A revival is the Holy Spirit coming again in tremendous power, coming upon a congregation, coming upon a church or a group of churches, coming upon a whole country, sometimes. There are the people, gathered together in their usual humdrum – lethargic manner, not expecting anything to happen when, suddenly, the Spirit of God comes down upon them and takes hold of them and possesses them and lifts them up and does wonders among them. And all the people are amazed, even as they were on the day of Pentecost. Revivals of religion! And there have been many, many such revivals, thank God. There has scarcely been a century but that there has been some kind of revival when God has, again, poured down His Spirit. – from a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on June 2, 1963.
Category Archives: Lloyd-Jones on John 1
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 9 of 10
When John says “children of God,” he is not talking of an honorary title that leaves the person unchanged. No, no! There is a real transformation. We are children of God in the sense that children are like their parents, that they have something in them of the nature of their parents, that the relationship is that between children and their natural parents. It means that we have become transformed into the likeness of God! Nothing less than that. It means, therefore, a change in our vital capacities, in our perceptions, in our emotions. There are many statements to this effect in various places in the Scriptures. Take, for instance, Paul’s words in the Epistle to the Galatians: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3.26). Or take that magnificent statement in 2 Peter 1.4, where Peter says that we actually and literally become “partakers of the divine nature.” This is a staggering statement, and it is tragic that we do not seem to realize this. – from a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on January 20, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 8 of 10
The one who is led of the Spirit of God is the one, therefore, who glories in nothing but in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Let every man examine himself.” from a sermon on John 1.12-13 preached on April 7, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 7 of 10
Indeed, let me put it like this. You may be very dissatisfied with yourself. That, in itself, is a good sign. The Pharisee is never dissatisfied. He is the man who steps forward and says, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are…or even as this publican” (Luke 18.11). My dear friend, the fact that you are dissatisfied is, in itself, indicative of the fact that you are a child [of God]. Any feeling of unworthiness and dissatisfaction is a very good and healthy sign. So, if the devil comes to you and says, “Ah, well, there are the signs of a child, but you have not got them perfectly,” you say, “No, I haven’t got them perfectly. That’s what worries me and, because I’m worried about it, I am a child [of God].” – From a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on February 17, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 6 of 10
Men and women think of themselves only as animals, and they think, therefore, of satisfaction for the animal part of their lives. Their real interest in putting an end to war is so that they may have peace to go on sinning. That is why they are against war – it just disturbs their good times, it is an interruption, a nuisance. And work is becoming a nuisance, too. What men and women want is money in order to enjoy themselves, and anything that interrupts that enjoyment is annoying – hence, most of our troubles at this moment. All this is the result of the fact that people do not realize the truth about themselves – that each person has a soul, and belongs to God and the spiritual realm, that they are to be above and over all these things instead of living to them and being governed by them. They are in the dark about themselves as much as they are about God and, therefore, they do not know how to live. They have no idea of true living. They regard the worship of God as a bore, as dull and uninteresting. There are many who regard it as stupid and an anachronism and would think that we are fools to gather in a building such as this at this hour. – from a sermon on John 1.5 preached on October 14, 1962.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 5 of 10
“The way of transgressors is hard” (Proverbs 13.15) – and it must be made hard. That is one of the ways whereby we, eventually, have some hope that men and women will be ready to listen to the message of grace and truth that has come in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was only when the Prodigal Son found himself in the far country with the husks and the swine that he began to realize the truth concerning himself. And human beings are still like that. I regard these two world wars as a part of God’s punishment upon them for their apostasy. And there will be more and more until the final return of Christ and the ultimate judgment. – from a sermon on John 1.17, preached on November 11, 1962.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 4 of 10
There are very good, upright, moral men and women in the world, people who seem to be paragons of all the virtues. You cannot point a finger at them. They never seem to do any wrong, they have a high moral code, a high ethical standard, and they believe in living up to this. There are many such who deny the whole of the Christian faith, never darken the doors of a place of worship and are not at all interested in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, someone may say to me, “How do I know whether I’m not just living a good, moral, ethical life myself? How may I know that I’m a Christian?” And, it’s just here that this test comes in.
When your good moral men and women fall into sin, what troubles them, of course, is that they have failed, that they have fallen from their standard. They may even feel, perhaps, that they have let down the whole human race. But they never go beyond that. By contrast, what worries Christians is that they behaved as they did though this blessed Spirit of God is in them, in their very bodies. He is grieved, He is wounded, He is hurt – they have caused the Spirit of God to mourn. But, your good moral people know nothing at all about that. They cannot know it because the Spirit is not in them, because they do not know the Holy Spirit. They argument is inevitable. – from a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on April 28, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 3 of 10
Now, let us see what this means, therefore. It shows that the moment you separate the Spirit from the Word, the teaching of His own Word, you are courting disaster and, eventually, will certainly land up in trouble. (I know that there are people who, by contrast, put all their emphasis upon the Word and do not like any talk about the Spirit. They are equally wrong, but we are dealing, at the moment, with this particular error that characterizes the Quakers.) The beliefs of the Quakers have led to certain inevitable results. One is that they have gone hopelessly astray in their doctrine. Most of them, by now, are nothing but Unitarians – that is, they no longer believe in the deity of Christ. They say that He was just a great man, a great religious and moral teacher, one who was exceptionally endowed with this inner light and illumination and, therefore, we can benefit from reading about Him and trying to follow Him.
Then, having gone wrong on the person of Christ, Quakers have, obviously, gone wrong in their understanding of His work, His atoning death upon the cross. They do not believe in it, they do not even see any need of it. Believing, as they do, that this inner light is in everybody if people but realized it, they see no need of a rebirth. And, because they do not recognize sin as such, there is no need for Christ to bear the punishment of their sins and to die upon the cross. God is love, Quakers say. He has put the spark of spiritual life in everybody and all that is needed is to kindle it into a flame. You do that by becoming passive and stopping all thought, and listening, and the light will come and the voice, as it were, will begin to speak and you will be led out into all truth. All that is needed is to give this spark that is in us, the light that is already there, an opportunity to do its own work within us. – from a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on February 24, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 2 of 10
We must grasp the fact that there is always an extraordinary balance in the Scriptures, and it is when people forget the balance that they always get into trouble. Notice how Scripture puts it. The Lord Jesus Christ constantly said that He had come not to glorify Himself, but His Father, and the Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself, but the Son. The conclusion we draw from that is the great and blessed doctrine of the Holy Trinity, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal and each ministers to the glory of the other. It is always wrong to put the whole of your emphasis upon one of the Persons to the exclusion of the others. This is an error into which the church herself has sometimes fallen. There are certain epochs and eras in her history when she has been guilty of putting excessive emphasis upon one or the other Person of the Trinity. – from a sermon on John 1.12-13, preached on April 7, 1963.
Lloyd-Jones on John 1 on Monday – Part 1 of 10
I have known people who have said that they do not see the need of Christ, they have never seen the need of grace, they have never done anybody any harm, they have always lived good lives. But, these people have never listened to the law. They have never known anything about coveting. They have never examined their hearts. They are not only denying the Scriptures, they are utterly ignorant of themselves. They, of all people, are the greatest sinners because there is no greater sin than never to have seen your need of the blood of Christ to cleanse you and to save you. That is why people are deficient in their appreciation of the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. Never having realized their own ugly, foul, black hearts, never having realized the exceeding sinfulness of sin, they have never known anything about this wondrous grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Do not dismiss the law, my friend, if you want to know anything about grace. Let the law speak to you. And, though you may have been a Christian for years, if you are not convicted of your sin and do not feel that you are foul and unclean, then I despair of you.
From: Born of God: Sermons from John 1 by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2011), p. 73. From a sermon on John 1.17 preached on November 4, 1962.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was pastor of Bethlehem Forward Movement Church in Aberystwyth, Wales (1927-1938) and pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, England (1943-1968).
