Martyn Lloyd-Jones - The Lord's Supper guards Doctrine

I am currently preaching on the early chapters of the Book of Acts in the mornings at Bethel Evangelical Church, Hanley. While doing preparation for a sermon on the latter part of Acts 2, I came across this Lloyd-Jones quote in his Authentic Christianity:

“So the Lord’s Supper was not just the idea of the apostles, not something conjured up by the Church, but it was a solemn command of the Lord. Why did He command them to keep it? And here is a most significant thing. I believe he gave this command in order to preserve the doctrine, it is a kind of display of the truth, and our Lord wanted to preserve the truth throughout the centuries until the end of the Christian era.
“What a wonderful thing this has been! This table with its bread and wine has often been a terrible condemnation of the pulpit. Men have entered pulpits and said that Jesus was only a man, that he was nothing more than a moral exemplar and a good teacher. They have said that his death was the death of a pacifist, that it was a great tragedy and that we must imitate his spirit and live in the same way. They have preached like that in pulpits and then they have gone down to the Communion table, and there has been no connection between their preaching and the message of that Communion service. The Communion table, the broken bread and the poured out wine, has been preaching a message.
“And so, because of men and their fallibility – and we are all fallible – the Lord took a step to preserve the truth, the doctrine. And if you want to know how to test modern teaching and modern preaching, here is your test: what relationship does it bear to the bread and the wine? Does it lead to that? Is the Communion service a demonstration of the message that has been preached? If it is not, the message has been false. Here is the Lord’s own command and he has commanded it in order to preserve the teaching.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Authentic Christianity Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 1999) Pp. 159-160

Forthcoming Banner of Truth Titles.

The Banner of Truth Trust has been a consistently excellent publisher since the 1950s. They publish books of lasting worth, not just the latest paperback self-help book that will vanish as quickly as it appeared. Two books announced recently, but not yet available in the UK caught our eye as ones that are of particular interest.

First, John Morgan's Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales. Translated into English for the first time, it apparently consists of "two massive volumes", hence the rather steep price of £40. It is apparently full of primary source material, rather like the four volumes of the Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers. Another piece of Church history that was hidden to us English for so long is finally put into English dress. We trust that the translator has done his job as well as he did with The Atonement Controversy. It may take us a while to get together the funds to buy this work, if some kind soul does not send us a review copy.


The second volume is by Iain Murray, Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace. This is no mere re-hashing of material from the two-volume biography of Lloyd-Jones that Murray wrote, but a study of three major themes in Lloyd-Jones. These are: the nature of true preaching; the need for full assurance for Christianity to be vibrant and persuasive; and the question of whether or not Lloyd-Jones' understanding of the New Testament Church was overly divisive. It promises to be another of Iain Murray's great contributions to Reformed literature.

We shall be tightening the belts to add these volumes to our library. Unfortunately medical issues prevent us from selling our bed.