Book Recommendations/Reviews, Part 2

The point: Couples with poor marital models should buy two copies of Wayne Mack's 'Strengthening Your Marriage' and work through it diligently to strengthen their marriage within biblical norms.

Martin uses the analogy of a 'little sore' that gets red, festers, and produces 'pus of bitterness' to describe chronically unresolved issues in a marriage, emphasizing the need for couples to address them directly with God's help.

and therefore, you're picking up bits and pieces and some things you're sort of doing by instinct, but you can't articulate the biblical roots to your children. I urge it for you, but then I know from pastoral experience that there are couples who are having struggles in what I would call chronically puffy areas of your marital relationship. Every time it seems to be healed over, the little sore begins to get red and then it festers and then something will cause pressure upon it and out will come, I'm sorry for the gross imagery, but that's what it is, the pus of bitterness and disappointment ...

26:59 - 28:03 Read in full sermon

The point: Couples with chronically struggling areas in their marriage should commit to working through Mack's book to address and heal those issues.

Building on the previous analogy, he prays for God to come with a 'scalpel and cut out the pus sacs' in struggling marriages, illustrating the need for radical intervention and healing.

No amount of pastoral counseling is going to do it. I have seen over years of pastoral intimacy with people that until a couple is determined that together before God they're going to address these issues, you can have a hundred sessions with any number of your elders and the issues will not be dealt with. So I would urge you to let Dr. Mack be your in-house counselor and go to work on some of those chronic areas of deficiency and then it can be helpful in a third way, those of you that have a good marriage and other couples who are struggling don't and they come to you and say, Look, it's obv...

28:03 - 28:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Couples with chronically struggling areas in their marriage should commit to working through Mack's book to address and heal those issues.

Martin describes a scenario where couples with struggling marriages approach those with healthy ones, seeking guidance, illustrating the opportunity for lay members to minister using resources like Mack's book.

I know there are probably times when you blow your cork and you say to the woman that you're probably irritable and nasty and your husband would like to stick your head in the kitchen sink, but for the most part it's obvious you two have got your act together. And it's obvious that my wife and I are my husband and I don't. Can you help us? Brethren, the scripture says that pastors and teachers are given to the church to perfect the saints unto service work.

28:43 - 29:11 Read in full sermon

The point: Use Ryle's book as a catalyst for discussion with your sons about vital issues, even if you only cover a few pages at a time.

He uses the example of a father warning his son about glancing at 'wicked literature' in a 7-Eleven store to illustrate the practical application of Ryle's counsel to avoid occasions of sin.

Break off every known sin. Avoid anything that will be the occasion of sin. Here's where you give the warning dad, about what's wrong going into the 7-Eleven store and letting the eyes glance at the wicked literature that's there on the rack. You dads, you're to be doing this.

32:23 - 32:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Read Sprague's chapter on amusements and exercise strict control over television with respect to your children.

Martin quotes Sprague's chapter on amusements, challenging parents that if they read it and don't exercise strict control over television, they are 'willfully rejecting light,' illustrating the profound impact of entertainment choices on character.

He takes the history of Joseph as the framework for letters to young men. And the peculiar dangers that Joseph faced as a young man and how God undertook for him the danger from excessive parental indulgence danger from injurious treatment danger from living away from home and though some of the specifics are dated because the book was originally published in 1845 by and large it is as relevant as tomorrow morning's newscast. And likewise letters to a daughter on practical subjects and here's a father showing a good example of how a father hands on dad in the formation of the character of his ...

34:10 - 35:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Use John Angell James's 'The Christian Father's Present to His Children' as Lord's Day afternoon material with your family.

He uses the vivid imagery of 'blown on drugs and their hair wildly bouncing as they screech and howl and throw out their multi-decibel sounds in their rock concerts' to describe the cultural forces that deform character when biblical principles of modesty and courtesy are neglected.

companions on what books to read again a chapter on amusements and recreation these older men recognize that unless young people understand the biblical principles with reference to this subject their character will be greatly deformed and its development greatly detuned by the blown on drugs and their hair wildly bouncing as they screech and howl and throw out their multi-decibel sounds in their rock concerts

38:37 - 39:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Parents must come to grips with the issue of entertainment and leisure, exercising moral fiber and determination to control the use of television.

Martin refers to the television as the 'idiot box' to emphasize its potential to undo all the good being attempted in family devotions, Sunday school, and preaching, challenging parents on their moral fiber to control its use.

Well, I wonder if I have. I wonder if I have. How many of you are going to go back and there'll be no fundamental change in the way you use that idiot box and let the world undo all that you're trying to do at family devotions all that's being done in the Sunday school classes right now and all that some of us attempt to do from this pulpit. I really wonder if some of you have the moral fiber and determination to come to grips with this issue.

42:49 - 43:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Every modern Christian parent ought to buy and study 'A Token for Children' before making it required reading for all of his or her offspring.

Martin quotes Dr. John Gerstner's foreword to 'A Token for Children,' highlighting its value for understanding Christian experience through the conversion accounts of children and its surprising omission of infant baptism, challenging modern covenantalists.

John Gerstner, has as its subject matter the following. A Token for Children, written by James Janeway in the 17th century, is designed for adults in the 21st century. If we contemporary Christians want to know what Christian experience is, we can do no better than let these little children of centuries ago teach us. Cotton Mather's New England supplement bound with Janeway moves into the 18th century and these little ones, whose conversion is recounted in this book, A Token for Children, ranging from 2 to 14 years of age, show the ordinary steps towards salvation, beginning with correction an...

45:41 - 46:52 Read in full sermon