I specifically went to the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust....(mljtrust.org)....to look for a sermon on revival to listen to....and came to one where the announcer informs you that the tape recording sustained significant damage over the years. He apologized in that it might be a little difficult to listen to. Well....what I thought when I heard that was the possibility that the Devil particularly did not like this sermon....and tried to destroy it. That's how my mind at times operates. So I listened to the sermon....and I may have been correct in my speculation for it is a needed and a wonderful sermon.
The title of the sermon is....The Modern Philistine....and you can easily Google it. The Doctor....as he was known to many of those who knew him.....for he was an accomplished young doctor....on the Royal staff....when he decided to go into the ministry where he would work to heal men's souls....instead of healing their bodies where they just go back to the world....anyway the Doctor began by describing Isaac in need of water for his people....but the Philistines filled in all the wells with their rubbish.....so he first had to dig out what the Philistines had put there....and he related this directly to our seeking revival.....where that which is in our lives of the Philistines....the rubbish in our lives....has to go first. In other words to seek revival without repentance and self-examination is useless!
I've posted on this concept at times....for as with all of our efforts for revival in America....we may show much enthusiasm and passion.....but little to no mortification. Lloyd-Jones dwelled on the fact that dwelling on Jesus....on who He is....and what He has done for us....and on his glory and magnificence and power....is what revival stems from. He then spent a significant portion of the sermon on the authority of Scripture and the wrath of God of which we have little interest in....and on the Holy Spirit.....warning us never to refer to the Third Person of the glorious Trinity in any way other than God the Holy Spirit!
Well....the sermon is there for you if you should so desire. We are looking for revival....but we are not really looking for Christ. Martyn Lloyd-Jones greatly lamented the condition of the world in these revival sermons from the 1950s....but we are so much more lost today. I can't really even imagine him commenting today on the world or the church.....nor can I imagine Charles Spurgeon envisioning just how bad we are....even though he put his own health in jeopardy warning so intensely of where the church was going in the decade of the 1880s!
Note: I listened to the sermon twice more as the day wore on....and in booting it up....the warning on the condition was not there? I have no explanation for that...nor am I that interested in finding out why. I found this sermon and that is enough.
