Recommendations for Some Good Christian Reading (2006?)

Introduction: Purpose of Book Recommendations and Bookstore Ministry

0:03 In the month of November of the past year, we had a congregational meeting at which, among other things, I announced that our book room downstairs was taking on a new focus in seeking to be an added and an increased instrument of edification and strengthening of the ministry of the church here at Trinity, as well as an instrument of help and blessing to those who may come by the bookstore during the hours that it is open. And now today is an expression of that commitment. We're very thankful as pastors for the work of Rob Morrison, the deacon assigned to oversee the ongoing, and developing ministry of the bookstore, of our sister Nancy Perosi, and the labors that she undertakes downstairs. Those who work in the bookstore, the men who are there available to give you counsel, when you as a member or friend of the church visit the bookstore and you're browsing the bookshelves, for all of those things we are deeply grateful. Now what I intend to do this morning, I have a Herculean task, I may not accomplish it. That's one.

1:23 I have a stack of the books. This is the other stack of the books. And I have arranged them under five categories. And I want to give varying degrees of recommendation concerning these books.

1:37 Now obviously, we don't expect every one of you to run down tonight after the evening service and buy all 17 or 18 of the books that I'm going to recommend. But I hope that in one category or another, you will hear something that you will like, something that is, ah, that's what I need. I think I ought to purchase that particular book. And then I believe that we're putting all of the books that we have in the bookstore also in our church library.

2:06 For those of you that aren't sure you want to purchase a book, but you want to read it to evaluate its worth, you can go the route of first of all checking it out of the library. Now we don't want a civil war down there with ten people all wanting to one book. And I was there first. No, you were there first.

Category 1: Understanding Our Bibles More Fully and Accurately

2:24 Ah, I'm sure you will manifest grace in the matter. So, category number one is what I'm calling understanding our Bibles more fully and more accurately. Both for personal devotions and for family worship. Thinking of family worship particularly with children who are not in the infant stage.

2:47 As you go into the bookstore from the main hallway, the first section to your right, is the section that has books for younger children. Very, very helpful for family worship, for reading with your children. But I'm thinking in this time of book review today, of books that will be helpful for those say from nine or ten years onward, as you have family worship seeking to understand our Bibles more fully and more accurately. And I cannot speak highly enough about the Banner of Truth series called Let's Study Mark.

3:27 In my own New Testament reading, I try to read through the New Testament once every year. I'm going through, or I've just finished going through this one on Mark four times. And every time I go through, I get new insights, new understanding that helps me to understand more accurately and more fully the message of the Gospel of Mark. Any one of the Let's Study series are excellent helps.

3:56 The only exception I would mention is possibly the one on Hebrews that I have found difficult to read with the same ease and profit with which I have read all of the others in the Let's Study series. The one on Philippians, Marilyn and I went through once or twice together. I've used several times myself, exceedingly helpful. And then, if you're in the Old Testament, you have heard Pastor Carlson mention Dale Ralph Davis.

4:28 Any of Dr. Davis's commentaries, we have First Samuel judges, we have others, though they are written in a way that is most helpful to preachers, their benefit does not have to go up to the level of a preacher's understanding of the Word of God. He has a rare gift of taking the most broad, deep scholarship, bringing it to the text of Scripture, and coming away with clear, simple expressions of the truth of God in contemporary illustration, application, vocabulary. He is a most gripping writer.

5:09 And some of you who have teenage children, you could do well, say, to take the one on the book of Judges and use that in family worship, two or three pages a day, working your way through. And I think your teenage kids would find themselves gripped by the way in which this man opens up the Word of God. So I recommend very highly the Let's Study series from Banner of Truth, and then these by Dale Ralph Davis. And then, for those of you that like to use a daily devotional book, Dorothy and I have used almost since the beginning of our marriage, Morning Thoughts by Octavius Winslow, a number of you use Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, and have found it profitable, and have gone through it a number of times. I would highly recommend Morning Thoughts, and then there's a second volume called Evening Thoughts, and the breadth and the variety of the emphases of this servant of God. Time after time, Dorothy and I have found the meditation for that particular morning so suited to our own need that we have felt like the Lord, the Lord came down and chose the particular meditation, even though we've just been working through one after another according to the sequence. We ignore the date of them.

Category 2: Doctrinal Issues

6:34 They are dated just like the calendar, but for understanding the scriptures and their application to life and to experience, very, very helpful. So I would like to recommend those particular volumes under Category 1, Understanding Our Bibles More Fully and More Accurately. Second category is what I'm calling doctrinal, or we have an Englishman here this morning, or a former Englishman, The Doctrinal Issues, and I would like to recommend, first of all, J.I. Packer's helpful little book called Concise Theology, A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs. This would be a wonderful book to have on your family bookshelf if one of your children should ask a question about some major issue of historic Christian truth. Why do we believe our Bibles are the word of God? What is the witness of the Spirit to the inspiration and authority of the scriptures?

7:40 What do we mean when we talk about God revealing himself? God is sovereign. What do we mean by predestination? What do we mean by the providence of God?

7:51 You can just look up in the index, find that particular meditation, and most of them are just two pages. This is on man's inability as a sinner. Two pages. God's covenant is a little longer.

8:05 That's one and a half, two, three, three and a half, four pages. God's law, just two pages. It is the most condensed, accurate setting forth of what he says. Historic Christian Beliefs.

8:21 I believe every family ought to have a copy of this for reference. And then as your children get older at some point, I would greatly urge you to work through it at your family worship in terms of grounding your own family in the major doctrines of the Christian faith. It was in that book that I first got that phrase. When we are glorified, we will have sinless spirits inhabiting deathless bodies.

8:50 And you've heard that. You've heard it again and again from me. I bow down. Not I bow down.

8:55 I reach for Dr. Packer's hand and I kiss the back of it and thank him for giving me that simple little statement that has such stickability about it. Then most of the books or many of the books we have in our bookstore, the Puritan authors, Dr. Packer, many others, are men who holding to historic Christianity, are men whom we would call paedo-baptists.

9:20 That is, they believe that it is the duty of the church to sprinkle the infants of believing parents. And we are Baptists. We believe that baptism is an ordinance of Christ that should be administered only to self-confessed, intelligent disciples of Christ. We believe the commission of Matthew 28 is clear.

9:45 Make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And though we are not nasty Baptists, we regard our paedo-baptist brethren as beloved brethren. Pastor Donnelly, who's almost like an adjunct pastor among us, is a paedo-baptist. We are, I hope we are sweet Baptists, not nasty Baptists, but we are Baptists by conviction.

10:14 And some of you might be vulnerable to some of the paedo-baptist teaching if you're not well-grounded, in our distinctives. And so under this head of doctrinal issues, I want to highly recommend this relatively small booklet called A String of Pearls Unstrung, subtitle A Theological Journey into Believer's Baptism by Dr. Fred Malone. He was a Baptist.

10:40 He went to a paedo-baptist seminary, became a paedo-baptist, became a paedo-baptist pastor. But the more he wrestled with the issue, the string of pearls that held together the argumentation for paedo-baptists began to become unstrung. And that's the significance of his title. And here in this lovely little booklet with, again, a gracious spirit to his paedo-baptist brethren because he was one of them, sincere and earnest, he lays out a very compelling case for our understanding and practice of confessor's baptism.

11:19 That's the term I like. We cannot be certain that everyone who's baptized is a true believer, but they certainly are confessors. And little unconscious infants can confess nothing except that they're hungry or ornery, or happy and gurgle when they're all tanked up, etc. So under the doctrinal issues, I highly recommend Fred Malone's A String of Pearls Unstrung.

11:44 And then a man by the name of Law, a contemporary, has done great service to the Church of Christ in taking the stuff of the great Dr. John Owen, the Puritan of the 17th century, and brought it down into more readable English, simplified not the substance, not the substance, but the manner in which it's laid out before us. And I would like to recommend, if you've not read John Owen, because so often poor John Owen gets bad press as though he was this ugly man, who came trudging down the street and said boo at everybody and tried to scare them. It's not that at all.

12:26 Dr. Owen is one of my patron saints. I've just read for the fourth time the second volume of his complete 16 works on communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and have found it exceedingly profitable. I'd like to recommend two.

12:43 Number one, The Mortification of Sin, in volume six of The Complete Works, there are three treatises, one on the mortification of sin, another one on indwelling sin, and another on temptation. This is the first of those treatises, based on Romans 8, 13. If you by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. Mortification of sin is essential to eternal life.

13:13 As surely as faith in Christ is foundational, mortification of sin is essential. No one gets to heaven except in the way of believing in Christ and the mortification of sin. And so I heartily recommend this to all of God's people. Take it in conjunction with your own devotions.

13:35 Read just a couple of pages a day. You have constant directives given that you can pray in and say, Lord, help me to do this. Help me to think this way. Help me to relate to my sins and to your grace in this way.

13:51 Another one from volume number seven, Apostasy from the Gospel. Apostasy is a very real thing. Among confessed disciples, some fall away. Now, we do not believe that true believers will ever eventually fall away, but true believers will persevere in faith and in holiness.

14:14 And the only alternative, once we've confessed Christ by baptism, become part of His church, is perseverance in the way of obedience in holiness or apostasy unto death. And this is a most helpful book to give us the principles, what are the things to look for that are the first signs of apostasy, not that we might follow them, but that we might avoid them. So under this matter of doctrinal issues, I highly recommend these two works by Owen. Now we move to category number three, and let me get my clock up here so I can end on time.

Category 3: Biography

14:53 I might end up cheating a little bit, with your permission. Now we come into category number three, and that is biography. Now, in years past, probably maybe two years ago, I highly recommended this book that I want to recommend again, God Knows My Size. This is one of the most heartwarming, God-glorifying biographies that I have read in years.

15:22 It's by this dear woman who, in great straits, I'll just give you a little teasing incident, was, as a little girl, in the midst of communist Romania, asking, God, if you exist, make yourself known to me. And in answer to that prayer, a care, a care package came to her home. And in it was a coat and shoes exactly her size. God knows my size.

15:57 And that reality was the turning point in her spiritual experience. And then all the way through her life until communism was ended in that area and she came to the States, time after time, in crises in the prison, the floor was filled with human excrement and she was treated like an animal. God would come with a singular token of his presence and she would go back to the little phrase, God still knows my size. If you want a biography that will cause you to lose some sleep if you do it in nighttime reading, with sheer joy, I urge you to read God Knows My Size.

16:41 It's a good book to Sunday afternoon reading, to read with and to your children, to show them the living God does indeed care for his precious children. And then Dr. John Piper has done the church great service in that at his annual pastor's conference, he takes one biographical study each year and gives a marvelous overview of a man that has greatly impacted the church throughout its history. And then when three of them have been given, he works them into printed form and they come out in these little trilogies of the biographies of great men of God.

17:22 This one, The Hidden Smile of God, the subtitle is The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. Again, a small book, three mini-biographical sketches. I believe he has three such books now, covering nine lives. I think we carry all of them in our bookstore.

17:48 If we don't, we will highly recommend this. Again, we're not laying before you a 400-page book or a 500-page biography such as someone gave me for a special present and God had to put me on my back sick for five days and I got through it, the latest biography of Jonathan Edwards. But I don't wish being put on my back sick for five days at a stretch to read the biggies. These are the kind.

18:15 You can pick it up and in a few hours work through each of the mini-biographies. Highly recommend this to you. Well then, there's also a little booklet on the table downstairs with just the big words, Newton. And it's a lovely, distilled, biographical sketch of the man whose song we love to sing, Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, and is a good little vignette of John Newton's life and his labors, his conversion, and the marvelous transformation that God wrought in the heart of this former sailor and slave trader and changed him into a mighty man of God. See, one of the great benefits of biography is that the truth that we're absorbing under the preaching of the Word, we see it dressed up in the lives of God's people. And it becomes a great encouragement to us. Then we come to category number four.

Category 4: Specific Issues - Modesty, Dating, Depression, and Stewardship of the Body

19:18 We've covered understanding our Bibles more fully and accurately, doctrinal issues, biographical sketches, and now specific issues, books. Books that are calculated to address issues that we believe are issues that ought to be of concern to us as the people of God. And I'm going to recommend some four or five of such books this morning. Number one, Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing of America.

19:54 The summer months are coming. Sand and surf and poolside relaxation will once again be upon us. Jeff Pollard has done a masterful job in tracing the history of the matter of the garb that is considered appropriate for bathing, whether at the shore or in the backyard. And his sources are not Christian sources.

20:22 He's got references to first-hand sources from secular people. That the fact that people who still have their sanity will appear in semi-nakedness in public without shame is the fruit of a calculated effort on the part of those who have wanted to see our nation become a nation of immodesty. I know some people have not dared to read this for fear it would challenge what's in their drawer that they're going to put on when they go to the pool or go to the shore. I challenge you, child of God.

21:05 I'm dead serious. If you've not faced realistically that you've been conned into accepting immodesty that is condemned by the scriptures, get Jeff Pollard's book and read it with an open mind and heart with the prayer, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

21:35 And then, though I've recommended this in times past, I've noticed that since I last recommended it, some of you have come to the place where it's now an issue. When I recommended it the last time, you probably thought, oh, my kids are light years away from that. Well, here they are. They've come up into that stage of life.

21:56 You've heard me express it before. The three stages in the development of a young man are when he's a little boy and you say, girls, he goes, yuck. He gets a little older and you say, girls, and he goes, meep. He gets a little older and you say, girls, and he goes, mm.

22:16 From yuck to mm to mm. And some of you have had boys and girls that have gone from the yuck to the mm to the yum stage, and they want to know, what about this business of, quote, dating? And I want to recommend sincerely and earnestly and as passionately as I can and passionately as I know how, the book by Josh Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. This is already a classic, setting forth the whole matter.

22:50 Where did this idea of teenagers pairing off boys and girls, where did it come from? What are its dangers? Is it anything that we as the people of God should be sympathetic to and allowed to be practiced by our children? Again, some of you may sit there and say, I'm not going to read some fanatical thing that, that, that, that, that.

23:14 Please don't have that attitude. The Scripture says, he that does, he that walks in the light, comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. The person who hates light won't come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. You have nothing to lose.

23:36 If you have a conviction that you ought to allow your daughter, your son to quote, date, then you have nothing to lose by reading Josh Harris' book. You'll take his best arguments and you'll be able to say, no, from this Scripture and that Scripture and from this obvious principle in that, I don't believe it's worthy of being considered. On the other hand, you may find that he has such compelling biblical and practical insights that you will want to sit there and sit down with your teenagers and work through this book together and say that as far as you are concerned in the administration of your household, dating, indiscriminate dating, or even dating more selectively for a kind of social activity is not going to be part of your family experience. And along with that, I would like to recommend Mitch Lush's Seven Messages that he brought here some years ago on dating and courtship. They are in video as well as audio and that you work through them with your family. I know families that have done this.

24:47 I know there are churches that have done this. And I say to some of you who are young men and young women, I'm just looking out now and I'm seeing some look on some faces that aren't too happy. I'm seeing one man going to sleep on me and I don't appreciate it. I've spent time and effort to prepare these things.

25:09 I'm pleading with you. Don't dismiss these matters. They are serious. Very serious.

25:17 So I recommend Josh Harris and Mitch Lush's Seven Messages on the Matter of Courtship and Dating. And then, I come to this book called This is Still Under Special Issues. We've dealt with the matter of modesty, dating, courtship. Third one is, this book called Will Medicine Stop the Pain?

25:41 And here's the subtitle. Finding God's Healing for Depression, Anxiety, and Other Troubling Emotions. Do you know what the two biggest epidemic concerns are in our nation? Here's the first one.

26:01 The most widely, this is Star-Ledger, Friday, April 11th. This is not coming out of World Magazine. This is Star-Ledger. I quote, The most widely prescribed drugs in America are not for pain or cholesterol management, heartburn or hypertension.

26:21 They are for depression. In the past year, antidepressants received 232.7 million prescriptions. Next in line were the different medications for cholesterol, 220 million.

26:42 The next one, painkillers, 186 million, etc. Epidemic treatment of quote, depression. Charles Barber, not a Christian, author of a new book, quote, Comfortably numb, how psychiatry is medicating a nation end quote. That's the name of his book.

27:08 Said, antidepressants can be very effective for people with severe and disabling mental illness. He's not writing off completely the use of medication, but, but, listen carefully. He said, heavy marketing by drug makers, Americans' quest for a quick fix and a wider acceptance in popular culture have resulted in the use of antidepressants as, here's what he calls them, an instant cure for all emotional difficulties. End quote.

27:50 Now, I do not know and I have no intention nor do any of your elders to take a survey and ask unsigned, so it would be anonymous, how many of you sitting here today are on some kind of psychotropic drug, some kind of antidepressant? I do not know. So what I say is not in any way I know of what, two, three people, I think it's three, three, four, that I specifically know are on some kind of an antidepressant, some kind of a psychotropic drug, et cetera. So what I am saying is not a coward's effort to hide behind a pulpit and get at anybody, but it does express a deep pastoral concern that our nation is burying itself under a glut of antidepressant medications. Quick fix because people want to get out from under their depression. Now what's the great benefit of this book? Its authors are Elise Fitzpatrick and Laura Hendrickson, MD.

29:03 She's a medical doctor who once practiced psychiatry as I recall in terms of her bio. And in this particular book she sets out what is a most helpful case to reconsider whether or not the first time we have a week marked by a blue period emotionally, we run to a doctor who gives us the mantra, you know, well your serotonin level is low and we've got to give you a serotonin uptake inhibitor and when we do then when your serotonin level comes up then you're going to feel that the sky is bright and sunny again. I had that mantra spoken to me. Alright? So I'm not talking as someone on the outside.

30:02 And I would plead with anyone who is on any kind of an antidepressant, please get this book. Because the authors in a very balanced scriptural way address the matter, they are not saying there is never any place for medication. She writes, does this mean you couldn't ever try going without medication if you haven't tried? Of course not.

30:27 We want to make it very clear if you suffer from cognitive disorder we do not believe that your personal sin is responsible for all the disturbances you are experiencing. We are all affected by Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden. This sin can affect our choices if we're making perceptual mistakes even if we're working as hard as we can to keep our hearts right. If this is true for you we suggest you may need your medicines to help you think as clearly as possible that there are times and places where because the fall has affected the entirety of the physiology including our brain chemistry the pill may be a means of grace and they do not take the absolute position that any Christian should in time get to the place where he or she never needs medication. I do not believe that. These authors do not believe it. However, I do believe with these authors that a great amount of the use of these medicines is an escape from dealing deeply and honestly and thoroughly with spiritual issues.

31:47 And that's the great thesis of their book. I heartily recommend it. I plead with anyone who's on medication because it is balanced. They give the warning that if you read the book and feel well maybe I ought to back up to do so in consultation with your doctor not to just kick your medicine cold turkey.

32:10 I've not found a book as balanced as this. There's one other I've just completed reading that takes a different approach from some aspects that I would like in individual pastoral counseling to use along with this book. But I heartily recommend it and set it before you for your consideration. Then you know what the second thing that's great what's the term I have here in my notes?

32:38 Epidemic is you know what it is? Anyone want to venture a guess? Obesity. Obesity.

32:50 More than 30% of the American population is now classically described as grossly overweight. We're not talking 10, 15 pounds. Childhood obesity is the biggest medical problem being dealt with in the public school system. And dear people, as God's people, we must not treat this with indifference.

33:16 Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit and we are to glorify God in our bodies. And I wish there were a book I could recommend, but there isn't. Pastor Carlson went on the internet, scoured it, seeking to find the major book distributors if they had a book. I'm sure there's one that I could recommend but I simply don't know of it.

33:42 And in lieu of that, what I want to do is I want to recommend that some of you go back and take my four Sunday school lessons delivered a few years ago entitled The Christian and the Stewardship of His Body. In that series of studies, I seek first of all to lay out what I call a string of theological reasons to give us a Biblical view of our bodies. What is this thing that I put my shoes on the bottom part in the morning and I may scratch back here in the afternoon and I put my glasses on this part up here? What is this thing called my body viewed strictly theologically, viewed through the lens of the Bible? What is my body? And I seek to hammer out a solid Biblical theology of what the body is. Having done that, I then seek to put on that string some pearls of practical Biblical counsel for the care and the stewardship of this body.

35:00 Now whether you recognize it or not, you have a stewardship of your body. The Scripture says, You were bought with a price. And that doesn't mean just your soul because Paul goes on to say, Glorify God therefore in your body which is His. And my body either glorifies God or robs Him of glory.

35:30 One or the other. It either glorifies Him or it does not. Glorify Him. And I am pleading with the members and friends of Trinity Church not to fall into Grecian body worship.

35:46 One part of our society and I bring that out in my lessons has gone into Grecian body worship. And everybody's worshipping the tight butt and the buff body and all the rest. I have no sympathy for that pagan body worship. It's dishonoring to God.

36:09 It is destructive to the soul. However, however, there is a Biblical doctrine of the stewardship of the body. And I plead with you if you're not thinking Biblically and conducting what goes into your mouth Biblically and what you are doing to seek to get a modicum of proper exercise, the simple formula, dear people, at the end of the day you can't get away from it. Here it is.

36:39 What goes in minus what goes out minus what's burned up stays on. You got it? You got the formula? There it is.

36:56 What goes in? Donut middle of the day. A few cookies three o'clock in the afternoon. A little bit of bedtime snack.

37:07 What goes in minus what goes out minus what's burned up the rate of my metabolism the measure of physical activity I do or do not do the amount of exercise I get what goes in minus what goes out minus what's burned up stays on. And we all operate with that formula. Oh, yes, but my medication. Your bottle of medicine weighs one-fifth of an ounce.

37:45 It doesn't make you gain excessive weight. It makes your burning process less. Makes you more vulnerable. Yes.

38:00 But the medicine doesn't make you gain the weight. The food does. The medicine doesn't have enough calories to make you gain a fifth of a pound. Dear people, that is reality.

38:18 Now, some of you may get angry with me for telling you that, but that is reality. And every one of us needs to come to grips with it. And for some of us, it means that we live on a caloric intake that is close to semi-fasting. That's the way we are.

38:44 And what is the last of the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5? Self-control. Self-control. So I want to recommend those tapes to you.

Category 5: Miscellaneous Titles - C.S. Lewis, The Lord's Prayer, Churchmanship, and The Excellent Wife

38:59 Then, we come down to category number five, and that's miscellaneous titles. That's just a catch-all category. Now, how many of you here read or have read and appreciate C.S. Lewis to one degree or another?

39:16 I thought so. Good. Then you're going to appreciate this book. C.S. Lewis, Clarity and Confusion, A Balanced Introduction to His Writings. The author, called Andrew Wheeler, studied philosophy in his undergraduate and postgraduate years. He's a member of Free Grace Baptist Church in Lancaster in England. He's presently extensively involved in youth work and engaged in training for pastoral ministry.

39:46 I am so thankful for this book. I just read it through, what, two weeks ago. And in it, he gives a lovely little biographical snippet of a sketch. It's called, A Sketch of C.S. Lewis's Life.

40:02 Just a matter of 10, 12 pages. Then, his second chapter is Some Glimpses of Grace, where he traces out from Lewis's own writings his coming under conviction of sin, coming to hatred of sin, but not knowing how to come out to forgiveness of sin, and then his coming to faith in Christ, so that this author is willing to stick his neck out and say, I am persuaded that C.S. Lewis was indeed a true child of God.

40:35 And his documentation, as far as I'm concerned, is impeccable. I would not want to debate with him. So he sets out what happened in the subsequent life of C.S. Lewis, and then he begins to highlight the areas where C.S. Lewis is not a safe guide to the people of God, or even to the unconverted. He had some loose views of what we would call the absolute inspiration, infallibility of the Scriptures.

41:12 And so he has a chapter quoting Lewis profusely. Not what secondary sources said about Lewis, but what Lewis himself wrote, and he's fully documented all of Lewis's writings chronologically, and I think thematically as well. No, but wherever he quotes him, he has footnote at the back of the book telling you exactly what book, what chapter, etc. He had weak views of the Bible.

41:41 He was weak on the subject of creation and evolution. And the author documents his weakness there, and then also other religions, and whether or not there was a way to God through Christ, apart from the proclamation of the Gospel. And that is a very helpful chapter. So I highly recommend any of you that have found Lewis helpful, but you've come across this or that, and then also to inoculate you.

42:12 See, if an author helps you, you have an emotional predisposition towards him, and that can make you soft where you ought to be hard. And when you come across things in Lewis that are off the wall, you ought to rear back in your hind legs and say, thank you, Mr. Lewis, for all you've taught me, but here, I'm not going where you're going. And be discerning in your reading of C.S. Lewis.

42:37 All right? So I recommend that very highly. I think we have some already in the bookstore. If not, they will be in shortly.

42:45 And then I'm sure all of us who have sat here in recent days have found the two sermons that Pastor Carlson preached on the Lord's Prayer exceedingly helpful. I have. I've had new insights. And without in any way seeking to be overbearing in this matter that many of you know we've had to be dealing with in recent days, for your own profit, for your own prayer life, and for your family's prayer life, we highly recommend these two books on the Lord's Prayer.

43:17 J.I. Packer, Praying the Lord's Prayer and When You Pray, Making the Lord's Prayer Your Own by Philip Graham Ryken, pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church. Packer very beautifully says that in three historic things we have the very essence of the nerve centers of Christianity, what is our duty embodied in the Ten Commandments, what we believe embodied in the Apostles' Creed, and how we are to approach God in the Lord's Prayer.

43:54 So we recommend these as books that will be helpful to you. And then, as you will hear, God willing, in the next hour, in my parting counsels to Trinity Baptist Church, my counsel this morning, and it will be carried over into next Lord's Day, I'll have three subheadings this morning, and God willing, four next Lord's Day is going to be to hold fast to your biblical churchmanship. And with that burden upon my heart, I pulled out some of my books and I was impressed afresh with this book by Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church. This is a marvelous book underscoring what the church is, why it is so crucial to the life of the people of God. All questions are the chapter headings. Why go to church? Why seek baptism in the church?

44:55 Why join a church? He says how he was bringing a series of messages on the church, and some young person came up to him and said, well, why do I actually have to join the church? I come regularly, I receive the ministries, I've gotten to know the people, I enter into fellowship. Why become a formal member?

45:13 And Mr. Whitney says it set him thinking and it drove him to his Bible. And he has a very compelling case for discernible, open, conscious, covenantal commitment to a local church. Why listen to preaching in the church?

45:30 Why worship in the church? Why witness with the church? Why give to the church? Why attend the ordinances of the church?

45:40 Why fellowship with the church? Why pray with the church? Why learn in the church? Excellent headings, a wonderful, wonderful setting forth of the biblical doctrine of the church and its critical place in the life of the people of God.

45:59 And then two more books, doing well time-wise. I didn't know how well I would do time-wise, and we're all on track here. Some of you know that, as an outgrowth of Pastor McDiarmid's preaching from Titus 2 last year, where Paul directs the older women to train the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, to be chaste keepers at home, that the word of God be not blasphemed, that there's been a heightened concern that the older women in the church do that very thing. And one of the ways that's finding an expression right now is in a book study, and we're thankful for God's blessing upon that book study, using this book by Martha Peace, the excellent wife. She is an older woman, wife, mother, who's had great usefulness in fulfilling the Titus 2 challenge and directive. And the bottom line with this book, the copy I have in front of me, is Dorothy's personal copy, and I had to mend some of it with some Elmer's glue. It was falling apart.

47:19 It is marked and remarked and questions and comments, been a great means of grace in her own life. And the bottom line of the book is, Mrs. Peace is trying to persuade women that your greatest ministry is to your husband. That's your fundamental, central calling, is ministering to your husband.

47:46 Not your children, not the church, not the school, not the home school co-op, not the job outside the home, it's ministering to your husband in all the ways that Scripture makes this plain you are to do. So realizing we have just 10, 12 women, I don't know the exact number, but if you are engaged in the book study, I recommend to all the wives this book by Martha Pierce, The Excellent Wife. And again, you see, if you've got anything to defend, you're not going to read that book. You're going to stay clear of it because I've told you what it's all about.

48:30 And if you sit there and when you hear me say, your primary ministry is ministering to your husband, and your eels go in and say, no way, Pastor, you're not going to read this. I can make a prophecy. You're not going to read this book because it's going to nail you where you're thinking wrongly. Well, isn't that the mark of a true Christian?

48:50 He wants to be nailed wherever he's thinking contrary to the Word of God. Jesus said, he that does the truth continually comes to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. I don't understand professing Christians who run from issues where they think God may nail them to the wall. I don't understand it.

49:15 Frankly, I don't understand it in the light of John 3 and verse 19. He that is doing the truth continually comes to the light. Lord, if Martha Peace has got something to show me from Your Word that exposes skewed thinking, Lord, show me my skewed thinking. And then align my life with proper thinking.

Category 5: Miscellaneous Titles - Money, Possessions, and Eternity

49:39 So I heartily recommend that book. And then the final book I want to recommend is Randy Alcorn's Money, Possessions, and Eternity. This is the finest thing I have ever read on the subject of how a Christian is to view whatever stuff God puts in his hand. It is balanced.

50:04 If you do get the book and read it, I urge you to read chapter 16 first. I hope someday I get to know Randy Alcorn and get his confidence enough to feel it would be right for me to even make the suggestion that he ought to restructure his book and begin with chapter 16 in which he lays out a balanced Biblical view that not all of us are called to the same standard of life, to the same possession of things, etc. It is very, very helpful and balanced. But the bottom line is he challenges again and again this notion that if God increases what comes into my hand, that is a sign that God wants me to use for myself more that is in my hand. Rather, he challenges us to think when God increases what comes into my hand, it is that my hand might increase in its ability to give to others. And it was a confirmation of so much. It came into my hands right when I was preaching on 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 and Paul's perspective on giving.

51:22 And for me, it was confirmation after confirmation of perspectives by which, by God's grace, I've sought to live and to handle what God has put into my own hands as well as insights that I found most helpful. So I highly recommend this book on the subject of money and the stewardship of whatever God has entrusted to us. So I got through all, I think it was about 20 books and it is just 27 after and I'm very grateful for your attentiveness. We've got just 2 minutes.

Conclusion and Prayer

52:02 Any question that any of you have concerning any one of these things that I've recommended, I'd be willing to entertain it. If not, well, let's pray and ask God to lead us in the days to come. Father, we are so thankful that we have been blessed so abundantly in our generation with godly authors who have studied your word and wrestled with its truth and reflected upon it and have put the fruit of their reflections into print that we might have these means to help us on our way to heaven. We pray you will guide your people as they respond to the recommendations made this morning that each of us would be directed by your Holy Spirit to those books that will be the very instruments of the risen Christ to carry on his work in our hearts and in our lives. So we call upon you for your blessing for the ministry of your Holy Spirit. Give us discernment as we read human authors that we may be like the Bereans who search the scriptures, bring everything to the touchstone of the word of God, that we may obey the commands given to the Thessalonians to prove all things, to hold fast

53:31 to that which is good. Give us grace, then, we pray. Bless this time that we will spend in fellowship with one another and then as we return to worship you and to sit beneath your word, meet with us, we plead in Jesus' name. Amen.

53:50 Amen. We are dismissed.