Episode 25: The Why and How of Reading Books

To the Ruled Church podcast.

Christ Is King and the Church Is Not a Democracy

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy.

It's a monarchy.

Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast.

Episode 25. How you doing, Eddie?

Man, I'm doing great. It is 2023.

That's right, and people don't realize that you and I haven't podcast in a while, because these podcasts have kept rolling out. We've done some other things, but I don't think we've seen each other in, what, about three weeks or something?

Yeah, it's been something like that. It was before Christmas, and I know this podcast won't come out till later on in January, but it's right here, January the 4th, as we are recording this.

Do you guys have good Christmas, New Year's, all that?

Yeah, yeah, it's been going good.

Y 'all took off church to give your staff a break.

And all that? You bet, you bet that's what we did. No, no, it was just great. Honestly, I think we mentioned this before when we were talking about that subject, and I think I kind of agree with Calvin.

I wish that Christmas was on Sunday every year. I wish we just observed Christmas on the Sunday closest to the 25th of December. I think that'd be a great thing. Maybe, maybe our observance of the celebration of Christ's incarnation would be less commercialized and more distinctively Christian if we did it that way.

Always on a Sunday. We had a New Year's Eve service as well. First of all, on a Wednesday night in between, we had a game night, kind of like after some singing and a lesson, we had a game night. It was a lot of fun.

We played some Jeopardy and fun, and then we had a New Year's Eve service, which was not very well attended, but Wes Brown did it, and he did so good, and is very, very encouraged by it. Of course, New Year's Eve is on a Saturday and all that.

And next year, I'm actually thinking about doing New Year's Eve service with some other churches because it's on a Sunday night.

Yeah, yeah.

And so maybe we could meet a little later, not too late, maybe like seven or something, I don't know. Anyway, just some thoughts, but we had a great time together. We had a great attendance on Christmas, a little bit lower on the first, actually.

Anyway, brother, we had a couple of good podcasts, which have already come out now with some brothers from the church, and so it's good to be meeting back with you. And today we want to talk about reading books.

How Christians Should Read More Books

Well, yeah, I wanted us to kind of talk about this subject because, and I'm a slow reader, and I'm the world's worst person to not make it through books, to start a lot of books that I don't get.

The world's worst?

The world's worst person to not finish a book, to start reading in a book and not finish it. But what I really wanted us to talk about, several podcasts ago, we were dealing with the issue of reading the Bible every day.

And if you're only going to read one book, you need to read the Bible. There's never should you forego the reading of the Bible so that you can read a commentary or a novel or any other book. However, that does not mean that the Bible's the only book that you ought to read.

For most people, they have enough time and enough ability that they would be profited by reading other good books. Now, the issue then becomes what to read because of the increase of books, there is no end.

And so I just really thought it might be helpful to our listeners if we kind of talked a little bit about how do we pick what we're going to read? Even as pastors, you know, there are so many new books coming out every single day and you listen to podcasts or you listen to guys on social media and there are new books being published every day.

And so how do we sift through those and say, okay, these books are worth my time. And that is a mix of reading old books and then how we evaluate new books.

Yeah, earlier this month, we did a podcast on reading the Bible and both of us have friends. I have a couple of different pastor friends that actually don't read much other books at all hardly than the Bible.

And I don't think there's a problem with that practice. However, both of those men, both of those men, like one of them is in his fifties and the other I think is in his seventies. And I think that there's something that can be said about a man later in his life that's spending more and more time in the Bible and less and less time maybe in other books.

I think for most of us, we need the learning and the standing on the shoulders of giants. It's a practice of humility to be able to sit and learn from others. And by the way, you're not just trying to read others that got everything right because then you're not going to be reading very many people.

That's right.

You're just back to the Bible, right? Well, I'll give a biblical admonition, but Philippians 3 .17 says this, "'Brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.'".

Which I think that is a first and foremost an application in the local church, of course. I think that we ought to mimic and follow those who are godly examples in the church. But I also think that there's a tangent, if you will, that we can go on, and there's an application there that we can make for reading books.

We ought to read godly men. So we're asking for, what are some qualifications for reading books? Well, one of the qualifications I think is we should have a healthy consumption of people who have gone before us and who are already deceased.

And why do I say that? Well, because their legacy is written now. You can't apostatize if you've already gone to be with the Lord.

That's right, that's right.

And so I think that we need to read older books. It doesn't matter how fast you read. A lot of people don't read because they don't read fast. A couple of things I'd say about that. One, who cares? Like, is someone standing over your shoulder and be like, oh, look how fast you read.

It doesn't matter how fast you read. If I can read a book in a week and it takes you three weeks or a month or two months,.

So what?

So one first thing is like, so what? Keep reading. The other thing I would say is you actually can become to an extent a faster reader. What I mean is the more that we read,.

The faster we read.

Like we can train our brains. Really the problem is television, social media, those kinds of things. God has given us an amazing gift in the brain and our brain can be rewired by our environment. And so if we're disciplined in reading, we actually can read.

We actually can train our brains to be better readers.

Right.

And there's nothing that says you've got to get through this, whether it's a small book or a larger book that you've got to get through it all. You know, nobody's got to, like you said, nobody is over your shoulder watching you.

And nobody's, if you're not reading for a class or something, it's not like you've got to read this in the next month, you know? And so a practice that can be helpful is taking books in smaller pieces and saying, look, I'm going to read this much every day.

It's small amount, but I'm going to read it. You know, one of the things I'm doing this year, and I started this out last year and didn't do it, so I'm only a few days in this year, so I don't want to speak like I'm achieving it, but I'm working my way through Calvin's Institutes, but I'm just reading a small section each day, just the next little short section.

And it's going to take forever, but that's achievable because you can read it in, you know, the sections I'm reading, you can read them in seven or eight minutes, you know? So seven or eight minutes a day, instead of a person thinking, well, I have to have my one hour set aside that I can read this book.

Well, you're not going to have that many days where you have those. I mean, maybe for us as pastors, we get a little more opportunity because in study for sermons, but I'm saying outside of those kinds of things, if you're looking for books to read, if you have five minutes here or there, when you can read, we'll sit down and get five minutes further in that book.

And I think that's great. I think the word that you used there, I want to pick up on is achievable. And I love the idea there. And that's what we're talking about because you might have days that you can sit around and read an hour, but most of us, those days, even for pastors are not every day.

And eight to 10 minutes a day, that's much more doable. And you just keep doing, keep reading wherever you stop, pick up the next portion there. So I know it sounds a little too simplistic maybe, or maybe it sounds over simplistic, but the point is that you really can do it.

Just read, you know, in the words of the great theologian, Nike, just do it. So one thing, you know, read some of the guys that's gone before us, read some of the classic works, read the Puritans, read the, I don't think that you should just read, you know, Baptist or whatever.

I mean, I think it's, I think some people think there's a danger. Like, man, if you read, if you read Presbyterians, you're going to be convinced by their argument or whatever to baptize babies. Like, no, not if you're well-grounded in the scriptures, right?

That's right.

Person that reads the Presbyterian arguments and becomes convinced is not well-grounded in the scriptures. So that's why we start with, you read the Bible daily.

And you read,.

If you only have five minutes, you're reading the Bible, which you do have more than five minutes to read the Bible 99 of the day. So the days that you live. So read the Bible, be well-grounded in the scriptures, and then read the dead guys.

And then another category to shift into is read biographies, because I think it's an application, again, of Philippians 3 .17, of keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

Not just their doctrine, but watch their lives, learn from their lives. You'll be convicted by some of the ways that people in the past have lived their lives. So what else would you say about biographies?

Biographies as Mentors in the Christian Life

Yeah, you know, I've been greatly blessed by reading biographies. I love to read anything about the life of George Whitefield, has just really been impactful to me. George Mueller as well, just reading about his life.

And so when we think about reading biographies, there are so many different people in church history and in the history of our faith that we can, if you imagine what would it be like to have them as a mentor?

Well, their biography can mentor you. Along with that, I would also say we have found in our family that reading biographies together. So we read, you know, every evening as a family, we read some portion of something along with reading the scriptures.

And we found that biographies are some of the richest things that we can read together. As a matter of fact, right now we're reading through wonders of grace, you know, which is it's testimonies of individuals that were saved under the early years of Charles Spurgeon's ministry.

And it's just really great to read those testimonies, to read those accounts.

But yeah,.

So many missionary biographies can be so beneficial to your own spiritual walk and to igniting that passion to see people come to know the Lord.

Yeah.

And even out of the way people sometimes that you don't think about much, for example, Faith Cook, I read her biography on Lady Jane Grey and this young woman, the non-day Queen of England, you know, and it's pretty amazing her boldness.

I think she was like 16 when she was beheaded. Sorry to spoil it for whoever didn't know, but her boldness to the Catholic priest is pretty amazing, you know? And so it's just encouragement of our faith and it helps us to see some things.

Now, those who've gone before us, they have some blind spots, but they're usually different blind spots than some of the blind spots that we have. And so it's helpful. And so you got biographies, you have those who've gone on before us and now that kind of brings us to a big one.

How to Choose Contemporary Books Wisely

Like, how do we discern? There's so many, but like you said, there's so many books coming out year after year. How do we discern which to spend our times? Like, first of all, you need to just go, you can't read every book that comes out.

You just can't. In fact, it would be a misuse of your time to set that as your goal. You know, most pastors, now I know some people that read pretty well and they want to do a book a week and that's like 52 books a year.

Or you have the Al Mohler types that what? They read like two books a day or something. You know, like, you know, okay. So you're super ambitious. You're going to read, assuming you're not Dr. Mohler, you're going to read a hundred books a year or whatever.

But even then you're not even beginning to touch the amount of books that are coming out. So how do you discern which books to read, contemporary books to read?

Yeah. And I think one thing can be, if there's an area that you're wanting to study, I think it's okay to say, look, for the next however many months, my reading list is going to be composed of books around this subject, you know.

Or if you're, obviously that can be greatly helped by taking a class. So for myself, I'm about to take a class starting here in a couple of weeks. Well, that class is going to have required reading. So I know over the next, you know, several weeks, I'm going to be reading those books because

What class are you taking?

I'm taking, I'm actually auditing. So I'm not taking it for credit, but I'm auditing the covenant theology class at Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

Shout out Strip Mall Seminary.

That's right.

Listen, that is probably top three, maybe number one seminary class I've ever taken, that the Baptist Covenant Theology with Dr. Jeff Johnson. I'd encourage every person to take that class or, you know, audit that class or whatever.

Lots of good reading there. Actually, I'm reading right now the Nehemiah Cox book and the one by him and Dr. John Owen. Anyway, the

And that book is, see, I'll be reading that because that's required reading for the class.

And when I took the class, there was multiple books we could choose from to read. I didn't have that book. It was kind of expensive. So I chose some other things. I wish I would have read it then, but I'm reading it now.

It's very good, very helpful class. But yeah, that's a great point. Some of the contemporary, there's some, it's good, it was an example like that, to read some of the guys have gone before us and now passed on into glory and to read some of the guys that are writing now, like Jeff Johnson or Sam Renahan.

And those guys may disagree a little bit about some aspects of Baptist covenant theology, but it's helpful to dig down and to get their perspectives and to think through these issues. I think that's good.

I've got a little book on the Lord's Supper that I plan to read. And here's something else too, like nothing says that you are required to pick up a book, start in chapter one and finish through to chapter 20 and read it that way.

You don't have to, especially with contemporary books. Now with older books, I would say, I'd put a little more burden on you to read the whole thing and get the whole argument. But especially with contemporary books, it's okay to say, okay, here's some things I really wanna get out of this book and to read some of that.

In fact, I would say it would be better to skip around and read than it would to just sit down and read the first three chapters and then put it down. You'll actually get more out if you read some of the chapters that you think are the most beneficial and don't feel bad about it.

I don't think that that should be the mainstay of your reading. If you're doing that with every book, that's probably, try to get the whole thing at least with some of the books. But if you take a handful of books here or there throughout the year and you're like, I'm not gonna read all these.

I'm only gonna read portions out of these books. I think that's okay and it can be beneficial to your walk and to your theology. And so, yeah.

And I'll tell you something else. And I haven't done this actually in a few years, but I used to be subscribed to a service that they put out basically little synopsis of books. And you could go in there and read.

Actually, I think you wrote for them, didn't you?

Yeah, yeah.

You wrote reviews, book reviews, basically little, these are the main points of the book. And the way I looked at those book reviews was, look, there's no way I've got time to read all these books. So reading these book reviews at least lets me know the main things in these books.

And then what I would do is when one of those really stood out to me, then that was a book that went on my, hey, I wanna get the book and actually read that book. And so services like that can be helpful too.

It's okay to go read book reviews and get other people's opinion, especially on the new books that are coming out. You know, we look at the classics and we can say, there are some books you can say, hey, you know, almost every Christian will be benefited by reading this or that book.

But a lot of times the new books, they haven't stood that test of time yet. And one of the things you can do is I would say, instead of thinking I've got to read the newest books coming out, a lot of times what you can do is kind of wait and say, hey, this book came out three years ago.

People are still talking about it and reading it. I probably should read it. Like I don't have to read it when it's hot off the press, but if a book comes out and people are still using it after it's been through the publishing and the promotion cycle a time or two, and you can still see that people are saying, yeah, this is a good helpful book, then maybe that's one you need to look into.

Yeah.

Reading Books You Actually Want to Finish

Hey man, I think that's good. I think that sometimes when books first come out, sometimes there's excitement around them. So for example, I mentioned Jeff Johnson again, he's got a book. By the time this podcast comes out, I think it'll be out on the sovereignty of God.

And so I'm excited to read that, you know? And so here's one thing about reading too. There's some books that you need to force yourself to read sometimes, but also you can let your excitement about books drive your love for reading as well.

So if something does, like I understand what you're saying, I think it's right. You don't have to read the book when it first comes out, but if there's excitement around it and it's something that piques your interest,.

Well go with it. Get it, read it.

And it's okay to have favorite authors. It's okay to have, look, whenever this guy comes out with a book, I like it. So I'm gonna read what he writes. We said earlier, you can't read everything, but a lot of times you can read everything that, now there are some people that are so prolific in their writing that you can't read everything they write.

And then there are a lot of people that maybe you can't read every blog post that they put out, every tweet that they put out because they're prolific that way. But if they come out with a book every couple of years and you really like their writing, you could read a book every couple of years and stay up on that author if you're talking about an author that you've been benefited from in the past.

And I would even say this, there are some authors and there are some books that I would not recommend, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't read them. And what I mean by that is you mentioned earlier, one of the things that can, the advantages of the dead guys is they're not gonna apostatize.

However, there have been people who have apostatized that I have been helped by the things that they've written. And I would read those books that they had written again. I would read them again.

Give me an example.

Okay, there are a couple of books that I read years ago by Francis Chan, and I would read them again. I think they were helpful. I think that there were some good things in them. I wouldn't wanna promote Francis at this point, and maybe apostatize is a little too strong a word with Francis.

I'm not exactly sure where he's at on everything, but I do think that it's at least worrisome enough that I wouldn't wanna promote him at this point, but I was helped. And so I think there are examples like that of, hey, I read this book and it was really helpful to me, but I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna necessarily put people on that path because of what the person's writing now.

I can give you an example. I read Josh Harris' Stop Dating the Church. And that was very good, very little short book. And I wish I could still promote it, but I won't now, I won't. And I wouldn't spend my time reading it again.

I'm not gonna read it again. I mean, that's an easy, you have to discern and make a choice how many books you wanna read. And one of them is, one of those is, that's easy for me. If now they're apostatized, well, I can spend my time doing other things.

Also, let me just mention this, and we can begin wrapping up, but we've mainly talked about theology books. And I think as time permits and as interest peaks, I think it's okay to read non-theology books.

Do you read anything else besides theology books, biography books? What other interests do you have?

Well, I'll tell you, usually I do, when it comes to those kinds of books, I usually consume those over Audible instead of a paper book.

Very good.

But yeah, last year I listened to some Westerns. I listened to a book. Actually, it was kind of a biography, but it was dealing with Quanta Parker and kind of that history. And then I also listened to

Was that the S .W. or S .E. Gwynn book?

Yeah, that's very good. Very good. And then also, I'm going to tell you, I listened to this, I'm not encouraging it. I've always loved watching Lonesome Dove, so I went and listened to Lonesome Dove. It's very graphic, and it's pretty brutal.

So they really did scale that back for the television screen.

I've read that book twice. Read it twice.

Yeah.

It's been years, been years.

But yeah, I'll work through stuff like that, but usually it's on Audible because I drive so much.

As a pastor, reading, even when you read even fiction books or nonfiction books,.

And then of course,.

I think our mainstay ought to be theology books and such, but just reading is helpful in so many ways. One, we're designed to read. Two, it helps our imagination process. It helps our vocabulary. It helps us with the way that we communicate as we read and we see how others are communicating their thoughts.

It helps us to be better communicators. And so pastors need to be readers, readers of the Bible, and I think readers of, and that would be a reason too, I would say, don't only read the old dead guys because you don't want to just be sounding like them in the way that you write and communicate.

So read them, but also read contemporary guys too, and it'll help the way you think. It'll help the way that you articulate your thoughts, and you can set you some goals. There's been years in the past I've set goals.

Our goals are helpful. There's nothing wrong with goals, but I think the mainstay is to read, to be a reader every day, and to seek to mature yourself in the faith by learning from those who've gone before us and those who are contemporaries with us even now.

Read some of the lesser known guys too. We live in a, and obviously I'm going to say that because I've written some books, but we live in a day of kind of hero worship sometimes. So I think it's important to read the big names, but there's nothing wrong with grabbing a book by someone you don't know, supposing it's got faithful endorsers or whatever, or, you know, and read it with discernment, and you can benefit from guys like that too.

Yeah.

So you mentioned earlier a book that you haven't yet read, but that you're excited about that Dr. Johnson wrote on the sovereignty of God. I'll mention another book that I have not yet read, but that I'm excited about.

It's a very short little book, but there is a brother, he's a Presbyterian pastor who just wrote a little book on,.

It's called Souls,.

And it's about evangelists, about how salvation works. And I'm excited to get a copy of it and read it. So the brother, his last name is Everhard. Matthew Everhard is the author's name, but, you know, lesser known book and author, but I'm excited to get ahold of the book.

I've seen some of his content on YouTube, and I'm like, you know, I think I wanna read that. I'm gonna get my hands on that and read it. So I think that is valuable. So kind of as we close out, would you like to maybe each give a few book recommendations?

Some books that we would say, hey, you really probably should, these are worth your time.

Recommended Books for Christian Reading

Yeah, sure. I hadn't really thought, but I can think off the fly here. You going first? You got some?

Well, I can go first. First of all, I would say, From Death to Life by Quatro Nelson.

Yeah.

From Death to Life, it is good. I would encourage anybody, if you're listening to this, you probably already read it, but if you haven't, you should get a copy of From Death to Life and read that. Before the Throne, also by Alan Nelson.

You should get a copy of that and read it. It's really good. But a few other books. I was really helped by The Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur. That book was really, really influential to me and really helpful to me at a point in my life.

And I'm very thankful for that book, very thankful for Dr. MacArthur. And so that was really helpful. We're talking about the big guys a little bit. And so I would say, The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul.

And at this point, R .C. is with the Lord, and so he's one of those safe ones. And so I would say, The Holiness of God is, it really does help you to get a better vision of the Lord. And then I was really benefited by Desiring God by John Piper.

And I think that's one of those kinds of books that even if a person disagrees with John MacArthur, they disagree, or John Piper, and they disagree with even the whole idea of Christian hedonism, I think the book is helpful just as a general meditations on thinking through what it means to have this alive and heartfelt relationship with the Lord.

So those are some books that I would encourage people to take a look at.

Yeah, I'll mention a few, I'll echo those. A contemporary author, I would mention, Piper's The Pleasures of God. That's a lesser known book, but that was helpful. Again, I'm not endorsing everything with Piper, but The Pleasures of God was good.

Some works and such I think should be on your shelf. Some you know of, some that you may not, but Reform Dogmatics by Herman Bavinck. That's an excellent, if you don't have that, Eddie, that might be something you'd think about investing in.

It's very helpful. I've been very edified by Bavinck. The Christian's Reasonable Service by William S. Abruckle, Dutch theologian, formed Dutch theologian, I think in the 17th century.

Very, very, very good.

That's been helpful in some studies and stuff that we've done. The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock, an excellent Puritan work to sink your teeth into. Lots of stuff that MacArthur has written I've been benefited by.

Pilgrim's Progress, have we mentioned that one?

No, we haven't. Yeah, we gotta mention that.

Yeah, read the Pilgrim's Progress.

That's probably the first book you should, if you're a person that only reads the Bible, that right now you're like, I only read the Bible. Well, the first other book that you should read is Pilgrim's Progress because it is like the best-selling book after the Bible.

So you should probably read it.

Yeah, good. Religious Affections by Edwards. Biographies, let's mention a few biographies real quick. I'd mentioned that one by Faith Cook on Lady Jane Grey, but some biographies that have profoundly impacted me, probably Ian Murray's on Martin Lloyd-Jones and then Arnold Dalimore's on George Whitfield.

What about you?

Well, I mentioned earlier George Mueller and there is a, and I don't have it, I'm not sure where, I just rearranged my bookshelf and so I'm not exactly sure where it's at, but there's a biography of George Mueller by a guy named Steele.

And it was just really, really helpful to me that biography of George Mueller. And so I would probably any biography of George Mueller, but that one, that specific one, and I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what the name of it is, but it's by a brother named Steele.

And so S-T-E-E-L-E, I think is his last name. That was a helpful biography.

All right, brother.

It's been a good episode. You guys be readers. We've already made it. Couple of things to say at the end. We've already made it through the first month of 2023.

In podcasts.

What do you think about that?

That is so great. You know, we both were excited to get back into podcasting this last year and we're able to do that, but I love that we're able to be ahead a little bit like this because the chances that we will be able to keep putting out the content every single week, you know, it's heightened by that.

And so praise the Lord.

And also only 11 months from today is Christmas.

That's right.

Thanks for listening to the Rural Church Podcast. Say goodbye, Eddie.

We'll see you guys next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the toimos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you going to respond?