Some final quotes, which I find liberating and inspiring: “The primary task of the Church and of the Christian minister is the preaching of the Word of God” (19). “The work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which any­one can ever be called” (9). “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also” (9). Preaching must always come first, and it must not be replaced by anything else”…

The greatest benefit I received from this book is what I would call the aliveness of preaching – by that I mean the vivid sense that preaching is, in the very moment in which it is happening, a living address from God to his people.  It is the platform for a divine-human encounter – the occasion for God coming down among his people in a unique and powerful way.  Hence his language of “the element of attack” in a sermon (71), his assertion that the ultimate goal of preaching is to “give men and women a sense of God” (97),…

Lloyd-Jones has also helped me think about the mechanics of sermon preparation.  In the past, I think I’ve erred by relying almost exclusively on commentaries in my preparation, in addition of course to prayerful reflection on the text.  As I’ve grown I’ve learned that I really need to use systematic theology in my sermon preparation.  I need to look at my passage through the lens of doctrine.  A lot of times commentaries are focused on particular concerns, and I’ve found that using systematic theology as well as commentaries adds another layer of richness to my understanding of the passage. Lloyd-Jones…

I’ve been slowly chipping away at Martin Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachers this year.  In the next few posts, I want to share some of the ways it has helped me.  The first has to do with what preaching that is both Christ-centered and expository looks like.  An abiding intellectual struggle of mine over the last 2 years or so has been how exactly to preach Christ from various different kinds of biblical texts.  Put simply, here was the issue: if the goal of expository preaching is to say the meaning of the text from which I am preaching, how do…