2020 Book Recommendations | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. This is our Christmas special, where each year we try to recommend a number of books that we think would be helpful for you for Christmas presents. Some of them are for believers, some for unbelievers, some are for pastors.

And the one thing we want to not do is recommend the same favorite books each year. So you can go back and see earlier podcasts to see other books we've recommended in the.

Past.

Books for Christmas Gifts and Helpful Reading

But this year, we have a few. And so I have AC and Chuck with me, and they have limited themselves to about three or four books each like we agreed on. And then I brought a big pile. By the way, we're filming in the sanctuary at the church.

And so there's a there's some echo that you'll hear. And we also have some noises going on in the background as some ladies are getting ready for a baby shower. So just bear with that. AC?

Yeah.

It was somewhat difficult to narrow it down to three books to recommend for Christmas presents this year, but three did immediately come to mind. And the first is a book by John MacArthur entitled None Other Discovering the God of.

The Bible.

I really enjoyed this book just for the fact that it was an introductory look at the attributes of God. After finishing the book, one of my first thoughts was this was just kind of an outworking of 45 plus years of pastoral work just roaring out of John MacArthur.

Very, very helpful. Very warm, very pastoral. Classic John MacArthur, scripture saturated. Almost every paragraph is laced with scripture. What you also see in the book is that he has just a working knowledge of church history, knowledge of the early church and various doctrines that were taught and defended, but also this knowledge of the modern church and different theological issues that are going on right now.

But there was also an apologetic bent you could feel. There was always a defense as well of Christian doctrine. Really, a justification of God as to who he is and why he operates the way that he does in the scriptures and in the world.

But I felt with every chapter what MacArthur was doing, he was building a case. Scripture upon scripture, every comment that he made is backing up what he's discussed in scripture. He's just picking up steam.

And by the time he draws his conclusion at the end of the chapter, you're just almost left with no other way out but to say, you're right, John. You're right. This is who the living and true God is, and this is how I must live in light of who he is.

So I felt like this book was a great addition to the books that are already available on the attributes of God. You've got Stephen Charnock's Existence and Attributes of God, which is like the Mount Everest of the attributes of God.

But you've also got George Swinnock, who wrote about a 115 to 130-page work on the attributes of God. So I felt like if a baby Christian was looking for a book to read on the attributes of God, or pastors or parents were looking to give a book to a baby Christian, or really any believer in general, a book on the attributes of God, then this one would be the go-to.

It's a modern voice, not sacrificing content, and providing really the essentials for what you need to understand the basics of the attributes of God.

What's your next book?

Gospel-Shaped Devotion and the Christian Life

Yeah, the next book is The Gospel-Shaped Life by Ian Hamilton. It's a book by The Banner of Truth, available at their website for just under $10. It is 43 three to four-page devotionals. Again, Ian Hamilton, a contributor for the Weight of Majesty study, just comes with each devotion with the heart of a pastor, the heart of a seminary professor, looking at various parts of the gospel.

So he looks at the doctrine of the Trinity. He looks at the New Covenant. He looks at election. He looks at evangelism. He looks at all these different aspects of the gospel and applies them very warm-heartedly.

I think what comes out in every page of this book is that there is such a warmth and a tenderness toward Christ and toward his fellow man. Something that I thought was really helpful as well is that he has kind of sprinkled throughout the book biographical sketches of men like Martin Lloyd-Jones, of Samuel Rutherford, and Thomas Goodwin, just pointing out how the gospel was lived out in their own life as ordinary believers, but also as pastors as well.

So again, just a tender love for Christ and his fellow man, great knowledge of church history, theology, doctrine, as well as how to apply it every day. So if you're looking for something that's simple, clear, maybe for lack of a better word quick, then this book would be perfect, I think.

And the last book that I want to recommend is a book by someone that I don't know how often or if at all he's been mentioned on the Behold Your God podcast, but a gentleman by the name of Clyde Cranford wrote a book called Because We Love Him.

It's actually a book written by Clyde. He discipled John, he discipled Chuck, discipled Jordan Thomas as well. So he's very influential to them. You could say he's very influential to Christ Church in Albany.

And because of that, you could say he's very influential to the Behold Your God studies. In fact, Christ Church uses this book as a discipleship book for younger men and younger ladies in the church. So I would say that probably right now I've read this book about seven times with some of the younger men in the church.

And I would say that it just gets better every time. It is a general overview of the Christian life. I think we could all say this, it's down to earth, it's clear, it's simple, it's accessible. Clyde, again, like MacArthur, like Hamilton, just saturates the pages with scripture, helpfully, powerfully.

It's very warm and conversational. I think after every time I complete reading the book, I feel like I've once more sat down across from a very dear friend who loves my soul, who at times has to say very hard things to me, things that I don't necessarily want to hear, but I need to hear.

I've sat across from a friend who encourages me to pick up the pace. And after I've done talking with him, I just want to follow Christ. I want to see him more clearly. So I would say this book is worth its weight in gold.

If you can find a copy of it, by all means, purchase it. You can get it at christianbook .com for about $15. So it deserves a wide readership. So if you have the opportunity to get it for yourself or someone else, do it.

Chuck?

Pastoral Care for the Sick and Widows

Pardon me. I want to recommend a few books to pastors, and then maybe one just to everyone. Two of these are actually from the same series by Brian Croft, and some of them are co-written by others. He just left the pastorate to work with this ministry full-time called Practical Shepherding.

These two books, one is called Visit the Sick, the other Caring for Widows. They're not expensive books, but they are very practical, very helpful. The Visit the Sick book talks specifically about hospital visitation or visiting people in their home who are sick.

Christ Church is a fairly young church. We've only been around for about 20 years, but also our congregation is fairly young. We're obviously aging, but there are pastors who weekly are in the hospital, maybe multiple times a week in the hospital.

We don't have that many hospital visits, and probably the majority of the hospital visits over the years have been for newborn babies more than anything else. So we don't get a lot of practical experience here, and men who are coming up and interested in ministry, it's not easy to grab them and take them to the hospital and say, here's how you do a hospital visit.

But this book gives a lot of practical advice as well as a short kind of biblical theology of caring for the sick. But the value, again, I believe is the practical advice. If I remember correctly, Brian Croft's father is a medical doctor, so he also borrows from him, but stuff like what to say and what not to say.

I've needed that in the past. How long to stay, what do you do if you get to the room and no one's there, just some very practical advice. Never ask to see the wound, those kinds of things. The other one, though, caring for widows.

In this book, Brian Croft gives, again, practical advice about visiting with widows. And it's helpful. It's a good kind of starting place to think about some of this, but I think the real weight of this book, the help of this book is the co-author, Austin Walker, who gives a biblical overview of God's care for widows and what God says to the church about caring for widows.

And it is really good. Austin is Jeremy Walker's dad, and I was convicted reading it. We had our deacons read it, and I think they were all convicted as well. I recommend that book to you. Another book, this is called The Preacher's Catechism by Lewis Allen.

This is published by Crossway. Lewis Allen is a pastor in England, and he has put together this little devotional for pastors, and it's in a, obviously, a catechism kind of format, The Preacher's Catechism.

The catechism itself is at places kind of forced. I think the real value is in the devotions themselves. So for instance, this is chapter 11. How did the first preacher sin? He took the fruit of preaching and ate it for his own pleasure.

And then there's a warning against that, but this, I think, is a great kind of Sunday, pardon me. This is a great kind of Monday morning book. If you ever had the Monday morning blues after preaching on Sunday, it's a great book to come back to and remember whose you are and the calling that God has placed on your life, that kind of thing.

I've gone through it a couple of times, and we'll probably go through it again in 2021. Third book, this is by Josh Smith, who is the son of Bailey Smith. It's called Preaching for a Verdict. It's published by B &H Academic, which I guess used to be Broadman and Holman.

The whole idea of this book is that in preaching, you should obviously give application, but even application is not enough. There should be an exhortation or a call to action. So perhaps you've heard sermons that don't even include much application.

The truth is laid out and the preacher stops and you're kind of left with, okay, there's a lot of truth there. And then there are other times we hear application made, here's what you should do, and it stops there.

Josh Smith is arguing that beyond application, there needs to be an exhortation, a call to do what the Bible is calling you to do in that application. He argues from the Bible with biblical examples. He argues from church history and lays out a pretty good case, I believe.

He also gives some examples of how various texts make an exhortation or what the voice is in calling for action. Sometimes it's very strident, perhaps sometimes it's not as strident, but he argues that each voice has, or pardon me, each passage has an exhortation built into it, obedience.

You need to obey. He also gives some helps on how to develop that without being manipulative. How do we persuade people to obey, call them to repentance without manipulating their emotions and doing something that the Bible is not calling for?

So I think it's helpful in those ways, and I commend it to you. One other book, and this more general, and it is from the works of John Flavel. This is volume one. Volume one has a short biography of John Flavel, but the real treasure in it is The Fountain of Life, A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory.

That's a long title, but it's certainly a book worth reading. Flavel, 17th century pastor, and so he is a Puritan. It's not super easy reading like these other men I've just mentioned. There's a difference, but he's not John Owen Hart either, and it is a look at Jesus from eternity past to now as he intercedes for us, and his work, his incarnation, his work in obedience, his work on the cross, et cetera.

All of that, just a look at that sermon by sermon, 42 sermons, and if the catechism book is kind of a good Monday morning book, I like to think this is a great Saturday night or Sunday afternoon book, and it's thick, but you could take a sermon a week and work through it pretty easily, and over the course of most of a year, I think would be an investment well worth making, not just the money, the investment of time, as you carefully look at Christ, his person, and his work.

The Warmth and Breadth of John Flavel

Yeah, that book by Flavel was one of the first that I read in rethinking kind of our theology after we were in college, and then a second one that follows that called The Method of Grace where he deals with the work of the spirit and salvation.

Both of those are so helpful. Flavel really is one of the warmest of the Puritans. All right, so my list starts with a Puritan book called Ore from the Puritans' Mines, so Mining Ore. It's the essential collection of Puritan quotations by Dale W. Smith, and it's been published by Reformation Heritage Books, so over 3 ,000 quotations, over 250 authors quoted from, and it's given in subject form, and so there are over 400 subject headings, and I was just reading quickly through a few of them.

Very helpful.

So it's been a while since we've had a good Puritan book published, and I'm glad that Reformation Heritage Books put this together. Now, this is my first one because actually this is the church's Christmas present to Chuck and Acey, so there you go, and I notice you guys didn't bring me a Christmas present, but that's all right.

We'll talk about it later. It wouldn't fit.

Oh, okay.

The second recommendation is a set by Trinity Pulpit Press. It's a collection of Al Martin's lectures on pastoral theology. Now, these are three volumes, and these are pretty meaty, all right? So there are some books on pastoring that are almost purely devotional, and then there are some books that are purely academic, and this would be in between those two extremes, but it is a serious read for those who are serious about pastoral theology.

So the first volume is called The Man of God, His Calling and Godly Life, and I think that's probably what Al Martin's really known for, a significant Reformed Baptist pastor over the last decades and a very serious man, very earnest about a godly life.

Second volume is The Man of God, His Preaching and Teaching Labors, and the third volume is The Man of God, His Shepherding, Evangelizing, and Counseling Labors. So these are books that Chuck and I have just...

Have you read any of this?

Okay.

So Chuck and I have just kind of jumped in on our own and read parts of it, and we found it good. Men that we respect have recommended it. So we have actually not finished reading these, but it'd be good for you to take a look at it and see if it's something that would help you.

An old favorite that I've recommended before, but it's so good, I just can't not recommend it this year, and that is The Expository Thoughts on the Gospels by J .C.

Ryle.

Now, this is kind of a big set. So what, seven volumes? Matthew, one volume, Mark, one volume, Luke, two volumes, and John, there's three volumes. J .C. Ryle's a 19th century Anglican bishop, one of the rare examples of a 19th century Anglican who is clearly reformed and evangelistic, warmhearted in his theology, and was also a bishop there.

By that time, that didn't happen so often. Contemporary of Charles Spurgeon, these are very simple. You can go through... He gives a short passage, maybe 12 to 20 verses from the Gospels, and then he will take about three or four pages just to explain two or three major points.

The Book of John, he does a little more on. He gives you, at the end of each section, highlights from the best commentators, from ancient commentaries that it's very hard for us to find now, highlights from some of their best comments.

So it's very helpful. This was the first set of commentaries that I read as a believer. I remember after being converted, I started with the Gospel of John and just read one section a day and then eventually worked through the others.

So J .C. Ryle on the Gospels. This is Banner's new edition, and it's really well done. Now, two big sets that Banner has just put out that we mentioned in one of the bonus episodes of the podcast, and this is a set on...

It's called The Treasures of John Owen. So we have, what, five volumes and 10 books in these volumes. So these are some of the Puritan paperbacks that Banner published on Owen, but they've been republished in these nice hardback editions.

So really clear print, nice size. They're sewn and they have a ribbon in them. So it's a really nice set. Let me read you the titles of the books that are there. Let me read you the titles of the set.

All right. It's The Holy Spirit, Temptation, Resisted and Repulsed, Communion with God, which is my all-time favorite Owen book. The Mortification of Sin, The Glory of Christ, Searching Our Hearts in Difficult Times, Indwelling Sin in Believers, Apostasy from the Gospel.

That's a theme that most evangelicals have not researched, and Owen is very biblical.

There.

Apostasy from the Gospel, The Spirit in the Church, and finally, Duties of Christian Fellowship. So John Owen, Treasures from John Owen. Last, another large set that Banner has just put out. Same way, really nice, small hardback editions of Puritan paperbacks they've done in the.

Past.

Each one has a ribbon with it. And so I'm going to read, this is a 10-volume set. Let me read what's in it. Thomas Watson's book, All Things for Good. We've read that as a church. Also Thomas Watson on the Doctrine of Repentance, which in my opinion is the best small treatment of the Doctrine of Repentance.

Richard Sibbes, The Bruise Read, his most famous book by far. William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying, which is the old way of saying, you know, the art of preaching. Thomas Watson again, The Godly Man's Picture.

Samuel Rutherford, his letters, and then a small collection of quotes called The Loveliness of Christ. Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. William Bridge, A Lifting Up for the Downcast.

John Flable, The Mystery of Providence and Facing Grief. John Bunyan on prayer. Joseph Alain on a book called A Sure Guide to Heaven, which is probably the most used old book in our church for evangelism.

Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. And finally, Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor or The Revived Pastor. So some of Banner's most significant paperbacks put in a really nice, more durable form.

Certainly worth the effort. Right, well that's just a sampling of what we could recommend this year. Again, you can go back and see older episodes around our Christmas time book recommendations and hopefully that'll help you fill up your stockings.