“Saints in the morning, sinners at night”
by Greg Jones
President, MLJ Trust
During his ministry, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached at his church, Westminster Chapel, London, three times a week. He divided up these weekly messages in the following way: On a Friday night, he would deliver an instructional sermon, teaching in-depth on a verse of Scripture - the best example of this type of sermon being his series on Romans. On Sunday morning, the sermon was geared towards the edification of the saints with the best example being his Ephesians series. Finally, on Sunday evening, his sermon was evangelistic in orientation - his Acts series forming the best collection of sermons of this type. The following is an example of an evangelistic sermon entitled "Healed from Sin" from Jeremiah 17:14-15:
Listen to "Healed From Sin"
This order of preaching on a Sunday was humorously coined by a contemporary as "saints in the morning, sinners at night!'.
Evangelism was of primary importance to Dr. Lloyd-Jones, and he often took more time in preparation for evangelistic sermons than his other sermons. Early in his career, during his first ministry charge in Aberavon (Wales), this would take the form of a written manuscript for evangelistic sermons1. Dr Lloyd-Jones lamented the 'decisionism' of evangelistic 'campaigns', seeing them as superficial and potentially detrimental to the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion. This was one of the reasons Dr. Lloyd-Jones refused to be a part of the Billy Graham evangelistic campaigns which came to the UK in the 1950's even though Dr Graham asked him to chair the UK Preparatory Committee for the 1954 London Crusade. To illustrate his view, in response to a question about when his church held evangelistic campaigns Dr Loyd-Jones replied "every Sunday evening!".
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1 Banner of Truth has published some of these manuscripts from early in his career in the book "Evangelistic Sermons at Aberavon".