2019 Book Recommendations | Behold Your God Podcast

Hey, welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm John Snyder, and normally I have Matthew Robinson with me, and we are able to talk about things that we think, hope would be of real value to your souls, and things that have been helpful to us.

But he's not able to be here with us today, and today is a special episode. We have these about once a year around the

Christmastime New Year, and we're going to be giving some book recommendations for you today, and these are not my top ten book list recommendations, because if we did that every year,

I'd just give you the same ten books. But these are ten books that I find really helpful, and we're going to talk about different categories of books, why even use books, and what are some warnings that go along with books, so that when we use them, we can use them in the right way, and we can avoid some of the slippery spots, you know, some of the spiritual precipices that are there with an enemy who would always give us a nudge and push us a little too far in one direction.

So, you know, you go from maybe just reading your Bible only, to adding a few good books to your library, and then if you're not careful, you can add so many good books and pay so much attention to good books that you end up creating some problems.

So, why books? Well, we've talked about this before in other episodes, but books really are nothing more than old teachers that God has given to the church.

You know, we know that in Ephesians and throughout the Bible, we see evidence that God equips men to teach in the church, and, you know, in an authoritative way, ladies also teach in different ways.

But, so think about pastors or theologians in particular, and, you know, it's a real benefit if you belong to a church where the preacher or teachers are not only godly, but really gifted, and what they say benefits your soul.

But once they die, is that the end of what they do? Well, no, it isn't. And so, what we have is we have some of their words preserved for us, and we can come and pick them off the shelf at any time and interact with those authors, and, you know, the things that captivated their hearts, that filled their minds, the benefit from their hard work is right at your fingertips.

So, these are teachers that God has given the church, and we still benefit from them.

So, if you say that I'm a person that only reads the Bible, I actually don't believe that that's a biblical response, because the

Bible itself teaches us that God has given us teachers, and that's what these are. But another way that I like to think of books is,

I think of them as lifelong companions. Now, different books do different things, and we're going to have an episode later where we talk about the right use of commentaries.

Obviously, reference books, you read those differently than you read a theology book, or a devotional book, or a biography.

So, they have different uses, but when we think about, you know, the books that we're going to talk about today, they can all be lifelong companions that walk alongside you.

So, even if you live in a day, or in a place, or you're in a spiritual environment where you don't have that many godly older friends that you can lean on, you can make the most of the best writers of the past, and in a sense, they can become a friend to walk alongside you.

Early on in my Christian life, before I was a Christian, my mother read to me from the life of Hudson Taylor.

After I became a believer, I read his two -volume, and I just mention that because from that point forward, every time

I make decisions, in some measure, it's like Hudson Taylor's there, and his witness is there from his life, and, you know, so it's like a conscience, you know, and so I think, you know,

Taylor faced a similar situation, and he really honored the Lord, and, you know, am

I really making the right choices? So, books can be lifelong companions. Now, I mentioned that there's some warnings, and so, obviously,

I really like books, and I have benefited immensely from good books, but I want to give some warnings, and the first is this, the best gifts that God gives us, and so just think of books as some aspect of that, the best tools that God places in our hands.

Also make the best idols or the best substitutes, you know, corner cutters and shortcuts.

Here's what I mean. You can fall in love with old books. You can fall in love with certain authors, you know, whether they're old authors or modern authors.

You can fall in love with certain themes, like some people, you know, really hone in on the end times.

Other people will say, you know, I need to understand this aspect of theology, or the church, or evangelism, or missions, or family, and books can help you to really focus on a topic, but if you're not careful, the book becomes a substitute for walking with God.

You know, in a sense, what they did as they walked with God and the things they recorded on these pages, it becomes a substitute for you digging your own well.

So use the books, but use them as a tool to dig a deep well between you and the

Lord, so to speak, and don't use them as a substitute. Don't just drink from their well.

Also, obviously, good books, they bring you truths in a very easy -to -reach fashion.

I mean, these guys have already done, guys or ladies, have already done all the hard work, so you can just pick it up, and you can have thoughts, and even if you're reading, you know, big theology books, and it's not just a quick thought for the day, still, they've done all that work.

So it can become a substitute and kind of a shortcut that causes you to neglect the

Scriptures themselves, so always make sure that you guard against that. How do you do that? Well, one suggestion

I have is what Tozer said, and that is, Tozer said good books, good devotional books, good biographies, whatever.

As they really impact you, you know, they fill the mind, they stir the heart, put up bookmark where you're at, and just shut the book, and let it drive you to God, or drive you to the

Scriptures, and that your soul would be meeting with the Lord while you're reading this book.

So the book itself is kind of like a path or a light on the path, but it doesn't become the stopping place.

The book ought to lead you to love God, to pray, to search the Scriptures more, not a substitute for those things.

So that's one warning. Let me give you one or two more. Diet. Be careful with your diet.

When it comes to spiritual books, you have to be careful with how you feed yourself.

Now, why don't we say that with the Scripture? And the answer is that the Bible is always so perfectly balanced.

You can read a passage in the Gospel of John, chapter 6, I remember reading through and really wrestling with the issues of, you know,

God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, and you run in John chapter 6, you actually run into some really, some of the strongest language in the

Bible about God's work in redemption, what we tend to think of as the sovereign aspects of our rescue.

And so as I was reading through that passage, I was struck not only by those strong statements, which somehow I had not noticed before, but I was also struck by the balance.

And so, you know, strong statements about God's sovereignty were immediately followed by equally strong statements about our responsibility.

And so when we talk about the Scripture, as long as you're in the Scripture, working through the

Scripture, you know, not just limiting yourself to your favorite, you know, two or three books of the Bible or two or three themes, but if you're trying to work through the

Bible or taking a book and working all the way through a book, then the Bible's perfection guards you against imbalance.

But books that men write outside of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the

Scriptures, all the other books in the world, even the best of them, you have to be careful how you feed yourself those.

You need a balance. And so here's what I mean. You want a good balance between objective truth and subjective truth, between truths where you're looking away from yourself, outside of yourself, to the great realities, the facts, the indicative statements of Scripture that are being talked about in these books.

And these are really the flagstones that you build your life on, these unchanging facts. But after a look at the objective facts, then it's good to turn and to, you know, to put some other things in your diet.

And you look at books that help you with the subjective, that is, how do I apply these objective facts?

And am I really doing that? Or am I just, you know, have I become passive and I just read theology and I just read about other people's lives, but I don't really do anything about it?

So you need those books that get under your skin, you know, and they really get to you and bother you and they haunt you.

So we're going to talk about both of those kinds today. So let me say one more thing before we go to my actual book list for today.

And that is books do have different value. I don't just mean different uses, but books have different values.

And I'm just going to give you my opinion on this. So you're very welcome to disagree with this. But I think that the books that deal with the topics in Scripture that are at the heart of Scripture, that are fundamental, that are primary, rather than the topics that are secondary or tertiary, you know, not unimportant, not unbiblical.

So don't mistake me to say that this is an either -or situation. Like, I just need to focus on primary things.

And if this is not a primary doctrine in Scripture, or if this is a secondary, if this is a doctrine that, you know, flows out of the primary doctrines, well,

I don't need to worry about that. I tend to be tempted with that approach, just focus on primary things and let everything else, you know, go.

But that is not a biblical approach. It's something that I have to ask God to help me not to do. And sometimes

I do better than others. But I want to say that, so while this is not an either -or situation, if you don't have much time to read, my suggestion is you read the books that give you the most help to focus on the most central things.

So if I could only read a few books a year, I would choose books that had objective truths and subjective application of those truths.

But what truth? I would choose things that help me to know God Himself, help me to adore

Christ, help me to grab hold of those realities. Because out of those great realities flow things like a prayer life, holiness, being the right kind of dad or husband or evangelist or pastor or worker.

But if you start with the secondary things like how to be the right kind of dad, how to be the right kind of businessman, how to be a good father, how to be a good evangelist, how to grow a church, how to do a

Sunday school class right. You know, if you do those kinds of things first, because you think they're more practical,

I think you will find as the years go on and you look back, you will find that your soul is not as benefited and your spirituality will be shallow compared to what it could have been.

So not an either -or balance, but if you're very limited in time, then give the lion's share of your reading to things that are focused on the great fundamentals of Scripture, God, the gospel, things like that.

All right, well, let's go ahead and look. And I think that this podcast should get out toward the end of December. So hopefully we can get this to you in time, that if you have some last minute gifts that you haven't gotten, you can still go online or run down to the

Christian Bookstore and you can still find some of these in time for Christmas or at least in time for the

New Year, which is really, I love Christmas, but the New Year is one of my favorite holidays when it comes to spiritual impact, because it's when everything slows down again, you know, and I kind of had to shake myself in front of the mirror and say,

John, you know, it's time to go back to real life. And so, you know, I immediately think of like, well, what good books could

I work through this year? So I want to give you these books in some different categories.

And the first category is the theology. And I actually only have one recommendation on that.

And it's, look at how little that is. So if you're scared of theology books, you know, my theology section is kind of over to my left.

You probably can't see it, but it's got a lot of big, scary books with little print. I mean, they scare me.

So you might feel a bit intimidated. So I want to recommend a theology book that I think is just so beneficial.

It's good theology, but it's said in a way in, you know, in a bite -sized format that is also very heartwarming.

And it's actually by a man who's been dead for about 300 years, George Swinnick, a Puritan. And it's published by Reformation Heritage Books in their little series called

Puritan Treasures for Today. So these are small paperback works. Banner of Truth has a similar series,

Puritan Paperbacks. And both those series have so many helpful books. This is by George Swinnick, and the title is

The Blessed and Boundless God. And what it is, it's just a short treatment of the attributes of God.

And there are many treatments of God's attributes that are bigger and more thorough.

But if I were just kind of just diving in, or if I'd read those big works, like Stephen Charlock, you know, 800 pages on the attributes of God, which

I think is a wonderful book. But I wanted just, I wanted a small book that I could read, you know, in the first month of the year, or just like, you know, read a chapter on each

Sunday of the year. And I wanted to get, you know, just be reminded of those great truths, I would start here.

So George Swinnick, The Blessed and Boundless God. Okay? So that's my book.

Now, let me give you some devotional books, and kind of in a category all to itself. Now, this is an antique copy, so you won't be able to find this.

If you can, you know, sell whatever you got and buy it. But I did double check to make sure that a modern edition is available of this, and it is.

I know it's on Amazon, but it's probably on some other, it's at some other places. So you can look in the show notes for all of these books, and TJ is going to help you find them.

This is a book called Christ in Song, and I think I've mentioned it before. It's called Hymns of Emmanuel, Songs of Christ.

So Christ in Song by a man named Philip Schaaf. One of my favorite books in all the world, because, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I do like church history, and that was what my degree was in, in undergrad work.

And Philip Schaaf is a historian. He did a big eight -volume set of Christian history. Now, when you think of a guy that writes an eight -volume set on Christian history, you probably think of a guy like I think, you know, he's got a wrinkled forehead and stooped shoulders from bending over a table and studying, you know, in the library all of his life, and he's got big thick glasses, and he's probably a little dry, even though he's really academic.

Philip Schaaf was not that way, and one of the evidences is, toward the end of his life, after doing all this study in Christian history, what he did was he took the very best songs that referred to the person and work of Christ, all right, so he's limiting himself to that, and he gathered them from the first, second, third, fourth centuries all the way until, you know, early 20th century.

He gathered them together and he put them in this book, Christ in Song, and so the book's divided up into two big sections, if I remember correctly,

Christ for us and Christ in us, so the two great aspects of Christ's work, so Christ for us and Christ in us, and in each of the categories, those have a lot of subcategories underneath them, like the advent of Christ, you know, the ministry of Christ, the death of Christ, resurrection of Christ, all those things, but in each category he arranges the hymns chronologically, so when you look at the advent, and so one of the songs is entitled

O Thou Redeemer, it's by a man named Ambrose, it was written in the year 397, but toward the end of that, we have a hymn called

The Church Has Waited Long, you know, for the Christ, and it's written by Horatius Bonnard in 1856, so it's a unique book,

I don't know any other hymnal like it, really great Christ in song, you can go online and find that.

Okay, now continuing in our devotional books, here's one of my all -time favorite authors,

A .W. Tozer, and this is a really, this is by Moody Publishers, this particular edition, this is a collection of his three, probably his three most popular books,

The Knowledge of the Holy, that is the treatment of God's attributes, The Pursuit of God, his all -time most popular book, and then

God's Pursuit of Man, so it says here, the three spiritual classics in one volume, so it's really a nice book to get, not very expensive, hardback, three great books in one.

Now, I would say that there are some times where, it's not often, but there are places where Tozer will say things that I wish he would have worded it a little differently, there are some theological differences

I would have with Tozer, not many, but they are, and sometimes, and rarely, they show up in these books, but I am very willing, happy, to have a few lines in a book that I would have to disagree with the author, when that author, like Tozer, has walked so near to the

Lord, and the things he says help me to walk near to the Lord, so A .W. Tozer, the collection of three spiritual classics,

Knowledge of the Holy, The Pursuit of God, and God's Pursuit of Man, by Moody Publishers.

Let me give you two other books in the category of devotional works, of subjective, and this is by David McIntyre, and it's

The Hidden Life of Prayer, so actually, David McIntyre was a young Scottish minister in the late 1800s, he married the daughter of Andrew Bernard, we talked about Andrew Bernard in our

Bereavement series, he lost his wife, and such a wonderful witness to God's faith, when it's through those dark days,

Andrew Bernard was an extraordinary minister, friend of Robert Murray McShane, and his biographer, when

Bernard was older, his daughter married David McIntyre, and McIntyre became a co -minister with Bernard, and then when

Bernard resigned and stepped down, then McIntyre became the sole minister of that little church.

One of the things that McIntyre was known for was his prayer life, and so this is a really, just a very penetrating treatment of prayer, and I took a group of young believers through this this year, we met once a week, and just worked through it, and I felt really convicted, and I think they felt benefited.

I remember one time talking to Paul Washer, if you know of Paul, and I'm always encouraged by any chance

I get to speak to Paul, but Paul made a comment to me that really struck me, he said that he never needs to have a book on his desk to encourage him to study the

Bible, that's easy, that kind of comes natural, but he said he always needed a good book on his desk on the topic of prayer to stir him to pray, because prayer is hard work, and so I was encouraged to hear

Paul say that, because he is a praying man, so this is one of his favorite books as well, so Hidden Life of Prayer.

One more, J .C. Ryle, contemporary of Charles Spurgeon, Anglican bishop, a rare instance where a truly evangelical man was made an

Anglican bishop in the late 1800s, and Ryle wrote a book on holiness, and this was written in part to counteract some of the erroneous views of holiness that came out of the 1858 -59 revival in the

Keswick movement. Now those were really godly people, and many of them, we would know their names,

Andrew Murray, Oswald Chambers, and Hudson Taylor, and we admire their lives, but when they went to explain how holiness actually works,

I would agree with Ryle and Spurgeon, later with Martin Lloyd -Jones and others who said that they probably didn't explain that in a biblical way.

I think that they misunderstood aspects of Romans 5 and 6. Now I wish I could live as godly as those men lived, and I don't want to be critical of men that love the

Lord, but I would have to say that Ryle's book on holiness is a much safer guide than some of those that came out around the 1850s.

So really my favorite book on holiness, J .C. Ryle, published by the

Banner of Truth Trust. All right, so that's our devotional books. Now let's, I want us to move to some historical works.

Okay, so there are two by the same man. One is Revival and Revivalism by Ian Murray, and that is one of our all -time favorite history books at this church, because what he does is he traces the transformation of American theology and church, everything,

American evangelical religion from the end of Jonathan Edwards' life, you know, so mid -18th century, mid -1700s up until mid -20th century or early, even earlier than that turn of the 20th century.

So Revival and Revivalism by Ian Murray, a very helpful book to help us to understand how did we go from views of God and of the gospel and of holiness and of church and all those fundamental things, how do we go from the view that Edwards had and Whitfield had to the view that probably most of us have grown up with.

Very helpful, very fair treatment, very clearly laid out for us where he goes to the original sources.

So another book that he wrote that follows up on that is Evangelicalism Divided, and in this book he really deals with the 20th century.

So it happened in my lifetime, much of it, and he talks about the ministry of Martin Lloyd -Jones, talks about what happened in Britain and in America as there continued to be some shifts in our theology.

Really critical if you want to understand how we got to where we're at. All right, so some biographical stuff.

This is a little book that was given to me by a man right after I became a believer.

I read it. The Select Sermons of George Whitfield, the man that gave it to me, I really looked up to.

It's by J .C. Ryle as well, and so this is my first, this is the first book that introduced me to anybody that thought like a

Puritan, and I didn't even know what a Puritan was, but I remember that a guy named Charles Spurgeon recommended a guy named

George Whitfield. So when I found this book, I read it. It gives you just a few sermons, but it also gives you a little biographical introduction and a theological explanation of what did

George Whitfield believe. Greatest preacher in the English language, and it's just a really easy, small, fascinating read, a good place to start.

Now, next, if you read that and you really like it, this is a two -volume set of Whitfield sermons published by Crossway, and Whitfield sermons are often hard to find, so this is a new two -volume set, hardback, really worth its weight in gold.

When you read it, you see how simple Whitfield sermons are and why the average man really appreciated him.

Final book. This is just one volume of a two -volume biography on Martin Lloyd Jones, again written by Ian Murray.

This is volume one, the first 40 years, so two -volume work by Banner of Truth on the life of Martin Lloyd Jones, not because you worship

Lloyd Jones or you think he did everything right, but because I think for us, especially in the

West, the things that Lloyd Jones faced in the days of his ministry and the choices he made as he responded to those things, they're such a beneficial guide for us today in so many areas, and how he clung to the hope that Christ's sufficiency was enough for a church, biblical preaching, prayer, things, but it's not written by a man that lived 400 years ago.

Things that Lloyd Jones faced, we face again today, so really beneficial to read his life, especially for those who are spiritual leaders.

Well, I hope that helps. You probably have other books that are great, and we could kind of keep going, but we'll have to stop there.

10 books that you might look at in the coming year. Now that the

Puritan film is out and shipping after two years of working together with Reformation Heritage Books and Puritan Reform Theological Seminary, we're here in Tupelo, Mississippi, where we've gathered some friends and family together just to screen the film as a way to celebrate.

We spoke to one family who'd come out to see the film. First, the father, Scott, and then two teenagers,

Claire and John. I just think it paints a picture of their, like, you know how John Piper was saying, it's more, not necessarily worldview, just like your heart for heart for the

Lord, and I just feel like they, it painted a very good picture of what they stood for, what they were desiring, and I think that's the most important thing, not necessarily who they were, what time period they're from, but just like what they believed in, what they were striving for, so I think that...

So somebody my age that's not familiar with who the

Puritans are, or really, you know, close in their walk with God, I think it'd be a eye -opening experience and a conviction, but I think it's convicting even to the one who's walking closest to Christ.

It's still a conviction to, okay, I'm still so far, there's so much more to Him than we ever hoped or imagined, so yeah,

I think it'd be a great endeavor for anybody to watch this and learn and just open your mind to so much more.

For more information about Puritan All of Life to the Glory of God, visit themeansofgrace .org.

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