Tolle Lege – Page 2 – No Other Boast

Tolle Lege: Gospel Deeps

Readability: 1

Length: 201 pp

I read Jared Wilson not because he pastors a big church (he doesn’t), but because he preaches a big gospel (the gospel that truly builds the church big). Gospel Deeps was a delight to read, one of my favorite this year. As is par, I will let the book speak for itself.

My driving conviction in this book is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is big. Like, really big. Ginormous, if you will. And deep. Deep and rich. And beautiful. Multifaceted. Expansive. Powerful. Overwhelming. Mysterious. But vivid, too, and clear. Illuminating. Transforming. And did I mention big?

It is a sad irony, then, that the ever-fashionable impulse to do justice to the depths of God’s love amount to a very dramatic exercise in one-dimensionalism. This is polyhedronal stuff, man. Woe to the flatteners of what is hyperspatial, multi-dimensional, intra-Trinitarian, eternal in ways awesomer than “one year after another.”

The gospel in fact is scaled to the very shape of God himself.

The gospel announces the fullness of God for the fullness of man despite the fullness of sin.

The tannins of Christ blood contained many hints and strains, a variety of atonement blessings, but they are all pressed for through gods wrathful crushing. When the wrath of God satisfied, the penalty is paid and therefore the victories secured and his love is fulfilled.

He lives a short life and dies that we might die short while and live.

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Tolle Lege: Weakness is the Way

Readability: 1

Length: 118 pp

Author: J.I. Packer

Times of obvious weakness form a sort of bookends to our life. We are born weak, we die weak, this is clear. Unfortunately we think we are mythical demigods during the time in-between. We want to be strong, like Adam, in ourselves. We deny the curse, or worse yet, think we can outlive death drawing on our own resources. Dead branches, though we believe we can bear fruit, we believe we are strong.

J.I. Packer profoundly known these bookends. He was hit by a truck at a young age, and he is now 87 years old. More importantly, he knows that his state of weakness has never changed. Learn from this sage. You are weak. Lean into Christ in utter dependence, and know that then, and only then, are you strong.

[T]he way of true spiritual strength, leading to real fruitfulness and Christian life and service, is the humble, self-distrustful way of consciously recognized weakness in spiritual things.

Paul models the discipleship, spiritual maturity, and growth in grace that all believers are called to pursue. When the world tells us, as it does, that everyone has a right to a life that is easy, comfortable, and relatively pain-free, a life that enables us to discover, display, and deploy all the strengths that are latent within us, the world twists the truth right out of shape. That was not the quality of life to which Christ’s calling led him, nor was it Paul’s calling, nor is it what we are called to in the twenty-first century. For all Christians, the likelihood is rather that as our discipleship continues, God will make us increasingly weakness-conscious and pain-aware, so that we may learn with Paul that when we are conscious of being weak, then – and only then – may we become truly strong in the Lord. And should we want it any other way?

WTS Books: $10.82 Amazon:$10.97

Tolle Lege: A Neglected Grace

Readability: 1

Length: 109 pp

Author: Jason Helopoulos

A Neglected Grace, some books need to be written just for their title. Family worship is a neglected grace, it is not a burden, but a grace. This book isn’t a hypocritical-white-washed-tomb Pharisee, the innards match up with the outards. There is grace here one wouldn’t want to neglect.

It’s gone! Or, at the very least, it is rarely seen or heard. If it were an animal, it would be on the endangered species list. We have not only stopped doing it, but we have stopped talking about it. We hear few sermons or pastoral exhortations that attend to it. We find few fathers and mothers encouraging one another to pursue it. Christian publications seem to have forgotten about it altogether. And yet, in the history of the church, it has been one of the Christian family’s strongest characteristics: That is why this book includes a number of quotes from Christians of previous centuries.

What is it that was part of the DNA of the Christian family in previous centuries, but seems to have all but vanished in this past century? Family worship. This glorious expression of our Christian faith used to mark Christian homes, but over the past one hundred years, the evangelical church seems to have for-gotten about it. It is time for us to explore and promote family worship in the church again.

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Tolle Lege: Creed or Chaos?

Readability: 2

Length: 85 pp

Author: Dorothy Sayers

Creed or Chaos? is a collection of essays written by Dorothy Sayers, an author who wrote around the mid-eighteenth century during the World Wars. She wrote widely in various genres, notably mystery novels.

I put Sayers in a category with C.S. Lewis. I do not always agree with these authors, but where I do agree I thunder “Amen!” Sayers saw things, and what she saw she articulated extremely well. What vision. What words. Although old and out of print you will not find this book old and out of date.

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as “a bad press.” We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—”dull dogma,” as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.

This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.

If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore—on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him “meek and mild,” and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

Now, we may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.

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Tolle Lege: Death by Living

Readability: 1

Length: 185 pp

Author: N.D. Wilson

N.D. Wilson is one of my favorites. In my opinion Death by Living is his best.

Most men die by dying. Few die by living. Jesus lived. Jesus died, which is again to say, He really lived.

Here are smelling salts for your soul.

Jesus was born in a motel barn. To a teenage mother still slandered to this day. To an adoptive father who many believed (and believe) to have been a cuckolded nitwit. Jesus, the Word made physical, the Man born for trouble we cannot comprehend, was placed in a trough. He would trigger (but escape) a genocide. And he was just getting started. He would experience betrayal, profound brutality, and death before He even reached my own ripe age of thirty-four. He had come for exactly that reason. He had come for death, for a bride living (and dying) beneath a curse.

He was Adam done right.

Loosen your jaw and begin chewing, this gristle is tough. Adam, living in his story rightly, would have done the same. Adam would not have been the well-behaved Mormon teenager, abstaining from the fruit. He would have looked at Eve, seen her curse, seen her enemy, and gone after that serpent with pure and righteous wrath. He would have then turned to face the pure and righteous wrath of God Himself (that Adam had just imaged), and he would have said something quite simple, something that would be said by another, thousands of years later.

“Take me instead.”

Adam could have been conqueror rather than conquered. Regardless, fallen or unfallen, he was born to die. So are you. So am I. Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story.

WTS Books: $15.20 Amazon:$15.40

Tolle Lege: Family Shepherds

Readability: 1

Length: 179 pp

Author: Voddie Baucham

“If you can’t say ‘Amen!’ you can say ‘Ouch!’” so Voddie often says. Well I say “Ouch!” and “Amen!” to his book Family Shepherds. Convicting but not condemning, men, you will not only be encouraged but equipped to shepherd you family after reading this book.

Ask any Christian, “Who is responsible for discipling children?” and you’re likely to get the right answer: “Their parents.” However, probe further and you’ll find confusion, conflation, equivocation, and perhaps downright indignation toward any approach to discipleship that’s actually predicated on this unquestioned premise. While we all agree on the clear biblical mandate for parents to disciple their children, we’re unclear as to what that entails. We’re even less clear on the role the church is to play in offering instruction and support in this endeavor.

Part of the problem lies in that we usually begin from the wrong starting point. Virtually all the debate over the discipleship of young people begins with the assumption that church structures and programs such as the nursery, children’s church, Sunday school, and youth group are foundational discipleship tools, and whatever happens must take place within that framework. But what if those things didn’t exist? What if there were no nurseries, or youth groups, or Sunday schools? How, then, would we propose a plan for one generation to “tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done” (Ps. 78:4)?

Fortunately, we don’t have to invent such a scenario from scratch. All we have to do is open the pages of the Bible and begin reading. There we find a world where the aforementioned programs and ministries did not exist; there we find a disciple-making model that looks almost nothing like the institutional structures with which we’ve become so familial. And there we find family shepherds.

WTS Books: $11.42 Amazon:$11.58

Tolle Lege: Unpacking Forgiveness

Readability: 1

Length: 193 pp

Author: Chris Brauns

Sometimes forgiveness is hard. Some people make it too easy. I don’t mean easy to forgive them, they make the act of forgiveness too easy. They say forgiveness is to be automatic and unconditional. I like Unpacking Forgiveness because no matter which side of the teeter-totter the big kid has you stuck on there is solid Biblical wisdom for you here. Forgiveness can be extended in the hardest of situations, and it shouldn’t be automatic, and sometimes there are consequences to actions even after forgiveness. This book is Biblically faithful, incredibly practical, illuminatingly illustrated, and deeply needed.

[God’s] forgiveness can he defined in the following way.

God’s forgiveness: A commitment by the one true God to pardon graciously those who repent and believe so that they are reconciled to him, although this commitment does not eliminate all consequences.

God’s forgiveness is gracious. He offers forgiveness freely. This is not because forgiveness is free in terms of cost. It is a very expensive gift that can be offered freely because, motivated by love, God sent his one and only Son to pay the price for it.

God’s forgiveness is a commitment. When God forgives us, he makes a commitment that we are pardoned from our sin and that it is no longer counted against us.

God’s forgiveness is conditional. Only those who repent and have saving faith are forgiven.

God’s forgiveness lays the groundwork for and begins the process of reconciliation. When God forgives us, our relationship with him is restored.

Not all consequences are immediately eliminated. God disciplines his children as a father disciplines his children (Proverbs 3:12).

God expects believers to forgive others in the way that he forgave them.

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Tolle Lege: The World-Tilting Gospel

World-Tilting

Readability: 1

Length: 308 pp

Author: Dan Phillips

Want to read a book that powerfully presents the gospel? Here you go, Dan Phillips’ The World-Tilting Gospel. Want a book that will help you develop a Biblical worldview? Ibid. Don’t think a book can do both? Then you don’t understand the gospel and you don’t understand the world. Now we have gone from a want to a need. If you don’t see the connection then you need to read a book like this. Here you go:

Self-image matters, but not in the way that pop psychology paints it. What one makes of the human condition—what you think you are now, and/or what you think you were when God found you and made you His—has a major ongoing impact on our approach to God, our view of Him, and our day-to-day relationship with God.

Suppose we have the belief that we are good people who simply need a bit of a leg up. We aren’t really bad-hearted. People just don’t understand us. Deep down inside we mean well and want good things. Oh, we may have a few bad habits, we sometimes make a bad call here and there—a mistake, a goof, an “oops” . . . but it’s what’s inside that counts, and what’s inside is good.

Here’s Bud Goodheart, for instance. Bud sees himself as a decent, moral, well-meaning guy. So naturally Bud is attracted to the sort of worldview that presents God as the grand Rubber Stamp in the Sky. This God loves us unconditionally, just as we are, and wants us to realize our deepest dreams and aspirations. “Go for it, child!” Bud’s God cheers. “I’m right behind you!” That’s the line from the pulpit . . . or stool, or “enablement stand,” or whatever. “God wants you to pursue your dreams!”

So Bud simply brings God his biggest and brightest dreams, and God signs off on them. Whump! Whump! Whump! goes the heavenly rubber stamp. Approved! God claps Bud on the back, gives a big thumbs-up—and off Bud trots. Pursuing Bud’s agenda. Because God has Bud’s back.

How will such a man, such a woman, see Christ? Not as a Savior, surely. As Facilitator, as Enabler, as Cheerleader inspiring him to pursue his dreams, his goals, his ambitions. What is the Cross, to Bud? If anything, it is an expression of God’s love and approval. The Cross proves how much Bud means to God, how worthy Bud is, how irresistibly adorable Bud is to God. The Cross tells Bud that he is okay—that God just wants to fulfill Bud and make him happy with himself. It’s about affirmation, not execution.

Bud may view the Christian life as an ongoing negotiation with his partner, Jesus. Nothing radical, certainly. After all, Bud “invited” Jesus in, he gave Christ a “chance,” he “tried Christ” (like the bumper sticker says). Jesus was a plug-in, an add-on, like some enhancement to a web browser—a really good and powerful plugin that promises big things, but a plug-in nonetheless.

And Bud maintains control of the relationship.

But, you see, if Bud is wrong about himself, and he’s wrong about God, and he’s wrong about Christ, and he’s wrong about the Cross—then Bud is wrong about the relationship, too.

It matters!

WTS Books: $13.10 Amazon: $13.28

Tolle Lege: Lit

Readability: 1

Length: 188 pp

Author: Tony Reinke

Erasmus whiffed on the Reformation, but he hit this one out of the park, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” Seem more like a foul ball? Baseball, America’s pastime is said to be past its time, declining in popularity for faster paced balls of baskets and foots. Today books are perhaps looked upon as even more ancient and boring than baseball.

A nostalgia for baseball before performance enhancing drugs can be easily kindled by a good documentary or watching the Sandlot, but a comeback seems unlikely. For the people of God, a nostalgic stance toward books won’t cut it. The ratings must go up.

Tony Reinke’s Lit! will not only help you to read books, and warm you to them, it will set forth a theology of books to impel you to read. Consider this, at Sinai God wrote. As Christians we must be readers. No exceptions.

God has acted in history. He has put His glory on display. It is on display incessantly in creation. But how has God chosen to make His most glorious deeds known to most of mankind? Not in their actually seeing them. Not by drama or film. He chose words, and He placed those words in a book. This sets the trajectory for our attitude toward books, and it sets the bar by which they are judged.

If you’re not a reader I’m glad you’ve read this much. I hope you will buy this book and read why you should read more, and how you can read better.

Since Moses descended from the mountain with two loose-leaf stones under his arms, all literature can be divided into two genres:

Genre A: The Bible. The Bible was written by God through human authors, but it is fully inspired in all its parts. It is the only book that is inspired, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient, and wholly consistent in its worldview.

Genre B: All other books. However “inspired” all other literature may be, no matter how “lit” it is with truth, goodness, and beauty, no other book is infallible. All man-made books are hindered to some degree by errors, inconsistencies, and insufficiencies.

These two categories were shaped when God broke into history and ran his finger across a stone tablet. All literature is now divided into two genres—and one soars above the other in importance.

WTS Books: $11.42 Amazon:$13.37

Tolle Lege: Future Men

Readability: 1

Length: 171 pp

Author: Douglas Wilson

Got boys? Then you’ve got future men, and thus may I highly commend to you Future Men. If your interest isn’t peeked because of a failure to realize the magnitude of what was just said, perhaps a controversial statement will rouse you.

[B]oys should not play with dolls, and boys who do play with them have a problem. One of the themes of this book is to reinforce the truism that the boy is the father to the man. What you have young you will have more of later, old.

This is why I love reading Wilson, especially concerning the home. Other author’s focus on the family is all carrot and no stick. But boys thrive when there are sticks, whether it be playing with one, or being corrected by one. Speaking of sticks, take this:

Men who follow Jesus Christ, the dragon-slayer, must themselves become lesser dragon-slayers. And this is why it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. And to beat the spears into pruning hooks prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you fighting the dragon with a pruning hook.

The Christian faith is in no way pacifistic. The peace that will be ushered in by our great Prince will be a peace purchased with blood. As our Lord sacrificed Himself in this war, so must His followers learn to do.

Sticks should be swung both by the boy, and, when needed, at the boy. There is much stick slinging wisdom here for both ends. If I didn’t provoke you to read the book, perhaps I provoked you to pick up a stick, and that might be a step in the right direction.

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