In his classic book Preaching and Preachers Martyn Lloyd-Jones asks, “What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence.”
The Doctor evidently didn’t think he hit the mark very often for he once said, “I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching.” The venerable J.I. Packer would beg to disagree. When Packer was a 22-year-old student he heard Lloyd-Jones preach each Sunday evening during the school year of 1948–1949. He said that he had “never heard such preaching.” It came to him “with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man” he had known.1
Lloyd-Jones has affected untold preachers over the last few decades, two of whom are Mark Dever and Tim Keller. The latest 9Marks Interview finds Dever discoursing with The Manhattan Man on the latter’s biography and early ministry. Tucked away at the interview’s end is Dever’s question of how The Doctor influenced Keller’s preaching. What ensues is an edifying dialogue on the role of tone, personality, and power in preaching.
Listen to the short segment below and the download the whole interview here.
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