Praying Properly (4)

The True Goal of Prayer: the pleasure of God (1 Kgs 3:10-14).  Would you have said this is the true goal of prayer?  Would you have said that when you come into the presence of the Lord and bring to Him your desires and wants and needs, the pleasure of God is your goal?  You know when the Lord is pleased with your prayer, He grants you your requests.  God was pleased with Solomon's prayer.  He asked for a hearing heart and the ability to discern between good and evil.  He got these (vvs 11-12), but He was given more; the Lord also gave him what he did not ask for (v.13).

You know, there is something very pleasing when you bring pleasure to someone you want to please.  It thrills your soul to know you've please that other.  And when that other is the Lord Himself, my, the pleasure you experience is indescribable.

Why pray?  To please the Lord.  "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."  When we glorify Him, we please Him.  Glorifying Him is much more than just saying, "And to Him be all the glory." It is about bringing pleasure to His heart.  True prayer pleases God.  There is no greater lure to prayer than God's sheer generosity.

When you bow before God in prayer, set your heart and mind to pleasing Him in all you say.  Remember, He knows your heart.  Be focused upon Him.  Seek Him.  Lift Him high.  Make sure your prayers please Him; for if they do, they will be answered.

Praying Properly (3)

The true anxiety of prayer: the people of God, (1 Kgs 3:7b-9).  When the Lord said to Solomon, "Ask what I should give you" (v.5), His Word was both a gracious invitation and an inevitable test.  He was being invited to come with big requests and to 'ask anything.'  Here's the challenging point: your response to such an invitation reveals who you really are.  Your true spiritual character comes out when you are given such an invitation.  How?  Because we either act on it as it stands, or else we just do not believe that the Lord is serious and is making such a gracious offer to weak believers like us.

Also, what we ask for reveals what is most important to us.  Whah!  What Solomon asked for revealed what was important to him.  He asked the Lord for a 'hearing heart' and the ability to discern between good and evil, so that he could rule the people of God well.  He wanted his entire being to be geared toward pleasing God through serving Him well.  What was it that drove Solomon's prayer?  The well-being of others; in this case, God's people.  He was anxious over the people of God, and that motivated his prayer.

It was the same with Moses.  When he saw the burdens under which his fellow Hebrews were living/existing,   he was moved to pray for their deliverance, little knowing that God would use him as the answer to his own prayer.  Lesson: be very careful what you ask for - you might get it!  His prayer was not asking God to advance his own political career; it was Israel's need for deliverance, regardless of cost to himself, that drove him.  In Solomon's case, his prayer was driven by the need for a discerning heart to rule the people of God.  His was a holy anxiety, concern over the well-being of God's redeemed people.

The leaders of God's people ought to exhibit a watchfulness over them; they ought to have a watchful worry that trembles for the welfare of the people of God and that always prays with one eye on their good.  And that ought also to drive us in our prayers.

Are you concerned about the low level of true spirituality there is in the church today?  Are you anxious about your own poor spirituality?  At the beginning of a new year (2013) is a good time to take spiritual stock of your own soul, and of that of your church.  Don't settle for second best either personally or for your church.  Seek the Lord and He will reveal to you what you need to do - for yourself and for your church.

Praying Properly (2)

The true incentive of prayer - the faithfulness of God (1 Kgs 3:6, 7a, 8).  When we begin our prayer, we must do as Solomon did - start not with our request, but with God's past faithfulness, with what He has done.  No better place to start.  Indeed, there's no other place to start.  What an incentive is here to speak to this great giving God.  Whilst we know in our heads God's liberality when it comes to blessing His children, we still come to Him as if He were an unwilling Father who is reluctant to give to His asking children.  But He is faithful - look at His track record.  His covenant faithlessness was experienced by Solomon's forefathers in ancient days.  He promised that Abraham's seed would be as great as the sand on the seashore, and Solomon now declares that God has kept His promise and has done just that!  Whatever promise the LORD has made, he has kept.

Tell me if you know of a greater incentive to prayer than this fact.  Solomon began with God's faithfulness, His dependability, His fidelity.  So must we.  Praise Him for His faithfulness.  This gives us confidence in prayer.

Why pray?  Because the One to Whom we pray is utterly faithful.  We can trust Him completely and in every situation.  Begin here.  Let me give you another little incentive to pray.  Just this week, my wife came under another strange Satanic attack.  He tormented her all afternoon, and refused to relent.  That is, until about tea-time when she experienced a lifting of her burden, and the rest of the evening was great.  Why did this happen?  Because someone had been praying for her at that moment.  It may have been a Christian friend in Northern Ireland, or England in far away places like India or Panama.  Someone unknown to us had uplifted her in prayer, and God answered.

Why did He do that?  Because that's the kind of God He is; and that's the kind of God and Father we have.

Trusting In The Lord

The other morning in our devotions, we read these marvellous words: “To trust in God is not a gamble, it’s a sure thing.”  We have proved this numerous times in the past, but definitely during the past four months.  As Hebrews tells us, “He who promised is faithful” (10:23).  When our Lord makes a promise to His children, one thing is sure – they can bank on it totally and absolutely.  After all, it is the Lord Who makes such a promise.  But look at what follows – the Maker of the promise is faithful. 

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is faithful.  We can rely totally upon Him.  He is as good as His Word.  We can stake our all, nay, our eternity, upon what He says by way of promise.  Our God is dependable in all things.  Oh, trust Him to see you through. As the old Gospel hymn puts it, “He is willing to aid you, He will carry you through.”  It assures us, “Ask the Saviour to help you...”  Jesus asked the blind man, “What do you want Me to do for you?”  What a question?  And written in words of one syllable so all can understand and ask Him.

Praying Properly (1)

When it comes to 'prayer,' the Old Testament has much to teach us. 1 Kings 3 may be described as a manual of prayer, or a 'how to' prayer book.  "At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask! What shall I give you?”" (v.5).  God is telling King Solomon to ask Him for something.  In fact  the verb 'ask' occurs eight times in verses.5, 10, 11, 13.  The LORD was satisfied with Solomon's request, so we can learn from these verses what true prayer is.  Dr Dale Ralph Davis gives us some needed help in this matter.

The true incentive to prayer - the generosity of God (vvs. 5b, 13, 14).  Our God is generous in His dealings with us.  He wants to give and give and give again.  "If you ask anything in My Name, I will give it to you," promised Jesus.  God was so pleased with what Solomon asked that He made him a open-ended promise to give whatever he asked.  It is to this same lavish and generous God that we, as Christian believers, come to when we pray.  When the minister says, 'Let us pray,' he is not just issuing religious words; he is calling the people of God to talk to the King.  And we are called to speak to Him because His generosity knows no limits.  He is 'the giving God.'  God said, “Ask! What shall I give you?” (v.5).

And He's saying exactly the same to you and to me this very day.  Come with your mouth filled with requests and let your requests be made known unto God.  Pray without ceasing  says Paul.  Why?  Because the God to Whom you pray is anxious to give to you whatever you ask in Christ's Name.  So keep on praying.

Lloyd-Jones - His Life, Work and Significance

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)

His Life

David MartynLloyd-Jones was born on 20^th December 1899 in Cardiff, Wales, the middle son of Henry and Magdalene Lloyd-Jones, Harold and Vincent being the other siblings.  His father was a small but reasonably successful businessman in Llangeitho, Cardiganshire.

Wales had known the outpouring of God’s Spirit in earlier times under the ministries of men like Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris, William Williams, Christmas Evans, Evan Roberts, and not least John Jones of Talsarn.  At the close of the nineteenth century and after great visitations of God, Wales was a dark spiritual wilderness, despite the many churches and chapels that lay scattered around the country.  The Lloyd-Jones family belonged to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church in Llangeitho.  This denomination had grown cold during Martyn’s boyhood and adolescence, and much of the life of the revivals of 1904/5 had become a faint memory.

The Calvinistic Methodist Church which the Lloyd-Jones family was connected to can trace its beginnings to the mid-1700s, a time when the Christian churches in Britain were divided into two main groupings – the Arminians under John Wesley (17??-17??) were the Methodists, and the Calvinists under George Whitefield were the Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists.  Both these groups faced their own particular problems.  The Methodists emphasised the free will of men and ignored the need for depraved men to be sovereignly regenerated by the effectual call of God.  The Calvinists were also facing challenges; while they emphasised the sovereignty of God in salvation, they degenerated into hyper-Calvinism in which there was no longer any Gospel for a lost mankind. 

They denied the free offer of salvation to all men through Christ the Saviour of the world, and with that they sidelined the need for evangelism and missions. 

The young Martyn had a fairly uneventful boyhood up to January 1910.  On a winter’s night everything would change for the whole family, and not least for young Martyn.  In the early hours, a fire broke out which nearly cost the lives of the three boys who were sleeping upstairs.  The family was spared, but most of their possessions were lost, a loss from which Henry never fully recovered. 

The three boys joined as members of the church at Llangeitho in 1914 at the encouragement of their minister.  However, while they enjoyed the debate on religious matters, each was more committed to his career than to his professed faith; this was a common thing in their day.

The family moved to London in 1914 where his father set up a milk delivery business.  Martyn shared in the rounds of the business.  With the family, they attached themselves to the Charing Cross Chapel (now Orange Street Congregational Chapel) and Martyn attended there throughout his young adulthood and student days in the capital.  He continued his education and commenced his training to be a medical doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London (known affectionately as Barts).  By the age of 26 he had gained his MD degree and the MRCP.  From these facts, it is clear that, as a young doctor, he was well up the Harley Street career ladder.  He obviously has a lucrative career in medicine before him.

The Charing Cross Chapel where the Lloyd-Jones family attended was no different from the other congregations in the connexion.  But what stood in its favour was the fact the Welsh Calvinistic Methodism sought to take a mid-way between high Calvinism and Arminianism.  They held tenaciously to the doctrines of grace but unlike their English counterparts, they did not believe that being Calvinistic meant ignoring the heart and emotions.  For them, it was a “whole Gospel for a whole man.”  Holding to correct doctrines apart from what Whitefield called a “felt Christ” was wrong and potentially spiritually dangerous.  They saw a need for a return to Bible preaching rather than preaching of doctrinal statements, catechisms and confessions.  They also emphasised the need for spiritual revival. 

DML-J has begun to feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit in his life and in the fullness of time realised he was a lost sinner who needed Christ as his Saviour.  While he enjoyed the religious debates he had with other Sunday School scholars, Martyn had another debate going on which only he knew about, a debate that was raging within his own heart.  He was becoming concerned about his own spiritual condition.  He had thought all along he was a Christian because he was a church member, but he knew he was not.  Only later did he come to see his need of Christ and His salvation.  He knew that he needed to hear the Gospel being preached clearly, and he also knew that this was not what he was receiving in his church.  In fact, his minister preached on the assumption that all were Christians, which was a common reality in many Presbyterian churches of that era, and sadly also of today.  But while reading for himself, the truth of God’s love for the world dawned upon him, and he came to see that Christ died for all men, and therefore for him, and he entrusted himself to the Saviour of the world, whom he was later to preach with great effectiveness.

It was this Welsh religious history that played a crucial role in the development of Martyn’s life and ministry.  He married Bethan Philips in 1927, also a trainee medical doctor, and who became a Christian under her husband’s faithful preaching in Sandfields.  Afterwards the young newly-weds moved to Port Talbot in South Wales, where Dr Lloyd-Jones was installed as minister of the Forward Movement of the Presbyterian Church of Wales at Sandfields, Aberavon. 

His Work

Although he had preached a few times before realising that he was being called by God into the Christian ministry, DML-J had ministered in Sandfields while working with Sir Thomas Horder at Barts.  After one of these visits, the congregation decided that they wanted to call him as their minister, which they did.  He accepted the call of the congregation as the call of God, and went back to his beloved Wales in 1927 to commence what was to be an eleven year ministry of careful biblical expository preaching.  As well as being aware of the call of God on his life, DML-J was so impressed with the conditions of the poor in London among whom he had worked as a physician; hence, Aberavon was a logical choice as his sphere of ministry.  This town had a population of about 5,000 people who lived in sordid, squalid and overcrowded conditions; or as someone put it, Aberavon was a place for the bookie, the prostitute and the publican.  Here his convictions about the Gospel would be tested to the limit.  On being asked whether or not he knew if he could preach, he candidly admitted that he did not know; but he did know what needed to be preached – the Gospel of redeeming grace to a lost world.

In the church in Sandfields, his approach was so different to that of other ministers who came straight out of a liberal theological college with a corresponding liberal theological education.  DML-J knew what he believed, and he declared that message uncompromisingly and with authority.  His message can be distilled to this: he preached Christ and Him crucified, determining with Paul not to know anything among them but this.  Some church members did not like this message, and left.  But they were replaced gradually with those who were drawn by God’s Spirit and gripped by the truth, and these were mainly the working class in South Wales.  They were converted to Christ under the Doctor’s authoritative biblical preaching.  He did not have emotionally charged appeals after his sermons, but allowed the Lord to do His own saving work in their hearts.  But God used this young man with the clear message of God’s love for mankind and His justice and righteousness, and God brought one hard case after another to the Cross and to saving faith in Christ alone.

The stir this preacher caused is difficult for those who do not sit under that kind of ministry to understand.  Given that he had not been theologically trained in the recognised way, DML-J was a man who got his message from the Bible.  He saw as his role to preach the Bible verse by verse and passage by passage.   As his preaching ability became more widely known, many demands were made for him to preach outside his own congregation and in many different places. 

On 28^th November 1935, he was invited to preach in the Royal Albert Hall in London to an assembly of Christians.  He dealt with the problems he saw with many of the forms of evangelism that were being used in the church, comparing and contrasting them with the Biblical model.  In the congregation that evening was Dr G. Campbell Morgan (then 72), minister of Westminster Chapel, London.  Having heard of DML-J, and having listened to him on that evening, he wanted, in 1938, to have him as his colleague and successor in Westminster Chapel.  But this was not so easy because overtures had been made to him to become Principal of Bala Theological College in North Wales.  The call to stay in Wales and also to head up the training of future ministers of the Presbyterian Church in Wales was strong.  Eventually, the call to London prevailed, and the family transferred to London in April 1939 and he worked alongside Dr Morgan from September 1938, thus providing him with the respite he needed at that time.  Dr Morgan died in 1945 and DML-J was sole pastor of that great London congregation. 

DML-J’s work became critical to the resurgence of Reformed theology in the United Kingdom (UK).  His sermon series were soon demanded in print, and his expository sermons on the Sermon of the Mount were published, and these expositions stand today as classical sermons which set the pattern for what truly expository preaching is. 

After the ravages of war, in 1947, the congregation grew quickly and the balconies were opened.  From 1948 until 1968 when the Doctor retired as minister of Westminster Chapel, the congregation averaged 1,500 in the mornings and 2,000 at the evening services.  He died and went to be with his Lord on 1^st March 1981, entirely appropriate for a Welshman since this was St David’s Day.

His Significance

Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has been rightly described as the most influential preacher in twentieth century Britain, if not the world.  His preaching gifts were unequalled, therefore the influence he exerted on preachers across many denominations and none, together with the legacy that he left in his printed and now digitally re-mastered sermons is incalculable.  His books are listed in the Bibliography, and currently there are about 1,600 sermons available for download, covering his main sermon and lecturing series.  His 53 years of ministry have left an indelible mark on British and international evangelicalism. 

Amongst the extra-church involvements of DML-J can be accounted his setting up the Banner of Truth Trust, the Evangelical Library, The Westminster Fellowship, Tyndale House, The InterVarsity Fellowship, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, etc. 

While DML-J, who was capable of thinking independently but without disparaging the contribution of earlier generations of God’s servants, applied his mind to understanding and preaching the Gospel, he was not swayed by everything he read.  Instead, his practice was to weigh everything against the clear teaching of Scripture, on the hand, and by the teaching of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, on the other.  His practice was to use the Robert Murray McCheyne Bible reading scheme where, if followed, one would read the entire Bible once a year, and the New Testament and Psalms twice.  His knowledge of Scripture was proverbial, and this he used to assess everything he read. 

But as is usually the case when his theology is examined, he created as much controversy after his life as he did while he was still ministering.  Controversy was stirred because of his views on ecclesiology, Pentecostalism, and his understanding of the sealing/baptism/filling of the Spirit.

However, his theology of one aspect of soteriology is now causing some controversy, specifically his understanding of the universality of the Gospel.  Since the Gospel is to be preached to every creature, does that mean that what is offered in the Gospel is for all men equally?  Has God revealed His will to save all men on condition of faith, or did He send Christ to save only His elect?  What DML-J actually preached, as discovered in his published sermons, stands in clear contrast to what some reformed theologians and preachers held to be the authentic Christian message. 

Interpreting Scripture

With regard to the biblical understanding of what the death and passion of Christ were about, while interpreting the Scriptural data is a necessity, it is how it is interpreted by some theologians that causes the difficulties.

Some years ago, I came across a most enlightening section in one of New Testament scholar, Prof. J. Gresham Machen’s books (1881-1937), in which he seeks to set out the issue facing the Christian church in the 1930s, which he sees as the mis-interpretation of the biblical data to suit the purposes of a deviant agenda.  Machen writes:

Formerly when men had brought to their attention perfectly plain documents like the Apostles’ Creed or the Westminster Confession or the New Testament, they either adopted them or else denied them.  Now they no longer deny, but merely ‘interpret.’  Every generation, it is said, must interpret the Bible or the creed in its own way.  But I sometimes wonder just how far this business of interpretation will go.  I am, let me say, in a company of modern men.  They begin to test my intelligence.  And first they test me on the subject of mathematics.  ‘What does six times nine make?’  I am asked.  I breathe a sigh of relief; many questions might place me very low in the scale of intelligence, but that question I think I can answer.  I raise my hand hopefully.  ‘I know that one,’ I say.  ‘Six nines are fifty-four.’  But my complacency is short-lived.  My modern examiner puts on a grave look.  ‘Where have you been living?’ he says.  ‘ “Six nines are fifty-four” – that is the old answer to the question.’  In my ignorance I am somewhat surprised.  ‘Why,’ I say, ‘everybody knows that.  That stands in the multiplication table; do you not know the multiplication table?’  ‘Oh, yes,’ says my modern friend, ‘of course I accept the multiplication table.  But then I do not take a static view of the multiplication table; every generation must interpret the multiplication table in its own way.  And so of course I accept the proposition that six nines are fifty-four, but I interpret that to mean that six nines are one hundred and twenty-eight.’  And then the examination gets into the sphere of history.  The examiner asks me where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.  That one, also, I think I know.  ‘The Declaration of Independence,’ I say, ‘was adopted at Philadelphia.’  But again I meet with a swift rebuke.  ‘That is the old answer to the question,’ I am told.  ‘But,’ I say, ‘everyone knows that the Declaration of Independence was adopted at Philadelphia; that stands in all the history books; do you not accept what stands in the history books?’  ‘Oh, yes,’ says my modern friend, ‘we accept everything that stands in the history books – hundred per cent Americans we are.  But then, you see, we have to interpret the history books in our own way. And so of course we accept the proposition that the Declaration of Independence was adopted at Philadelphia, but we interpret that to mean that it was adopted at San Francisco.’  And then finally the examination turns (though still in the sphere of history) to the department of history that concerns the Christian religion.  ‘What do you think happened,’ I am asked, ‘after Jesus was laid in that tomb near Jerusalem about nineteen hundred years ago?’  To that question also I have a very definite answer.  ‘I will tell you what I think happened,’ I say; ‘He was laid in a tomb, and then the third day He arose again from the dead.’  At this point the surprise of my modern friend reaches its height.  The idea of a professor in a theological seminary actually believing that the body of a dead man really emerged from the grave!  ‘Everyone,’ he tells me, ‘has abandoned that answer to the question long ago.’  ‘But,’ I say, ‘my friend, this is very serious; that answer stands in the Apostles’ Creed as well as at the centre of the New Testament; do you not accept the Apostles’ Creed?’  ‘Oh, yes,’ says my modern friend, ‘of course I accept the Apostles’ Creed; do we not say it every Sunday in church? – or, if we do not say it, we sing it – of course I accept the Apostles’ Creed.  But then, do you not see, every generation has a right to interpret it in its own way.  And so now of course we accept the proposition that “the third day He arose again from the dead,” but we interpret that to mean, “The third day He did not rise again from the dead.”’

In view of this modern art of ‘interpretation,’ one may almost wonder whether the lofty human gift of speech has not become entirely useless.  If everything that I say can be ‘interpreted’ to mean its exact opposite, what is the use of saying anything at all?  I do not know when the great revival of religion will come.  But one thing is perfectly clear.  When it does come, the whole elaborate art if ‘interpretation’ will be brushed aside, and there will be a return, as there was at the reformation of the sixteenth century, to plain common sense and common honesty.

Source:  J. G. Machen, God Transcendent, (1949, Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh), 45-47.

I considered this to be useful to post on my website, so that readers might have an opportunity to read and think about what Machen wrote all those years ago.  To him, this is the single most important issue facing the Christian church, and it still is today.  I trust you find it as helpful as I did.