October 15, 2026
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College set aside the chapel service on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in Alumni Chapel to hear the preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and to learn from his example.
Lloyd-Jones, a Welsh physician turned preacher, served as minister of Westminster Chapel in London from 1939 to 1968. President R. Albert Mohler, Jr. said he was a natural first choice for such an occasion.
“By God’s providence, we can still hear his voice,” Mohler said. “I don’t know what I would give for an audio recording of Augustine or Chrysostom or Martin Luther or even Charles Spurgeon. We have no voice. It’s a great gift to us in this age that we have the voice and are able to hear. We want to be good stewards of this.”
At the center of the service was a 12-minute excerpt from Lloyd-Jones’ 1955 sermon on Ephesians 2:4, which Mohler has listened to more times than he can count. He told students that Lloyd-Jones’ writings had given him “not only encouragement, but guidance even in the course of leading this institution.” Before the excerpt played, he prayed that those gathered would be “spiritually edified, encouraged, prodded along by the example set by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.”
After the excerpt, Mohler led a conversation with Greg Jones, president of the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust, and Grant Castleberry, pastor of The King’s Chapel in Raleigh, North Carolina. Castleberry wrote his Ph.D. dissertation at Southern Seminary on Lloyd-Jones.
The trust now gives away about 1,600 of Lloyd-Jones’ sermons for free, and previously unknown recordings keep surfacing.
“It’s very exciting when you see these new sermons becoming available,” Jones said. “I believe that they are treasures for the church.”
Castleberry said Lloyd-Jones understood exposition differently than many do today, and not as a running commentary on a text.
“What he’s talking about is going to the text and coming away with a message,” Castleberry said. “It’s not just teaching, it’s a Spirit-filled exhortation of the Word of God, and it became an encounter with God.”
Mohler also tied Lloyd-Jones to Southern’s own history. Faculty at the seminary sign the Abstract of Principles “without hesitation or mental reservation.” In rereading Lloyd-Jones’ What Is an Evangelical?, Mohler found that Lloyd-Jones had confronted the same problem in his own day. In that, Mohler said, “Martyn Lloyd-Jones was surgical in more ways than one.”
In closing, he commended the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust and the Banner of Truth Trust for preserving Lloyd-Jones’ preaching. “This is all a matter of stewardship,” he said. “Because of their stewardship, this is our stewardship as well.”
Mohler ended with the sermon’s text. “Martyn Lloyd-Jones would hate for us to end with a word about Martyn Lloyd-Jones,” he said. “But God, who is rich in mercy. I’m going to let those be the last words.”
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