2. No Substitute

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones opens the Word of God and confronts the tendency to depreciate preaching at the expense of other forms of activity. As those who have the Good News, we must tell the truth. Other agencies, politicians, cults, false religions, and nonprofits can do their work, but they cannot preach the Gospel. They can ease the pain of the human condition, but they cannot change the heart. The primary task of the Church is not to make a man happy, good, or even well off. The primary task of the Church is to deliver the truth about man and the remedy in Christ. The danger is that the Church will tinker with the symptoms and bury the real trouble. To merely treat the symptoms without discovering the cause is a criminal act. In the end, everyone suffers. It takes a specialist to isolate the radical problem and deal with it in a radical manner. This is the work of every preacher, says Dr. Lloyd-Jones. Fashions, votes, and stones are nothing new to the Church. Be warned not to fall prey to them. When the Church takes care of her primary purpose, God works through it to provide relief to others. The Protestant Reformation birthed hospitals, schools, and many other property relief efforts, stimulus to science, literature, etc. The preaching of the Gospel from the pulpit, applied by the Holy Spirit, has been a means of dealing with personal problems that the preacher knows nothing about. Counseling has its place, but most counseling will be done from the pulpit. Anything else is a failure to folfill the great mandate given to the church.