I would like to write a book one day on how Jesus’ resurrection impacts everything. The Puritan giant John Owen wrote a masterpiece many years ago titled, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. My future book is going to be named, The Death of Death in the Resurrection of Christ (note 1 Corinthians 15 especially verses 20-28). Too many Christians only hear sermons on the first 11 verses of 1 Corinthians 15 to the exclusion of the other 47. My book will examine the entire chapter.
1 Corinthians 15:20-26. 20 But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. 21 For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, 24 then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25 For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. 26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
Thanks to John Starke for his realistic article Teaching Children the Gospel in Everyday Prayers. In the same vein, I have penned a few dinner prayers for my children that try to accomplish a few things: 1) address various attributes of the Father, 2) teach a simple theology, and 3) focus on Jesus. For the sake of aiding memory they also rhyme and they’re short. Enjoy!
Posted by Paul Lamey in culture, Reading, Writing. Comments Off on The First Written Records
“People being what they are, the bureaucracy came first. The genesis of writing lay, not in the celebration of the human spirit, but in the need to say with certainty: This is mine, not yours.”
~Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, 43.
I read somewhere that 40,000 books are published in the English language every year. Again, that’s just one year and that number makes me sweat even if it is wrong by half. One can only hope to read a small fraction of that in a lifetime.
No matter what you read, be sure to follow the advice of P. J. O’Rourke who said, “read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” So when you get ready to take a dirt nap be sure to snuggle up with your copy of War and Peace or Ulysses. Your friends will wax on about your great depth of learning at your memorial. If that’s not your style then there are a few other books you may want to checkout in the meantime.
The following list is my “read and conquered” list from 2010. There are others but they did not make the list because they are either not worth mentioning or I simply don’t want you to know that I read them. Besides, my interests may not be your interests. There are no categories or rankings here, a few are rereads for me, and only some of them were published in 2010. It’s just a plain old list. Enjoy!
5 Cities that Ruled the World by Douglas Wilson. Wilson is a superb writer which means you have to read very carefully when he gets it wrong or you’ll start thinking that everything the prophets said came to fulfillment in AD 70. This is a good book which serves as a cultural summary of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York.
Greek for the Rest of Us by William D. Mounce. This is what a layman’s guide to biblical Greek looks like. Excellent resource for church leaders and the congregant that wants to go a step further in their NT studies. Excellent chapters on translations and word studies.
Off the Record with Martin Luther trans by Charles Daudert. As Melanchthon would often say, “This book is the bomb!” I have often quoted many times here at ET from this updated translation of Luther’s Table Talks. It’s insightful into the man and provocative for all the right and sometimes wrong reasons.
The Deep Things of God by Fred Sanders. This guy can write. It’s a book on the Trinity but it’s also about a lot more. I’m not sure I would say this is a first-stop on the study of the Trinity but it’s definitely one of the first stops one should make once on the road.
The Trellis and the Vine by Marshall and Payne. Contrary to what you may have heard, this is not a book about wine making. I feel cool and relevant just saying that this is a good book. I plan to start a chapter by chapter interaction with it sometime next week here at ET.
What is the Gospel?by Greg Gilbert. Even though it lacks the requisite blurb by J. I. Packer, this is still a good and simple introduction to the subject. I wasn’t thrilled with the chapter on the kingdom but why should the author care what I think at this point, he wrote an excellent book.
The Gospel & Personal Evangelismby Mark Dever. It’s near impossible to read any new Christian book that is not endorsed by Dever. I wanted to skip the endorsements and go right to the man himself. This is a good book that came in handy in my church class on evangelism.
Marks of the Messenger by J. Mack Stiles. Since I taught a class on evangelism this year, I read my share of books on the subject. Next to the modern classic Tell the Truth by Metzger, this is the best of the lot.
The Messiah in the Old Testament by Walter Kaiser. If you’re tired of the magical hermeneutics of those who can make Jesus appear in any mention of blood or wood in the OT then Kaiser will be refreshing to you. Anyone who can pull this off in less than 300 pages is worth reading. This is the best introduction to a difficult subject.
The Messiah: Revealed, Rejected, Received by William Varner. This is what Kaiser looks like if you take him to a party and he has a good time. Varner is a fun read and extremely helpful on the subject. This is a book I would put in the hands of any congregant who wants to see the Messiah through the lens of progressive revelation. I loved this book.
A Grief Observedby C. S. Lewis. A hard read, not in the James Joyce sense but in the punch you in the gut kind of way. I read this right after my wife was diagnosed with cancer in March which in hindsight was probably not a good idea.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Probably the best introduction into the fictional world of Port William. I literally LOL in chapter ten. That is officially the only time I have used the acronym “lol” in writing this year.
The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry. You move from trendy to really cool if you have read more than one Berry novel. This puts me way up there. This was not my favorite and was a bit of a downer compared to his other novels.
In Cold Blood by Trueman Capote. Someone once said, “don’t judge a book by its movie.” This book details murder and its consequences from one of the great writers of the 20th Century. This is why the Calvinist understanding of the nature of man is the right one.
The Correspondence of Shelby Foot & Walker Percyed by Jay Tolson. Southern writers owned the 20th Century. Percy, Foote, Faulkner, O’Conner, Capote, and Welty are just a few reasons why. They are like the Celtics or the Yankees in their days of dominance. This is a behind-the-veil look as to why.
Beowulftrans. by Seamus Heaney. You don’t describe a book (poem) like this, you just commit yourself to read it and then see why it has stood up solid for 1,000 years. Hrothgar’s discourse on the dangers of power (lines 1724ff) should be studied by every person who has subjects or is a subject (I think that covers the bases).
Old School by Tobias Wolff. Someone described this book as “redemptive self-awareness.” I just thought it was a good story. It’s an excellent novel and what the movie Dead Poets Society should have been if it wasn’t so “self-aware.”
Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N. D. Wilson. This is what presuppositional apologetics looks like when it has too much sugar. A fun book to read but will not be everyone’s cup of Sam Adams.
Into The Wildby Jon Krakauer. An interesting and sad true story about a young man who lost himself. my favorite Krakauer book.
Into Thin Airby Jon Krakauer. Fascinating story of the 1996 disaster on Mt. Everest. A good reminder of why I have wisely avoided mountaineering all these years.
The Chosen by Chaim Potok. A great story and excellent help at seeing the inside of modern American Judaism.
Exemplary Spiritual Leadershipby Jerry Wragg. Jerry nails it! This is a penetrating look at what a shepherd is and does by one who practices shepherding every day.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 1859-2009 by Gregory A. Wills. I know what you’re thinking, with such an exciting title you’re probably wondering how you missed this doorstop of a book. As a recovering Southern Baptist I read this with great interest. Two things stand out to me. 1) Seminaries run down hill faster than you can say Crawford H. Toy and 2) I get the impression that Wills is not telling us everything about the current administration since it’s his employer and all. That biography awaits a future date.
The Road to Serfdom by F. A Hayek. This is the Calvin’s Institutes of economic theory. If you want to know why the engine won’t crank then this is the Chilton manual on the economy and many other things.
Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley. CB published this memoir soon after his father, William F. Buckley, died in his home study in 2008. If you’re a WFB fan then this should be considered canonical commentary. CB is an atheist and it is interesting/sad to see how this plays into his perspective of losing both parents within a twelve-month time frame. NB: I will always remember this book because I finished it in the waiting room and two minutes later the doctor told me my wife had cancer.
Right Time, Right Place by Richard Brookhiser. From a man who was like a son to William F. Buckley. This is a front-row seat to the last half of Buckley’s life.
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. In short, Carr explains why we as a culture are stupid. We have trained ourselves to not concentrate. If you want proof, ask yourself how many times you checked Facebook, Twitter, or your email in-box before you finished reading this post on my 2010 reading.
If you like this kind of post then here are some other guys doing it better.
Sorry to interrupt the steady flow of blog posts here at Expository Thoughts, but does anyone know where I can find a copy of an English translation of Dionysius Thrax’s The Art of Grammar? I’m not looking for a collector’s item—I just want to read the thing and I’m too lazy to translate it myself.
I am doing a bit of writing on the life and ministry of Paul and I have found that this is a fairly limited area within evangelical scholarship. There are many works on the theology of Paul but not so much on his life. I have Richard Longenecker’s The Ministry and Message of Paul and F. F. Bruce’s Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Is there anything else you have read that makes a contribution to the subject beyond these?
Printers played an unsung role in these early years of the reform movement, though it it not always easy to determine their motives. Many acted from deep religious convictions and risked all to produce evangelical literature for their countrymen. For others, religious sentiments combined easily with profit margins. The market for popular Reformation authors was great, and there was money to be made. Mostly the printers formed smallish circles of friends and acquaintances, yet with their extensive web of foreign contacts they were able to ensure a constant flow of literature into France which passed under the radar of censors [Bruce Gordon, Calvin (Yale University Press: 2009), 17].
John Broadus, one of the founding professors of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), famously penned the classic homiletics textbook On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. The original was excellent but the “revised” copies you find around today . . . not so much. The following is one of the amazing stories behind the book.
Broadus’s homiletics class began the year [1865] with two students, but one dropped out midseason, and the remaining student was blind. Broadus could not use his accustomed assigned reading and recitation method, so he developed lectures that gave the student the complete course. Several years later Broadus revised and published these lectures under the title On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. Broadus had to borrow more than $1,000 to publish the book. The royalties quickly extinguished the debt. Reviewers praised the book, which was widely used as a textbook in American theological education even decades after his death.
From Gregory A. Wills, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (Oxford University Press, 2009), 64-65.
Like many of you I watched last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Joel Osteen. Since this is a blog dedicated to all things preaching then I think it is fair that we examine the man who is considered “America’s #1 Preacher.” There were a number of things in the interview that I would love to comment on but the one that stood out the most was his confession that he was not qualified to handle the Scriptures but nothing could prepare me for the shocking news that Osteen could bench press 300 lbs! I would like to publicly challenge Osteen to a bench-press competition in which the loser promises never to preach again.
By the way, Osteen’s new book Become a Better You hits stores today. Below is what others are saying:
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