's preaching on it and they got so excited it was too excited for Lloyd-Jones and they wanted to start some all night prayer meetings and here's the quote from Ian Murray a few in 1959 were so absorbed with revival that they organized all night prayer meetings and looked to Martin Lloyd-Jones for support they did not get it close quote I mean I read that and I said Murray you write like that's a compliment now it may be that these were off the wall people and I'm not being fair I don't know but he didn't say much to counterbalance it you know if I wrote a biography of a man and he said I'm not going to support your all night prayer meetings I'd have to add a sentence and say he did pray especially when the bottom line for him in seeking the Holy Spirit was extended persevering prayer it's just another evidence that this man had a style of life and he wasn't going to be interrupted he had sermons to preach and books to write and lectures to give he couldn't get down with the people it would take too much time number five did he ever come to terms this is my last one did he ever come to terms with 1st Corinthians 14 1 make love your aim earnestly desire spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy and he did interpret prophecy basically the same way Wayne does he gives examples from the Scottish covenanters like Alexander of people who prophesied things that were yet to come he believed in the gift of prophecy theoretically at least here's the quote it is always right to seek the fullness of the spirit we are exhorted to do so but the gifts of the spirit are to be left in the hands of the Holy Spirit himself and I say Martin how do you make that square with 1st Corinthians 14 1 that is not what the text says the text says earnestly desire the spiritual gifts not just the fullness that may or may not bring the spiritual gifts you've missed it you did not own up to that verse was he quenching the Holy Spirit with that attitude towards spiritual gifts listen to this quote we must not seek phenomena and strange experiences what we must seek is the manifestation of God's glory and his power and his might we must leave it to God in his sovereign wisdom to decide whether to grant these occasional concomitants or not now surely he's right in the sense that we ought not to be preoccupied with the form of things like healing the body rather than the transformation of the soul for everlasting life surely he's right about that we ought not to be preoccupied with the externals and with the phenomena but I ask you could Peter and Paul and Philip and Stephen and Barnabas alongside whose preaching God himself testified with signs and wonders effectually when they go to prayer at night not say do it again and how could Martin Lloyd-Jones who spends many pages saying what the world needs is attestation gifts and then come to the end and say don't ask for them now he's probably trying to be careful here of a focus on phenomena and I respect that but frankly I can't make it square with 1st Corinthians 14 1 in fact is it not the case in Acts 4 30 that they did pray for signs and wonders they said father grant your servants to speak with all boldness while you stretch forth your hand to heal they ask him to do it therefore we have biblical warrant to ask him to do it and I don't understand Lloyd-Jones except that he was not a person that could risk that kind of trouble quote does it not seem clear and obvious that in this way God is calling attention to himself I think I'll leave that quote out that's just a quote to talk about his valuing of the phenomena well let me close by simply saying it seems to me that in his preaching Lloyd-Jones presented us a masterfully balanced picture of what today is maybe in the offing namely avoiding on the one side the spirit quenching intellectualism and on the other side the man centered entertainment oriented non doctrinal emotionalism he called people he called us to what I think this conference has been calling us to and then he didn't do it it seems to me because his view and his personality it looks like hindered him quenched the spirit so I just close with this beautiful call of his closing exhortation let us together decide to beseech him to plead with him to do this again revival not that we may have the experience or the excitement but that his mighty hand may be known and his great name may be glorified and magnified among the peoples and I put an S on that word peoples because I want you to see that what I've said here is going to lead into John Kyle's message I've designed these conferences every year to terminate on world missions that's very intentional and if if you don't walk out of this conference later on today more gripped for the unreached peoples of the world and the completion of the great commission I will consider that this has been very largely a failure and that we would have fallen prey to the abuses of experiences rather than the vision giving power of experiences now questions for 15 or 20 minutes Yes, I think that's exactly what he would have thought. The unity was being forged on the basis of experiences, not doctrine. He thought that was devastating, and I think he was right. Dan? Thank you, David. I think, at least in my mind, this whole thing about cautions is really kind of a cutting edge, as far as I'm concerned. And I guess I want your reflection on Edwards and Whitfield, as far as the Great Awakening, and whether ordinary people, and I think you're probably right, ordinary people get scared by the cautions, but without the cautions, where do ordinary people end up? And I'd just like some of your reflections on Edwards and Whitfield and their dealing with both the quenching of the spirit and the extremism there. Is that the question? Well, I just will say what I said already. I think the cautions are necessary. The question had to do with—I'm not sure what the question was— comment on Whitfield and Edwards in regard to cautions, and do cautions then quench the spirit. I tried to emphasize long, powerful, extended, repeated cautions. In other words, if the subjective sense coming from the pulpit is, these are mainly dangerous, rather than mainly glorious and wonderful and desirable, then you're going to quench the spirit. Would you say you wait until such? No. No, it's a matter of balance. I mean, people will read you. They'll know. They'll know subjectively whether you're more scared or more excited, whether you're more open or more closed by how long you do it, how you do it, the tone of your voice when you do it, whether you sneer at things. You can read the articles in the Standard and know where a person is emotionally pretty easily. We'll go over here. Yeah, Bill. I just have a question. Please, tell us about your experience, just so they know where you're coming from. Well, my name is Bill Douglas. I was an elder at the Ephesians Church. I attended Westminster Chapel from 1965 to 1968. I've sat under his ministry for years. A lot of what you say is true, but a lot of what you say is heavily modulated by the banner of truth. And the banner of truth could yet succeed in determining what the image of Lloyd-Jones is. There's another side to him that isn't true. I think you're right when you say you have to read Lloyd-Jones, as it were, in the original. His time at Sandford was very different from his time at Westminster. Westminster was a huge emporium. It was just a vast cavern. At Sandford, where he started, he had a smaller meeting, and there he had the experience meetings. And I think if you read the first volume, and he looks back wistfully at his days there, times when he would say sermons were almost literally given to him in the morning, whereas later on, when he was more experienced, he knew exactly what he could do. So there is the division between the two periods of his life. It is true that he was an organizational disaster. I mean, he had just no time for organization. I think he practiced everything that he preached in private. And he also ministered other ministers in private using those principles. But I think he believed that the gifts themselves were secondary to the power in preaching. And what he would want to happen would be to set the ambience of power. Because he believed that Christianity was inevitable. He believed that the gifts were inevitable. What would have frightened him would be technique, and learning how to do these in the absence of powerful preaching. Because the main spring that drove him was his preaching. And when you listened to him, you'd listen for 20 minutes, and you might even walk out and say, well, what are they all talking about? But he would build his argument. And he always said that his logic had to precede his rhetoric. Never allow his rhetoric to precede his logic. Now, that's why he doesn't like the preliminaries. What he wants to do is to set the holy logic out, and to hold Jesus out before the people, and then watch what happens. Because he believed it was inevitable, and he would never stop them. If you preach the gospel in the way that Whitley and Wesley did, they'll break the church doors down to get in. And when they're in, they won't go home, because you're feeding their needs. Did he do that? Would you put him in that category? Well, people breaking the doors down to get in? Yes, I'd say so. I just got the impression the church did not significantly grow. During his time there, well, you know, we would go. I would go to Westminster Chapel in the morning. I would go to stop in the evening, like all the students did. And then in 1968, we'd go to St. John's Bishopgate in the morning to get their brokers, and then we'd go. You know, we were all students with all the weakness. And also, there's absolutely no congregation. Of course, it never flies here. There's no residential neighborhood around him. But I think that there is this difference between them. And I do share a lot of what you said, but I think you understand the man. The root point is that he was interested in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He was interested in this intense assurance. And the other things could come along if they may, but they were never satisfied. Yes, thank you very much. That's really helpful. Over here. Yeah, my own experience and what's been happening at Bethlehem as I've preached. I've never been a cessationist in memorable history. I can remember as a 15-year-old hearing Richard DeHaan or his father on the radio argue from 1 Corinthians 13 that when the perfect comes refers to the canon. And as a 15-year-old lying in my bed in Greenville, South Carolina saying, that doesn't work. So I've never been a cessationist. Although Walter Chantry, bless his heart, sweet man, argues that argument in here from 1 Corinthians 13 on page 53. So I think I've always preached openness to and hunger for the Holy Spirit here for ten and a half years. In fact, I've gone back and looked. I've preached on the Holy Spirit a lot over these ten years. Again and again and again. Prayer week almost always tends to become a questing week after fullness in my mind. So what started last spring when I simply took up the topic, compassion, power and the Kingdom of God and told the people, we're going to talk about signs and wonders and spiritual gifts and power evangelism and the third wave and all this stuff and come to terms with it. It was not anything dramatically new. I don't think people when they heard me didn't say, this he's never thought before. Most of the people who've been around a while didn't. And so they heard it. We only, I think, what I'm trying to do and I'm no model here because this is mainly a message to me because I think I'm very much like Lloyd-Jones. I would rather study than have a prayer training seminar like we're going to have this Friday for four hours. I mean, I want to read a book on Friday. That's my gut desire. And write an article or a book. And I'm going to stand right here on Friday for four hours and do with David. I thank you, David. It's Saturday. Probably nobody will show up because I've been saying the wrong day for so long. And we together for four hours, we'll use all of Wayne's material probably and talk about hands-on praying and then we're going to have a clinic at the end and do some of it. And it's just very inefficient use of time. Isn't it? It's just incredibly inefficient. Hands-on ministry is incredibly time intensive. Two hours over one aching, depressed person? Late at night? I mean, good night, I got a thousand people to shepherd. That's the mentality that drives pastors of big churches and I'm sure little churches. I mean, it's not easy to shepherd a hundred people when you're the only pastor. It's harder, in fact, than it is for me. What else do I need to say about that? Oh, we had a leadership training thing and brought in the pastor of the vineyard down in Evanston last fall. And he just did his thing and just knocked everybody off their seats. 180 of our people or so were there and that caused a big row. But as far as, I've been here 10 years and I think most people would say the heart of my message is go hard for God. And that's all I'm saying today is go hard for God. And it's just been growing and adjusting. And we haven't, I think probably we've lost one person, one member over this issue this year. And he had a big hang up with other issues as well. If anybody wants to be more specific, I have lots more to say, but I could talk until Tom brought... I don't talk about seeking a second baptism... I don't talk about a second baptism either because they weren't baptized with the Holy Spirit if they haven't gotten it. In other words, the question is whether you buy his distinction between regeneration and baptism in the Spirit. If you buy that, then it may or may not happen at regeneration. And if it doesn't, and it is an experiential thing that is unmistakable, he says, then it's appropriate to seek it. And the only way to seek it, he says, is through persevering prayer. So your terminology just, it has to be made more precise. When you say you teach that the Holy Spirit comes upon a person at conversion baptism, I think by come upon you mean they receive the Holy Spirit for the first time. Yeah, that's not what he means by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He emphatically is separating a person who is indwelt by the Spirit, which begins at regeneration, and a person who is baptized by the Holy Spirit, which is a coming upon with a flood of intimacy that bumps you up to a level of certainty that is not discursive or deductive, but immediate and intimate like a revelation of glory to your heart. And so, he doesn't say, as far as I know, so I don't know how many of them... Yeah, he wouldn't say second, he would say second, third, fourth, fifteenth. He says, and here his terminology is different from the way we would talk probably, we need a fresh baptism. See, you would say we need fullness. But I'm going to argue here, you know, if we had time, exegetically, I wrote down five arguments for why I don't agree with the identification of what happened at Pentecost with 1 Corinthians 12, 13. I don't agree with identifying baptism with the Holy Spirit with regeneration. And therefore, I think he's right. And so, whether I want to press for using the terminology because of the endless confusion it may cause today, I haven't decided. But I think what happened at Pentecost needs to happen to every Christian if they're to have the kind of fitness for extraordinarily effective witness that Christ commissioned them to. It can be coincident, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that it may not have been coincident for everybody in the New Testament, but there were some pretty carnal people around who may not have had power. But I think Paul assumed that it was there. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Feel free to make copies of this message to give to others, but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit Desiring God online at www.desiringgod.org. There you'll find hundreds of sermons, articles, radio broadcasts, and much more, all available to you at no charge. Our online store carries all of Pastor John's books, audio, and video resources. You can also stay up to date on what's new at Desiring God. Again, our website is www.desiringgod.org or call us toll free at 1-888-346-4700. Our mailing address is Desiring God, 2601 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.