Eighteen Book Recommendations | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, and I'm the director of Media Grantiae, and I'm here again joined by my good friend

John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of course of the Behold Your God study series for Media Grantiae.

It's coming up toward the end of the year, and people start to do things like top ten lists, and even with Christmas coming up closer, people start to suggest, you know, books that you might ask for to put on your

Christmas list, or if you get those great, you know, Amazon cards or Banner Truth gift cards or RHB gift cards, what would you spend them on?

Well, we've collected a nice pile of books here to just give some short recommendations.

There are several categories. What are the categories, John? Well, we've broken it down into biographies, devotional books, commentaries, and some more heavy theological reading.

So our challenge really, since there are 18 books, and that's leaving a good number out, cutting them down just to the ones that...

there's really no system here, you know, it's not the top 18 that we've read this year, it's not...

these are the most important books that have ever come into my life kind of thing, but these are just books that we felt like we wanted to commend to you today.

So the challenge is two minutes or less in our commendation of each book.

Are you up for the challenge, John? We'll see. All right, buckle in for a four -hour podcast.

No? So why don't you get us started with your first biography? Yeah, this is a biography by Amy Carmichael.

Now, a lot of these we've mentioned before, so we only need to just quickly hit them again, but Amy Carmichael was a missionary in the late 19th, early 20th century to India, and there are a number of biographies available.

Ian Murray did one recently. It's a smaller... it's a great biography, but it's a smaller one, so it's a good one to introduce you to her if you're not really ready to jump into a to a 400 -page book, but of the commentaries...

of the biographies that are larger. I think Frank Houghton's biography of Amy Carmichael is the better because it includes her own writing, and Amy Carmichael is the unusual combination of a godly life and exciting ministry, but also of a real ability to write.

She was a poet, and she wrote a number of books herself, so in this book you find that her own biography and account of the work,

Gold Cord, is quoted heavily, so I think it's the best one on Amy. Another one is the...

is one that we've mentioned so many times, the Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McShane, written by his friend within months of his death, so Andrew Barnard writes this.

He includes some of McShane's own diaries. He gives some of his sermons and then some of his letters, so very warm, very easy to read biography of McShane.

My last one, and before Matt gives his, is another that we've mentioned many times, and that's

Hudson Taylor. Now this is volume one of a two -volume set, and it divides well.

The first one is called The Growth of a Soul, and the other one deals with the growth of the work that Taylor did in China as a leader of the

China Inland Mission, and so the first one covers all those amazing accounts of how

God taught Hudson Taylor lessons that he needed to know to walk with Christ, especially on his own so often in China, and the second volume deals with how

Taylor applied those principles of Christlikeness to leadership, which I find so very convicting as a pastor.

Now this is volume one. My second volume is falling apart because I've read it more often. Now I don't recommend

Hudson Taylor if you're wanting to figure out the theology of the church or some specific topic.

Hudson Taylor was, you know, this biography is very general. Taylor had to work with all different types of different church backgrounds and traditions.

He worked with Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, so he wasn't a particularly precise man in that way, but it's the picture of Christlikeness in the man himself that I find so helpful.

Well, my contribution to the biography stack is Revival and Revivalism by Ian Murray, and this is really, you know,

I just had a conversation with a friend recently about this book who confessed that he had it on his shelf for years and looked at it and said, yeah, that's a book about revival.

I like studying revival. Revival's great, but I don't know if that's really what I want to read right now, and then he finally pulled it off of his shelf and realized, this is a history of America.

This is one of the most challenging and, I think, theologically telling books that has ever been written.

I mean, I really couldn't speak more highly of it. The subtitle or the whatever you call it is, The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism from 1750 to 1858.

The Making and Marring. So how did we get here? How did it start?

And how did we get where we are? How did things devolve to the point that they are now?

So it begins in the colonial period, and it goes all the way through the mid -1800s with the

Wesleyan Methodists and really details some wonderful works of God in revival, and also the works of men in revivalism, and just the pervading influence that you can trace that forward to see the influence in our churches today.

So really can't recommend this highly enough. We have used this here in the church, what, twice?

We've read through it corporately, having book studies, and what tends to happen is the folks who come from a

Southern Baptist background or even kind of a non -denominational background, they read the first hundred or so pages, and they go, hmm,

Solomon Stoddard, that's interesting, and you know, oh Edwards, and oh, and then somewhere around, what is it, page 200 or so, they go, wait a minute, this is talking about me.

This is talking about the stuff that I grew up in. This is the roots of the bad things that I've kind of come out of.

This is where all this started. So very eye -opening, very good book. Yeah, I love to add my recommendation there.

Of all the books that we have when it comes to history and things and biography, I think that would be our all -time favorite for a compact dealing with such critical themes, but from a very fair and historical perspective,

Ian Murray is a great writer. The size of that book, don't let that scare you, and he's dealing with not just, he's dealing with all the denominations,

Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, and he's tracing the good and the bad, but it's just such a compelling argument that, yeah,

I think that we couldn't recommend any book higher than that. Yeah, Ian Murray is the people's historian. I mean, he's very precise.

He's a trustworthy, true, and genuine historian, but he writes for the people in the pew who just want to know how we got here.

Yeah, well, with devotional books, we've got, we've both got a few. Let me start with one that has to be recommended with some reservation, all right, with a caveat, and that is a book by Brother Lawrence, a monk in the 17th century, who wrote, or this was compiled from conversations with him and some of his letters and Maxim's little short sayings.

The book's called The Practice of the Presence of God. It was a favorite of A .W. Tozer, which is how I got introduced to it.

It is actually the first book, other than the scriptures, that I read as a Christian. Now, you don't recommend this book for the gospel because Brother Lawrence doesn't discuss the gospel, but what it is, it's a story of the life of a monk who,

I believe, came to know the Lord, and in the Roman Catholic system at the time, wants to dedicate himself to the

Lord. He doesn't rethink Roman Catholicism. He doesn't rethink a lot that we wish he would have rethought, but what he does talk about in these conversations is, how do

I live unto God every moment? And he eventually came to the conclusion that, though as a monk, he had set times of prayer and meditation, really he found that he could hold communion with God throughout the day, as much doing the dishes in the kitchen of the monastery, which was one of his jobs, as he could in the corporate prayer times.

So, the benefit is, he talks about how to live all of life unto the

Lord. Now, one of my favorite accounts of him is, toward the end of his life, he was dying, and he was surrounded by a number of his friends, and they were standing there, whispering around him, saying, he's dying, he's dying, and he kind of revives a little, and sits up and says,

I am not dying, and they think that he's losing his mind, he is dying, and he said, and so they asked him, what are you doing?

And he said, I'm worshiping, and so that was really the picture of his life as a believer.

So, a helpful book in that way. Let me give you another one from a totally opposite theological spectrum, and one that I can recommend without any caveats, and that is a book by the

Puritan John Owen, Communion with God. Now, we mentioned this in a previous podcast, but this was a book that was read by myself and a number of young ministers, just when we were getting started, and Anthony Mathenia, Jordan Thomas, co -pastors here,

Chuck Baggett, Shelton, we all got together in in the city of Memphis at a Starbucks, and we were reading books, so we read

McShane's biography, and then at the end of that, we all were kind of bottomed out, we thought, well, we're not even

Christians, you know, I mean, we read McShane, we look at us. So, the next book that I chose was a little book that I had never read before, called

Communion with God. In this book, John Owen deals with the triune nature of God, and how that affects our fellowship with Him.

How do we hold communion with Him as Father, as Son, and as Spirit, specifically?

And that is a unique approach, and so Owen talks about that.

It is the warmest book I've read by Owen, very clear, easy to read for a

John Owen book, short, you see, and it was just a very helpful book for us.

In the devotional category, I brought one that we, again, read as a church this year. The men in our church got together to read this really small book by John Calvin, and it's been released under different names over the years.

It's actually taken from the Institutes. This was released under the name,

I think, A Golden Book of the Christian Life, maybe 50 years ago, and personal story,

I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, my family's a Presbyterian family, and so John Calvin, Calvinism, that was never a scary thing for me, that was just normal life.

I thought everybody thought like that, and so this book was in my home growing up, and it was probably the first John Calvin book that I ever read, and I remember as a believer reading

Calvin, and I had this idea that, okay, Calvin's good, but he's cold, and he's precise, and he's just, boy, you know, he's

John Calvin, and could not have been more surprised and happy to learn just what a warm, devotional man

Calvin was, and how that comes through in this little book. This is an edition that was put out by Reformation Trust, which is a division of Ligonier Ministries.

Don't worry about trying to write these down as we mention them, because all of these will be in our show notes at mediagratia .org.

I will put links to where you can get these if you're interested, but do you know what

Calvin's emblem is, what his personal motto was? It may surprise you.

If Ian Hamilton was here, then we'd ask him to say it in Latin for us, but since he's not, the

English translation is, well, let me say this, the logo, if you could call it that, is a hand with a heart being raised heavenward like this, and the motto is, my heart

I offer to you, Lord, promptly and sincerely. So if anyone ever offers you a version of Calvinism that doesn't involve offering your heart to God promptly and sincerely at all times, accept no substitutes.

This is the religion of John Calvin, the Christianity of John Calvin, and it's really well comprehended and explained in this little book,

A Little Book on the Christian Life. Yeah, very helpful, especially for Christians going through difficult times, because that was a difficult century, and a lot that he writes deals with the issue of suffering.

I've got one last one, and this is one, of course, we mentioned so much, A .W. Tozer's book,

The Pursuit of God, and Tozer wrote this on a train from Chicago to California.

He was going to speak in California, and so his heart had been full of these thoughts and wanting to say these things in some way, and as he got on this train, he was, he had a private car, and he just wrote throughout, through the day, through the night, and pretty much wrote the rough draft of the book in one stretch like that, and this is one of the more challenging books that I've ever read, and my favorite of Tozer's.

I'll just read you some of the chapters. Chapter one, Following Hard After God. Chapter two,

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing. Three, Removing the Veil. Four, Apprehending God.

Five, The Universal Presence. Six, The Speaking Voice. Seven, The Gaze of the

Soul. Eight, Restoring the Creator -Creature Relation.

Nine, Meekness and Rest, and Ten, The Sacrament of Living, and this is the kind of book that I generally read about once a year or every other year, and usually in January, and I always find it to be very bothersome, you know, kind of like a godly friend that comes along and shakes you and says, why did you slow down?

Why did you think this is a good place to stop? Press on. So I find

Tozer a good friend in that way. Well speaking of pressing on, this is yet another book that we've read as a church.

You can tell that a lot of mine are coming to, what books have I read this year with the local church? Well, this is

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. If you're not familiar with it, you should read it. Don't just let it be the book that, yeah,

I have a copy of that, and it's on my shelf, but I've never really gotten into it. This is incredibly helpful.

We used Derrick Thomas's little video series from Ligonier as a guide.

That was good. There are other guides to The Pilgrim's Progress. Yeah, there's some study guides that go with this, and we'll put it on the podcast, because there's some really helpful ones.

Yeah, but you will not believe how relevant to your Christian life this book that was written by John Bunyan in prison, what, how many years?

Nearly 400. Nearly 400 years ago is. You will be helped and encouraged by this book.

Yeah, and Matt's mentioned so many books that we've done as a church. Sometimes I get this comment from folks.

They'll say, well, well you must be a highly educated church, and my church is not highly educated, folks.

We're blue -collar people. We're not wealthy. We don't, you know, and I hear all these excuses, and they say, we couldn't read that book.

I would say that you should guard against that lie from the enemy.

Now, you don't throw your people in the deepest end of the pool, but you can begin to introduce your people to good books that were written in previous centuries, and you just say to them, hey guys, this is an old book, so we're all going to kind of, we're going to work through it together.

If we have questions, when we get together each week, or however frequently you meet in small groups and discuss it, underline in your book.

Put question marks in the margin if you don't understand what it's talking about. You know, we have folks in the church who don't have a very good education, and they read these old books, and they will circle words they don't understand and go look it up in the dictionary, and it's not easy, but it's really worth it, and you will bring your folks to green pastures if you'll just trust them to make a little extra effort, so don't be discouraged by the older books.

Yeah, let me just add to that, that reading is really a spiritual, Christian reading is more spiritual than it is intellectual.

There are intellectual men and women in universities all around the country that could not possibly understand what some of these books are talking about.

You know, they know what the words mean, but they don't get it, and then there are people who maybe never read a single book in high school.

I have a friend who said he got through college, and he only ever read one book in the whole time, but since becoming a

Christian... Would you like to give us that name? That name will be in the show notes. Since becoming a

Christian, he is a voracious reader because he has met Christ, and if we can come to know

Christ better and more, and all I have to do is read this book, I'm in. Give me the book, you know, and it's a spiritual thing, way more than it is an intellectual thing.

Yeah, it's a spiritual appetite that causes a man or a woman or a young person to press through a book that's not as easy as maybe some other books they've read.

I've got one more on the devotional side, and it's kind of a mix with the category we're about to come to, but it really is more of a devotional book.

It's Christ is All by Henry Law, and this has been recently republished.

This is from the late 1800s, recently republished by Tentmaker Publication, and I think it's a little hard to get a hold of now, but you can get it online used, and some of the print on demand, but Henry Law goes through the first five books of the

Bible, and then some other Old Testament passages, and he just takes pictures of Christ, and it looks like it...

Look, I mean, that's a giant book, you know, that's a scary book, but actually each chapter is only about four, three to five pages, so it's a great book for a short read each day.

If you've got about 15 minutes, you can carve out of your schedule. Henry Law, when

I first started reading it, it was actually Anthony Metheny that I saw it on his bookshelf, and I've seen this on bookshelves in good bookstores before, and I've just never gotten it, and so I thought it was kind of a

Puritan commentary on the first five books, and I thought, well, I'll get it when I'm preaching on one of those books, but I asked

Anthony, and he said, no, it's a great book, get it, so I got it, and it really is more devotional kind of snapshots of Christ.

When I started to read it, being a book from the Victorian era, like Spurgeon -like era, it's pretty flowery, and I thought, well, it's going to be real sentimental, real flowery, it's not going to be as careful theologically, so it'll kind of work up your emotions, but that's not what

I want only, you know, you want some real fuel behind your heart's emotions, and I was wonderfully pleased that the theology in it is good, and so it's a good mix of head and heart, but there's a lot of heart in this book, so it's a good one to read this year.

Yeah, I almost actually grabbed that one this morning off my shelf to bring up and recommend. For me, also a little bit of a segue from devotional into commentary, this is a book called

The Inner Sanctuary by Charles Ross. Charles Ross is from the same school of the

Scottish divines like McShane and the the Benares. Ross wrote this book as an exposition of John chapters 13 to 17, and this is the upper room time with Christ and the disciples, and it is a wonderful, wonderful view at Christ.

If you are cold, if you are afraid, if you are going through hard times, or if you just want to, if you just know,

I need to love Christ more, how do you love something or someone who is beautiful more?

Well, you just look at them, and because they are lovely, love is the reaction, and so read this book.

My wife recently had some health issues. There was some scare.

There was a scare of cancer. There was an operation that was needed, and she was reading this book, and she was asking me to read it with her as she was going under in the anesthesia there in the operating room, reading this book to her, and the doctor said that as she was sort of in that intermediate state, she was just speaking of Christ and the beauty of Christ to the doctors, so this is a really wonderful book.

Yeah, I just recommended that book to a teenager in the church who was struggling with periods of kind of just a dark despair, because that is such a direct look.

It's like staring right at the sun, you know, and so helpful. Now, another commentary, and this is one of a multi -volume set.

This is the one that was published by Baker. Banner of Truth has taken up this and republished it in a seven -volume set,

I believe, and it's called The Expository Thoughts on the Gospels by J .C.

Ryle, another contemporary of Charles Spurgeon. Ryle was actually an Anglican bishop, but so clear and helpful.

Now, the reason I recommend this is that, and what we try to do really at the church is we've tried to make sure that every family in the church has a set of these on the

Gospels. Ryle takes about 10 to 15 verses at the beginning of each little section, so you have the verses from Scripture, and then he gives about three to four pages of simple comments.

It's really more like a devotional commentary, so three or four main points from the passage, and very short, very to the point, very good theology, good, good, warm application.

In the Gospel of John, though, he seemed to have more time, because in the Gospel of John, at the end of each of those sections, so you have the

Scripture, then you have his comments, then you have a section where he gives you the best comments from the writers of previous centuries, so this goes way back, books that we find hard to locate today, even with the internet, and so the

Gospel of John is really the real jewel of this set, but we recommend this to everyone, baby

Christians, families, older Christians. Yeah, one of the great strengths of Ryle is he is so readable.

He's an incredibly intellectual guy, he's an older writer, but he is very readable.

You're not going to encounter a lot of paragraph -long sentences that you have to go back, and you've lost your place, like, wait, hold on, you know, what was he saying?

It's just he is really a master at putting the hay down low where the sheep can reach it.

Quickly, I would not be myself if I didn't recommend this book to you.

I've recommended this book to everybody, probably several times already on this podcast, but this is

Romans 6 by Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones, which is part of a long series of sermons that have been collected in books where the doctor preached through the book of Romans over the course of how many years?

175 years, I think. When he was asked early on in his ministry, he was known for preaching through books of the

Bible, he was asked, when are you gonna preach through Romans? And he said, as soon as I understand Romans 6,

I'll preach through the book of Romans. So to Lloyd -Jones, Romans 6 was the key that unlocked the book of Romans, and if you want to know who you are,

Christian, if you want to know what you are, you need to read this book. You need to read the book of Romans and the chapter, chapter 6, but if you want to really be taken by the hand by a faithful friend and have those things explained to you really well, read this book.

And that is another book that we've read through at the church, groups of men. Matt, you and I were in the same group.

Yeah, 10 years ago. Yeah, and I think that even though that was 10 years ago, and we've done many small groups throughout the 18 years of this little body,

I would say that that was the most significant one, and I think it was recommended to us by Andrew Davis. Yeah.

When he was here, someone asked him about best books he'd read, and he mentioned

Lloyd -Jones on Romans 6, and I thought, Lloyd -Jones on Romans 6, you know, I guess, you know, and the best book you've ever read.

Yeah, what about Romans 8? Yeah, what about all that tricky stuff in 7? Yeah, that's when we went and got it, and it was, it just blew us all away.

Yeah, you know, that was one of those meetings where if you're leading the meeting, you don't have to worry about finding something to say, because as soon as you took a breath, everybody jumped in with both feet and said, man, you know, this was so great, and yeah, so that was a great one.

Kind of wish we could just dial the clock back and go right through it again. Another commentary that I have, and this is an unusual one.

I believe this was the first commentary, or one of the first, but I believe it was the first commentary that the Banner of Truth published, and it's quite surprising, because it's a commentary by a man named

Burroughs, who was a Princeton graduate in the late 1800s, on the

Song of Solomon. It's not a book that I read much, and it's not a book that I preach through often, but this commentary on the

Song of Solomon, and it was recommended that there's a foreword here by Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones.

This, I think, is the most balanced approach. Now, some of the Puritans wrote on the

Song of Solomon, and the Banner produces and publishes their book, and they're good books, but they go so slowly, word by word, phrase by phrase, that I think that sometimes they reach places where it's a bit of a strain.

You're reading it, and you say, really? Is that really what the song is saying? But what

Burroughs does is, he takes a three -fold approach, kind of like three layers. So, he gives his own translation of the

Song of Solomon, and it's just kind of a running overview.

Maybe you could say, kind of a paraphrase. So, that's just a couple of pages of this book, and then he gives a...

he goes a little deeper, and he gives an overview of the entire book, and that's, you know, that's still a pretty short part of this book, but he just goes section by section and explains to you what's happening in these pictures.

These are, you know, these are Eastern pictures. This is poetry from, you know, 3 ,000 years ago.

So, it's a little difficult for us. So, he goes through, and he basically explains, scene by scene, what's happening, and I find that to be the most helpful part.

So, I really, when I read this, which is about once every two years, I read through that second section. Then, when you find a section in there that you think,

I'd really like to stop and consider this more in -depth, then the third part of the book is a verse -by -verse commentary, which is also very helpful.

Yeah, yeah, good. So, I guess we're moving now into our theological recommendations.

I want to mention quickly, The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. This is from Crossway. This is a wonderful book.

This was a book that I gave for Christmas to a lot of people last year, or a year before,

I believe, and I'll give you just a quick overview of what he deals with here.

It's the Marrow Controversy. Now, a lot of us may not be familiar with the Marrow Controversy.

Sinclair Ferguson gave, I believe, a three -talk lectures on the

Marrow Controversy at Banner of Truth Ministers Conference many, many years ago, and those tapes had been digitized and were put online.

I listened to those six, seven years ago and was really fascinated, was really blown away.

Great insights into the heart of the gospel through this obscure theological controversy that happened in Scotland many, many years ago.

Those, I believe, were sort of the launching pad for this book to be put together around.

So, quickly, the Marrow Controversy centered on Edward Fisher's book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, and it pitted two groups of theologians against one another.

The core issue was whether a person must forsake his sins in order to come to Christ, and so the

Marrow men, men who had discovered the Marrow, this older book, agreed with Fisher's book.

They thought that that demanded works as a precursor to faith.

So, if you tell someone you must abandon your sins in order to come to Christ, that that would be opposed to the free offer of the gospel, that come to Christ.

Their opponents taught that the gospel should only be offered to those who were beginning to show evidence that they belonged to the elect or the redeemed of God, and so there was a syllogism that might give some clarity to that.

The major premise is that the saving grace of God in Christ is given to the redeemed or the elect alone, and then the minor premise is that the elect are known by the forsaking of sin, and so the conclusion from that syllogism would be, therefore, forsaking sin is a prerequisite for saving grace.

Now, we may recoil in horror at that, but if you are a believer, you are one who shares the gospel, either with your family and family devotions, or perhaps in addition to that with your co -workers.

If you're a minister, you're sharing the gospel regularly with your congregation.

You may be shocked in horror to find out how much of that spirit comes into our offer of the gospel, our presentation of the gospel.

So, if you want to be wrecked by the freeness and the beauty of the free offer of the gospel again, which you may not know that you want to be, but you do, read this book and allow

Sinclair to challenge you about your own free offer of the gospel. Very, very good.

I think you have one in this category, so I'll jump to my next one here. Now, this is the one that I want to take just a couple of minutes on.

This is All That Is In God by James Dolezal, and this is from our friends at Reformation Heritage Books.

This is one that we're actually going to give away some copies of, if you want to get in touch. I have several extra copies of this around the house, so we'll put some notes in the show notes about how you can accomplish some menial task that we'll give you, filling out a form or something like that, and we'll pick a few people to send out copies of this to.

The subtitle to All That Is In God is Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism.

Well, what is classical Christian theism, and who or what is challenging it?

Well, the answer to those questions is actually far more important and more captivating and more wonderful than you might imagine.

So, very quickly, what is classical Christian theism? Well, in the Bible, we have statements about God that refer to His unchanging nature, so Malachi 3 .6,

I am the Lord, I do not change. We have statements about His eternality, so Deuteronomy 33 .27,

the eternal God is a dwelling place, and many, many more. We have Habakkuk 1 .12,

are you not from everlasting, O Lord? Well, then these truths are developed, and they're developed doctrinally and carried forward in the writings of theologians like Athanasius, and Augustine, and Aquinas, and then in the major Protestant confessions of faith.

So, classical Christian theists maintain the traditional understanding of divine attributes like aseity, and simplicity, and immutability, and impassibility, and eternity.

And so, Dolezal says on page one, the underlying and inviolable conviction is that God does not derive any aspect of His being from outside Himself, and He is not in any way caused to be.

Now, what is challenging classical Christian theism is a school of thought that Dolezal calls theistic mutualism.

Those who fall into this category believe that the traditional doctrine of God's attributes results in a

God who is distant, and cold, and can't genuinely relate to His creatures.

There's talk in this camp about God having a genuine give -and -take relationship with His creatures, and that God is capable of being moved by His creatures, which may not immediately raise your hackles.

But, that kind of thinking about God requires a redefinition and an outright rejection of the traditional understanding of God's attributes, or what we've called classical

Christian theism. So, in this book, Dolezal looks really closely at the doctrines of divine immutability, aseity, eternality, and impassibility.

But, Dolezal writes, the chief problem I address in this work is the abandonment of God's simplicity, and of the infinite pure actuality of His being.

Now, if that whets your whistle, great. If that sounds like something, well, that's not for me.

That must be for theologians. Now, Dolezal's written a book. What was his book?

Oh, I can't remember the name of his more technical book, but he has written a technical book that many feel should be required reading in every evangelical seminary, but this is not that.

This is not a technical book at all. This is written for the person in the pew. Now, that's not to say that it's an easy go, because we're thinking about God.

We're thinking about things that are infinitely above our greatest understanding, but it is incredibly wonderful, and I would commend this book to you.

So, dig in. I've got a theology book by John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, and this is a short treatment of really of the doctrines of salvation.

The book is divided along those two lines, redemption accomplished, that is the atoning work of Christ.

So, you could think of it as Christ for you, and then redemption applied, that is how is that by the work of Christ brought into you,

Christ in you, and so these are the basic things, the atonement of Christ, how

God calls us to Him, regeneration, faith, repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, union with Christ, such a critical doctrine, and glorification, what does the end look like?

The end looks better than the beginning. In fact, the end looks better than everything leading up to the beginning, and that may sound blasphemous to us, you know, but it's not.

The best is yet to come for the believer, and as our Lord will be clothed in His glory.

This book is kind of the gold standard for that, and very simple, so biblical that it's almost like having a quiet time in the

Bible. You know, I don't let this become a substitute for your Bible reading, but I remember in seminary my last year, and I did not go to a seminary that necessarily would have, you know, would have agreed with everything he said.

I think he's right, but I remember having to do,

I had one more class to do, so I needed to do what they call like an individual study, so I had to read some books and write a paper outside of my normal class setting if I was going to get enough hours to graduate on time, so I was trying to squeeze everything in, and I picked the

Doctrines of Salvation, and I was looking at Regeneration, and I picked up this book, and I was amazed at how biblical.

It wasn't a book that left you behind where you thought, now what did he just say?

It's just, he was a great brain, but he writes in a very simple way, and each page is just full of verses to help you to see exactly where this comes from, and so a very helpful book on that topic.

You know what, we should give some copies of that book away, too. I think I have some extras on the shelf, and I agree with you.

It is a wonderful book, and should be read by everyone. Certainly, I agree with you that it could be read by everyone.

I mean, there are no deeper waters when it comes to the topics that we're talking about, but the way that he presents them are, if you can read your

Bible and understand it, you can read this and understand it. All right, my last one here is

The Divine Covenants by A .W. Pink. Now, this book is presently out of print, and strangely, but I do know of plans from Free Grace Press to bring this back into print, so maybe that'll happen sooner than later.

This copy of the book is actually the property of Pat Daly, the manager of the

Boehner Truth Trust, so Pat, you let me borrow this about a year ago. If you're watching this, I got you, fam.

I hadn't lost your book. It's still here. What does Pink talk about? Well, let me say it like this.

If someone were to ask you to describe the Adamic Covenant, give some biblical references, what are, show me in the

Bible where we get this idea of the Adamic Covenant, or the Noahic Covenant, or the Abrahamic Covenant, or the

Sinatic Covenant, or the Davidic Covenant, or the Messianic Covenant, what would you say? This book,

Pink takes you by the hand and takes you through the Scriptures and shows you where we get these covenants, these covenants where God deals with His people by way of covenant.

You may know that Westminster covenant theologians and particular Baptists or Reformed Baptist covenant theologians disagree about the way that some of these covenants apply in our day.

Pink doesn't get into the polemical bits where he's arguing for one camp or another.

He just simply takes you into the Scriptures in this book and shows you where are these covenants?

Are there covenants? Some say that there are not or that they have no bearing for us today.

A really good biblical overview of the covenants in the

Scripture. So, A .W. Pink on the Divine Covenants. That's my last one. Yeah, so we just have a couple of bits of advice as we bring this to a close.

One is, when you read an author that you've not read before, it is difficult sometimes to, whether they're modern or ancient, to get in kind of into the groove of how they talk.

It's kind of like coming up to somebody that has an accent you've never heard before and you have to say to them, could you, could you say that again?

Or no, I still didn't get it. Would you say it more slowly? So, with a book, it's kind of like each author has his own accent.

And personally for me, there are authors that I start to read and I really want to know what they say about a topic.

But by chapter two, I'm still struggling with the way they lay out their arguments. Maybe they make bold statements at the beginning and I'm not sure

I agree with them. And I'm all angry with them, you know, and I'm thinking, that's it, this goes in the trash. But then

I find, wait, wait, wait, they lay out their arguments later and they're convincing, they're biblical arguments.

Or maybe they give stories at the beginning and they're kind of, you know, sentimental stories. And I think, ah, it's just going to be a lightweight book.

And then, then they get to the meat. So every author is different. Don't quit a book in the first chapter or two.

Keep reading. Generally by about chapter three, I feel like, okay, I understand how the author likes to communicate.

And once you get in harmony with that author's style, then you really benefit. So a lot of times

I have been tempted to give up on really good books that have proven helpful to me because I just didn't like the way the author wrote.

So stick with an author, plow through it. You'll get to the place where it becomes easier. Last bit of advice that we want to give is that there is the issue of balance.

Think of books like a diet. There's only one book that we've been given that you can read in every situation, in every mood, in every stage of life, every circumstance.

And you don't have to worry about being overbalanced here or there. That's the scriptures.

But every other book, we have to, we have to be wise in how we kind of lay out our spiritual diet.

So here's what I mean. There'll be times where I'll read biographies for a while, but sometimes that will produce despair.

I think, well, my life is not like that. I'm not overseas doing that, or I'm not that kind of Christian, or my prayer life is not that way.

So I read that to kind of be a shot in the arm, a jolt to say, pick up the pace.

But then you need to move to books like what you've just introduced, books that are more theological, where they talk about objective truths.

This is what God is. This is what God has done. And so whether you're having a horrible day or a wonderful day, that doesn't really matter.

This is who your Savior is. Whether you ever existed or not, this is true. Yeah. And so these are the praiseworthy, glorious realities that you're building your life on.

And it just doesn't matter how you're doing at this present moment in that sense. So you go from experiential, subjective to objective.

And you know, you have to balance yourself. Sometimes you're reading heavy theological books. Sometimes you're reading just, as we mentioned, books that are warm and devotional, and the person's done all the work for you and brought it down low.

Sometimes you're reading biography. But be careful to kind of mix your diet. My suggestion would be that you don't read just one type, one genre of book.

Don't just read biographies. Don't just read devotional books. But force yourself to read in categories that you don't find yourself naturally, you know, drifting toward.

Yeah. Let me add to that too. You know, don't use it as an excuse, but I really like these kinds of books.

This is just the way that I... This is the kind of reading that I like to do. Well, like I really like Twinkies, but if I just ate

Twinkies nonstop, you know, that wouldn't be good. That's not a legitimate excuse that, well,

I just really only like to read theology. I don't care about these devotional books. That doesn't really do it for me.

Well, you're the very one who needs to read some of these devotional books in that case. Yeah.

You know, the PhD work I did was in the 17th and 18th centuries, so I find myself kind of drifting back there.

If I go to the books and I think, well, I've got like a little time in life right now,

I'll pick a book. I always go to that section, but I have to make myself go to some of the modern authors that are saying the same biblical things, but they're saying things in a way that I need to hear them today with our modern context in mind.

And so it is an act of discipline, and you know, you can't be a kid that just goes to your favorite Twinkie.

Another thing, and you can also apply that to authors. I do have favorite authors, but I can't only read my favorite authors because no man or woman who has written for us in the last centuries or today is going to be a perfect author.

They're going to be weaknesses. Only the scripture is infallible. And so if we follow one author, we tend to reproduce some of their weaknesses.

So we want to read widely. Yeah. Good advice. Great recommendations.

Hopefully this has been helpful for you as you've listened along. I want to also repeat that if you didn't catch the names of all these, all you have to do is go to mediagratia .org

or in English, that's themeansofgrace .org and look in the show notes in this blog post where this podcast is hosted and you'll see all of those.

We're going to cut this down now and we're going to move into what we call our supporter appreciation podcast.

So those of you who have come alongside Media Gratia with a monthly donation at mediagratia .org,

we, as a token of our appreciation, we like to put together a little extra podcast every month that we deal with some of your questions.

We talk about a little more in depth and some of the subjects that we've brought up. We don't ever want there to be a financial barrier between you and that kind of content.

So if you genuinely can't afford to support your family, tithe to your local church and be a monthly supporter to Media Gratia in any amount, then please get in touch with us at support at mediagratia .org

and we'll make that content available to you. It's not for sale. It's genuinely just a token of our appreciation to all of you who have come alongside and shown that you believe in the work that the

Lord has entrusted to our hands. So thank you. Thank you to everyone who's listened and we pray that this will be a beneficial time for you.