Over on the WordPartners blog, I shared an interview my colleague Todd Kelly did with Dick Lucas, who I call, “Your favorite preacher’s favorite preacher.” Alongside Stott and Lloyd-Jones, Lucas was a major evangelical preacher in the UK during the 20th century and greatly influenced preachers like Tim Keller, Alistair Begg, and Kent Hughes.
This interview is special to WordPartners because the organization that Dick helped start, Proclamation Trust, inspired the work we do training Bible expositors in over 40 countries around the world.
Listen to the audio below:
Or read the transcript broken into five parts:
- 00:00—13:30 | Dick Lucas’ Early Years and what C.S. Lewis was like as a professor
- 13:30—32:05 | Dick’s Beginnings in Ministry & Growing as a Preacher
- 32:05—37:52 | The History and Development of Proclamation Trust
- 37:52—56:25 | Dick Lucas on Expository Preaching and Its Impact
- 56:25—end | Dick Lucas on the Cultural Moment
The interview is over an hour, so here are four highlights:
1. Hearing about the people he has rubbed shoulders with over the decades. He was a student of C.S. Lewis’ for a time (and shares about it), sat under John Stott’s teaching at church camp, and shares an interesting anecdote from recent time with Kevin DeYoung.
2. This simple way of understanding expository preaching:
“I’ve got to find out why [the Bible] says [what it says] in the way that it says it and for the purpose it says it. It’s really as simple as that.”
3. This section on the Bible’s authority in church is powerful. Making the Spirit-inspired Word of God our authority is the only thing that truly makes the Holy Spirit the authority!
“A young man came to me only a fortnight ago to tell me that his congregation has charismatics. They’re retired people from London and say to him, ‘We only want a ten-minute sermon. We want more worship.’ That sounds thoroughly sincere and good-hearted, but what it means is, ‘We don’t want to sit under the Word of God. We want what comes out of our own heart.’
If you make the Holy Spirit your authority, where does the Holy Spirit dwell? ‘In my heart.’ And you can’t help getting this muddled up with your sinful self, can you? For a long time now in the charismatic movement, the authority is the Holy Spirit with Scripture. Our authority is Scripture alone. Within 20 years, that will be a liberal evangelical movement.”
In other words, it is a false dichotomy to think the Holy Spirit would will anything other than the Word He inspired.
4. Lucas shares how Martyn Lloyd-Jones finished this sentence: “The sermons that God used most of mine were the sermons _________________.”
You will have to listen or read the transcript to find out.
Enjoy!
