Category: Tolle Lege

Readability:  1

Length: 195 pgs

Author:  Albert Mohler

Words from the Fire is an excellent little book for the Christian on the Ten Commandments.  Each commandment is clearly taught, masterly illustrated, proper studied in its context, and then examined and applied in light of Christ.  Here is a book for the whole of you, to inform your mind, convict your heart, and direct your will.

[W]e do not celebrate a lawless grace any more than looking to the Old Testament we should see a graceless law.  There is grace in the law.  Israel, in hearing the Word of the Lord and receiving these words received grace!  And if we do not understand that, we slander both the Old Testament and the God who spoke to Israel at Horeb.

The prevailing secular mind-set says that law is simply a product of human experience codified in legislative form.  It is just how we learned to live with each other.  There is no absolute or transcendent ought.  There is merely a phenomenological is. 

Adultery begins a breakdown of order that threatens the entire society, for how can we trust each other if we cannot trust our most intimate commitments?  …Marriage is the little universe upon which every other human relation depends.

The big lie is that we are what we own, or we can be what we want to own, what we wear, or what we drive.  What do we do when we get a new car?  We have got to show it to someone, almost like there is no fun to be had if nobody is around to covet it.  We provide a drive-by opportunity to covet.

Readability:  1

Length:  168 pgs

Author:  D.A. Carson

Praise God for great books on the cross of Christ.  For the ones that not only feed your mind but warm your heart.  D.A. Carson’s Scandalous was such a book for me.  This easily makes my list of top books on the cross.  I listened to these sermons soon after Dr. Carson preached them at Mars Hill.  I remember being overjoyed when I heard they would be turned into a book.  It came, I read it, I was not disappointed.  Here is a taste of what you can expect.

The deeper irony is that, in a way they did not understand, they were speaking the truth. If he had saved himself, he could not have saved others; the only way he could save others was precisely by not saving himself. In the irony behind the irony that the mockers intended, they spoke the truth they themselves did not see. The man who can’t save himself—saves others.

One of the reasons they were so blind is that they thought in terms of merely physical restraints. When they said “he can’t save himself,” they meant that the nails held him there, the soldiers prevented any possibility of rescue, his powerlessness and weakness guaranteed his death. For them, the words “he can’t save himself” expressed a physical impossibility. But those who know who Jesus is are fully aware that nails and soldiers cannot stand in the way of Emmanuel. The truth of the matter is that Jesus could not save himself, not because of any physical constraint, but because of a moral imperative. He came to do his Father’s will, and he would not be deflected from it. The One who cries in anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but yours be done,” is under such a divine moral imperative from his heavenly Father that disobedience is finally unthinkable. It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will—and, within that framework, it was his love for sinners like me. He really could not save himself.

Dilemma wretched: how shall holiness
Of brilliant light unshaded, tolerate
Rebellion’s fetid slime, and not abate
In its own glory, compromised at best?
Dilemma wretched: how can truth attest
That God is love, and not be shamed by hate
And wills enslaved and bitter death—the freight
Of curse deserved, the human rebels’ mess?
The Cross! The Cross! The sacred meeting-place
Where, knowing neither compromise nor loss,
God’s love and holiness in shattering grace
The great dilemma slays! The Cross! The Cross!
The holy, loving God whose dear Son dies
By this is just—and one who justifies

Readability: 2

Length: 226 pgs

Author: D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation is currently my favorite book on prayer.  In fact it is probably my favorite Carson book.  It is one of my favorite books ever! 

The book is composed of a series of sermons surveying Paul’s prayers in his epistles.  I have heard Cason and others testify that God greatly blessed these messages when they were originally delivered and a marked difference in power was measured from those days.  I certainly can testify that as I read the book I was deeply convicted, taught, and had sweet communion with God.  God has used these sermons to impact my prayer life, I am certain He will use them to impact yours. 

Do you not sense, with me, the severity of the problem? Granted that most of us know some individuals who are remarkable prayer warriors, is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?

What is wrong? Is not this sad state of affairs some sort of index of our knowledge of God? Shall we not agree with J.I. Packer when he writes, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face’?  Can we profitably meet the other challenges that confront the Western church if prayer is ignored as much as it has been?

Readability: 1

Length: 154 pgs

Author: John Piper

This is a readable little book about Ruth dealing predominantly with the theme of providence.  While A Sweet and Bitter Providence is not my favorite book on Ruth, nor one of my favorite Piper books, it is full of good, solid, digestible truth.  Here are a few tidbits.

Is God’s bitter providence the last word?  Are bitter ingredients (like vanilla extract) put in the mixer to make the cake taste bad?

Knowing how this book ends gives us a sense, as we begin, that nothing will be insignificant here.

Seek refuge under the wings of God, even when they seem to cast only shadows, and at just the right time God will let you look out from his Eagle’s nest onto some spectacular sunrise.

A follower of Christ in any ethnic group is a closer relative to us than any blood relativewho rejects our Savior.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rObFF1dsi2U]

Readability: 2

Length: 177 pgs

Author: Tim Keller

Tim Keller wrote his first book in 1989, Ministries of Mercy.  He didn’t publish another title for nearly 20 years; it seems he was saving up.  The Reason for God and The Prodigal God were published in 2008, Counterfeit Gods in 2009, and finally this October, Generous Justice is scheduled to release.  I think I once heard Keller explain the silent years saying he feels he is much better oral than written communicator.  Certainly he is a gifted speaker, but his writing disproves any supposed inadequacies’ Keller may feel he has.  Ministers buy Ministries of Mercy, and Christians, buy everything else he has written.  It seems God in His providence used those two silent decades build power and pressure, preparing for an anointed eruption.  These are earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting, truth-saturated books.

Counterfeit Gods deals with sin at the fundamental level, idolatry.  Luther said that if we keep the first commandment we break none of the others.  Sin is the failure to love God with all.  We do not live in a polytheistic world where we divvy up our hearts and service among the gods.  God gets all.  And when he doesn’t, idolatry is afoot in our hearts.  This book will help you see, root out, and fight against your idolatry.

There is a difference between sorrow and despair.  Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation.  Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience career reversal, you find comfort in your family to get through it.  Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing.

We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case.  The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes.  Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the best things in life.

Many, if not most, of these counterfeit gods can remain in our lives once we have “demoted” them below God.

If you want God’s grace all you need is need, all you need is nothing.

Is there any hope?  Yes, if we begin to realize that idols cannot simply be removed.  They must be replaced.  If you only try to uproot them, they grow back; but they can be supplanted.  By what?  By God himself, of course.

Rejoicing and repentance must go together.  … [W]hen we rejoice over God’s sacrificial, suffering love for us – seeing what it cost him to save us from sin – we learn to hate the sin for what it is.  We see what sin cost God.  What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s [sic] costly death) is what most convicts us of the evil of sin.  Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves.  Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.

Readability: 1

Length: 154 pgs

Author: Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington

The Bookends of the Christian Life is a short little book for the whole of life.  John Wesly once wrote

He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.

This is the message of this gospel saturated book.  In Christ my sins are done with, I am cleansed from them and stand clothed in His righteousness.  But not only am I cleansed, the Holy Spirit now indwells me to break the power of the sin that Jesus cancelled.  Don’t look here for any amazing originality.  Come here to be reminded about the very core of living the Christian life.  Here the most vital of doctrines are applied to your everyday living.

Readability: 1

Length: 243 pgs

Author: Scott Klusendorf

Looking to be a better voice for the unborn?  Buy Klusendorf’s The Case for Life.  Klusendorf wisely calls us to narrow the debate to one question:  What is the unborn?  Here we have the advantage.  The burden of proof lies upon pro-choice advocates to prove that the unborn are not humans.  At the very least they must admit they are potential humans.  Intellectually ours is not the weaker position, this book will help you demonstrate that.

Why should you want to be a better advocate?  In the introduction Klusendorf recalls a mentor’s signature quote that haunts him to this day, “Most people who say they oppose abortion do just enough to salve the conscience but not enough to stop the killing.”  Are you comfortable with the death of the innocent?  I am, but I hope to be less so in the future.  This book has pushed me out of my comfort.

In short, you didn’t come from an embryo.  You were once an embryo.  At no point in your prenatal development did you undergo a substantial change of nature.  You began as a human being and will remain so until death.  Sure, you lacked maturity at that early stage of your life (as does an infant), but you were human nonetheless.

Next time somebody says you shouldn’t impose your beliefs on other, ask, ‘Why not?’  Any answer he gives will be an example of imposing his beliefs on you!

If you’ve had an abortion, you don’t need an excuse.  You need an exchange – his righteousness for your sinfulness.

Readability: 1

Length: 235 pgs

Author: Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Truth is bigger than fiction.  I think one purpose of fiction is to wake us up to the bigness of real life.  Fiction exists only in man’s imagination.  It is flat.  It comes from man’s mind.  God’s mind is infinitely bigger.  Humans are infinitely more amazing creatures than trolls or elves, for humans are made in the image of God.

None of this is to say that fiction or art is not stunning.  But if Lord of the Rings can so stun, stir, and inspire, how much more the reality of living all of life imago Dei?

Here is a true story that illustrates my argument.  The story of Denver Moore and Ron Hall and Ron’s wife Debbie who brought them together, is filled with love, suffering, beauty, pain, death, hope, joy, and glory.  It is a great story well told.  My eyes are not big enough for me.  This book lends me good eyes, eyes to see my God and humanity, eyes that see Avatar as small.

Read these quotes and see if you want to see with these eyes as well.

Until Miss Debbie, I’d never spoke to no white woman before.  Just answered a few questions, maybe – it wadn’t really speakin.

Denver smiled a bit and sidled up to a cautious question.  ‘I know it ain’t none of my business, but does you own something that each one of them keys fits?’

I glanced at the keys; there were about ten of them.  ‘I suppose,’ I replied, not really ever having thought about it.

‘Are you sure you own them, or does they own you?’

Money can’t buy no blessins.

You’d be surprised what you can learn talkin to homeless people. … Sometimes to touch us, God touches someone that’s close to us.

How do you live the rest of your life in just a few days?

I was embarrassed I once thought myself superior to him, stooping to sprinkle wealth and wisdom into his lowly life.

‘But sometimes we has to be thankful for the things that hurt us,’ I said, ‘cause sometimes God does things that hurt us but they help somebody else.’

The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain’t no final restin place.  So in a way, we is all homeless – just working our way toward home.

Just tell ’em I’m a nobody tryin’ to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody.

Readability: 1

Length: 220 pgs

Author: William P. Farley

Gospel-Powered Parenting opens by noting that according to George Barna seventy-five thousand books have been written on parenting just within the last ten years.  Given that statistic why should you buy this one?  Because it is thoroughly gospel-centric.  Because, in the author’s own words,

The emphasis of this book differs from that of many other Christian books on parenting.  Most emphasize techniques.  By contrast, Gospel-Powered Parenting will emphasize the parents’ relationship with God, with each other, and with their children, in that order.  The emphasis of this book is that parenting is not primarily about doing the right things.  It is about having a right relationship with God – a relationship informed by the gospel.

Do you still need a couple more reasons?  Ok, Farley focuses on the new birth rather than morality and he focuses on the father as the lead parent.  In addition Tim Challies says it may be the best book on parenting he has read.  I have not read nearly enough books on parenting in order for my “Amen!” to add any weight to Challies endorsement, nevertheless, this is the best book on parenting I have read, so far.

We parent out our theology.

Understanding the gospel and its implications for disciplining our children fortified Judy and me through these trials.  It helped in several ways:

• The gospel convinced us that indwelling sin was our children’s problem.
• The gospel convinced us that authority is a crucial parental issue.
• The gospel instructed us to pursue our children’s hearts rather than their behavior.
• The gospel motivated us to use discipline to preach the gospel to our children.
• The gospel motivated us to fear God.
• The gospel helped Judy and me to grow in humility and sincerity.

The fear of God equips parents to overcome the fear of their children.  They can disappoint their children, but they dare not disappoint God.

[Reflecting on 1 Timothy 5:8] If Paul writes so stridently about the failure to provide material food, which nourishes our bodies for only a few short years, what would he say to the father who fails to put the Bread of Life before his children?