Book Review: The Explicit Gospel

I really like Matt Chandler. In fact, I would venture to say that he is one of my favorite pastors to listen to. My wife and I followed his progress through his time with a brain tumor and cancer, watching a man put his full hope and trust in a sovereign God who has a sovereign plan. It was a very encouraging and instrumental thing for us to watch. Therefore, when I heard a few months ago that Matt Chandler was publishing his first book, I was ecstatic! Let’s just say, I was not disappointed.

First, off, when I received the book, I was struck by something very interesting: the wide range of people who gave a blurb on the front or back of the book. The names range all the way from Rick Warren and Ed Stetzer to Mark Dever and D.A. Carson. I am not commenting on these men individually, or saying that one is more correct or faithful in my opinion, only that they are different. What struck me was that Chandler must have written a very good book in order to bring together such different people. And so he did.

Many books have been written on the Gospel recently: what it is, what its effects are on us, how it gives mission to the church, etc. Within all of these books, there seems to be two different camps as far as what authors are stressing. On one hand, you have the traditional, “Romans-road,” Jesus-as-my-personal-savior Gospel, which stresses the death and resurrection of Jesus and the call for men to repent and believe in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. That is all great, and absolutely true, but this camp rarely mentions the kingdom of God or Jesus as the Messiah. Then, on the other side, you have a resurgence of people such as N.T. Wright and Scot McKnight stressing the Gospel as the ushering in of the kingdom of God by His long-awaited Messiah, the God-man Jesus Christ. Again, all great and true, but this camp has swung the pendulum so far in the other direction in an attempt to correct the other side that they seem to neglect the personal salvation and forgiveness of sin aspect of the Gospel.

Matt Chandler’s book was a refreshing corrective to this over-stressing one way or the other. His book is split into two parts: The Gospel on the ground and the Gospel in the air. The Gospel on the ground, as Chandler phrases it, is what the first camp of people are talking about. Chandler discusses four topics in this part: God, man, Christ, and response. The Gospel in the air, then, talks about what the second group is stressing. Again, Chandler discusses four topics in this second part: Creation, fall, reconciliation, consummation. In structuring his book in this manner I believe that he has faithfully represented both aspects of what the Gospel is in its fullest sense, rather than narrowing the Gospel into one at the exclusion of the other.

Finally, Chandler ends with two very important chapters where he stresses the dangers of stressing one of these aspects over the other. First, he gives 3 dangers of leaving the Gospel on the ground too much (that is, neglecting the aspect of the Gospel as the ushering in of the Kingdom of God):

1. You will miss God’s grand mission
2. You will rationalize your faith and no longer care about those around you
3. You will develop a self-centered Gospel

Next, he gives 4 dangers of leaving the Gospel in the air too much (that is, neglecting the aspect of the Gospel as a personal faith for the forgiveness of sins)

1. You will fall prey to syncretism, that is, you will not look much different from the world
2. You will promote a Christless gospel
3. You will elevate culture as an idol
4. You will abandon evangelism

Overall, I though that Matt Chandler’s book was excellently written, consisting of Chandler’s trademark style of both humorous and serious at the same time. The book is a very good read as well as, I believe, a very important one in our attempt to bridge these two equally true aspects of what the Gospel is.

You can buy this book from Amazon here

In accordance with FTC regulation, I would like to thank Crossway publishers for providing me with a review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

 

Book Review: Calico Joe

“What if a pitcher intentionally hit a batter, a young star? What if both careers were ruined? And what if they met years later to try to come to grips with what happened in a split second?” These are some of the opening words of John Grisham to the reader explaining his rationale for writing this book.

I must say, I began this book very conflicted. First off, I am not a big baseball fan, AT ALL! The sport has always bored me and I have had no interest in it whatsoever. However, John Grisham is one of my absolute favorite authors. So here was the dilemma I was in: My favorite author writing on one of my least favorite topics. How would it go?

After finishing the book, I was not conflicted at all! I absolutely loved the book. While the book definitely centers around baseball as the skeleton for its storyline, it moves in the same rapid and gripping style that one would expect from a Grisham book. Your emotions are stirred to love Joe Castle and hate Warren Tracey, but just when you think you have it all figured out, you begin to have just a little bit of compassion for Tracey and are conflicted in your emotions.

I think that Grisham found the perfect harmony between length and in-depth details in this work. There is enough baseball jargon to engage the avid fan, but not enough to turn away someone like myself.

Go buy the book here and enjoy this short, but excellently written piece of American fiction. Grisham has hit one out of the park in this one (pun intended).

In accordance with FTC regulations, I would like to thank Doubleday Publishing for providing me with a review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Book Review: How God Became King

N.T. Wright is certainly one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world today. With that said, few people ruffle feathers and stir up controversy as well as Wright. His years of Pauline scholarship, in particular with regard to the doctrine of justification and Paul’s understanding of the “righteousness of God,” has left the Christian community looking afresh at these crucial doctrines and has resulted in multiple lectures, essays, and entire books taking Wright to task on the views he has advocated.

Well, here he has done it again in his new book where he seems to assert that 2,000 years of Christian thinking has misunderstood the Gospels. This, to be sure, has ruffled a few feathers and caused some important interaction. One very notable review of Wright’s book can be found here, where the reviewer interacts with Wright on a political and social level. For a much more positive and affirming review, see this review.

Wright’s central thesis in this book is simple: The Gospels are the story of how God became king. Wright identifies a very crucial problem that has existed in the life of the church for decades: We do not correctly understand the New Testament, and in particular the Gospels, in light of the Old Testament and the expectation of a coming Messiah. To many, the name Jesus Christ is thought of simply as a first and last name rather than “Christ” identifying Jesus as the Anointed Messiah, the long-awaiting King that would come and bring the Kingdom of God to Earth. In this regard, Wright’s book has been very helpful, along the lines of Scot McKnight’s recent work, The King Jesus Gospel.

While I do think that Wright made some helpful correctives to the Church’s misunderstanding of Jesus as the Messiah come to bring God’s kingdom, I am not so sure about some of his conclusions about the need for theocracy and abandonment of the separation of church and state. I think that this is a very well-written book, and will be important in this ongoing re-discovery of the primary importance of understanding Jesus as the Messiah who has come to bring God’s kingdom. However, I do think that McKnight’s book may be a little better at doing this while leaving out many of the political caricatures and conclusions that Wright includes in his work.

Nevertheless, I am pleased at the release of this book and resonate wholeheartedly with Wright’s thesis that the Gospels are about How God Became King. I greatly enjoyed reading this book, as I do with all of N.T. Wright’s works; purely as a writer, he is hardly rivaled today.

In accordance with FTC regulations, I would like to thank HarperOne for giving me this book as a review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Mark Noll on Popular Theologies

In this quote, Mark Noll, noted Christian historian, especially with regard to American Religion, comments on the influx of popular theologies that flooded the landscape of America in the 19th and 20th centuries:

“Without a national state church, with few widely revered theological traditions, with no centralized scheme of a national education, with all of the denominations compelled to enter into vigorous popular competition for adherents, with innovations in communications implemented by ordinary people, and with significant amounts of wealth widely distributed and available for establishing colleges, publishing houses, newspapers, and other means of disseminating ideas, the United States has been a very fertile medium for popular theologies.“*

*Mark A. Noll, The Old Religion in a New Word: The History of North American Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 195.

When he says “popular theologies,” he is referring to those systems of thinking that arise from the general public and laymen rather than originating in the academy/university. Some of these “popular theologies” that Noll specifically identifies are Dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, and a wide variety of sectarian movements, including Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

What are some other popular theologies that you see that have arisen in the United States? One that I would add would be the health/wealth gospel or “prosperity theology”

N.T. Wright on Creeds

N.T. Wright on Christians who seek to understand the whole Biblical canon and storyline from the ancient creeds alone, especially the Nicene Creed:

“Again, it would, I think, be uncontroversial to propose that the great majority of people in today’s church who consider themselves to be firmly ‘creedal’ Christians, affirming the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and the second coming, have never imagined for one moment that the gospels are telling the story of how God became king or that the rescuing sovereignty of God is already a reality in the world through the public career, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is a kingdom-shaped gap at the heart of their implicit story. And the problem with leaving the gap unfilled is that everything else in the story changes its meaning, ever so slightly but significantly. Like somebody who has lost a central piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but is determined to finish the puzzle anyway, other pieces have to be pulled a little out of shape if they are to be made to fit. By themselves, the creeds are fine – excellent, solid, evocative, up-building. But if their enthusiasts claim that they teach exactly the same thing as the canon, they have deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them“*

* N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 257.

The Primary Importance of Original Languages

One of my professors at SBTS, Dr. Jim Hamilton, recently wrote this excellent article discussing the primary importance of the original biblical languages during one’s seminary training. Hamilton argues that people have often misunderstood what the role of the seminary is in its training of pastors. He says the seminary is not a church, not a substitute for a pastoral internship, nor is it an evangelic crusade. Rather,the Seminary exists to teach people the Bible! And since the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek (and some Aramaic), the study of these languages should be of the utmost importance for any student training to teach and preach God’s Word!

Stemming from this argument, Hamilton offers two helpful pieces of advice for those currently in seminary:

1. Seminary students who want to learn the Bible in the original languages should take the languages early and often. Why let a semester pass in which you’re not in a Greek or Hebrew class? Hamilton suggests that pastors in training should use most, if not all, of their electives taking Hebrew and Greek exegesis courses in order to better learn the Bible. Other areas of study are absolutely important, including counseling, church history, etc. However, most of this can be learning by reading some good books or attending some excellent conferences. However, when is the last time you heard of a conference doing verse-by-verse exegesis of 1 Peter in Greek?
2. You are cultivating Christlikeness as you lay your life down for others by studying the biblical languages. Studying the languages is HARD work! I have spent many hours hammering down Hebrew and Greek paradigms, many times when that was one of the last things I wanted to do. However, this point is a good one for me to remember! In my study and sacrifices to learn the languages I am laying down my own personal comforts and desires in exchange for focusing on something of the utmost importance and something that will immeasurable serve those whom I will minister to in the future.

You can read the rest of the article here, which I would highly recommend you do. Not only is Dr. Hamilton a much better writer than me, but he also goes into much more elaboration and explanation of the argument which he is proposing.

This article by Dr. Hamilton is part of a larger series of posts by Desiring God titled, “How To Stay Christian in Seminary.” Here is the series thus far:

• Introduction – Seminary: Life or Death?
• #1 – Know Your Value of Values
• #2 – Be Fascinated with Grace
• #3 – Love that Jesus Calls the Weak
• #4 – Study the Word for More than Words
• #5 – Pray with Your Books Closed
• #6 – Be a Real Husband and Dad
• #7 – Keep Both Eyes Peeled for Jesus

Book Review: Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?

James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary, eds. Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

 

Many advances have been made in the last few decades by critical scholars of the Bible, especially in the area of the Old Testament. With the rise of postmodernism and the slow move away from modernism, we live in an age when even the critical scholars themselves are split between following the traditional critical methods of modernism, or the more literary analysis of postmodernism. Either way, these two critical school of thought have slowly crept their way into the Evangelical world, to the extent that some are even considered to be “critically Evangelical.”

In response to this growing criticism creeping into Evangelicalism, and specifically in response to two recent books – Peter Enns’, Inspiration and Incarnation and Kenton Spark’s, God’s Word in Human Words – the Department of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School held a panel discussion among its faculty members in February 2009 to address these issues. At the request by many for these talks to be produced in published form, James Hoffmeier and Dennis Magary have compiled those talks, along with articles requested by some of the leading scholars in the Evangelical field, into this present book. In the preface of the book, the purpose of this work is summarized well:

“We offer this book to help address some of the questions raised about the historicity, accuracy, and inerrancy of the Bible by colleagues within our faith community, as well as those outside it” (23).

Below you will find the Table of Contents listing the the 23 articles written by 23 of the world’s leading scholars in their respective fields.

This book is an invaluable resource for anyone entering into or currently in biblical studies, especially with the age of criticism that we find ourselves in today. I am very thankful for Crossway in publishing this book, as well as the numerous scholars who contributed both their time and their wisdom to helping those of us who will encounter this type of criticism to be able to give an adequate, intelligent response for the positions we hold. In particular, I was very impressed with Richard Schultz’s article on the issues of Isaianic authorship. I hope to post a review of that specific chapter in the days to come. I am certain this will be a resource I will return to over and over again throughout the rest of my seminary career.

Buy here at Amazon

I would like to thank Crossway for giving me a review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review

Albatros Bookmarks

This looks incredible. Click here to pre-order

Albatros bookmarks from Oscar Lhermitte on Vimeo.

Westminster on Adoption

The 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XII, of Adoption:

“All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in an for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have His name put upon them, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.”

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!

What a glorious truth this is that God has chosen to extend His mercy to me, someone so undeserving, and has bestowed upon me the honor of being adopted as one of His children! Hallelujah and Amen!

Book Review: How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens

Zondervan has just released a very helpful book by Michael Williams titled, How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens:A Guide to Christ-Focused Reading of Scripture. This book is meant to pair with their other books in this “How to” series, including How to Read the Bible for all its Worth and How to Read the Bible Book by Book

The purpose of this book is to show the reader how each book of the Scriptures ultimately either points to or finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Each chapter in the book is very short (averaging 4 pages) and covers one book of the Bible at a time.

I was very impressed by the format of the book and how helpful a resource like this could be for teachers in our churches, whether senior pastors, Sunday School teachers, or small group Bible study leaders. Each chapter is structured the same. First, the reader is given a small statement of the theme of the book. This is a concise sentence or so in order to help a teacher not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Next, the author gives a memory passage for each book, which is very helpful if one wanted to lead some sort of small group study with this book and have participants memorize Scripture together. Next, there is a section titled The Jesus Lens. This is the passage that really explains how this book of the Bible points to or is fulfilled by Jesus. Next is the section titled Contemporary Implications. This is sort of the “application” section where the author shows how each book is relevant and useful to speak to us today in the 21st century. Finally, there is a section called Hook Questions. Again, this is a very helpful section if leading a small group study through a book, or through an OT or NT survey, as it helps the reader to think through some discussion questions to pose to a group.

___________

I was given this book as a gift from Zondervan in exchange for participating in their blog tour. Rather than every blogger reviewing the book as a whole, Zondervan wanted each blogger to choose a book of the Bible and review that section. Therefore, I chose to review the section on the book of Leviticus. I will discuss how Michael Williams deals with the book of Leviticus in this book in order to give you a taste of the book as a whole.

Leviticus: Life in God’s Presence

Theme of the Book: God instructs his people how to live in his presence

Williams explains that the reason the book of Leviticus was written was so that the people of Israel would know how to live in the midst of God’s presence. The second half of the book of Exodus dealt with God’s instructions on the building and operation of the tabernacle, the place where God himself would dwell. The fact that Yahweh would now dwell in their presence raises an enormous initial question: How can such a holy being dwell among such unholy people. The purpose of the book of Leviticus is to answer that question. The people are to follow certain laws and ceremonies in order to purify themselves in a manner worthy of Yahweh dwelling among them.

Memory Passage: Leviticus 20:26 -”You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.”

The Jesus Lens: Jesus is the flawless sacrifice and sinless priest

There are many rules and instructions both on the need for a sacrifice without any imperfection offered to God, as well as special rules and proceedings to be followed by the priests so that the sacrifice would be acceptable before God. In Christ, we see both of these fulfilled. Jesus is both the flawless sacrifice and the sinless priest (Hebrews 7:27).

Contemporary Implications: The Spirit enables believers to live holy.

Jesus has shown us and taught us how we are to live as followers of him. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:14 to “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with Him.” While we are unable to live in this way on our own, we, as believers, have the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us in holiness!

Hook Questions

(1) Are you cultivating a life of holiness?

(2) What does such a life look like today? How would anyone recognize that you are set apart to God and his purposes for you?

This is just a quick overview of the material in the chapter on Leviticus. The chapter itself was rich with insight and biblical knowledge, yet not at a level that can only be understood by seminarians or scholars. I think that the major strength of this book is its accessibility by all types of people.

I would highly recommend this book as a must-have resource for anyone who has any sort of teaching or discipleship role in the local church. In fact, this is an excellent resource just simply for your own understanding and reading of the Scriptures. I am thankful both to Michael Williams and to Zondervan for the publication of this book.

In compliance with FTC regulations, I would like to thank Zondervan for giving me this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.