Book Review "The God Who is There"

Program Introduction and Daily Bible Reading

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is September the 18th, 2020. If you're following along in our daily Bible reading, which I hope that you are, today we are going to be reading from 1 Peter chapter 5.

And if you'd like a copy of our daily Bible reading, go to our website, sgfcjax .org, look under posts, and under posts you will see the 2020 Bible reading program. We are reading one chapter a day through the New Testament, going in the order that we believe approximately that the books were written.

So a chronological tour through the New Testament, one chapter a day, every day, in 2020. So today is Friday, and Friday has become our day for doing book reviews. And I have been looking forward to doing this book review for a while.

I read this book, I have really enjoyed this book, and I want to highly recommend this book to you, especially if you are a new believer in Christ. Or maybe you are someone who is not yet a believer in Christ, and you're listening to this program, and you want to know more about the Bible, you want to know more about who God is, you want to know more about what the Bible says about God and about man, then my recommendation to you would be to read this book.

And the book that we're going to be looking at today is entitled, The God Who Is There, Finding Your Place in God's Story, by D .A. Carson. Now, D .A. Carson is a scholar, he is a tremendous scholar, and he is able to write both on the scholarly level and on the popular level.

He's able to write for those in the academy, and he's able to write for those who are in the pews. He is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is the co-founder of the Gospel Coalition, and he has been described as doing the most seminal New Testament work by contemporary evangelicals, and as one of the last great Renaissance men of evangelical biblical scholarship.

I'll tell you what really got my attention about D .A. Carson, was not so much his writing, but what someone else said about him. I was watching an interview with D .A. Carson years ago by Dr. R .C. Sproul, and this was prior to Dr. Sproul's passing, and Dr. Sproul sat down with D .A. Carson, and Dr. Sproul said of him that he considered him to be one of the greatest scholars living today.

I think that was the language he used, I may be missing it slightly, but basically he said that Carson's work and Carson's writings have been some of the most important work of his generation, and so to have somebody like R .C. Sproul speak so highly of Dr. Carson is, to me, a tremendous thing.

I, of course, as many of you know, considered Dr. Sproul to be not only one of my favorite pastors, but one of my favorite Christians, one of my favorite people. He just was, he was a tremendous man, did a lot of great things, and I was blessed to have met him on several occasions, and I'm just thankful for the time that I had with him, and thankful for the lessons that he taught me about being a scholar and being a pastor and preacher, and when I hear him give accolades to someone like D .A. Carson, that, of course, got my attention even more.

I knew, of course, I've known who Carson is for a long time, but that was really just of interest to me, and so this book that I'm talking about today is written by D .A. Carson, and this book is not written necessarily for scholars, but I genuinely can say I think that anyone, whether they are a not yet believer, they have not yet come to Christ, or that they are a seasoned, long-time believer, even someone who is a Bible teacher and Bible scholar would still benefit from this book.

In fact, I'm going to read from, in the opening we have the acknowledgements, and one of the acknowledgements is from Sam Chan, lecturer in theology, preaching ethics, and evangelism at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia, and this is what he says.

He says, if you've ever wanted to hear God's story, then this book is for you. If you've ever wanted to come face-to-face with the God who made loves and rescues, then this book is for you, and if you've never picked up the Bible or wandered into a Christian church, then this book is especially for you.

So it kind of tells you what it is, and I'll give you an overview of the book. Having gone through it myself and having read it, basically what this is, is this is an introduction to biblical Christianity.

I guess that's the easiest way to say it, and so this book is great because it begins at the most basic level of, if you've never opened a Bible before and you don't understand what the Bible is, you've never even considered what is in it, this book starts—I mean, it even says things like, the big numbers are the chapters and the small numbers are the verses.

I mean, you might think, wow, how simple, but yes, imagine somebody who's never grown up in church. Imagine someone who's never been to Sunday school, who's never been to church, and you might think, well, I don't know anybody like that.

Well, there are people like that all over the United States who maybe grew up in unbelieving homes or maybe grew up in situations where church was not a priority. Bible reading and Bible study was not a priority.

Many of the listeners, I'm sure many of you may be near me and you're in what we might call the South, the Bible Belt, and so a lot of us wouldn't think to ask those questions because we grew up in Sunday school situations where we were always opening our Bibles and having sword drills and things like that.

But imagine having someone never, never having read the Bible. This book takes them on a journey through God's Word, understanding from the very basic level and then—but the thing is, it doesn't stay at the basic level.

It doesn't start with baby food and continue with baby food. It starts with the simple things and it moves on to the more powerful, complex things, never straying, though, from that popular presentation where it's—I would say Carson understands his audience throughout.

He's talking to people as if they know nothing, but at the same time, he's not talking to them like they're fools or he's talking to them as a respectful scholar is explaining the most important book in the world to people that he genuinely cares about and wants them to understand.

That's the key to this book is D .A. Carson wants people to understand the Bible and I believe he understands the Bible and therefore his explanation is very, very clear and concise and powerful. I want to read to you—I want to read the chapters to you as—I want to show you how the—or explain to you how the book is laid out.

The book is laid out with 14 chapters and it goes as follows. The God who made everything, that is chapter 1. Chapter 2, the God who does not wipe out rebels. Chapter 3, the God who writes his own agreements.

Chapter 4, the God who legislates. Chapter 5, the God who reigns. Chapter 6, the God who is unfathomably wise. Chapter 7, the God who becomes a human being. Chapter 8, the God who grants new birth. Chapter 9, the God who loves.

Chapter 10, the God who dies and lives again. Chapter 11, the God who declares the guilty just. Chapter 12, the God who gathers and transforms his people. Chapter 13, the God who is very angry. And finally, chapter 14, the God who triumphs.

God's Justice, Hell, and the Need for Tears

I want to say this, one of the things I was so thankful about this book is this book does not shy away from the reality of God's justice and God's eternal punishment for those who remain in their sins separated from Christ.

I bring that up because I think it's important to mention that so many people have abandoned a solid theology of eternal conscious torment, a solid theology of hell, and have replaced it with either not talking about hell at all or having it be the very last thing in any type of theological lesson or conversation or outright reinterpreting the idea of hell as some type of personal experience of sin in this world.

I've heard it recently explained hell is we create hell with our sin and hell is what we make and hell is not something created by God, even though the Bible clearly says that hell is something that God created for the devil and his angels.

So the idea that we create hell is, to me, it's a miscommunication of the truth. And I think if you want a good, solid understanding of what the Bible says about God's punishment of the wicked, I think you'll find that in this book.

D .A. Carson, I think, does a great job. In fact, I want to read on page 210 of the book. He says this. He says, any Christian who teaches on these things without tears is betraying Christ. This is what he's referring to there.

Any Christian who teaches on the subject of God's punishment, God's hell. He goes on. He says, Christian faith and thought are not helped by angry preachers whose tone almost suggests that they take a kind of vicious glee from the tragic end of others.

For a start, we Christians will be the first to acknowledge, as Paul understands in Ephesians 2, that we are all by nature children of wrath and starting with us who have become Christians. If we have come to experience the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with the living God, it is only because of the grace of the gospel.

We are never more than poor beggars telling others where there is bread. We are never more than condemned prisoners who have found pardon and who want others to enjoy the same. This, again, takes a sobering and mature look at the subject of eternal torment.

I think it does so in a way that is God-honoring and in a way that is helpful for either a young believer or someone who is, as I said, new to the faith and trying to learn what the faith says about things like this.

Justification, Regeneration, and Concluding Prayers

Another part of the book that I wanted to point out is in the later chapters, what we find is that D. A. Carson is actually looking at some of the more deep aspects of the faith. As we noted when we looked at the order, he talks about God declaring the guilty just.

That's the doctrine of justification, and he does a tremendous job of explaining the doctrine of justification so clear in his presentation. Recently, I was thinking about how muddled so many people become, especially scholars, when it comes to issues like justification.

They become so muddled and so confused, and this book has a great understanding and explains very well the doctrine of justification and ultimately the doctrine of regeneration, which we see in chapter 8, where he talks about God granting the new birth.

All of these things are great, but in the later chapters, what we see is we see what he calls concluding prayers. These are prayers that are written for the person who's reading this book to help them understand how to respond to this truth.

You know, you've probably heard, as I have, many people talk about the sinner's prayer and how sinners have to say this very specific prayer if they're going to be saved. You know, God, I believe in you.

I repent of my sin. I trust in Jesus. You know, and personally, I don't like the idea of sinner's prayers, because I think when a man comes to repentance and faith, when he understands the gospel, that will pour out of him.

I don't think we have to necessarily give him something to recite, such as in Islam. There's a certain thing that has to be recited in Arabic for a person to become a Muslim. That's not the way Christianity is.

But there are times when new believers need help praying, and so there are these concluding prayers that are written by Carson himself, and they are wonderful, beautiful prayers. And I'll give you a portion of this one.

This is in the chapter, The God Who Dies and Lives Again, the concluding prayer. We rejoice, Heavenly Father, in the truth that Jesus rose from the dead, yet we begin to see that this is not simply a truth in the public arena of history to be absorbed quickly and then set to one side.

For if indeed your dear son, the God-man, rose from the dead, then everything is changed. His victory over death is confirmed. And he goes on. But the point is, this book is great for someone who doesn't know how to pray.

It gives them a model, an example of a seasoned believer writing out a prayer to God. So how would I recommend this book? One, I would recommend this book to any believer. No matter where you are in your spiritual walk, whether you're very mature or whether you're very new to the faith, or maybe you don't know where you are and you are not yet in Christ, this book would be very helpful and would accompany well your personal Bible study and devotion because it takes you through the story of the Bible in edible bites that you can learn from.

In fact, I'll tell you how much I like this book. Currently, we teach at our church. We have Sovereign Grace Academy. And I just finished our course on Survey of the Old Testament, and I'm currently teaching the Survey of the New Testament.

And this is a two-year rotational course. So in two years, I will again teach Survey of the Old Testament, Survey of the New Testament. The next time I teach these Old Testament, New Testament surveys, this book will be part of the required reading.

That's how much I think of this book and how much this book is useful because it is that well put together. And I will tell you this also. I think this would be a great book to give your unbelieving loved ones.

If you have friends and family who do not believe, ask them, would you be willing to read a book that I give to you and purchase this book and give it to them? And I believe it will be very useful. It's, if you want to say it this way, it is a very, very hefty gospel tract because it takes somebody from the beginning of creation to the end of revelation and explains to them the story of God in the Bible.

And it explains our place in that story. Well, this has been my review of The God Who Is There, Finding Your Place in God's Story by D .A. Carson. Highly recommended, and I would encourage it to be added to your own personal reading list.

Closing Remarks and Program Sign-Off

I want to thank you for being with me today on Coffee with a Calvinist. And again, we have this program every weekday morning at 6 .30 a .m. And you can find us on Facebook, on YouTube, and on any of your podcasting outlets.

We are on Apple Podcasts, we're on Spotify, and of course, we're on Facebook as well. So if you're watching us or listening to us on one of these outlets, please take an opportunity to let us know that you appreciate and like the program.

If you have any questions, send those in. I like to deal with listener questions, and I appreciate you being in the audience today. Again, thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. Keep in mind, we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 6 .30 a .m. on YouTube and Facebook. If you enjoyed this lesson, please take a moment to respond by hitting the like button, leaving a comment, and subscribing to the channel.

On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening. May God bless you.