It is important that I stress that the Doctor is not merely someone of interest to one section of the church or another. During his life and subsequently, he was almost unique in his time for his appeal to people from all different denominational backgrounds. He truly was a gift of God to the whole church, and if you have never read or listened to the Doctor you need to right away! So to whet your appetite, here are some posts since August 2006 in which I mention him:
The Doctor was a great believer in the need for us to think carefully and study carefully God's Word. There is no doubt that the books of his sermons and talks are some of the most perceptive, well-argued, and yet passionate materials ever written. As an example of his love for the truth of the Bible here is a quote taken from Authentic Christianity (1st U.S. ed., page 53, Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books.)
"So the first effect of Christianity is to make people stop and think. They are not simply overawed by some great occasion. They say, “No, I must face this. I must think.” That is the work of the Spirit. The people in Acts thought again. They repented—the Greek word is metanoia—they changed their mind completely. The Spirit always leads people to think, and, as I have been showing you, the greatest trouble is that men and women go through life without thinking. Or they think for a moment but find it painful, so they stop and turn to a bottle of whiskey or television or something else—anything to forget.
Is it not obvious that the world, speaking spiritually and intellectually, is in a doped condition? In all sorts of ways men and women evade the facts. They can do this with great energy, they can be very intellectual, but ultimately they end up with nothing.
What does the Spirit make us think about? Well, not first and foremost about ourselves. I must emphasize that Christianity does not start with us. It does not say, “Do you want to get rid of that sin that is getting you down? Do you want happiness? Do you want peace? Do you want guidance?” That is not Christianity. That, again, is the approach of the cults. No, these people in Jerusalem were made to think about Jesus Christ! They were given the objective, historical facts about this person . . .
The next point is that the . . . Spirit now makes us go on to realize the relevance of Jesus Christ, and everything concerning Him, to ourselves personally . . .
You can sit in a chair and read a book about Jesus Christ, you can read about Him in your Bible, and you can read books of theology. Very interesting. To an intelligent person there is no study more entrancing. It has been the occupation of some of the greatest minds of the centuries. But you can do all that and still not be a Christian. It is the Holy Spirit who makes each of us see the relevance of Jesus to ourselves, so that we are no longer spectators, no longer critics, no longer people taking a wonderful, objective view. No, no, I am under criticism myself. The relevance of this has come to me. I see that I am involved in all this, and I had not realized it."
Now, it may well be that having read so many quotes from the Doctor here, you are eager to get a hold of his books. They can, of course, be purchased from Amazon.com, and many of his audio sermons can be downloaded from the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recording Trust. There is no doubt in my mind that reading his material will do you good and help you to, as he puts it, "think".
In the rest of this post, I want to introduce you to another way that you can get a hold of some of the amazing books that have been produced from his sermons. This is, of course, to purchase electronic copies of two fantastic resources from Logos. Logos has two Lloyd-Jones CDs available. The first of these is Selected Works of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and is a collection of no fewer than ten separate books by the Doctor, including more than 3,300 pages of Lloyd-Jones' highly relevant and well-loved works. Imagine being able to easily search all the following books at once for either a Bible verse key word, or a specific subject that you are interested in. These are some of the Doctor's most well-known and well-loved works.
Revival - this book is based on a series of talks given on the 100th anniversary of the Great Revival which started in Wales and swept across England, throughout the United States, and to the far corners of the world. It is a critical book for us to read if we want to understand the biblical view of revival - "I do not think that our age has seen any more powerful or profound treatmentof revival than this book."—Dr. J. I. Packer
The Assurance of Our Salvation - Based on John 17, this book explores how we as Christians can be sure of our salvation. The book is practical, pastoral, and inspiring.
Great Doctrines of the Bible (3 vols.) - This is a complete systematic theology written by the Doctor and it will help you grasp the theological and emotional impact of the message of the Bible.
Studies in the Book of Acts (4 vols.) - These sermons will inspire you as you consider afresh the birth of the church, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the advance of the early church.
Seeking the Face of God - The Doctor brings his scapel to nine passages from the Psalms. You will discover just why the book of Psalms is so precious to many of God's saints.
The second, Exposition of Ephesians series, is about 3,000 pages worth of in-depth analysis of the book of Ephesians and is one of the most thorough commentaries available on this vital New Testament book. Based on years of careful preaching verse after relentless verse. One of the Doctor's most well-known sermons is contained in this series. He managed to preach an entire sermon on the phrase "But God" from Ephesians 2!
"With these two words we come to the introduction to the Christian message, the peculiar, specific message which the Christian faith has to offer to us. These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole of the gospel. The gospel tells of what God has done, God’s intervention; it is something that comes entirely from outside us and displays to us that wondrous and amazing and astonishing work of God which the apostle goes on to describe and to define in the following verses." (Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1972). God's Way of Reconciliation chapter 2, page 59) Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.)
Lloyd-Jones shows how the book of Ephesians gives us a unique overview of Pauls's teaching. Many critical subjects are covered, including our salvation, predestination, the work of the Spirit, the Church, spiritual warfare, and many other aspects.
All these books mentioned above are a treasure trove, but their size makes them somewhat unwieldy - particularly if you want to use them in a 21st century manner. I am sure that for many of my readers going through a big book sequentially is just not something that they are going to do. As helpful as a paper book is for reading from beginning to end, increasingly many of us want instead to dip in and out of a book when we are interested in a particular subject. Locating that passage that you know is in one of your books that you have read is hard enough. Imagine being able to find a highly relevant passage in a book you haven't even read yet!
You can search the entire series of Lloyd-Jones books by word, passage, or topic, so you’ll never have to hunt through countless pages looking for that certain quote. What's more, all Bible references function as hotspots, immediately presenting the cited verse whenever the mouse cursor rolls over them. And by clicking on the citation, your favorite Bible translation will immediately open to the chapter and verse. This transforms your electronic library into a searchable index of amazing passages and chapters that are at your fingertips when you most need them.
Of course, these books work hardest when they are included on the same system as one of the core libraries. Then, you can quite literally type a Bible verse into the passage guide, click "go," and within seconds results will be flooding you from Lloyd-Jones and all your other books! This is not to encourage plagarism which everybody knows is when you copy one person. When you are inspired by and integrate ideas from many people into your own work it is not plagarism, it is scholarly research!
For some reason when I installed these items a collection was not automatically formed - but fortunately it is a simple matter to create one yourself (tools-define collections) and then to include that collection in the resources that are searched on a home page when you click passage guide (preferences on the homepage).
If you love Lloyd-Jones material, these works will stand on their own, but will be so much more useful as an add-on to a fuller Logos library system. At very least, you need a Bible to work with them. Even without what they call a "core library" - a critical mass of Bibles, commentaries, and lexicons - these two resources will still allow you to browse the books, search, annotate, Copy/Paste with Foo
Today I thought I'd tell you a little about an integrated approach I've set up to make use of the online social networking websites, and also to share with you some different ways you can access the content of this blog. Basically I have tried to ensure that a few of these sites will work together for me, that each of them, therefore, will offer you another way to follow the blog, and, where possible, point you to other material I think you should be reading before mine.
