The new 40th anniversary edition of Preaching and Preachers
contains essays from several contemporary preachers, including a piece
from Ligon Duncan entitled “Some Things to Look For and Wrestle With.”
Zondervan has given me permission to reprint that essay below. Ligon’s
comments serve as a good introduction to the book and are full of wisdom
in their own right.
*******
I received my first copy of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Preaching and Preachers
as a gift from a family in my home church as I was just beginning my
studies in seminary. My copy was from the fourteenth printing of the
first edition. I had been introduced to Lloyd-Jones as a teenager
through his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (my mother had
worn bare a copy of the original two-volume edition) and through the
preaching ministry of my boyhood pastor who had been deeply edified by
Lloyd-Jones’ sermons. Indeed, many of the “Gospel men” in the old
Southern Presbyterian Church and in the nascent reforming movements of
the early 1970s were profoundly affected by Lloyd-Jones through his
preaching at the Pensacola Theological Institute at the McIlwain
Presbyterian Church in August of 1969 (as Hurricane Camille was crashing
ashore in Mississippi).
I read Lloyd-Jones’ preaching in written form before I read Preaching and Preachers.
From the first, I was greatly impacted by the power of his sermons,
even in printed form. Sentences and paragraphs from these sermons still
grip me, utterly. I only heard audio recordings of his messages later,
and the medium of his voice added a layer of effect that I had not been
able to appreciate before. Continue at Ligon Duncan
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