SUMMING UP
11
SUMMING UP
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
You have heard in the announcement that it is not my intention to deliver an address at this session but simply to say a few words before we turn to God in prayer. A number of friends expressed a desire that we should have a session of prayer, and as mine was the only session for which no subject had been announced and as in any case it is the last session, it was the obvious choice for this purpose. It is right and fitting that we should do this—although we are not quite clear about adopting this as a regular part of each Conference. There are those who feel that as we are all praying men and women who belong to churches which pray, and as it is very difficult to get together to a Conference such as this for two days, the primary object of this gathering should be to discuss these great matters together so that we may pray more efficiently when we go home. I am quite sure that that is right.
It must not be assumed therefore that this will always be the character of the last meeting. But we must be fluid in these matters, and not become set. If therefore we have the feeling, as I certainly have had on this occasion, that we should give this session to prayer in this way, well then you will understand the reason for it. But perhaps it is a good thing that we should on this one occasion at any rate remind ourselves that there should be an “end” to all we do here.
In order to direct attention to that I would like to consider with you briefly the words of our Lord, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:17). In many ways the greatest danger confronting us, all of us, is the danger of being content with a knowledge of these things, an intellectual knowledge and apprehension. Such knowledge is most valuable, but if it stops at that it can be quite useless and, indeed, positively harmful because it may drug us into a condition in which we feel that nothing further is necessary.
Now there was nothing that was more characteristic of the Puritan method of preaching than the way in which they always came to the “application.” They were always very insistent upon that. I have sometimes wondered whether the trouble with many of us is our tendency to forget the application. There are many reasons for this. The chief one, I believe, is the danger of reaction, and of an over-violent reaction, against something else. It is a very subtle thing, but quite unconsciously we allow other people, and other positions, and other ideas, and other movements to determine ours. That, surely, must always be wrong. We should always be in control, we should always be positive, we should not merely be a “reaction” against something. This is a principle, you will agree, which can be worked out along many lines. I feel that we are always in danger of allowing an opponent, or somebody who is obviously wrong, to determine the grounds of argument and the matter to be argued about. Now up to a point that is inevitable, but that is merely the negative part of our work, and it is essential that we should be positive. It is a bad state when we are just “reactions” against various things, because that means that having reacted against them we stop, and so our witness is nullified and becomes quite ineffective. Now if it is true to say of us, as has been suggested once or twice in this conference, that we are a people who seem to be lacking in an active urgent concern for souls and in activity and action, it is a very serious matter. I am not admitting the charge for a moment, but if there is some suspicion of truth here, well then this conference should have made us examine ourselves very seriously. In fact, I feel that that is the way in which one can sum up this conference this year. It seems to have been a repeated challenge along that particular line. Are we always a little liable to be content with just knowing? And having known, to stop at that and to do nothing? The first challenge came to us with respect to missionary activity. We must examine ourselves very seriously about that. We of all people should have a concern for the glory of God, and therefore for the salvation of men’s souls. Have we got that as we should have it? Does our understanding of these doctrines lead us to a great compassion for the lost? Have we real zeal for the glory of God? Not in theory, not in statement only, but in actual practice?
Then take the second session where we were dealing with the vital matter of communion with God. To what extent is our communion with God real? We are all clear about what is bad, what is false, and what is wrong, but what of this matter positively? What is the condition of our praying, our “prayer life” if you like? How much time do we spend in prayer? What kind of prayer is it? What do we really know about praying “in the Spirit,” which is surely the essence of real communion with God? “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” If we merely feel upbraided and searched and condemned, and stop at that, we shall just become miserable and we shall probably analyze ourselves and the situation still more and then become introspective and morbid and spend our time in utter discouragement, just thinking about ourselves and our own failure. That, of course, is utterly hopeless and useless. Surely, the effect it should have upon us is to make us realize what is possible and to be concerned about arriving at that. If we really have grasped what is possible for us in this whole matter of communion, well then we must go on, and we must not give ourselves peace or rest until this has become a living reality to us in our experience. And so with all the other themes that have been put before us. Prayer came up again in the session devoted to the subject of intercession and the Spirit’s work in us. We did not deal with that sufficiently in the discussion. These matters are so large that it is very difficult to find time to take up these points as we ought.
Then in the last session we faced the duty of rejoicing in the Lord, and of always rejoicing in the Lord. Now of all people, surely, we should be rejoicing most of all in the Lord, because the more you know about Him, as we were shown so clearly, the more you delight in Him and the more you rejoice in Him. There is something wrong somewhere, otherwise these charges, these suspicions about our position, should never arise at all. The introduction this afternoon reminded us of that—that people normally think of the Puritan as a miserable person. It is wrong of course, but why have they got that impression? It would be folly and untrue to say that there is no foundation for it at all. There is a misunderstanding of Puritanism that does lead to misery. There are some people who are so afraid of false joy that they are only really happy when they are more or less unhappy. There is no doubt about this. I once listened to a man preaching a sermon on “the rainbow in the cloud”; but the whole of the sermon was devoted to warnings against false joy, so instead of going out of the service filled with thoughts about the rainbow, we were sent out with thoughts about the cloud! It was just that the good man was obsessed by this fear of the false.
Now the Puritans—we are reminded of this constantly—were always warning against the false, but they did not stop at that. And we must not stop at that. Otherwise we just become reactions, we are merely and only against the false. But that is of no value, it does not lead anywhere. Surely we ought, if we understand these things at all, to have such knowledge of God, and such access to God through the Lord Jesus Christ by the One Spirit, that we should be increasingly men and women who come out of His Presence in such a way that people will know that we have been in His Presence.
What is needed today above everything in the Church is the type of knowledge of God which is seen in such a man as Robert Murray McCheyne. When that saintly man entered his pulpit on Sunday morning people began to weep at the mere sight of him, before he had uttered a sound. Like Moses, having spent time on the mountain with God, it was evident to the people when he came down that he had done so. There was a radiance about him. Do we know anything about that? Is it going to be obvious to our families and our friends and fellow church members as the result of these two days we have spent here that we really have been with God? That is the object of all this. Otherwise it becomes a kind of scholasticism, it becomes a coterie. God forbid that we should ever degenerate into that! The end and object of all this, and all we have done, is to bring us to a knowledge of God. And if it does not do that we shall just have been turning around in circles, giving a good deal of satisfaction to the flesh, and we shall go away proud of our knowledge and our understanding, but it will be no help to anybody at all. No, there is always an end to these things. Take the New Testament Epistles, take the great Pauline Epistles with their great doctrines—yet every single one of them was written with a pastoral intent. We tend to forget that! They all have a pastoral intent and object. All our knowledge must be applied. It is sinful not to do so. “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”
There is just one other word I want to say. I am not sure but that the danger confronting some of us, our greatest danger at the moment, may just be this—and there have been indications of it in this Conference this time—the danger of our estimating and judging aspects of doctrine in terms of our own experience and thereby “limiting the Holy One of Israel.” There is a great deal of that at the present time. Take for instance what was said in passing by several about people’s reactions to the Journals of George Whitefield. You noticed the tendency to say about them, “Ah, excess of youth,” etc! How many of us are in danger of having that charge brought against us? Thank God, I say, for a man who is subject or exposed to that charge! Or let us put it like this. To how many churches today do you think it would be necessary to write the First Epistle to the Corinthians? How many of our churches are so thrilling with spiritual life that you have to tell them about control and of being aware of excesses? I do not know of one. That is because there is no life.
When you have life and vitality there is always a danger of excess. I would not venture to suggest that Whitefield had no failings, but I cannot understand the type of person who can read those Journals of Whitefield and simply feel that this was just a young man who was carried away by animal excitement. We were actually given a quotation, which proved that he was not. We thanked God for the way in which he had been kept by the Spirit from losing his head, or losing himself in any respect, in spite of the phenomenal success that attended his ministry. No man was more humble, no man was more aware of the dangers.
But what I am afraid is happening is this, that we read of a man like Whitefield lying on his bed badly in need of physical rest in the midst of strenuous preaching but finding sleep quite impossible because God was pouring His love upon him, and having read that we simply say, “Ah, this is ecstasy, this is excess, this is enthusiasm.” Why do we say that? I am afraid there is but one reason for it. It is that we know nothing whatsoever about such experience. And because we do not know it, we criticize it in Whitefield. In other words, we are reducing what is offered us, and promised us, in the New Testament to the level of our own experience. Because there are so few Christian people today who know this “real” joy of the Lord, these “real” manifestations of the Son of God, these overwhelming experiences of the Spirit being poured out—because that is such a rare experience today, our tendency is to criticize, to query, and to doubt its spiritual character. We are defining doctrine in terms of our experience and of our understanding.
We must come back to the New Testament itself and see how then the people of God knew what it is to pray in the Spirit. Look at them in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and look at the teaching given in the Epistles. What do we know about the Spirit coming down? What do we know about being in prayer meetings where you forget time altogether? Now that happened in the early Church, and it has happened in the subsequent history of the Christian Church. What right have we to express our criticisms and to say, “Ah, this is just youthful effervescence, something which a man outgrows”?
The fact was that those men never outgrew that. Whitefield and others were aware of the fact and ready to admit that they used certain unguarded expressions in their preaching and in their writing, but the whole glory of that period is—I am referring particularly to the eighteenth century—the way in which the amazing spiritual experiences persisted. And we know something of the way in which these people died. Exalted spiritual experience was not something that applied to their youth only; some of them had their greatest experiences during their last days on earth. Thank God you cannot explain these things psychologically or in terms of age or of anything else.
Let us be careful lest we become guilty of “quenching the Spirit.” We can easily become guilty of this. In our fear of certain things we can become so careful and so wary and so cautious and so afraid, that nothing at all will ever happen to us, and nothing will ever happen to our churches. And so the position will continue as one of utter discouragement and may even go from bad to yet worse.
I feel that we have to be careful about these things and that we must come back again to the New Testament and see what is possible and open to God’s children, to Christian people, while here on earth. Is this kind of “pneumatic” element as prominent among us as it should be? That seems to me to be the great question. Doctrine after all is a foundation, and no more. It is not an end, it is only a beginning. It is the means. We must never stop at it. It is always designed to bring us, by faith, into that knowledge, that intimacy, that deep experience of the Living God, for which we really meet with Him, know that He is present, and are conscious of the energies of the Spirit in us and among us.
Do let us, therefore, examine ourselves very seriously about these things. It is very wonderful and enjoyable to have fellowship of kindred minds. How delightful to discuss and to talk about these things. What is more enjoyable than this? But it can lead to nothing—nothing at all—if we are not ever mindful of the fact that it is merely the means provided by God to bring us to a knowledge of Himself.
With that word let us turn to God together. Let us worship Him, let us praise Him, let us thank Him. But above all let us plead with Him to have mercy upon us and to visit us. Let us take the phrase of Isaiah, and “lay hold upon God.” How many are there that stir themselves up to lay hold upon God? That is the call to us, it seems to me, at a time like this. Here is the Truth. Yes, but why is it so ineffective? It needs this power to come upon it, the Spirit and the Word, the Spirit upon the Word, the Spirit using the Word, the Spirit through the Word. Let us pray to God to give us this “demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” this power and unction that can take a word that often sounds so dead, a mere letter, and turn it into a living flame that will do its saving and transforming work in the minds and the hearts of men and women. Let us pray.
O Lord our God, we come into Thy holy Presence and we come, O Lord, to worship Thee, we come to praise Thy Name. Great God of wonders, all Thy ways are Godlike, matchless, and divine. We thank Thee for the opportunity we have had together to remind ourselves of this. O help us, we pray Thee, at this hour to realize that Thou art the Living God, and that Thou are looking down upon us in this room.
O Lord, we come in the Name of Thy dear Son. We recognize we have nothing else to plead, we have nothing which we can present before Thee. We were all by nature the children of wrath, even as others, and we have sinned against Thee deliberately and spurned the Voice Divine so often, followed our own wills, been proud of ourselves, of what we are, not even recognizing that what we are was the result of Thy gracious gifts to us. O God, we see how poor and sinful and vile we all had become as the result of man’s original disobedience and sin and fall, and our own misdeeds and transgressions. So we come and we plead only the Name and the Blood of Thy dear Son, and we do thank Thee that in Him we know that we have this access. Lord, make us all sure of it, forgive us if we ever come into Thy Presence in His Name, yet uncertainly. Grant us all the full assurance of faith that we may know our acceptance, that we may rejoice in Thy Presence and praise Thy Name.
We thank Thee together for the energies of Thy blessed Spirit. We thank Thee that He does work within us both to will and to do of Thy good pleasure. We know that we would not be here even this afternoon were it not for this. We thank Thee that He brings us back to Thee, that suddenly He visits us and causes us to read Thy Word and to turn unto Thee in prayer.
O Lord, we have never seen and known so clearly that, were not this salvation Thine from beginning to end, we would still be undone. We know it is Thy work and that Thou art continuing it within us, and we humbly thank Thee for His disturbing us, for His convictions, for His drawings, for all His movements within us. O God, we thank Thee for this and our prayer is that we may know this in a greater, a mightier manner. O Lord, enable us to pray in the Spirit. O come, we pray Thee therefore, upon us in this very gathering and enable us so to pray.
Lord, Thou knowest our desire is that Thy great Name may be magnified, that men and women may be humbled before Thee; yea, that the very nations be humbled before Thee. O God, authenticate Thy Word, grant power by Thy Spirit unto those who preach it in sincerity and truth. Revive Thy work, O Lord, in the midst of these evil days. Hear us in our prayer, and lead us on now by Thy Spirit that we may pray truly unto Thee.
We ask it in Christ Jesus’ Name. Amen.