Jeremy's Favorite Books | Clip from Recommended Reading for 2022

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Why don't you run us through six books, plus a bonus book, because I knew that, you know, we would need to have that allowance.

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Six books and an order that you would suggest a person might read these books to illustrate some of the things that we've been saying over our podcasts regarding principles of Christian reading.

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Okay, so my first book is going to be this. This is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by Professor John Murray.

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He was a Scottish Presbyterian author, preacher, pastor, professor, author.

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And this book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, I think is masterful. Now I'm going to recommend reading it a slightly odd way.

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It's divided into two elements, Redemption Accomplished and Redemption Applied.

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Read the second half first, because the second half will introduce you to Murray's style and will get you accustomed to his modes of thought and expression.

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Murray is a precisionist when it comes to vocabulary. He can get more into one word than most of us get into a sentence, more into a sentence than most men get into a paragraph, more into a paragraph than many get into a page.

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That can make him quite a dense author to read. But the second part of this book, he works through the order of salvation, and it's absolutely delightful.

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And in the first part of the book, he talks about how God has accomplished that salvation in Christ Jesus.

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And it's simply some of the most God -exalting, Christ -honoring, spirit -delighting doctrine that you can imagine.

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There are portions of this book, pages or paragraphs, where you can just stop and chew and taste and consider paragraphs that I go back to just to almost recalibrate my soul with regard to the marvel of a sovereign salvation.

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So Redemption Accomplished and Applied, more on the doctrinal side, but not lacking in that experimental and devotional aspect.

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Now this would be more devotional. This is called

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Christ Precious, and it's written by an 18th century Baptist called John Fawcett. Now I have it in this edition, it's recently been republished, which is why

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I'm recommending it on this occasion. And Fawcett's really asking the question, why is Christ precious to those who believe?

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And this wonderful survey of the person and the work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and he's not simply instructing you, he's drawing out your heart toward the

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Saviour. The first time I read this book, I can tell you now, I made a note in it.

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I was on an aeroplane at the time, and I thought, if I go down and this book survives,

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I'm going to write a note in the front so that my wife and children know that I want them to read this book, that they can learn more about the

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Lord Jesus Christ. I find this a tonic to my soul. There are lots of books that speak about Christ.

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This book is full of Christ, and I think it's delightful. Then here's one that's going to tie up some of the roots and the fruits.

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This is the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall, and his concern in this book is to make us to understand and to embrace and to pursue what it means for us to be

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God's people, made new creatures, and therefore, because of the realities of the

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Gospel at work in us, seeking after true holiness, pursuing holiness in the fear of the

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Lord, and in an environment where language like duty can often be a dirty word, where we're encouraged, if not so much these days, in the language to let go and let

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God, then effectively just to look and everything will get better. Walter Marshall helps us to understand what we're looking at or who we're looking at, why we're looking there, and encouraging us then to see how it is as true

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Gospel men and women we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

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It's a wonderful corrective to so many of the wrong ideas on both ends of the spectrum with regard to what true holiness is and the basis on which it ought to be pursued.

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So that'll plug your doctrine into your practice on a grand level. Then again, this will be available in a number of different editions.

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This is called The Saint and His Saviour, and it's one of the early collections of sermons that was published by Charles Spurgeon, and again, this is, as a book of sermons, it's going to be very different for you as a reader.

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It's a book that sometimes you might even want to read out loud because there is a sense in which you're still getting echoes of speech rather than writing.

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But it is, again, it is so wonderfully full of the Lord Jesus Christ. It will show us

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His beauty and His glory, and it will teach us more about our relationship with Him.

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It's got 12 sermons, titles like The Despised Friend, Faithful Wounds, Jesus Desired, Jesus Pardoning, Joy at Conversion, Complete in Christ.

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So without being a sort of a deliberately systematic approach to union and communion with Jesus Christ, it will nevertheless fill those things out.

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And because it's sermonic, you'll get lots of helpful instruction and application to help you on the way.

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Now I'm going to recommend a biography next. This is The Life of Adoniram Judson.

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It's called To the Golden Shore, and it's written by somebody called Courtney Anderson. Judson was a missionary to Burma, to Myanmar, and he actually set off as a

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Presbyterian when he arrived through his studies of the scriptures. He'd become a Baptist. That's not why

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I'm recommending it merely as a point scoring exercise, but Anderson does a wonderful job of tracing the spiritual development of Adoniram Judson from before his conversion, when he was an arrogant man, through his salvation, when

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God humbled him. Then the process by which he came to understand that even as a missionary, he had been more interested in his own reputation than he had in the glory of Jesus Christ.

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And there are portions of this book that'll just leave you utterly humbled before God.

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And then you see how through his sufferings, the loss of wives, he married more than once.

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His grief when a woman that he loved and committed himself to was called home, the sufferings that he went through as a pastor and a preacher.

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It is a delightful treatment of a Christian life, and there will be, again, easy gains at some point, and other points where you think,

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I've got to go away and have dealings with God on the basis of what I'm learning. Then speaking of dealings with God, and we've talked a little bit about John Owen and how he can be a little bit hard to get to grips with, and how some of his works are more accessible and more profitable, more immediately available than others.

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This has been put into a Puritan paperback by the Banner of Truth. It's called Communion with God.

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It's richly Trinitarian. And one of the marks, I think, of the Puritans is they had a wonderful notion of the whole

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Godhead, and Owen is one of those who's genuinely a theologian of the

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Holy Spirit. Now, Owen's contention here is that because our God is triune, we have communion with God as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit.

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And that there is, without separating them from one another, there is distinction, and that we relate to each in particular ways and along particular channels.

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And so Owen wants us to know God as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. And he guides us through a real relationship with the triune

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God in ways that will, you'll feel at times, you're gazing into the abyss and you're just dizzy with what

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Owen teaches you. But at the same time, your heart will be warmed and you will learn to walk with God.

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I think it's an excellent treatment. And then my bonus. Most of those books are quite substantial.

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They're a little longer. They could be quite heavy going. My last book, my bonus book, is much more immediately accessible.

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And if you're not a great reader, if you've not had much experience of reading or you want something just to get into your reading, this is

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Life in Christ, Walking in Newness of Life by a friend of mine named

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Edward Donnelly. It's again based on some sermons that were preached in 2001, so a much more recent publication.

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But it is, again, I remember, I'm recommending things that have done my soul good.

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I remember reading this and honestly, it lifted my heart closer to God. I felt as if I had a better understanding of my identity as a

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Christian. It helped me with regard to my pursuit of holiness. I didn't want to offend

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God after I'd read this. I was more conscious of my privileges as a child of God. So it's really a study of union with Jesus Christ and the blessed consequences of it.

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It's very brief. It's four addresses compiled between the pages, between the covers of this slim volume.

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And I find it consistently delightful. So you've got six more substantial books.

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And then one little bonus, Life in Christ by Edward Donnelly. Some of those that you mentioned,

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I would have put on my list, but you already put them on yours. So I mean, I gave you first choice.

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John Murray, really, you know, like you said, it's a theological book. It's doctrinal, but it is so biblical.

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It's almost like reading from Scripture itself and the clarity.

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Yeah, he really is the gold standard for that topic. Just really beneficial.

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Walter Marshall. I remember reading that as a believer struggling with the questions of holiness and how you balance that with grace.

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And of course, there's no need to balance. It's a wonderful fountain. I mean, you know, grace flowing through and controlling.

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But, you know, interestingly, Walter Marshall preached. That book is made up of sermons he preached and things that he wrote.

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Toward the end of his life, he died fairly young, but he had struggled with that. And he had gone to one of the

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Puritans, and it really brought him into the light to see that grace was the most powerful engine for holiness.

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And the result was he preached these sermons to his church, died. And I believe, if I'm correct, that they were published after his death.

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Now, if I've just made all that up, Teddy's going to have to just edit this entire clip, all right? Yeah, so wonderful.

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And then, oh, and communion with God. We've done that as a church. The entire church read through it. And we did it with a group of ministers.

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When I first started pastoring here, Jordan Thomas, Anthony Methenia, and a couple of other guys, we all started meeting.

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They weren't pastoring yet. We all started meeting at a Starbucks in a kind of a central location once a week.

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And we would read good books. So every Monday night, I would drive an hour and a half to them.

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And I remember reading through McShane's memoirs. And it was so encouraging. But it was also quite, you know, a bit humbling because none of us were

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McShane. And some of us were already past the age of McShane. You know, when I was 22, I thought,

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I might be McShane by 29. You know, by the time he dies, I might be super holy. And then when

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I'm 30, I'm just, yeah, I failed. Totally failed. And so after McShane's memoirs,

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I decided we would read communion with God because it was such, like you said, you know, it was such a warm treatment of the fullness of God in his triune person.

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Everything we need is there. And we are called to enter into friendship with God in all these ways.

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And, you know, responding to each of these persons in the Trinity. And I remember reading that after McShane.

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And we all felt like it was the most beneficial book on the planet, you know. Well, I think if you look at the run of the great 17th century sister confessions, the

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Westminster, the Savoy in the 1689, there's a sentence that is added at the end of the chapter on the

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Trinity in the Savoy Declaration. And Owen was a congregationalist. And I think this is pure Owen.

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And it's retained then in the Baptist confession. And it's simply this. I'm not suggesting that the

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Westminster divines didn't know this. But it's a sentence to the effect that this doctrine of the

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Trinity is the foundation of all our comfortable communion with God. And I just really think that's

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Owen. That's Owen saying, you know, we know God as triune.

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And I think that's a wonderful fleshing out of his understanding of that.

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