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This book is a profile in the series, “A Long Line of Godly Men”, put out by Ligonier Ministries. This series by Stephen J. Lawson and Douglas Bond contains short and to-the-point biographies of great men like John Calvin, Martin Luther, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I was impressed by the brevity and depth of this book on The Doctor, and I would certainly seek out other editions in the series, if the need arose.
Having just finished another short yet faulty biography on Jonathan Edwards, I was a little leery of spending my precious time on yet another potential disappointment. This audiobook read by Englishman Simon Vance, however, was clear, direct, and meaty, and I feel like I understand a whole lot more about Lloyd-Jones than I did before I heard it. I really enjoyed the audio-version, too, as Simon Vance brought to the book a firm British feel. I recall trying to listen to Jerry Bridges‘ Who Am I? read by Glasgow-born Alistair Begg (from Christianaudio.com), and I simply couldn’t match the voice to the author. For what it’s worth, I think that readers of these books ought to match at least the national accent of the author—if not the subject—that they’re reading. Personal preference.
Truth be told, my experience with The Doctor was minimal before I picked up this book. A friend of mine who knew of my old-book collection gifted me a first-edition compilation of Lloyd-Jones’ messages, and I kept it but never read it! I was surprised to learn how influential this man really was in mid-20th-Century England. This small Welshman single-handedly revived expository preaching to a continent and re-introduced a nation to the powerful love and holiness of the God of the Bible. Absent were the frills and ear-scratchings of “modern preaching” in that Westminster Chapel. Instead, Jones filled his listeners’ ears, heads, and hearts thrice weekly with the Truth of God in a verse-by-verse manner.
This book has quite a heavy emphasis on the pulpit and preaching, and for its length, I suppose that’s to be expected. What a person really wants to witness though, mid-biography, is the struggles of the person we’re exploring. What trials did he overcome to get where he was most used by God? Was it only that Jones was such a successful doctor that he had to choose excelling in one thing over excelling in another? This high-tower praise of a man who must have struggled with sin as we all do reminds me too much of the super-human treatment of popular pastors, even today.
Now, I love John MacArthur, but it’s a rare sermon (and a rarer paragraph still!) when you’ll hear or read him confess his own sinful struggles. Are we to assume that these great men of God aren’t or weren’t tempted? Are to believe that they’ve overcome the lowly snares of us common-folk? Of course not! The Apostle Paul moved from viewing himself as “an Apostle of Jesus Christ” to “the least of the Apostles” to “the least of all the saints” to “the foremost sinner”—and this in the progression of viewing his letters chronologically! The more mature Paul became in Christ, the more wretched a sinner he viewed his natural self to be. That’s not often what we see in these “Christian Giants” of today, but let me tell, it’s what we need to see.
This book drove me (perhaps surprisingly) to YouTube “Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons” with the hope that someone had posted a sermon or two of this great Welshman. What a treasure-trove I found! As soul-destroying as YouTube might be, there certainly are some gems to find, and I encourage you to search the site for yourself or to follow this link (which is something I rarely include in my book reviews).
Overall I really enjoyed this book, and I look forward to exploring briefly the lives other great men of God through the centuries.
©2018 E.T.
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