Category: Tolle Lege

Readability: 1

Length: 243 pgs

Author: Mark Dever

This book remains, more so after having reread it, my favorite book concerning the church.  The medicine cabinet is full of books on the church, and many contain good advice, but the medicine is laced with poison.  9 Marks of a Healthy Church is a truth filled, life-giving elixir amidst such books. 

This books is not about the marks of the church as we understand them historically (true preaching, right use of the sacraments, and faithful discipline), although Dever discusses this in the introduction.  Rather this book is about some marks that set off healthy churches from sickly ones.  Those marks are:

1. Expositional Preaching
2. Biblical Theology
3. The Gospel
4. A Biblical Understanding of Conversion
5. A Biblical Understanding of Evangelism
6. A Biblical Understanding of Church Membership
7. Biblical Church Discipline
8. A Concern for Discipleship and Growth
9. Biblical Church Leadership

If you are thinking this sounds like a book for pastors I would encourage to read ahead for two reasons.  First, the chapters were originally sermons preached to his own congregation.  These chapters originated as sermons for the person in the pew, not the pastor in the pulpit.  Second, if you are a voluntary member of an institution you probably would like to know what its purpose is, how it should operate.  Think of how much time you spend in church, wouldn’t you want to know what comprises a healthy one?  Do you get your idea of what a church should be from the status quo, tradition, your own mind, the newest fad, or from the Scriptures?  The church and what she is to be is a question that should greatly concern every Christian.  Toward answering that question I highly commend 9 Marks of a Healthy Church to you.

Many pastors happily accept the authority of God’s Word and profess to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible; yet if they do not in practice regularly preach expositionally, I’m convinced that they will never preach more than they knew when they began the whole enterprise.

To charge someone with the spiritual oversight of a church who doesn’t in practice show a commitment to hear and to teach God’s Word is to hamper the growth of the church, in essence allowing it only to grow to the level of the pastor.  The church will slowly be conformed to the pastor’s mind rather than to God’s mind.

I had made a statement in a doctoral seminar about God.  Bill responded politely but firmly that he liked to think of God rather differently. For several minutes, Bill painted a picture for us of a friendly deity. He liked to think of God as being wise, but not meddling; compassionate, but never overpowering; ever so resourceful, but never interrupting. ‘This’, said Bill in conclusion, ‘is how I like to think of God.’

My reply was perhaps somewhat sharper than it should have been. ‘Thank you Bill,’ I said, ‘for telling us so much about yourself, but we are concerned to know what God is really like, not simply about our own desires.’

We will “do church” differently, depending on how we understand God and ourselves.

We need to see an end to a wrong, shallow view of evangelism as simply getting people to say yes to a question, or to make a one-time decision.  We need to see and end to the bad fruit of false evangelism.  We need to see and end to worldly people having assurance that they’re saved just because they took a stand, shook a hand, or repeated a prayer.  We need to see real revival not being lost amid our own manufactured and scheduled meetings that we euphemistically call “revivals,” as if we could determine when the wind of God’s Spirit would actually blow.  We need to see and end to church memberships markedly larger than the number of those involved with the church, and an end to inaction in our own lives as we ignore the evangelistic mandate – the call to share the Good News.  We need to see the end of this debilitating, deadly coldness to the glorious call to tell the Good News.

But when the message of the Cross captures our hearts and captivates our imaginations, our tongues, stammering, halting, insulting, awkward, sarcastic, imperfect as they may be, won’t be far behind.

Readability: 1

Length: 508 pp

Author: Courtney Anderson

Simply, To The Golden Shore is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read.  Adoniram Judson was the first foreign American missionary.  He labored in Burma for 38 years, translated the Bible into Burmese, lost two wives and seven children, and endured a horrible prison sentence of 17 months all for their joy in Christ.   May these few tidbits encourage you to get outside of your little world, realize God’s plan for the peoples, buy the biography, and reorient your life toward the joy of all peoples in Christ.

A letter of courtship to the father of his first wife Ann:

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left is heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteous, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?

Ann Judson on the loss of their second child, Roger Williams:

Our hearts were bound up with this child; we felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say ‘It is enough.’

A letter from Adoniram to missionary widow and later second wife Sarah Boardman

My DEAR SISTER: — You are now drinking the bitter cup whose dregs I am somewhat acquainted with. And though, for some time, you have been aware of its approach, I venture to say that it is far bitterer than you expected. It is common for persons in your situation to refuse all consolation, to cling to the dead, and to fear that they shall too soon forget the dear object of their affections. But don’t be concerned. I can assure you that months and months of heartrending anguish are before you, whether you will or not. I can only advise you to take the cup with both hands, and sit down quietly to the bitter repast which God has appointed for your sanctification. As to your beloved, you know that all his tears are wiped away, and that the diadem which encircles his brow outshines the sun. Little Sarah and the other have again found their father; not the frail, sinful mortal that they left the earth, but an immortal saint, a magnificent, majestic king. What more can you desire for them? While therefore your tears flow, let a due proportion be tears of joy. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands, and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret, that there is sweetness at the bottom. You will find the sweetest cup that you ever tasted in all your life. You will find heaven coming near to you, and familiarity with your husband’s voice will be a connecting link, drawing you almost within the sphere of celestial music.

Emily’s recollections of a speaking engagement in the states where Adoniram simply preached the gospel:

As he sat down it was evident, even to the most unobservant eye, that most of the listeners were disappointed. After the exercises were over, several persons inquired of me, frankly, why Dr. Judson had not talked of something else; why he had not told a story…

On the way home, I mentioned the subject to him.

‘Why, what did they want?’ he inquired; ‘I presented the most interesting subject in the world, to the best of my ability.’

‘But they wanted something different… a story.’

‘Well, I am sure I gave them a story… the most thrilling one that can be conceived of.’

‘But they had heard it before. They wanted something new of a man who had just come from the antipodes.’

‘Then I am glad they have it to say, that a man coming from the antipodes had nothing better to tell than the wondrous story of Jesus’ dying love.’

Some of his last words to his third wife Emily:

‘It is not because I shrink from death, that I wish to live; neither is it because the ties that bind me here though some of them are very sweet, bear any comparison with the drawings I at times feel towards heaven; but a few years would not be missed from my eternity of bliss, and I can well afford to spare them, both for your sake and for the sake of the poor Burmans. I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home. I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from his school. Perhaps I feel something like the young bride, when she contemplates resigning the pleasant associations of her childhood, for a yet dearer home—though only a very little like her – for there is no doubt resting on my future.’

‘Then death would not take you by surprise,’ I remarked, ‘if it should come even before you could get on board ship.’  ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘death will never take me by surprise – do not be afraid of that—I feel  so strong in Christ. He has not led me so tenderly thus far, to forsake me at the very gate of heaven. No, no; I am willing to live a few years longer, if it should be so ordered; and if otherwise, I am willing and glad to die now. I leave myself entirely in the hands of God, to be disposed of according to his holy will.’

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=glo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0817011218&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Readability: 1

Length: 237 pgs

Author: Sinclair Ferguson

In Christ Alone is a collection of 50 articles written over two decades that the author one day noticed had a common theme.  It is a theme that unites much of Paul’s letters together as well for the phrase “in Christ” appears in his letters 72 times.  Thus it comes as no surprise that such a grand theologian as Sinclair Ferguson finds this grand theme uniting so many articles.  Indeed it is a theme that should unite all that the minister does, for all of our salvation is in Christ alone.  We have no other message but Christ and Him crucified.  So it is with great joy I commend this book to you, for it ministered much Jesus unto me.

[F]or John, the events, imagery, and language of the Old Testament are like a shadow cast backward into history by Christ, the light of the world.

In Jesus, God began from the beginning.  In a word in which sin infects us all from the womb (Ps. 51:5), it was not possible to begin with a mature man.  Our Lord had to begin His work in prenatal darkness, mature through every stage of life in perfect fellowship with His Father, and then die in the deeper darkness that surrounded Him on Golgotha.

Our Lord’s self humbling is not merely exemplary it is saving.

When the wonder of the gospel breaks into your life, you feel as though you are the first person to discover its power and glory. Where has Christ been hidden all these years? He seems so fresh, so new, so full of grace. Then comes a second discovery-it is you who have been blind, but now you have experienced exactly the same as countless others before you. You compare notes. Sure enough, you are not the first! Thankfully you will not be the last. 

The invisible is more substantial than the visible;

The future shapes the past;

The new is more fundamental than the past.

What does all this mean?

Simply put, it means that the story of the Lord Jesus, his person and work, is not a divine afterthought, a heavenly plan B hurriedly scrambles together when plan A went horribly wrong.  No, the coming of Christ was in the plan before the fall.  Everything that preceded it chronologically actually follows it logically.

In God’s workshop in this world, suffering is the raw material out of which glory is forged.

Readability: 2

Length: 276 pgs

Author: Andreas Köstenberger

If you are looking for a book filled with cute sayings, cliché advise, practical date night tips, how to have better sex, or the latest method of parenting children do not buy this book.  If you are looking for a thorough survey of all the Bible that gives clear, straightforward answers without distracting embellishments run to get this book.  Köstenberger leaves no stones unturned in the rock pile of texts dealing with marriage and family.  In God, Marriage, and Family he deals with gender issues, polygamy, divorce, homosexuality, sex, adultery, fornication, covenant, fatherhood, motherhood, discipline, singleness, contraception, abortion, adoption, spiritual warfare and more.  There is not a more thorough book I know of dealing with marriage and family.  The book is 448 pages of wise investment.  Don’t get scared only 276 pages comprise the book proper.  The rest of the book made of resource suggestions, study guide, endnotes, and indices is worth the full price of the book by itself.

It is not only the world that is suffering the consequences of neglecting the Creator’s purposes for marriage and the family. The church, too, having lowered itself to the standard of the world in many ways, has become a part of the problem, and is not offering the solutions the world needs. Not that Christians are unaware of their need to be educated about God’s plan for marriage and the family. An abundance of resources and activities is available. There are specialized ministries and parachurch organizations. There are marriage seminars and retreats.  There are books on marriage and the family, as well as magazines, video productions, Bible studies, and official statements focusing on marriage and the family. Yet for all the church is doing in this area, the fact remains that in the end there is shockingly little difference between the world and the church. Why is this the case? We believe the reason why all the above-mentioned efforts to build strong Christian marriages and families are ineffective to such a significant extent is found, at least in part, in the lack of commitment to seriously engage the Bible as a whole. The result is that much of the available Christian literature on the subject is seriously imbalanced.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3960331&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Recommending “God, Marriage, and Family” from Mars Hill Church on Vimeo.

Readability: 3

Length: 266 pgs

Author: Michael Horton

In Christless Christianity Michael Horton wrote concerning the alternative gospel of the American church, in his sequel, The Gospel Driven-Life, he writes concerning the true gospel, the gospel by which we live – every day.  The first concerns the crisis, the second the solution.

Christianity lives in proportion to its understanding of the gospel.  Block out the light of the gospel and the plant withers.  American Christianity may seem like a mighty oak from the outside, but with the Son eclipsed she rots from the inside out.   The gospel is not simply how we begin the Christian life, it is not a jumpstart.  As Tullian Tchividjian said in his endorsement of this book, “the gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life; it’s the fuel that keeps Christians going every day.”

This book is full of life-giving light, the light of the gospel, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6).  We have no other message, why would you want one?

The book is divided into two sections.  In the first Horton reminds us in vivid language of the best good news.   The gospel comes to us as news, it is not about what we do; it’s about what has been done for us.  In the next section he describes the kind of community that the gospel creates.

Preparing this post has made me want to reread the book very soon.  I hope you will be intrigued such that you wish to read the book twice before having read it once.

The Bible is not a collection of timeless principles offering a gentle thought for the day.  It is not a resource for our self-improvement.  Rather, it is a dramatic story that unfolds from promise to fulfillment, with Christ at the center.  Its focus is God and his action.  God is not a supporting actor in our drama; it is the other way around.  God does not exist to make sure that we are happy and fulfilled.  Rather, we exist to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.  God is not a facilitator of our ‘life transformation’ projects.  He is not a life coach.  Rather, he is our Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, and Covenant Lord.

Our real crisis is the righteousness of God, but the solution is the righteousness from God that is a free gift.

God outloves our hatred!

We not only have to get the gospel out; we have to get it right.

The riches of this estate that believers inherit are so vast that the will must be proclaimed every week. Christ’s attorney must read and expound the will in sections over a lifetime. Not just once, but every day we must renounce our trust in other would-be lords, saviors, providers and promise makers. We must let go of our anxious grip on our own lives, our sense of being in control, our own integrity and confidence in our religious experience. We must renounce the contracts we have entered that promised to make our life meaningful and say ‘Amen!’ to the will as it is read to us.

It is often said that we must apply the Scriptures to daily living. But this is to invoke the Bible too late, as if we already knew what ‘life’ or ‘daily living’ meant. The problem is not merely that we lack the right answers, but that we don’t even have the right questions until God introduces us to his interpretation of reality.

The more we hear and understand concerning the gospel, the more our faith grows and strengthens. Nevertheless, the weakest faith clings to a sufficient Savior. Faith itself does not save us from judgment any more than the quality of one’s confidence in the lifeguard is responsible for being rescued from drowning. It is the rescuer not the one rescued, who saves. In fact, it is in the very act of rescuing that a victim finds himself or herself clinging to the rescuer in confidence. I have yet to see a headline like, “Drowning Victim Rescued by Superior Clinging.” It is always the lifeguard who is credited with the rescue. It is on account of Christ that we are justified, through faith, and not on account of our faith itself.

In that wonderful yet often painful process of becoming part of Christ’s body we still want to make the news ourselves, but instead find ourselves being incorporated into the news of Christ’s doing, dying, rising, and ruling.  As we suffer the death of our cherished inmost self – that little devil – we become alive really for the first time.

When it comes to our standing before God we need a report not a resource.

Readability: 1

Length: 179 pgs

Author: Michael Wittmer

If you ride the pendulum this book will likely make you mad and that is exactly why I liked it.  While I did not always agree with Wittmer’s analysis or his advice, I agree completely with his overall thesis – that orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not competing alternatives.  While some conservatives so emphasize belief that it doesn’t matter how you live, post-modern innovators often so stress ethics that it doesn’t matter what you believe.  The pendulum swings.  Wittmer calls for us to learn from each and stand our middle ground.  He shows the relation of right practice to right belief by tackling 10 tough questions that often divide the extreme camps.  The questions are:

• Must you believe something to be saved?
• Do right beliefs get in the way of good works?
• Are people generally good or basically bad?
• Which is worse: homosexuals or the bigots who persecute them?
• Is the cross divine child abuse?
• Can you belong before you believe?
• Does the kingdom of God include non-Christians?
• Is hell real and forever?
• Is it possible to know anything?
• Is the Bible God’s Word?

 If you are attracted to postmodern innovators I would recommend this book to you.  If you are appalled by them thinking they have no valid critiques of evangelicalism I would also recommend this book to you.  I give you a couple of my favorite quotes and the conclusion of the chapter dealing with homosexuality.

Christians believe that the true God is not one person, as Jews and Muslims suppose, but that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons who share a single essence.  These monotheistic religions agree that God is one, and so he is to be feared and praised above all gods.  But only the Christian faith, which adds that God is also three, best explains why God is love.

We will always bear the image of God which is why our sin is a tragedy.  Girls Gone Wild is sadder than When Animals Attack, for, spring break evidence to the contrary, the girls in these videos – and the guys who watch – are corrupting a higher good.

One of Jerry Falwell’s close associates left Lynchburg in 1987 to pastor a church in Grand Rapids.  Ed Dobson decided that his church would balance their conviction that homosexual acts are wrong with compassion for those suffering from its effects.  So he called an AIDS hotline, which put him in contact with the pastor of a pro-homosexual church in the community.  Dobson told the pastor that while they never would agree on the morality of homosexual practice, they could agree to work together to help those who were struggling with AIDS. …

Dobson’s greatest criticism came from his congregation, many of whom feared that their church would be overrun with homosexuals.  Dobson replied “that will be terrific.  They can take their place in the pews right next to the liars, gossips, materialist, and all the rest of us who entertain sin in their lives.”  He added, “When I die, if someone stands up and says, ‘Ed Dobson loved homosexuals,’ then I will have accomplished something with my life.”

Dobson’s ministry is evidence that we need not compromise our moral code to reach out to those who have violated it.  Homosexuals are guilty of illicit sex.  We are often guilty of not caring about them or their plight.  Our sin is greater, and it isn’t even close?

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Readability: 1

Length: 169 pgs

Author: Al Mohler

I am deeply thankful to God for Al Mohler.  I believe God’s hand has powerfully been on him as the president of Southern Seminary.  I think He is Not Silent might be Mohler at his best, showing the deterioration of preaching in light of the glory that it is meant to be.

In the end, our calling as preachers is really very simple.  We study, we stand before  our people, we read the text, and we explain it.  We reprove, rebuke, exhort, encourage, and teach – and then we do it all again and again and again.

Preach the Word! That simple imperative frames the act of preaching as an act of obedience, and that is where any theology of preaching must begin.  Preaching did not emerge from the church’s experimentation with communication techniques. The church does not preach because preaching is thought to be a good idea or an effective technique. The sermon has not earned its place in Christian worship by proving its utility in comparison with other means of communication or aspects of worship. Rather, we preach because we have been commanded to preach.

True preaching begins with this confession: we preach because God has spoken. That fundamental conviction is the fulcrum of the Christian faith and of Christian preaching.

I fear that there are many evangelicals today who believe that God spoke but doubt whether he speaks.

Preaching is therefore always a matter of life and death. … The question that faces us as preachers is not how we’re going to grow our churches or inspire our people.  It is not even how we can lead them to live more faithfully than they did before.  The question that faces us is: Are these people going to life or are they going to die?

The expositor is not an explorer who return to tell tales of the journey but a guide who leads the people into the text, teaching the arts of Bible study and interpretations even as he demonstrates the same.

The preaching ministry is not a profession to be joined but a call to be answered.

Standing on the authority of Scripture, the preacher declares a truth received, not a message invented.  The teaching office is not an advisory role based in religious expertise but a prophetic function whereby God speaks to His people.

Rarely do we hear these days of a church that is distinguished primarily by its faithful, powerful, expository preaching.  Instead, when we hear persons speak about their churches, they usually point to something other than preaching.  They may speak of its specialized ministry to senior adults, or its children’s ministry, or its youth ministry.  They may speak of its music or its arts program or its drama team, or of things far more superficial than those.  Sometime they may even speak of the church’s Great Commission vigor and its commitment to world missions – and for that we are certainly thankful.  But sadly, it is rare to hear a church described first and foremost by the character, power, and content of its preaching.

Readability: 1

Length: 294 pgs

Author: Jim Andrews

I’ve read a good number of books on suffering; Polishing God’s Monuments might be the best one.  In it deep theology comes to you refined out of the fires of affliction.  The big issues are not dodged, and personal experience is not lacking.  In addition Jim Andrews is simply an incredible crafter of words.  The book is a mixture of theology and biography.  Jim Andrews tells of the unimaginable suffering of his daughter and son-in-law.  The biography is not meant to outshine the theology, he uses their story to illustrate principles and glory in the truths that undergird them.  If you read just one book on suffering, make it this one.  The main principle of the book is that in the midst of suffering we must polish God’s monuments.  We must look to our past, this includes all of redemptive history, and “polish”, that is remember our God, and that who He was, He is, and forever will be.  We don’t look back to live in the past, but to anticipate the God of all grace and peace in the present.

God’s people are buffeted in two ways: sometimes we suffer for the faith and other times we suffer with faith.  Either way our faith remains a work in progress.

The logic of monumental faith is simple.  If God loved and cared for me in the past; if God displayed his wisdom and power for me in the past; if God in his essential and moral being is the same yesterday and today and forever; if I myself am on the same spiritual page as before when the Lord showed his glory on my behalf, then nothing in this baffling instance has changed except his secret purposes.

God has not changed, and you have not changed, but his purpose is different this time around.  Be still, rest in the shade of his monuments, and wait patiently for him to finish his work.  In the end he’ll be there just as he was before.

For us it has been polish or perish.

The truth is a life of suffering is a better benchmark of God’s favor than a life of surfing.  God’s love is more likely to reveal itself in the presence of pain than in the absence of it.

Readability: 1

Length: 86 pgs

Author: Ligon Duncan

C.J. Mahaney commends Does Grace Grow Best in Winter? saying,

If you are presently suffering, this book is for you.  And if you are not, this book is still for you—in preparation for the trials that will undoubtedly come. Regardless of your current circumstances, Does Grace Grow Best in Winter? will help you perceive God’s purpose in suffering, receive God’s grace in trials, and draw near to our great high priest, who suffered the unimaginable horrors of the cross for us.

Here is a succinct yet thoroughly Biblical treatment of suffering.  It does not aim at being simply sentimental, or inspirational but rather faithful to Scripture and therefore lastingly beneficial.

Remembering the mystery of God’s providence redirects our attention from why to God.  Though we seek answers to our question of why we suffer, God brings comfort by answering the question of who is mysteriously working in our suffering.

Jesus suffered without us.  We may be tempted to think that Christ cannot understand our particular situation.  We may assume that there is some point of discontinuity between our experience and his that makes it impossible for him to really sympathize with us.  But here is the glorious news.  It is precisely because there is discontinuity between you experience and Jesus’ experience that he is able to sympathize with you in all things.  In fact, Jesus has experienced something that, by God’s grace, the Christian will never have to experience.

Readability: 1

Length: 226 pgs

Author: Jerry Bridges

If an author impacts me both with the ugliness of sin and the beauty of the atonement I am deeply thankful for them.  I always exit a Jerry Bridges book extremely thankful.  This sequel to The Pursuit of Holiness is no exception.

In a way The Practice of Godliness is the positive of his excellent book Respectable Sins.  After laying the foundation that godliness is rooted in devotion towards God he goes on to cover the various godly traits such as joy, holiness, contentment, humility, thankfulness, and the fruit of the Spirit.

The practice of godliness is an exercise or discipline that focuses on God.  From this Godward attitude arises the character and conduct that we usually think of as godliness.  So often we try to develop Christian character and conduct without taking the time to walk with Him and develop a relationship with Him.  This is impossible to do.

Where can we find the time for quality Bible study?  I once heard that question asked of a chief of surgery in a large hospital.  Twenty-five years later, his answer continues to challenge me.  He looked his questioner squarely in the eye and said, “You always find time for what is important to you.”  How important is the practice of godliness to you?  Is it important enough to take priority over television, books, magazines, recreation, and a score of activities that we all somehow find time to engage in?

Some virtues of Christian character, such as holiness, love, and faithfulness, are godly traits because they reflect the character of God.  They are godlike qualities.  Other virtues are godly traits because they acknowledge and exalt the character of God.  They are God-centered qualities that enhance our devotion to God.  Such are the virtues of humility, contentment, and thankfulness.  In humility we acknowledge God’s majesty, in contentment His grace, in thankfulness His goodness.

[S]o often when we sin we are more vexed at the lowering of our self –esteem than we are grieved at God’s dishonor.