The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust I: An Introduction

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me this week you can see is Teddy James. Good to have you, Teddy.

Hey.

Teddy, if you don't know of Teddy, Teddy is normally the guy behind the cameras where he would prefer to stay. But I hogtied him and got him to agree to help me with a special podcast today where we are going to be interviewing Greg Jones.

Teddy is going to be interviewing him. Greg Jones is a Brit who has escaped to the sunny beaches of Florida, which we said wouldn't be—.

We're pretty jealous of right now.

Yeah, it would be good right now because Mississippi has just come out of a week of ice storm, so that's pretty rare for us. Greg Jones is the president of MLJ Trust, Martin Lloyd Jones Trust. You can find that online, mljtrust .org, and it is the most complete resource for Lloyd-Jones sermons.

And they're arranged, you know, topically. They're arranged biblically. It's a wonderful resource that if you have not benefited from it, you should go there. It is a ministry that we highly recommend.

Making these available across the world has great potential in the kingdom. And if you want to support that ministry financially, I'm sure they would really appreciate that.

Yeah, before you go further, and you'll hear about this as I interview Greg later, but there's also an app and a YouTube channel. And we're going to have links to all of that in the description.

Yeah, yeah, great. So, great place. Something that Teddy and I both have used in our own lives, individually and ministerially, often.

Yeah, absolutely. So, John, let me ask you something, because like you just said, we have both benefited and countless others have benefited from Lloyd-Jones' ministry some 40 years after his death. What is it about him that gives such a timeless quality?

Lloyd-Jones’ Timeless Ministry and Reformed Influence

Yeah, Lloyd-Jones, if you're not familiar with Lloyd-Jones, Lloyd-Jones was actually born in 1899, which to me sounds like a million years ago. But 1899, died in 1981 after a bout with cancer. He was a Welshman, not an Englishman, even though he does sound like the quintessential English butler to an American ear.

I remember recommending Lloyd-Jones to a pastor in the South. He was a member of our church. And he listened to him, and then he ended up reading him. And he said he benefited more from reading because he said, I just could not get past the British butler sound.

So, if that catches you up, you can always read. He was Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, and the doctor is not a theological doctor. He didn't have a PhD in theology, but rather he was trained as a medical physician and was very successful as a young man, was in a couple of honored positions.

Assistant to the Queen's Physician, I think is what the official title was. That was a demonstration of his diligence and his skill. And that physician-like mind showed up in his ministry. Lloyd-Jones, very much a logical thinker, but also a very diagnostic thinker in dealing with the problems of humanity at large or in dealing with people one at a time.

When people at the church there in London, his second pastor, his first pastor was 10 years in a small Welsh town, Aberavon. I think Sandfields is the name of the church. And then he went from Wales to London and pastored there for about 30 years in Westminster Chapel.

Not Westminster Cathedral. That's an Anglican, Westminster Chapel. And it's still there. The building is still there. The church is sadly very changed after his resigning. But Lloyd-Jones exercised there such an extraordinary ministry in the sense that it kind of became the pulpit for Western careful evangelicalism.

And his influence in the UK really was that over evangelicals in the UK in the middle of the 20th century, he kind of became the father, you know, the guide of serious-minded, especially young people who were converted in the 50s.

They call them, if they were men who went into the ministry, they have been nicknamed the 50s men. So many college-age, university-age young men converted hearing Lloyd-Jones preach, influenced by the emphases that he maintained throughout his Christian life and ministry and experiential Calvinism, for lack of a better term.

Very much influenced by the Puritans, but also by the 18th century Great Awakening and on their side of the pond, evangelical revival men, George Whitefield over there, Jonathan Edwards here. So with the wedding of serious focus on doctrine, with a very warm application, a very aggressive application of those truths to the soul, Lloyd-Jones' ministry, spanning those 40 years in total, I think has a timeless quality that makes his books and his sermons very beneficial.

Even today.

Yeah. And now, John, for you personally, we get to see kind of the impacts and the ripples of Lloyd-Jones' ministry. You know, I personally, I feel very removed from them, right? But you got to see people and meet people in your time in Wales who had firsthand exposure to Lloyd-Jones.

Personal Encounters With Lloyd-Jones in Wales

Yeah, from 96 to 99, my wife and I, and at that time, our two children, we lived in Cardiff, Wales. And that was, we attended a church called the Heath Evangelical Church, pastored at that time by Vernon Hyam, who's passed away.

Vernon Hyam was the best friend of Martin Lloyd-Jones and vice versa. In those last decades of his life, they were both Welshman, very proud to be Welshman. Lloyd-Jones often, therefore, spent the weekend over in Cardiff and would preach at the Heath Evangelical Church.

And when he came, then he would be hosted by families in the church. He would spend the evening, you know, spend the night with the pastor and his wife. So we got to, you know, I arrived there in 96, having read Martin Lloyd-Jones' Sermon on the Mount.

And some of his articles at, you know, the Westminster or the Puritan Conference. And when I got there, I remember sitting at a table with a group of men. It was a church family retreat or camp, family camp.

So all the men were up a little early and, you know, like men, letting moms chase the little ones all around the campus. And the men were there having tea or coffee, you know, at 730 in the morning. And they broke into theological discussions.

It was a very encouraging church, the Heath Evangelical Church. I will never be able to repay them for how the Lord used them in my family's life. But I remember sitting with the men and they were discussing something that I think is a bit obscure.

They were discussing, was it right to listen to classical music? And I thought, you know, if we're going to ask, is it right to listen to Black Sabbath versus, you know, whoever was in the Christian group?

Yeah, like, okay, but no, no, they weren't talking about that. You know, what about Bach? Well, they said, Bach, yes, Bach. Bach, he, you know, he was a, he at least was a God-fearing man. But Beethoven?

I don't know about Beethoven. And I just sat there quietly. I was the new guy, you know, I had just arrived. And I just kept thinking, I cannot believe, you know, I feel like I'm on television somewhere.

Somebody's got a camera pointed at me like this is a joke. We can't be having a discussion on the philosophy of Bach versus Beethoven and the moral correctness of listening to them. And, and so guys were going back and forth.

And I just was kind of in disbelief. And one man chimed in and said, well, the doctor said, and he gave what the doctor said about Bach or Beethoven or whatever. And basically he said, you know, you can listen to these classical musicians and what their lives were really doesn't influence, you know, how we're listening to that music.

And so, you know, you don't have to be persnickety and whatever benefits a man's soul, let him do that. Well, anyway, whenever they quoted the doctor, two things shocked me. Number one, I didn't know who the doctor was.

I remember reading a guy named Martin Lloyd Jones, but I didn't know that he got called the doctor. The only, the doctor I'd ever heard of was doctor who were on television when I was a kid. And they would come on the PBS, you know, when you only had four stations and one of them was PBS.

You know, when all the good shows went off, then doctor who came on and I knew then that it was time to turn the TV off and go outside and play. So I thought you cannot be quoting doctor who that that just can't be.

Well, they weren't. They were quoting Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones. And so they would just call him the doctor. So that shocked me. It took me a minute to figure out who in the world are you talking about? But second, another shocking thing was when they quoted the doctor said that was the end of the conversation.

Whether or not they agreed with the doctor's statement, they felt it was inappropriate to argue. And so if you could quote the doctor among the evangelicals 20, 30 years ago, it kind of shut the argument on that was the authoritative statement.

So I thought, who is this doctor? Well, Lloyd Jones. And what I saw other than that strangeness, and we'll talk about that because there is a danger there when we admire someone. So I want us to hit the dangers in a minute.

But what I saw that was beneficial was, and by far, that was 99%. I saw men and women in their 60s, 70s, who were college age when Lloyd Jones was preaching. And they, especially in London, they would be at the University of London and they would go there and they would hear that this Welshman is preaching.

So they go hear this Welshman preach. He preached in English and Welsh. Sometimes he preached in Welsh on the BBC. So they would go and hear him in the city of London. And that church became just like the pulpit for the UK.

And so many of our friends, personal friends at that church were converted under Lloyd Jones preaching. And then their view of what a Christian was, what doctrine is, what use is Christian history and the study of theology.

What is a man? All of that was fashioned around Lloyd Jones' extraordinary influence for decades. So, for example, we would see men in their homes. They would invite us over after church and we'd have lunch with the family in the church.

And I would be amazed to see that the men would be very servant-like. They were genuinely helpful to their wives. They would grab up the dishes and do some cleaning. They would make tea for us while we were waiting on lunch.

And then when we had conversations, their conversation was gracious. So it wasn't ranting against their government. It wasn't ranting against the liberals down the road or the non-evangelicals, as the British tend to use evangelical, non-evangelical as their terms.

Their conversation, even when it had to be critical, was very humble, firm about theology. Not like movable, not mushy, firm, but humble, attractive. And I remember hearing a man talking to his son behind me in the church where we attended.

And the son said something like, Dad, where is the story of Jesus and such and such, some miracle? And the dad said, well, you can find that in Luke chapter such and such and Matthew chapter such and such, but it's also over in Mark.

And I thought, that dad didn't pull out his phone and pull up log off software. He just knew when we visited their homes at that time, VHS tapes were going out and DVD was in. So we would walk into people's homes and there would be a bookshelf.

Well, you know, that's not shocking. But what was shocking was it wasn't full of DVDs. It was full of books by banner of truth that were history books and theology books and biographies and, you know, sermon collections of sermons of different people.

And it was just so, such an oasis for me spiritually to be among the people. And the human instrument that God used underneath all of that, as well as the pastor of that church, but it wasn't just at that church.

But the human instrument was Lloyd-Jones, his continual influence in the sense of driving home the fact that the living God taking his word through it being preached to a group of people as they gather, that God's word in the hands of the spirit of God was all we need.

We didn't need to add any other bells and whistles. And he, in fact, when he first came to Wales, he removed a lot of what we would consider maybe essential, what the American church would think of as essential elements, you know, a big choir, a lot of fun, fancy programs.

And Lloyd-Jones dismantled all of that and stripped it back to the essentials. And the folks were quite shocked, but the Lord moved in such a wonderful way that many of the elders in the church were converted in the Welsh church there.

And then, you know, and then it spread through the community at really what we would consider what the British people called a gentle visitation. What Americans would say is a real revival. So we saw the continuation of that influence 30 years, 20, well, 20 years later, and it was still so vibrant.

One of my favorite accounts of Lloyd-Jones that was told to me by a man that was there when the account occurred is from the pastor that was there, Vernon Hyam. Vernon Hyam was very ill and had to be hospitalized frequently, you know, through his 30s and 40s and 50s.

He had some type of lung issue that was so extreme that he couldn't breathe. And his family would be called in from all around Wales to say goodbye to your father. He won't live through the night. And then he would live through the night.

For years, he preached with an oxygen tank near him in the pulpit, and he couldn't do visitation because of the weakness. And the Lord did, he feels very clearly, heal him. And that had to do a lot with Lloyd-Jones praying with him about that.

But that's another story. But my favorite Lloyd-Jones account is when Vernon Hyam was in the hospital. Now, you know, they had wards. I think they still do have wards in the British hospital. So there will be one big room with maybe eight beds.

And they have like little curtains separating them at night or whatever. So in the daytime, you might be able to see all the people in the same room. Vernon Hyam was there, and Lloyd-Jones drove over to see him.

And he walked in with his black overcoat, which he always seemed to wear. And he sat beside him and just talked naturally to him how he was doing. How was his, you know, how was his family? You know, a couple of spiritual questions perhaps.

And then he would get up and he would pray with him and get up and leave. So just very natural. Vernon Hyam said that the men that were in that room weren't all the kind of men that he would have thought would be interested in what Lloyd-Jones had to say.

One man, you know, basically spent all of his time reading kind of dirty romance novels. But, you know, that's kind of a euphemism. It was more dirty than romance. So he would read these kind of trashy novels, and his mouth would be pretty foul.

And he was right next to his bed was next to Vernon Hyam. So he got to hear and see Lloyd-Jones a lot. So this man with a foul mouth and a foul mind said to my pastor when he was there, when's that man coming back?

And he said, well, which man? I've had a lot of men, you know, visit over the week. And he said, you know. And in Welsh, he said, a dyn glan, the clean man. So he said, the clean man, you know, the clean man.

Well, I mean, everybody that went in there was cleaned up and dressed properly. They're Brits, you know. And he didn't understand at first, but he was talking about Lloyd-Jones. That foul-mouthed, foul-minded man saw Lloyd-Jones just talking naturally to his friend, and he realized something is clean about that man.

And that, I think, is so helpful for us today as we appreciate Lloyd-Jones' Reformed theology.

Great.

That's the bedrock. But we cannot stop short of that expression of biblical theology that we would be clean in a way that's attractive.

And now, with all of that said, I now want to be like, okay, I want to listen to Lloyd-Jones. And I've been listening to Lloyd-Jones. In fact, the church now is reading Romans 6, one of our small groups.

And I'm in that, ready to get back into it. But the big question, when you look at all of Lloyd-Jones and his legacy of the banner of truth, everything, it's a bit overwhelming. So where would you suggest people start if they've never read Lloyd-Jones or listened to Lloyd-Jones, and they just say, okay, where do I go?

By the way, if you'll continue listening, I do ask this question to Greg Jones, and I think he gives a great answer. But, John, I want to know what you say to that.

Where to start?

Yeah.

Well, I think with Lloyd-Jones, you're kind of spoiled for choice. But my starting place with Lloyd-Jones was actually his series of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount. And so I think it was probably by preaching through those that I was looking for resources.

And so there's a commentary, Sermon on the Mount, two volumes, Martin Lloyd-Jones. And I start to read. And really, it's his sermons. But he is so careful and he's so methodical and logical as he moves through a text that it really read like a kind of a devotional commentary.

I started there. But another I would say the second. The second resource of Lloyd-Jones that influenced me was his series of sermons in 1959 -1960 on the 59 or 58 -59 revival that occurred a century before in Wales, in Ireland, in the U .S.

So the 58 revival. When they talk about the 58, they're talking about 1858. So he used the centenary anniversary of that work of the Lord to talk to his people about what is real biblical revival. And I forget how many sermons there are, maybe 24 or so.

But I read the book some, and then I was painting a house, the exterior of a house one summer in South Mississippi. And so I remember as I painted, I just played they were tapes back then. I just played all the tapes of that, and I just listened to the entire book.

It is such a good introduction to a balanced and biblical perspective of the extraordinary seasons of grace that we call revival. And it gives history, good theology. It's just a safe and really stirring resource.

Fantastic.

Now, as with any of the blessings that the Lord gives us, they can be taken and used appropriately, or they can be used inappropriately. And there are dangers inherent in listening to Lloyd-Jones. What are they?

Dangers in Admiring Lloyd-Jones and Using His Sermons Wisely

Yeah, and maybe that sounds strange to people. You know, you recommend listening to a person, and then you say, what are the dangers? But everything outside of Scripture is imperfect, you know, incomplete, perhaps.

No matter how much we appreciate it.

That doesn't mean that if you read a theological statement written by a man today, that it's got errors. But it's going to be incomplete. There is no book that you can read and say, having read that book, every truth that I need to know was included, and it was included in a way that was so perfectly balanced and interwoven with every other truth, that there is no possibility that I would be in any way harmed, or there is no lack in this book.

Well, human books, mere human books, don't carry that quality, and mere preachers don't carry that quality. So, one danger, of course, is that in, let's start with the man. In admiring the man, and I do admire the man, and if you read his two-volume biography, which is a big go, because Ian Murray wrote it.

Ian Murray is just the greatest for writing Christian biographies.

Oh, he's so good.

Yes, so interesting, so, focuses on the right things, is careful. So, Ian Murray did a two-volume on Lloyd-Jones, and that may be a bit daunting. I think there's a reduced version, but read the two-volume if you have time.

Crossway has one as well, that I've heard is good.

Right, yeah.

The two-volume Banner of Truth, I think for the pastor, you just have to read the two-volume. I used to go to, when I was in Wales, and I would show up at church, the pastor, Vernon Heim, would sometimes corner me and say, how are you, John?

How's your studies? How are they going? And then he would say to me, have you read the two-volumes on Lloyd-Jones? And I would say, well, I did one, but I haven't read both. And he would, jokingly, he had a great sense of humor, he would shake his head with terrible disappointment and say, shame on you.

Have you read it since?

Yes, I have. Okay, so that is, for a pastor, a great resource because it shows Lloyd-Jones facing, you know, 50 years ago, compromises, cultural compromises that we're facing today. Not some of the more edgy expressions of that, but the deeper problems.

British evangelicalism, British religion is about 50 years ahead of us. British religion, not the evangelical churches necessarily. But kind of general run-of-the-mill religion in Britain is, I would say, 50 years ahead of us in a downward spiral.

But we are certainly following some of their bad choices. British evangelicalism, at its best, is a wonderful antidote to that. Lloyd-Jones, the man, I admire Lloyd-Jones, but you can admire a man in such a way that, you know, you imitate that man's idiosyncrasies rather than following him where he followed Christ.

So one thing I did, I was preaching through Ephesians. This was the first couple years of the church here. And so it was a Wednesday evening series. And I, you know, as a preacher, I would be studying four or five days for this.

And so I was so excited. So I had 50 minutes worth of tightly packed material. And that was probably too much. But what happened was when I finished my sermon, I would read Lloyd-Jones last so that I wasn't just, you know, reading him and re-preaching his sermon.

So I would do all my work. And then I would kind of use Lloyd-Jones like icing on the cake. But here was the problem. He was so good. I thought, that is so good. I'll just kind of use a chunk of it. And I would have my 50-minute sermon.

And then Lloyd-Jones would form my conclusion, which was a 20-minute re-preaching of Lloyd-Jones. So the other elder at the time, a man named Lanny Autry, who was always so gracious, never rebuked me.

I think twice in my, twice in the maybe 20 years, 19 years that we worked together, did he ever pull me aside and kind of warn me. He just was so gentle with me. He was an older man and very wise. He pulled me aside.

And this was one of those two times. He said, John, you're killing us on Wednesday night. You're preaching an hour and five minutes straight. That didn't include any other part of the service. And we're tired at the end of the day of work.

And you're not, you're excited. And he said, it's all good stuff, but why don't you divide it in half and do half this week, half next week. We can't focus for an hour and five minutes like that at the rate you're talking, et cetera.

And that was a good reminder, but that was an abuse. I was using Lloyd-Jones sermon as my sermon, so to speak. And that's always a possibility, you know, that we have when we admire people. Another wrong use of Lloyd-Jones, other than the obvious one of allowing Lloyd-Jones sermons to become your Bible or your Bible study.

So instead of you doing the hard work on your knees with some good study guides, I don't mean, you know, MacArthur's sermon series, which, you know, that's his commentaries are really sermons or Lloyd-Jones sermons, or even Matthew Henry's.

I mean, those are very sermonic. They've already done all the work for you. Those are great in their place, but first you, a Bible, you know, a notebook, a couple of, you know, Bible dictionaries or whatever, and the Lord, and you're wrestling with the text and you're digging your own well and not just drinking out of the well that Lloyd-Jones drank from.

And that's always dangerous. The better the preacher, the more tempting it is to make his sermons or his books a substitute for Scripture without noticing. But let me give you one, I'll give you two other dangers.

Well, let's throw them together. One, last danger, comparing Lloyd-Jones to ourselves or compare Lloyd-Jones to our preacher or our pastors. So to ourselves, if you're a pastor and you listen to Lloyd-Jones, and then you ever have to listen to yourself, you know, maybe you've done some horrible crime and you have to listen to your own sermons.

You know, it's penance. It sounds so horrible and you think, why would anybody ever come to the church and preach? And it can be very paralyzing when you are aware of how poor you are at your main task.

And Lloyd-Jones said about himself, he would not cross the street to listen to himself preach. And I don't think that was hyperbole. That's how he felt. We wouldn't agree with that, but we feel that way about ourselves.

So if you're thinking of a dad leading, you know, family worship, a Sunday school teacher, you know, a small group leader or one of the preachers at a church, it is easy to compare yourself to Lloyd-Jones and say, I'm terrible.

It's worthless. Why would anybody benefit from this? And you can be paralyzed by the awareness of your personal inadequacy. One time I was in Britain and I was eating with a man named Ernest Bevan. Ernest Bevan was a retired school teacher.

And more importantly, he was the elder. They only had one elder at this time, the elder of a vibrant little church right outside of Oxford, England called Banbury. But it was right next to Oxford. So I was in dreamland when I got to preach at this little church.

It was mostly university age, young people, and then some, you know, then some families. So I preached there that morning and I felt that the Lord helped me and they listened well. It was about 50 people.

They had no pastor at the time and 50 people that are Ernest, that's good for a British evangelical church. So I went home with Mr. Bevan because I was too far, you know, to drive all the way back to Wales.

So I spent the afternoon with the elder. We had lunch together and then he started talking and he started talking about Lloyd-Jones because he had attended Westminster when he was young. And not only that, but he was with other men meeting with Lloyd-Jones talking about the need to establish a new book publishing company.

And that became the banner of truth. So he was in that meeting and he was still in college. So he was the youngest guy there. Most of them were older preachers and someone, you know, they like Brits, they're very methodical and they're slow to make decisions.

Not like Americans, we rush out and sometimes have to come back a little. So they had met many times and Lloyd-Jones felt that it was delayed too much. And so he said, well, we will make a start of it now and he said, they picked a name and then he said to the men in the room, men, give all of your donations for the new publishing company, give it to Mr. Bevan.

He is now our secretary treasurer and he was a college kid. And so he just kind of froze and he was nominated by the doctor. So there was no arguing. Everybody got their wallets out and gave him the money and he became the treasurer of the Banner of Truth Trust.

And so I was there with him and he was talking about Lloyd-Jones preaching and it was so, he remembered those days, you know, 15, 20 years later with such gratitude for the Lord's work through Lloyd-Jones and then I had to preach that night.

So it was about four o 'clock by that time and let's say I had to preach at six. So I said to Mr. Bevan, Mr. Bevan, would you mind if I just go into a private room and have some time before I preach tonight?

He said, you know, of course, go ahead. So I go into the room, I lock the door and lay out on the floor and I just plead with the Lord and say, God, this man remembers Lloyd-Jones and I've just heard three hours of anecdotes from the way you use this Lloyd-Jones and I'm not that guy and I'm embarrassed to preach in front of him but more importantly, God, if you could use me tonight in the sermon, I want Ernest Bevan to be reminded that it wasn't Lloyd-Jones, it was you and of course, Ernest Bevan knew that.

So I preached that night and it was, I would say in the 30 years that I've been allowed to preach, it was one of the more noticeably assisted times and it was like the Lord picked you up at the beginning of the sermon and chauffeur drove you through the sermon and dropped you off at the end and I don't mean to be silly mystical but I even remember that night feeling like I opened up my heart in preaching and it is like it all poured out and at the end, I said the end,.

Amen.

And it was almost as if you weren't aware of the normal labor of making sure I say this in the right way, it was just so free. After the sermon, a number of the college kids came up and had good spiritual questions and they were filtering past me, the people shaking, saying thank you, thank you,.

You know,.

And I was about to go home but Mr. Bevan was the last one in the line and he's British, not Welsh, he's English so he's not very emotional. He comes up to me and he holds out his hand and I went to shake it and say, well, thank you for letting me have lunch,.

You know,.

All those things. And this man in his 70s who was a math teacher was crying and he shook my hand and said, choked up, he said, I almost forgot what it was like and then he walked out and so I was so grateful to the Lord that he helped me for Mr. Bevan's sake,.

You know,.

So it's an easy trap to read Lloyd-Jones, to hear these things, to, you know, to read any biography and think, well, what use is there for me to even try because I'm nowhere like that. And well, neither were they,.

You know,.

It was the Lord. Last danger, comparing your pastor to Lloyd-Jones. You listen to Lloyd-Jones and the Lord gave him extraordinary gifts but he didn't have every gift, he wasn't necessarily the best pastor, perhaps he wasn't necessary,.

You know,.

I don't know, I don't want to give a list of perhaps, we know the areas he was strong but I wasn't in his church year after year, I don't know the weaknesses of that church, it never really, Lloyd-Jones never really led that church to rethink what a church is so much,.

You know,.

It remained kind of a preaching station so it was large, number a few thousand.

And, you know,.

As for everyone really being shepherded, I don't know that that was really the case, it was more of a, it was more of a place that people went to hear the truth, preached with great blessing and so it was a great blessing but it's not the model for every church and there would have been weaknesses and Lloyd-Jones had weaknesses so all we know is the very best of Lloyd-Jones, it's not fair to compare that to your pastor and say, well, you don't preach like Lloyd-Jones,.

You know,.

I mean, we have had people leave Little New Albany Church because they said, I don't preach like John MacArthur and I said, well, if that's your,.

You know,.

If that's what you're looking for, you probably should leave because I can't preach like John MacArthur so to compare your pastor to Lloyd-Jones and to say, well, I'm not getting anything from you but when I listen to this British guy, you know, it's so helpful that if your pastor is a genuine, earnest pastor with a lot of imperfections and weaknesses but he is an earnest man, earnest for the Lord, then you should be patient.

You can give him Lloyd-Jones books, you can give him books that Lloyd-Jones read but even those, you have to give sparingly, pastors don't have time to read a library that you give them and they don't have time to listen to every sermon or podcast that you send them,.

You know,.

The link to, people do that to me and I rarely have time to do it so I tell them, I probably won't listen to this and it kind of hurts their feelings but you want to be patient, pray for your pastor and give him time, be a help, Lloyd-Jones had men who helped him, be a help to your pastor, he will not become Lloyd-Jones but he can become the man that God has designed him to be and that is the man that God has chosen for that church so that is the best man and so you want your pastor to become the most Christ-like version of himself that is humanly possible in this life, you don't want him to become Lloyd-Jones and so be patient.

John,.

I'm going to stop you right there, there's one that's a fantastic place to stop, thinking of not just the benefits why we want to listen to Lloyd-Jones, why we love the MLJ Trust but also some of the dangers just simply to be aware of how to pray for your pastor, I think it's wonderful but the reality is there's a whole interview that caused this discussion, we wanted to give a little context, we wanted to give a little of your personal connection to Lloyd-Jones there, how we've benefited from him and we've taken up the entire time of the podcast so here's what we're going to do, we're going to stop the podcast this week, right here and next week we will actually get to the interview with Greg Jones.