The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust II: Interview with Greg Jones

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder. And again with me this week is Teddy and we are going to do part two of what was supposed to be a one part, but I wouldn't quit talking. Part two of the MLJTrust .org ministry led by Greg Jones.

And Teddy has interviewed Greg to talk about the Martin Lloyd Jones Trust, this collection of Lloyd Jones sermons that are available online, what it's about, how it got started, why would you want to listen to a British pastor from last century, and how can you support it?

So we hope that you will benefit from Greg Jones and learning about the MLJ Trust.

Well, Greg, you are with the MLJ Trust and really do appreciate you taking time to meet with us and talk with us, be on the podcast. Why don't we just start with, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do with the MLJ Trust.

Thank you, Teddy. And thank you also to you and your organization for what I think is a fantastic biography of Dr. Lloyd Jones's life, Logic on Fire, that has helped really make him known to a new generation.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me. My name is Greg Jones and I have the privilege of serving as president of the MLJ Trust. The MLJ Trust has a quite very simple goal, and that is as follows. It is to keep the sermons of Dr. Lloyd Jones for free, online, and available to anyone who wants to listen to them.

So our goal is simply to spread the sermons and make them available. And that's really it. And we look at different ways of doing that, of course, but we are the official library of Dr. Lloyd Jones's, Martin Lloyd Jones's sermons.

And before we get any further into this, I want to go ahead and tell everybody where they can find MLJ Trust.

You can find MLJ Trust on the MLJTrust .org. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah, MLJTrust .org. We also have an app which more and more users are using, and you can find that on the app store under MLJ Sermons, and more increasingly popular is our YouTube site as well, which you can find under the MLJ Trust as well.

Of course, there aren't any videos of Dr. Lloyd Jones preaching, but we do have the audio. Thankfully, we have the audio files from a period of the 1950s through to the 70s.

Yeah, and so I'm one of those who uses the app and I have found it to be just so encouraging just always to have, you know, I used it personally to study the book of Ephesians and, you know, going through just that book.

I love how it's laid out. We'll get into that in a little bit. But if you are looking for any of these things, don't worry. All of the links to the apps, the YouTube and MLJTrust .org will all be in the description.

Of the episode.

So, Greg, let's talk just a little bit, because I know that the doctor was in the beginning didn't even really want his sermons to be recorded, right?

I understand that to be correct, Teddy. There's a story which Ian Murray tells, and at the back of the juice, somebody had the foresight, can I just say, of recording these sermons. It was Faithful Saints at Westminster Chapel, which was Dr. Lloyd-Jones' second of two ministries, but his main ministry where his voice became known.

And somebody in the chapel said, we really need to be recording these sermons down for posterity and for the Christian church. So they started doing it. And often Dr. Lloyd-Jones would come and ask them, what are they doing back there?

And they'd have to say, you know, we're recording these sermons. And apparently they told him that there were some old ladies out in a county of England that couldn't make it to the chapel, so they were recording them so that they could hear.

To them.

And apparently that assuaged him somewhat and they allowed it to go on. But I think that he wasn't, you know, it's not like today, he wasn't a huge proponent of that and of the recording. Nevertheless, they stuck to it and I'm very thankful that they did.

Yeah, absolutely. And we have all benefited from it and benefited greatly. So talk to us a little bit about how the Lord has used the MLJ Trust in all of these sermons.

Well, I think we don't, of course, see the effects from where we're at, but I can say that, you know, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was a faithful, powerful preacher of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it excites me as I look at the MLJ Trust and the numbers that have grown quite significantly really over the last five or six years.

It really does excite me to see that, you know, every time our Lord sends out His Word, it doesn't come back void, as we know, and it's doing its work. So seeing the Gospels go out, we recently celebrated a milestone of 20 million downloads since the Trust was founded in 2013.

And you think that he preached certainly to hundreds, possibly hundreds of thousands over his ministry, but now he's reaching the millions. And it's the same old message. It's the good news of the forgiveness of sins through faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And it's a rich, wonderful message and a deep message that he was a proclaimer, a preacher.

Of.

So, you know, we don't see, I certainly hear the testimonies of people who have been grateful and the sermons have impacted and have been saved and edified and sanctified through them. I feel like I get but a glimpse as to the effect.

But it certainly spurs us on to do everything we can to make sure that these sermons continue to spread. But ultimately, it's the Lord who's given the growth. You know, we can do everything we can, but it's exciting to see that there's still an appetite and an increasing appetite for expository, serious sermons that proclaim the name of.

Our Lord.

I think there's a hunger there. That certainly excites me as to how the Lord may be working through them, the effects of which we don't see here, but, you know, continue to plug away to make them available.

Now, for someone who I remember the first time that I went to the MLJ app and I was fortunate enough to have a friend who shared a particular sermon with me and he said, hey, I just listened to this sermon.

And the idea of listening to old sermons to me was still kind of weird because it just was not a practice that I grew up with. It was not something that I was very familiar with. And I'm thinking, why would I listen to a sermon that was preached in 1965?

That concept was just kind of odd to me. So let me ask you this. Again, I was fortunate because I had a very good friend who said, I'd listen to this and you'll benefit from it, so listen to it. If someone is just finding out about the MLJ Trust and they open it up and it's overwhelming because there's so many sermons there, where would you recommend they get started?

That's a great question. I think it might be helpful to talk about the different sermonic styles that, I hesitate to use the word styles, but perhaps the different audience for whom Dr. Lloyd-Jones was preparing the sermons for within the collection.

So he would preach three times a week at his home church, once on a Friday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night, typically 45 minutes to 55 minutes and three times a week. And then he would also preach during the week around the country as well.

So there was a rich diet. Church life at Westminster Chapel was vibrant. I look at the bulletins and I see it was a vibrant church centered on the preaching of the word of God. And there was a rich diet available.

Now, going back to what I was saying, on a Friday night, Dr. Lloyd-Jones would give what would be called his instructional sermons. And in those, he would go through in detail books of the Bible at a time.

And it is very much, it's all preaching. He would not accept that these were lectures. He didn't believe really in lectures as such. He believed that every time there is a proclamation of the word of God, it's preaching combined with some teaching.

And he saw that it was really that spirit anointing or the power of the spirit that defined preaching versus teaching. He wasn't there on a Friday night to simply impart information. He was also there to be led by the spirit in his exposition.

So anyway, Friday night was very in-depth, expository, line by line, sometimes multiple weeks on one verse, for example. I mean, he spends, I think, 80 sermons on Romans chapter eight, and then 366 sermons going through the book of Romans.

He didn't even finish, got to chapter 14. That's Friday. Sunday morning was, he would, I think they would describe it as saints in the morning, sinners at night. So you'd have the sermon for the saints in the morning, which always included, you know, the gospel.

It wasn't as if there was, but it would, I guess, be geared more towards edification of people who, in general, you could say were already Christians. And then on the Sunday night, he would preach an evangelistic sermon.

Interestingly, I think he spent more time preparing for the evangelistic sermons than for the others because he believed that you didn't just, you know, say the same old gospel and, you know, just go over the same old stuff.

He believed that it was worthy of the most of time for him. In fact, he used to write out his sermons, evangelistic sermons, when he was at Abraham and his first ministry, because he believed that it was that important when you're proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers.

It was worthy of the most diligence and preparation. So those are the three tranches or segments of preaching that he would do. And now to your question, where would I recommend someone go if they're listening for the first time?

It really depends on the person. If it is someone who is, hear the gospel, is interested in the gospel, I would probably go to the series on a Sunday night. And a good series, the biggest series for the Sunday night evangelistic sermons would be the Book of Acts.

And indeed, if you're sending out sermons, then I think to people who perhaps may not have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I think those would be good. But then I would say if someone is looking to just go through for a Sunday morning, there's the series on Ephesians, which is the edification series.

Now, of course, all of these sermons have instruction in them. They have evangelism in them. They have edification in them. So it's certainly not all one type. There's a mixture. And then I would say a good place to start, if I had to pick one, I would say Great Biblical Doctrines, which was one of his first Friday night series, where he goes through some of the great doctrines of the Bible that you can see.

I think there are about 55 sermons there. And that, I think, would be an excellent introduction that would then segue into some of the bigger series. He's probably most known for his series on Romans.

And we currently, as a trust, we send out weekly sermons to subscribers who put their email into our website. We send out that weekly email. We're going through Romans at the moment. And it's some of the finest work, I believe, on the apostles' great epistle.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, we as Media Grazie and I personally have just benefited so greatly from the doctor. And, you know, I mean, I think the impact that he's made on us is shown by the fact that our first biographical documentary was done on the doctor.

And so we're incredibly grateful for the MLJ Trust. And so let me encourage you, if you're not familiar with the MLJ Trust, go and check it out. Again, links to everything will be in the description. And you just got some great information on where to start.

So, Greg, I'm sorry, man, we got to wrap this up. But thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And thank you for your work. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, Teddy.

Before we go, is there anything else you'd like to add or speak to our audience about?

Well, I would just, if people are interested in the ministry and they would like to keep in touch with the Trust, I just found out, actually, we've got about 10 new sermons, which I believe are net new sermons, which have been found on a CD.

So that's something which I let our subscribers know. We don't bother that often. We send out sermons. We're very focused on what we do, which is getting these sermons out. But if you're interested in news like that, or news on how much downloads, or we're just about to do a new YouTube site, initiatives, like new content, et cetera, then go ahead to our website, mljtrust .org.

And there's a box there to enter in your emails, and you'll keep up to date with everything that's going on. I think that's the only thing I would add.

Thanks for asking.

How can everyone who hears this, how can we support you, and how can we be praying for the Trust?

Well, thank you for asking, Teddy. We are an all-volunteer organization. The Lord has allowed me time to put into the Trust, and we're run by three board members, but we do have some other volunteers as well.

So we are reliant upon the goodwill of God's people and their support to keep the lights on, as it were, but then also to look at initiatives, not only just keeping the sermons available online, that obviously has costs, and running the website and the charity, but it's also then anything extra we then put, it's pretty much straight to the front lines.

Since we don't have any staff, we don't have any offices, not that they're bad things, that's the way that we're structured. So anything that we do extra, then we'll go straight into different initiatives.

We just redid our website. We're looking at redoing our YouTube site, but then also it's the funds go directly into how we can spread this to different territories and spread these sermons, which we're constantly thinking about new ways to get these messages out.

So that would be one area. And then definitely to pray for the continued, that the gospel may sound forth, as the Apostle Paul says, that the gospel may sound forth to the world through these sermons, and that people would be edified and inclined, and people would know about it, not only non-believers, but also the people in the church.

And perhaps in an era where there's perhaps been a misunderstanding or a devaluing of the gift of preaching in the church, that God's people may be fed through this, but then also the preachers may be raised up and shown what I believe to be the biblical model of preaching in power and spirit.

So that would be some of the prayer requests that we would ask for as we seek to be good, faithful stewards of these sermons, which I think are treasures for the church today.

All right.

Well, fantastic.

Great.

Thanks again for your time.

Thank you.