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. So why don't you get us started with your first biography?

Biographies: Amy Carmichael, Robert Murray McShane, and Hudson Taylor

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 or 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 of 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 Bonnard writes this he includes some of McShane's own diaries he he 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 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 some specific topic Hudson Taylor was you know that 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 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 is 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 and really details some wonderful works of God and revival.

And also the works of men and revivalism and the 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 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 of the 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.

Would 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. Yeah for a compact dealing with such critical themes but from a very fair and historical perspective.

Ian Murray's 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 and 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. Yeah. I mean you can. He 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.

Devotional Classics: Brother Lawrence, John Owen, John Calvin, A. W. Tozer, and John Bunyan

Yeah. Well with.

Devotional books we've got we 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 books 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 doing the dishes in the kitchen of the monastery which was one of his jobs as he could in the 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 worshipping. 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 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 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 Presbyterian family and 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 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 mentioned them because all of these will be in our show notes at media gratia 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 in the English translation is well let me say this the the logo if you could call it that is a hand with a heart being raised heavenward like this.

And the 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 except no substitutes.

This is the 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 is 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 1 following hard after God chapter 2 the blessedness of possessing nothing 3 removing the veil for apprehending God 5 the universal presence 6 the speaking voice 7 the gaze of the soul 8 restoring the creator creature relation 9 meekness and rest and 10 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 pilgrims 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 Derek Thomas's little video series from Ligonier as a guide. That was good. There are other there are other guides to. Yeah there's some study guides to 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 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 and 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 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 a dictionary.

And it's not easy but it's really worth it. And you will bring your folks to green pastures if if you'll just trust them to make a little extra effort so don't don't be discouraged by the older books.

Let me just add to that 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 we're.

What these 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 have who maybe never read a single book in high school. I have a friend who said he only he got through college and he only ever read one book in the whole whole time.

But since becoming a Christian would you like to give us that name. And that name will be in the show. Notes. Since becoming a Christian he is a voracious reader. He because he has met Christ. And if there is a if we can come to know Christ better and more and by and all I have to do is read this book.

I'm in give me the book you know. And that it's. It's a spiritual thing yeah.

More than it is a no 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. It's not as easy as that so maybe some other books they've read I've got one more on the devotional side and it's kind of a mix with that 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 tent maker publication and I think it's a little hard to get a hold of now but you can get it online used and some 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 and 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 Mathenia that I saw it on his bookshelf and I've seen this on bookshelves and 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 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.

You want some real fuel behind your hearts emotions and I was wonderfully pleased that the theology in it is good and so I 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 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.

Commentaries: The Inner Sanctuary, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Romans 6, and Song of Solomon

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 in the disciples. And it is 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 that or someone who is beautiful more. Well you just look at them and the more because they are lovely. Love is the reaction. And so read this book. My wife recently had some health issues.

There was 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 doctor. So this is this.

Is a really wonderful book. Yeah I just recommended that book to a teenager in the church who struggling with periods of kind of just a dark despair because that is such a direct look. It's 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 is taken up this and republished it and in a seven volume set I believe.

And it's called the expository thoughts on the Gospels by JC Ryle another contemporary of Charles Spurgeon. Ryle was actually an Anglican bishop and but so clear and helpful. Now the reason I recommend this is that.

And what we tried 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 that this goes way back. Books that we find hard to locate today even with the internet. And so the Gospel of John is is really the 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 and he's 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 what. 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. Yeah he 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 six.

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 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 best book you've.

Ever read. And 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 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 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 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 threefold approach kind of like three layers so he gives his own translation of the Song of Solomon and it's 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 these this is 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 book. 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.

And 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.

That's those 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 who were beginning to show evidence that they belonged to the elect or the redeemed of God.

And so there was a syllogism that 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 the gospel.

Very very good. I think you have one in this category so I'll jump. Yeah you go ahead 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 you can accomplish some menial tasks that will give you filling out a form or something like that.

And we'll 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 who 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 112. Are you not from everlasting O Lord. Well then these these truths are developed and they're 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 a seedy and simplicity and immutability and impassibility and eternity. And so Dolezal says on page 1 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. These 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 the seedy 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. No Dolezal's written a book. What was his book. The 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 can 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. What is 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 the best is yet to come for the believer and as our Lord will be clothed in his glory.