So you know it's our privilege to have with us Dr. Jeff Thomas, an avarice with whales. He has been with us, oh, at least two, I think maybe three times before. And we trust this will not be the last time. God willing, he'll be back again. But may the Lord open up our ears and open up his mouth as he speaks to us from the life of Timothy Jones. Dr. Thomas, it's a great pleasure. I can't believe I'm back here. I love being here every occasion. It's been such a happy time for me. And then to see you and so many friendly faces, thank you very much for giving me an open pulpit to come here and choose my own subjects. And one of the spin-offs of coming here was that I picked up the hymn Rock of Ages and that new tune which you taught me. And we sing it now in Aberystwyth in Wales and love to sing it. So I'll be listening to the hymns that we'll sing today and maybe I'll find something else to take back. to the land of my fathers. I want to speak to you about Dr Lloyd-Jones and really in order to put him in the context of his life and influence, I want to refer to the 1904 revival in Wales and the influence that it had on him and on me indirectly. on all Christians in Wales, and to say something about revival, how I understand it, that term, and that I think that it has three characteristics. the presence of God in our meetings and we in Aberystwyth haven't obtained that so very often but there are times when God's Spirit descends upon a meeting and everybody knows that God is present. The unseen world becomes wonderfully and terribly close and at those times the preaching is transformed The preacher speaks with a boldness and an authority that's obviously supernatural, and hearers forget the preacher, and they just hear the voice of God speaking to their hearts, and familiar truths become real as they're preached, and those who hear them tremble at the thought of God. They shake with fear. as they are aware of their sins and then overwhelmed with wonder as they hear of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and they're filled with a joy that they can't put into words as they think of the heaven that's soon to come to us, the singing is transformed, people sing as they've never sung before, realising how wonderful are the words that they are singing and conscious that God is listening to them and the praying is transformed. God's people pray with confidence and earnestness and with a wrestling spirit, I will not let thee go unless thou bless me. And all of us, I think and have had some touch, some contact with some meetings like that through the course of our earthly pilgrimage. I want all our meetings to be like that. I want to know that God is among his people wherever they meet. at something that we've not attained in Aberystwyth. And then secondly, my understanding of revival is that we'll see many people of every sort, from every kind of background, converted. I long to see real conversions, powerful, unmistakable conversions. I long to see people terrified at the thought of the wrong that they've done to God, calling out, what must I do to be saved? I long to see them drawn to Christ, thrilled with him. overwhelmed by his willingness to save sinners. I long to see them breaking from the old life completely and turning their backs on the world, being baptised, giving themselves in consistent obedience to Christ. And I want to see that happening to people of all kinds. One of the great proofs or that the gospel is true is the fact that it has power to reach every kind of sinner. I want to see young children saved and elderly folk then in nursing homes, old people's homes. I want to see bright young students saved and I want to see illiterate tramps who sit holding signs begging up the side of the street and want to see God's saving power working among wealthy business people and asylum seekers who moved into the land and delinquent youngsters on street corners dabbling in drugs Most of the folk added to our membership has been university types, graduate types, scientists and librarians and computer experts, and it's grand to have them, but I'd love to see the bricklayers and the window cleaners and the plumbers and the unemployed, and we haven't obtained them, that mix of people And then the church becomes sort of unbalanced, it becomes a congregation overloaded with eggheads. And I'm praying that we'll see many such folk then turning to the Lord in 2011 and 12. We haven't already obtained that. And then when I talk about revival, thirdly, that every member of the church would be filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm not necessarily talking about one great crisis experience. I'm not talking about tongue speaking at all. I'm saying that every one of us ought to be brimful of the life of God at every moment. that if we were filled with the Spirit, then we would have a great sense of the love of God for us. How wonderful that He knows all about me. He's seen the file on me, but He still loves me. We would be able to say God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He's given us. And we on our side then would love the Savior with a warm and steady love. We'd long for the day when He was coming again. We'd want to serve Him with all our strength. And if we were filled with the Spirit then, if we were filled with the Spirit, we would love one another more warmly, more affectionately, and little troubles that come wouldn't be blown up. the way they do because love would cover a multitude of sins. We'd pray for one another more consistently. We'd commit ourselves to the life of the church more thoroughly. We'd be eager to be with our fellow believers and We'd want to be listening with them to the Word of God week by week. We'd do everything in our power to be present at the meetings. We'd look forward then to the Lord's Day when we were celebrating the Lord's Supper and feeding on Christ. if we were filled with Christ, we would be careful to avoid anything compromising and sinful and dubious. Worldly entertainments wouldn't have the power over us that they have. There we are. Those are my three examples, illustrations to you when I talk about a revival of religion. And I would think those three factors would be indispensably a part of it, a part of a revival. I just don't want us to because the word is so abused and the concept is so abused and so many claims are made for revival. I wouldn't want us to be suspicious of the concept and keep it at arm's length. And we want our churches, your church, my church, to know something of heaven and something of God blessing us. And something like that happened in Wales then in 1904. It was a frail, problematic revival because the preaching of the Word of God was not allowed to be central in the eyes of the public. And young men and women really took over and were incapable of ministering and handling the huge crowds that packed in and stayed in meetings for hours and hours. And young people who hadn't even had any theological training, straight from the call face, they encouraged protracted meetings. which went on into the small hours of the morning with a lot of emotion and a lot of confession of sins publicly, and a sort of finny approach, people being rebuked and challenged if they didn't get up and confess their sins. Much of it was unseemly, and then the main character, after six months, had a breakdown and never preached again, though he lived until the 1950s. But there were a lot of other little people, little pastors, who just reaped and reaped during that time. There was an interest, there was a concern, and churches showed a great influx of new members. And the usual figure of 100,000 people, whether it's 1859 or 1904, whether it's Ireland or Wales, that's the figure that's bandied about. But, you know, I met some of those people and they were, they just blossomed. And when they were in the congregation, the old folks then, and I would tour around and I thought, ah, he was touched in 1904. Mrs. Harris, who lived over the road from us, her father, her son was the our teacher in the local school. And then she finally had to go to an old people's home. And I'd speak at four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and she would always give the vote of thanks. They were illiterate. They were unspiritual people. But she was. She'd get up. She was only pint-sized. She'd say, now you listen to what this young man has had to say. In 1904, the Lord came, and he visited me, and he saved me. And he's been a faithful Savior to me ever since. And you need the Savior that he's been talking to us about. You know, there were people like that, they kept the prayer meetings going. Anyway, out of the 1904 revival, I'm coming to Lloyd-Jones, out of the 1904 revival, three movements came. The first was the Pentecostal movement in the form of the Apostolic Church. There are three denominations, Seminaries of God, Elim, and the Apostolic Church. And that's the sort of most primitive in that it claims that it has apostles as well as prophets. And there was a formidable leader, Pastor Dan. a very awesome, holy, intelligent man who led that meeting. And they spread their apostolic churches, which were always very slow, small, scattered throughout South Wales, but into Europe and into Africa they certainly went. And the second movement that came out of it was the Mission Hall movement. You know, there'd be a congregation like this and people were saved and they'd want other people to be saved. Or the phrase was, to enter into the blessing. They were unpopular because they were always urging people to be saved, and they were shown the door and pushed out. And they formed mission halls, which were really independent evangelical churches with a breaking of bread Sunday mornings and an evangelistic service Sunday night. And they were pre-meal. And they had pastors, so they weren't brethren assemblies, but they were Scofield Bible. And they kept the flame alive in the industrial valleys and in the towns and cities of South Wales. That was the second movement that came out of 1904. And then the third movement was the children of the revival, as they were called. And that is the people like Mrs. Harris, who stayed in the church. ran the Sunday school, prayed in the prayer meeting with the elders and the deacons. He led the young people's group and were very respectful to their ministers, undiscerning. But when the gospel was preached, when Dr Lord Jones came and visited their area, they just were thrilled and moved. buy it and I would meet them. I remember when I came to Westminster Seminary in 1961, I was preaching in 1961 telling people knew I was going off there and they knew I was vigorous as a young man and they were concerned that I would lose my vigour. going to theology. They'd seen it, you see, so often. Young people and they'd gone to the Baptist or the Presbyterian or the Congregationalist College and they'd become formal and cerebral and they didn't last long in the ministry and they wanted me to keep the faith. Faith of our fathers, living faith. I will be true to thee to death and they wanted that. So there were these three movements. Then, in the 1920s, God did something new. And God always does something new. and we've laid down the tracks and we expect the gospel train to come down this way, this is the way it's got to come because we've built the tracks for it and then the gospel train goes somewhere else and there are other tracks that we didn't know about and so there was a young man in London and he was a medical student And his parents were quite indifferent to the 1904 revival. They weren't children of the revival. His father was far more interested in politics and in the Liberal Party and Lloyd George. And he was a milkman in London. And he had been given these three sons. He wasn't Pentecostal at all. He wasn't Mission Hall, he was a Calvinistic Methodist, that's the denomination, and they had about 24 Welsh-speaking churches in London from the exodus that went there, like the people have come across here and built their Polish and Dutch churches and so on, and then slowly they turn over and become English-speaking, and there was one in Charing Cross, and they joined that when they went to London, there was a Sunday school teacher there and he was a surgeon but the preaching wasn't much, that wasn't important but there was this man and he taught and spoke because his father had gone through the 1859 revival, the 1904 revival and he was there in about 30 miles south of us And Dr. Lloyd-Jones was sitting in the congregation and he had been born and raised in Llangaetho, which is the great town, the little town, but great in Welsh history because it was the place where Daniel Rowland had had a 50-year ministry. And he'd had four or five harvests during that time there. And people just walked there from all over the country to hear the gospel preached by him. His building, it's... knocked down now, but there's another building on the site which is again 150 years old, very similar to it. You knock on the door of the houses at the back there and get the key and you can go in through the back door and you're there in the pulpit and And that was the church where Martin Lloyd-Jones went. And when the great celebrations in 1913 and 1914 came about to remember the evangelical awakening in Wales, he was fascinated. He listened to all the stories. And the two volumes which have now been translated into English, The Calvinistic Methodists of Wales, they're wonderful, wonderful, heartwarming stories that will give you an understanding of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, because that's his background. And little John Arran, whose father was the professor of philosophy at the University of Aberystwyth, John's father, a very gracious man, a Baptist deacon in this church over the road from us, which is Welsh language church. John then, glasses, looked a bit like the pictures of Harry Potter that you see. Off he went to Swansea University and people witnessed to him and he was saved, he got his PhD in physics there. And he's translated over ten years those two volumes. Just so well worth reading. Such a fine man. So, Lord John's read these. and listened to this man and God began to work in his life. He told me about Bard's Hospital. He was the star student and he went to work for Lord Horden, the King's physician. You know, he was just on his way somewhere. He had a little room in the top floor, a little office there on the top floor of Bard's Hospital. He said to me, I had great times in that room. And when he talks about the fillings of the Spirit and the words that he uses to describe these experiences of intimacy with God and God being very precious to him, that was God coming the reality of which he could not deny. And increasingly, that's what he longed for, for himself, that he could serve this God and make this God known. You remember there's an incident where he goes with a couple of friends to Leicester Square to a play, to a theatre. He and his girlfriend, who was to become his wife, Bethan, and another couple, and it was a clever play and it was a witty play. And then he came out, he came down the steps and there was a Salvation Army band. and they were playing the great hymns that he knew so well and they were exhorting the crowds in the London streets. He said, these are my people. I belong to them, not this world that I've just been in. The contrast was so great. And so he visited a church in South Wales, which the skids were under us. It was under all our churches, and the Drama Society and the interest in politics was just enormous in that church. It was a forward movement which had started about 80 years earlier and about 50 forward movement congregations were built so the people who were intimidated about coming to our churches would feel that they could walk into these halls. and in Aberavon, near the steelworks, one was set up and all the locals called it the forward. I'm going to the forward, the forward movement. They called themselves Bethlehem Sandfields and they just lost the plot and they were into all those other activities and he came and he came and preached to them just before he got married and they were moved and struck by him and they asked him to come back a second time and then they would vote after the evening service and they unanimously voted to call him to become their pastor So he got the night sleeper train back from South Wales to London and he went into Barts then on the Monday morning and there in his pigeon hole there was a little note and he took it out and the note said, the Chief Registrar wants to see you as soon as you arrive. So he went to the Chief Registrar's office, knocked on the door and went in. There was the Chief Registrar and there was a senior doctor there and the big desk was there and it was laid out with newspapers and the newspapers were all reporting that this prominent London doctor had given up everything to go to be a preacher in Aberavon in South Wales. They were looking at him. Is this true, they said to him. He said, I'm desperately sorry. You would have been the first to have known this. I'm so sorry. There's been a leak to the press and I intended you to be the first to be told. Is it true you were leaving us? Yes, he said. And then they arranged him with all the benefits that his life would be if he stayed in medicine. the good he would do to so many people, the service he could render to them. And they urged him to consider this again and his future and how useful it would be in the medical profession. And when he was just unpersuaded, then they were critical of him and sharp with him. And finally, when they had exhausted themselves, he said of them, but you see, gentlemen, after we've done all we can do for these sick folk, they are still going to die. And that is the distinction, isn't it, between medical work and the gospel of Jesus Christ, God loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life, eternal life, the life of God. That's the great theme that had gripped him, he was consumed by God. And so he went then, married and went down to 28 Victoria Road there in Port Talbot and a little house in a terrace and he would make the fire in the mornings and light it up in the winter, coal and wood and paper and the blower to get it going and warm up the room and there he began his ministry. and, oh, still he was considered the doctor, a medical doctor. And Swansea Hospital would phone through and ask him advice concerning certain patients. My father's twin brother wanted to be a preacher and so he had been accepted in the college in Brecon and arrived there and they looked at him and the staff did and they said they did not think that he was physically strong enough to be a preacher, that his heart wouldn't stand being a minister. And he was very disappointed at this rejection. And one of his fellow students said, why don't you contact this man Lloyd Jones? He's a heart specialist and he's just gone to a church in Port Talbot in Aberavon. Go down and see him. He gives help quite freely to people who who go to him. And so, Uncle Bryn wrote to him and he arranged an appointment and the doctor got his stethoscope out and checked him and so on. He said, oh, nothing wrong with your heart at all. No, you're perfectly fit. And so he was accepted back and so on he went into the ministry. I told Dr. Lloyd-Jones that. And he said, how did he do? I said he lived till he was 82. Oh, very good, so pleased that his diagnosis had been so accurate. My mother would hear him at that time, too, and my mother would remember things that he'd said. The situation that we face today is so very similar to the New Testament, to the Acts situations. the morality and the ignorance and the cruelty and the answer of the gospel. Those are things she would talk to me about. I first heard of him in camp. The officers, Calvinistic Methodist boys, talk together and I would enjoy listening to them talk and they would then talk about this man, the doctor. And they'd heard him and with such an iconoclastic group of students as they were, they still were not iconoclastic about him. And that was important for me. I wanted to I wanted to hear him myself then. Who was this man that I'd never met? And so I saw in the newspaper in 1958, in September, I was just a month before my 20th birthday, I was still a teenager, And I saw in the newspaper that he was speaking at the induction service of Dr. Ivan Evans, who's written just a wonderful new book now on William Williams Pantekellen. And so I got the train into Cardiff and walked along Cathedral Road and there was the forward movement again where Ivan Evans was and I went in and there was this dark suited, women hatted serious group of people. We sang Top Lady and Watts with great volume. And then he preached. I can't remember anything except the impact of it as being something very important. And I had to find out why it was different. What was significant about this kind of ministry? I told him, that was the first time I heard you preach. He told me, You know, he said, I preached on being ambassadors for God, that this man was going to be a pharmacist and God turned him round and made him an ambassador for him. I can't remember. I can't remember, Dr. Lloyd-Jones. He said, you know, David Jones, he had such a blessing in that meeting. I said, I can't remember. I can't remember. He was disappointed in me for not remembering the first time. I just knew there is something pure and strong and holy and wise and loving. And I want to find out why. I just needed that one to get on to his wavelength. perhaps it's like that with you when you first come into our meetings and there's not the frills that you've almost identified with Sunday morning ministry and then the next year I heard his great sermons then but God the building was shaken in which they were assembled and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit poor reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, and Felix trembled. You know, I remember those sermons now as vividly as when I first heard them over 50 years ago. And then his book preaching, his book Studies and the Sermon on the Mount came out, and that's always been my favorite of his, because it most speaks to the conscience and is most exegetical. I wanted to live like that. He had a man in our church, he was a deacon for a while when he was a student at Aberystwyth and he wasn't saved. He liked to always be with Christians. He hung around with them and listened to them. One day after being with them, he went back to his room, fell on his knees before God and he said, Oh God, make me a righteous man. Now all the gospel is in that prayer. And he did become a righteous man by the grace of God. And I, after reading that book, I wanted to live like that. I thought it was such a noble life, such a true life, such a good life, the life of a servant, the life of a man who knows God. The Sermon on the Mount does that. And I wanted to preach like that. I thought, ah, that's a role model for me. And so I read the Banner books as they came out then in 1959 and went off in 61 to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and sat at the feet of John Murray and Van Til and those others. After I'd been in the ministry about two years I was preaching just outside London at a conference on Whit Monday and I preached after an evening and I was waiting just to come into the church in the little minister's room looking through the window there and who should walk past but Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his wife. I was absolutely petrified to think, he's coming to hear me preach. I was preaching in the first session on, and Lott lingered, and then in the second session on, remember Lott's wife, and I got them both from Ryle's holiness. He'll know this. He'll know I've just taken this from Ryle. Oh, I've got a sermon at home and he'd much rather. That's his style of sermon. My mouth was dry. And there we are. He'd come, you see, you understand how we're all looking for the next generation, aren't we? We're looking for God to raise up men. We want to pass on the torch. We want God's hand to be evidently upon people who preach now to the end of the century. And we're looking. And he was looking. He told me when he, he always had his vacations in Aberystwyth during the war years because we were on the west coast, far from London, there was no bombing, we were on the Irish Sea. He said to me, I could come, you see, at ten o'clock I could go to Bethel and I could hear the preacher there and then at 11 o'clock at the English service I could come to your church and I could hear Marshal John preach at 11 and then 2 o'clock the Shiloh preacher would preach out in Pemparke and I could go and hear him and then at 6 o'clock I could go to Tabernacle and I could hear the preacher there. His curiosity, his interest, his desire to know what men were saying, was there a touch of heaven, was God with them, was God upon them, his concerns like that. It's a great mark of his love for the Church of Jesus Christ and the name and the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ that he fought in that way. And then when he was very ill he had a cancer removed from his intestines around 1967 when he retired from Westminster Chapel and for a year or two he was unable to preach and so he would go around and he would visit all the churches and he would look and listen in that way. I'm sure we were all a disappointment to him, how poor the preaching is. It reminded me of Dr. Machen. In 1937, Machen having battled and battled with liberalism and known so many disappointments. He had a former student from Princeton, Westminster, who'd gone out to the Dakotas and was preaching in a small Presbyterian congregation and they weren't really understanding and seeing. This was going to be lost now to the gospel. And so he asked Dr. Machen if Machen would go out to Dakota in January 1937 and preach for him there and give some addresses on Christianity. What is faith? And so Machen then, weakened by the inordinate burdens he was carrying, and bearing the attacks. So much of those that hated the Gospel and confessional Christianity took the train out, the long journey out, bitterly cold in Dakota, sub-zero temperatures, to help one little man, one small congregation, to stand fast that Christ crucified would be there. in South Dakota. And there he contracted pneumonia. And there he sent the two fine telegrams to John Murray. The Reformed faith isn't it grand. And the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. And I never asked John Murray where he was when he got the telegram. And what was it like. And his relationship with Maitchen. It's funny, you just, I suppose, respect for him. Failure now regrets about that. And there he died. I've been to his grave in Baltimore in the major area of that city, a vast graveyard But he's just like Lloyd-Jones. And I want us to be like that. I want us to be concerned, whatever the label. that a church has, that it's a theocentric, that it's a God-honouring, that it's got something of what I described with revival, something of the reality of God's presence and of the congregation being filled with the Holy Spirit and love and power there, present. And when people ask me, you know, well, what is this reformed faith? And what is a reformed congregation? That's how I describe it. So I read his books. I read Preaching and Preachers, and Ephesians and Romans. And I loved his high view of preaching. And I love what he said on prayer, not to resist any stirrings or movement that God gives to you to pray. And then the blessing that you will have if you respond, if you can take the car on one side and stop for a moment, if you can stop the housekeeping and the housework and just give yourself to God, and in the study you can lay aside some books and cry to God in that way. He didn't use, I suppose, enough illustrations. Maybe he was weak there, but when you've been many years, 30 years in one church, then your supply of illustrations then is perhaps more limited. I don't know. He has this wonderful story when he is preaching on the road to Emmaus and the depression that these men are under, Cleopas and his companion, how down they are. He speaks about preaching not far from Aberystwyth, out in a valley there, and he's preaching there, and the elders come to him in the afternoon and they say, can you come with us to meet the local headmaster? He's having such a detrimental influence over the children in the school. He's cynical about Christianity and religion, and he doesn't waste an opportunity to put it down. and we're so concerned about the effect he's having on young minds." The doctor went, they knocked on the door and they went to see this headmaster. Well, Dr. Lloyd-Jones said to him, well, you know, you weren't always like this, weren't you? You were raised in the church and you were trusting in God, weren't you? What happened and how did the change come? Well, he said, I suppose it was in the war. We were doing exercises in the Mediterranean. I was serving in the submarine. And we were going along one day and suddenly, we bang, we were at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Yes, but something else happened that day. Now tell me, everything that happened that day, So he recounted a few more details as he could think of them. And we were going along and suddenly, bang, we were at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Yes, but there's more, isn't there? There's more to that day than what you've described to me. Now, come on, tell me more. every detail of that day. And so the man repeated almost all, couldn't think of anything more and it always ended, there we were at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Yes, but they called up to a destroyer and the divers came down and they pulled the submarine up. Or you put on some life-saving equipment and you went into a chamber and it filled with water and you all were saved. Oh yes, the man said, but suddenly we were at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Lord Jones said to him, you know what the trouble with you is, you're still at the bottom of the Mediterranean. And there are people like that, aren't they? Sometime in the past they've had a heartache, fearful providence, the end of a relationship, contact with death, a heartache has come like that and they become cynical about God, they blame God for it. And they've lived in the light of that day henceforth, even though life has gone on and God has been so good to them every day. They've lived in the darkness of those days. I thought Lloyd-Jones could use stories then in such a fascinating way. His legacy, well, I think of his evangelism, Sunday nights in Westminster Chapel. The pulpit is the size of a boxing ring, round. It was built and enlarged by his predecessor, Campbell Morgan, because he had a big blackboard there and he loved to do overviews of the minor prophets or the Psalms. He hired his own church from the church for the price it paid for special meetings that missionary societies would hold there and they would charge them five pounds, say, for the use of the meeting. Well, he hired his own church for the Friday night and then he would have the collection that was taken. Never heard of that ever being done by anyone else. Well, Lloyd-Jones, he preached evangelistically and bounced around that pulpit, speaking to the gallery and tremendous earnestness and rigor, encounter. urging people to come and trust. His great theme was man, man's helplessness, man's impotence. I heard him preach in Westminster Chapel on times of refreshing from the presence of God, and that was the great theme again. He said, you go to Boston in the summer, you go there and it's 95% humidity and it's 90 degrees. It's hopeless. Oh, so hot. you put a fan on and it gives you temporary relief, but as the air goes round, the air gets warmer and it gets hot and stinking. And that's the world today, that's our culture, that's America, that's Wales. Today, clammy. Ah, you long for some breeze to blow upon you. He comes, the Saviour comes into your life. And there are the times of refreshing then that come when he ministers to you, calms your fears and heals your wounds. This Savior comes, urging people to repent and believe. His legacy, evangelistic preaching, his legacy, the personal devotional life, he used McShane's daily Bible readings that takes you through the New Testament twice, and the Psalms, the Old Testament once, and when I went to see him across the town, he'd stay always with a doctor in the town, and so I would have coffee with him in the morning. He would be having his little Bible, yes, an old man still having that small print, and he would close the Bible then to talk to me. He left us a legacy of the importance of the church, the importance of church history. the fact that he had himself been so helped by reading of the evangelical awakening. I was going to the Westminster conference, the Puritan conference that he started with my two sons-in-law. We came inside the courtyard of Westminster Chapel and they were re-roofing, re-tiling the roof. And down the ladder, back to us, came one of the workmen, yellow helmet on, belt with all his tools hanging around it. Be a gut, it seemed to me, and came down and he looked around and then we walked towards him. Very proper. He said, what's going on there then? So Ian, one of my sons-in-law said, we're going to a lecture on Sandemanianism. He said, oh yes, Lord Jones spoke on that, didn't he, a few years ago. Yes, oh yes. I was saved under his ministry and I often heard him preach and yes, he spoke on Sandemanianism. We had such a limited view of the influence of the gospel and how we can affect a man like that and change a man like that and give an interest in church history. We were stereotyping the working man and, you know, you don't do that in a place like Grand Rapids. where bakers and butchers and farmers were men of the Heidelberg catechism and men who knew their theology at all. And in Sandfields he had these steel workers and they were influenced by Marxist agitators and they needed the answers and he spoke to them. and edified them so that they were prepared to answer those that came to him. He was a He was familiar with the great movements of the Holy Spirit, with the Reformation. He'd read the two volumes of Edwards, and they had structured his thought, his longing for revival. He said he had not had revival in Sandfields. We would have been very satisfied to have called it revival. But the element of the fear of God coming upon a neighborhood and restraining sin, and that he felt was not present and not any evident there. His great concern was that our preaching, our words, should be authenticated by the Holy Spirit. And so when he talked about the baptism or the sealing or the filling of the Holy Spirit on us as we preached, he was longing then that there should be that dimension of the work of God in the hearts of the men and women who who heard him. His preaching was very simple. When I took my little girl to hear him preach in Aberystwyth, we walked home together afterwards. Ellery was nine, I suppose. And so after a while I said to her, what did you think of his service, his sermon? She said, oh, it was good. She said, it was like Sunday mornings, only simpler. And I made sure that he heard that. That would encourage him so much. You know how he would begin his sermon very quietly and look at the situation today, describe it, the humanism and the atheism and the despair of men and women, and then the passage of Scripture, that there was no more important passage of Scripture than this passage of Scripture, to address the situation, and he would begin to speak to people. and give a little glimpse of it. He wouldn't say, I have three things to say to you, because he might be so taken up with the second point that he'd never get to the third point. So he'd say, I have some things to say to you. And the first thing I want to say to you is this. A friend took him when he was lecturing in America. When he was lecturing in Philadelphia, took him to a very prominent and famous church in Philadelphia, and they listened to the service together, and the sermon doctor was very quiet on the way home. And finally, he turned to the doctor as he was driving him back to the seminary, and he said to him, what do you think of the sermon? a glorified Bible study," he said, dismissing it. He wanted more than exegesis and history of redemption insights laced through sieving through a passage of scripture. He wanted gospel application and authority there. His preaching was, much of it was ordinary, he never would repeat that, but there would be two or three sermons in a year that would be most moving and powerful. I wish all of those could be put together in a book. And he would tour the country with them every year, and he would oppose any taping of them, because friends would then send them on to Manchester or Edinburgh, where he would be going next to preach with these messages, and he didn't want the people up there to have heard them already. So part of his coolness towards taping sermons was because of that. He had men and they knew him better than I did and they were my role models and there were a dozen of them that I could contact and speak to and I adored them and loved them And just like Spurgeon gathered churches and ministers around him in London so that when the rest of the Baptist churches in the British Isles went into modernism, the London churches, because of Spurgeon's influence, held to the faith. And just like Machen gathered people around him, and he was their spokesman, and they admired and valued what he did in tackling modernism in the UPUSA, Lord Jones had his men too. And we are today about 60 churches in Wales. I suppose Wales is the size of Maine, 200 miles north to south, 100 miles east to west, 3 million people. and all except two of those churches have got ministers and really all of them go back to him and his influence. That's what he has given to us. And he had a Boswell like Dr. Johnson did in Iain Murray and the two volumes of The Life of Lord Jones are enormously valuable and I can commend them to you very much. He would cry to us to engage with God. He would urge us to trust in the power of the Word of God. for the Word of God is powerful and lively and sharper than any two-edged sword. He would tell us of the power of prayer, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. And he would tell us of the power of faith by which kingdoms are subdued and righteousness is obtained and the promises become ours. and the power of those things, he would remind us of them. What they had in the New Testament, we have today. Lord, bless your word to us now, we pray. We thank thee for raising up Dr Lloyd-Jones and for the influence and his books and his tapes that live on and we pray that we will see times of refreshing from thy presence even today and through the Gospel churches of Grand Rapids and Holland. and we ask thee, merciful God, to revive us and give us seasons of refreshing from thy presence. We ask it all through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.