Homeward Bound

Good Primer; Lacking in Examples Preaching by the Book provides a formulaic step by step approach to producing "text-driven" sermons. Pace is a big proponent of the expositional model in which each sermon point branches off of the one textual big idea. In this short book he provides an excellent summary of sound Biblical interpretation methodology, as well as a very helpful sermon drafting process. There are many streams of wisdom throughout! I appreciated Pace's understanding of the centrality of the Holy Spirit and His involvement in the entire preaching process. The Spirit wrote the Scriptures, helps us understand and communicate the Scriptures, and He convicts the hearts of the listeners with the Scriptures. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it--and as preachers we need to ensure we are doing none of this in our efforts alone. I will say that Pace's preaching model seems a little too rigid. He presents a good exegetical ...

James McPherson is as close to authoritative as Civil War historians get. Having a few years ago read his excellent Battle Cry of Freedom , I enjoyed picking up this much slenderer volume on the turning point of the war: Antietam. Like the best historians, McPherson loads his narrative with swaths of direct quotations from an array of sources: newspapers, soldier's journals, officers, foreign dignitaries...etc. With this information he spends over half of the book setting the stage for Antietam. We learn about the extreme sway of morale as the conflict evolved, the Union success on the Western Front, and the Confederate success of Second Manassas. These events provide needed context for the clash to come. There is little question that the Battle of Antietam is the turning point of the Civil War. So much hinged on the outcome of one day. A Confederate victory would have likely pushed voters in the North to support the Democrats--a party looking for peace. On top of that, a...

I am becoming quite the G. K. Chesterton fanboy of late. Heretics is another well known work of his that I have put under my belt. Short review below: Energetic and Fun Heretics is a scattered assortment of short verbal critiques of writers, philosophers, politicians of Chesterton’s day. Throughout, Chesterton is as paradoxical as ever, reversing every commonly accepted position and creed with the sardonic wit characteristic of him. Those who are familiar with his other works will likely enjoy the energetic pugnacity, while I could equally see how others newer to him could see it as overkill. Heretics is not as timeless as his seminal work Orthodoxy because, though philosophies never fully vanish, we are over 100 years removed from the characters Chesterton is calling out in Heretics . Because of this, many of the chapters are just not as engaging because we lack the background information regarding each of the heretics described. Chesterton does try to get the reader up to spe...

As many of you know, I love C. S. Lewis. My dad read me The Chronicles of Narnia in my formative years, and they will always have a special place in my heart. I enjoyed Mere Christianity . I loved The Screwtape Letters . I am amazed at the analysis of the human psyche in ‘Till We have Faces and The Great Divorce . Even compilations of various essays such as The Weight of Glory and The Problem of Pain I found simply riveting—even in the areas I disagree with Lewis. Then there is this Space Trilogy . I read Out of Silent Planet several years ago and found it, well, interesting. I enjoy Lewis’s prose and style of writing, but it was unlike the others. I read Perelandra soon after, and I enjoyed it a bit more than the first, but it seemed to drag in the endless back and forth dialogue. The series seemed just so different from everything I had previously read from Lewis. Upon finishing That Hideous Strength ( the third in the series) and, after thinking about it, and after some ad...

What time is it? Where are we going? What is the vision of the future that gives us purpose to live in our present time and place? These questions are some of the few Trevin Wax addresses in his recent book entitled Eschatological Discipleship . Eschatology is a theological term often associated with the topic of the end times among Christians. Wax chooses to use this word in a “broader sense” as “encompassing the Christian vision of time and the destiny of the world.” Wax is correct in his concern that many Christians are living with a “shrunken view of eschatology” which “fails to impact discipleship” and leaves Christians without the necessary tools to read the signs of the times and navigate its darkness. Unfortunately it is not uncommon to see Christianity viewed as a truncated list of rules or doctrines detached from any future vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. In this book, Wax gives a call for Christians today to live in the present as people of the future. After...

I picked up this 99 cent copy after running across Jesus’ remarks in Matthew 12, in which he quotes the prophet Isaiah: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Uncertain in the ambiguity, I found out Richard Sibbes had written an entire book on the topic. I had never read anything by Richard Sibbes before, but with an increasing personal interest in the Puritans I decided to give it a try. I was, frankly, blown away. The Bruised Reed is less a commentary on Matthew 12:20, and more of a blueprint of the Christian walk. It begins by discussing the tenderness of Christ. The heart of the Father. “As a mother tendereth most the most diseased and weakest child, so doth Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest child, and likewise putteth an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support.” Sibbes instructs that we not consider ourselves loftier than Christ, but in likewise manner, condescend to t...

When We Say Father is a short booklet where author Adrian Rodgers walks through the Lord's Prayer in a topical, almost devotional style. Each section is broken up and expounded on in simple layman's terms. Personal examples and short stories abound. Rodgers does not go into the exegetical, left brained particulars of the Lord's Prayer; quite the contrary, this is a quick and easy read that is directed towards the heart. A book any literate Christian can read! While there may be certain particulars that I may not agree with: for instance, Rodgers' insistence that God is a respecter of the human will, and will not draw anyone unless they freely choose him--the main thrust of this book is something I truly celebrate. Chapter 4 entitled "The Freedom of Forgiveness" was a great refresher of what it means to be forgiven from our own debt; and a stern warning against the epidemic of bitterness (often reflected in the church!). Cha...

As many of you know I enjoy a lot of C. S. Lewis' writings. My Dad read the Chronicles of Narnia to me and my sisters growing up, and since then many of his other writings have become personal favorites. Lewis has a truly unique way of writing and framing ideas, which is part of what makes him so enjoyable to read. The Screwetape Letters is a good rehashing of much of Lewis's thought, presented in the negative perspective of a senior devil giving advice and admonishment to a junior devil. The junior devil has been given a human "patient" and it is the devil's duty to ensure that he does not end up in "the Enemy's" possession. For those of you who may be new to Lewis, this book is an easy to read synopsis of many of his writings—and therefore a great place to start. As usual, Lewis's understanding of pure human pleasure and desire as something God given is refreshing. The devils decry their inability to create a new positive pleasure wit...

Ayn Rand is the antithesis to Karl Marx. Both are atheistic materialists in their philosophical understanding of the universe, and yet both come to complete opposite political applications of that same worldview they share. Marx saw injustice in his day with the division of labor and dreamed for a world that was different. Marx envisioned a world where man was not a slave to the bourgeoisie system, but free in a communal and equal economy. Rand (who grew up in the USSR) similarly longed for freedom, but a freedom in the reverse of Marx's Utopia. She dreamed of a freedom of the individual  from the shackled obligation to the community; a freedom from the collective and towards the "god of I." Anthem is a short novella which describes a dystopian world in which everything is spoken in terms of the collective “we.” The protagonist (named “Equality 7-2521”) refers to himself in the singular as “we” (which can make for a confusing read). He is given rules and restrict...

I am a Marx novice, but wanted to get a proper introduction to a thinker whose work has left such an indelible and bloody mark on history. Marxist thought is also making a sweeping comeback in college campuses and in the new Left movement (particularly among the young)--class warfare, class oppression, elevation of the socio political to the primary, lumping the individual into the collective--all ring familiarly of Marx. For this reason I wanted to read an analysis of Marx from a Christian perspective to see where he, as well as the new movements, fall short.   Dennison gives a brief and academic analysis of the life and works of Karl Marx. He then charts Marx's view of history and followed by (my favorite part) a Christian Presuppositional Analysis of Marx's view of History. Interestingly enough we see that not all (key word all) of Marxist thought is evil. Marx observed vast injustice in his day through the division of labor--where the rich minority were only g...

I apologize for the delay in this next installment of our virtual book club. Extenuating circumstances, namely the birth of my son have delayed my writing on here--and perhaps reasonably so! I will continue to provide a short chapter by chapter summary--trying to get the highpoints from Sinclair Ferguson's book The Whole Christ. *** Tincture. A word derived from the Latin Tinctura, which refers to the process of dyeing--in which a piece of cloth is recolored by dipping it into liquid dye. "Both to himself and others, Boston's reaching 'felt' like that. Extending the metaphor, one might say that now the garment of the gospel in which Christ was dressed in Boston's preaching was dyed a shade of 'Christ-in-whom-every-spiritual-blessing-is-found' rather than merely 'I am offering you Spiritual blessings.'" (1106) Once Thomas Boston had understood the truly free nature of the gospel offer, and the centrality of Christ in the Christia...

Ferguson opens chapter 2 by asking a fundamental question: What is the gospel? "The extent to which the answer we give determines how we preach and communicate the gospel." (565) What had happened with the Scottish church in the 18th century was that it had fallen into a legalistic pitfall of limiting the offer of Christ to those who seemed eligible. They fell into an unbiblical version of Calvinism where the offer of grace could only be genuinely given to someone who showed signs that they were of the elect. This is unquestionably wrong. As Evangelista says in the Marrow of Modern Divinity: "I beseech you, consider, that God the Father, as he is in his Son Jesus Christ, moved with nothing but with his free love to mankind lost, hath made a deed of gift and grant unto them all, that whosoever shall believe in this his Son, shall not perish, but have eternal life." Ferguson then goes to show how this universal offer to all does not go against the Westminster...

Chapter 1: How a Marrow Grew The year is 1717. Your name is William Craig. You are standing before the Scottish presbytery of the town of Auchterarder as a young candidate for ministry. This is an examination, often known for tricky questions and theological traps. A member of the presbytery asks that you agree to the following statement: “I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating us in coming to God." How would you have responded? Is it "not sound to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ?" The poorly worded statement has since been known as the Auchterarder Creed. And while Craig initially agreed with the statement, the following meeting he revoked his signature and explained his position. The church took away Craig’s license to preach the gospel, but the story goes far beyond the young minister to be. It sparked the “Marrow Controversy”. Thro...