A Diagnosis From The Doctor

One of the great influences upon my preaching is Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, the late, great pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. A few years ago while attending the International Congress on Preaching I had the chance to stand in "The Doctor's" pulpit. Quite humbling.

The legacy of this great Reformed preacher lives on in audio and the best site for these resources is the Martyn Lloyd Jones Recordings Trust.

A new resource found there is a daily devotional including excerpts from the teaching of Dr. Lloyd Jones. The following is a portion from today's devotion.

"There can be no doubt at all that the commonest cause [of misinterpreting the Bible] is our tendency to approach the Bible with a theory. We go to our Bibles with this theory, and everything we read is controlled by it.... There is a sense in which it is true to say that you can prove anything you like from the Bible. That is how heresies have arisen. The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men.... they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this; they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere. . . . There is nothing so dangerous as to come to the Bible with a theory, with preconceived ideas, with some pet idea of our own...."

Wise counsel for the living of our days.