In this episode, Derek and Cliff discuss the importance of reading and offer recommendations from some of their favorite books.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown. I am pastor and elder at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. I’m also the academic dean at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And I’m here today with Cliff McManis. He is pastor teacher at Creekside Bible Church, and he is also a professor of theology at Cornerstone. And today we want to talk about books, and specifically books that we think every Christian should read. But before we get into our topic, I want to draw your attention to withallwisdom.org. There you will find a large and growing collection of resources to help you grow in your walk with Christ. You can go there. We host our podcast there. You can check out articles and other kinds of resources, and we just want to encourage you to check that out. And now onto our topic. We want to talk about reading, the importance of it, and offer you a few suggestions of books we believe will really benefit you. Cliff, why don’t you take it away?
Cliff: Yeah, thanks, Derek. I thought it would be good to take a little break from our daily Bible teaching here on KFAX for some practical and pastoral diversion in light of a recent question that one of our members of our church asked me about a book that they were seeking my recommendation. And no doubt, Derek, you as a pastor and elder and Bible teacher over the years, have you ever had one of your people come up and ask you for recommendations for books?
Derek: Yeah, it’s pretty regularly, actually.
Cliff: Yeah, same here, which is a good thing. As a matter of fact, you’ve written formally on this topic, encouraging the saints to read, how to read a book, which books to choose, those kinds of things. Very important. So I just thought we’d take a few minutes today and between the two of us, maybe just give some of our favorite books that we have found valuable over the years, really over the past several decades for each of us, books that we think every Christian should read or have at least on their bookshelf, maybe even as a resource. So that’s what we want to do today. We don’t even know how many books we’re going to get through because between the two of us, that would be a lot of books we could recommend.
Derek: That would be, and we don’t have time. We don’t. At least not just today.
Cliff: Too many. So it was a really hard choice to really narrow that list to maybe between three or five books that we can share today with our people. And I’m thinking of maybe a verse today, Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 12, where King Solomon, we believe, wrote that book at the end of his life. So that’s about a thousand BC. And I don’t think they had the printing press yet then, right? So they’re doing stuff like on papyrus reeds and hammering into stone and animal skin. And to produce a book was a monumental undertaking. Yet even then, 3,000 years ago in Ecclesiastes 12, Solomon writes the words of warning of making many books, there is no end.So even in his day, from his perspective, there was just a proliferation of written material. And the emphasis there was on quantity and not on quality. So that’s even more of a challenge for us today because of our technology that there are so many books. We are drowning in a sea of books. And so it’s hard. It’s a challenge for the saints in our church where amidst the mass of books out there, what are the good ones? Because we have limited time. It’s all there is to it. And so that’s what we want to do. Just from our experience, things that have been helpful to edify you as a Christian, to feed your soul, and maybe even long term to have good books that you can use continually as resources. So that was kind of the criteria that I was thinking is books that we could just keep going back to again and again. Every time you read it, it’s not old.There are some things where you thought it was good originally, and then you go back to it, it was like, oh, that was terrible, you know, like 20 years ago, thinking of movies I saw as a kid by my family where my parents made me watch them, and they told me it was good, and then I go back 30 years later, that’s terrible. So these are books that Derek and I have been blessed by over the decades, and we just want to share the titles with you, the authors, and then just a brief reason why we think it’s worth having and putting in your bookshelf. So I’m going to go ahead and get us started. How’s that sound, Derek?
Derek: Sounds good.
Cliff: Okay. I’m going chronologically. I’ve just got three books. Hopefully we can get through all of ours here. The first book I want to recommend is when I first got saved in college, which is over 30 years ago, and I didn’t grow up in a Christian home and had no background, but I was hungry for the Word, I was a brand new Christian, I didn’t know the Bible very well, and someone in my first year being a Christian when I was 19 introduced me to the Bible Knowledge Commentary. It’s two volumes, and it was produced in the 80s by the faculty of Dallas Seminary, and I would just recommend that every Christian have that on their bookshelf as a resource.The Bible Knowledge Commentary, and so it’s two volumes, it’s got one volume is on the OldTestament, one volume on the New, and it’s book by book commentary in summary form with maps and charts and by, I think, just incredible elite biblical scholars, and the first time I ever used it was back in, I think, 1987, and I have literally used it since 1987, which would be over30 years. To this day, no matter what I’m studying teaching, I always seem to pull it off the shelf and look and see what that author has to say, so I use it almost weekly for that long, so it has stood the test of time for me, and it’s by a variety of different scholars that you can count on, so that has blessed my soul, so I’d encourage you, if you don’t have it, get volume one and volume two, Old Testament, New Testament, by John Walvoord, W-A-L-V-O-O-R-D, and Roy B. Zuck, that’s Z-U-C-K, and they were leaders and teachers and mentors for decades there at Dallas Seminary, so that’s my first recommendation, Bible Knowledge Commentary.
Derek: That’s excellent, and to have an accessible Bible commentary is such a useful tool for just any Christian that you can pull off the shelf, get some help on a verse or passage that you’re struggling with, and so what a great recommendation. My first recommendation is one that was very formative for me early on in my Christian life, really helped shape my vision of God and who He is and what He is like, and the title of the book is The Pleasures of God by John Piper, where he looks into texts in the Bible that talk about what God is pleased with, and he talks about how God’s soul, if you could say that, just for lack of a better expression, if you could look into God’s soul, you would know what He’s like by answering the question, what is He pleased with or what pleases Him? What brings God pleasure? And so he put this book together, it’s just meditations on these passages that speak of God being pleased in what He has created, pleased in saving, pleased in electing, He’s pleased in certain kind of conduct, and so you can read these things and you get to know God, I think, at a deeper level, and so this book was particularly formative in my own understanding of God and what He is like and what He truly is pleased in, and so I commend this book to every Christian to read, and to read multiple times. I think for me, this book, it’s like you said earlier, you can go back to this book and I’m always finding something new, it’s always encouraging, it’s always expanding my vision of who God is, and so just a wonderful book that I commend to our readers or our listeners.
Cliff: Do you happen to remember about what year that came out? Boy, when did it come out? Was it the early 200s or 2000s? I want to say it was even… So it’s The Pleasures of God. I remember that book distinctly because I read it when it came out, whatever it was, 20 years ago or so, and like you, I was struck by the book, this idea, this notion. I mean, I was a Christian for a few years and that God was pleased about so many things, that we pathetic, lowly, despicable, undeserving sinners could actually, at times, do things that please God. It was amazing. I’d never heard anybody really teach on that. It was a new concept for me to add to my Christian worldview. It blessed my soul. It was incredible, very encouraging. God indeed loves His children, and John Piper did a great job of vetting that out and flushing that, I should say, and that’s contrary to a lot of… When we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus, He is called the Man of Sorrows, and you don’t see Jesus jumping around happy and smiling and laughing a lot in the Gospels, because He was the Man of Sorrows, but that’s a good balance, a healthy balance to understand what God is like. He is a God of a full breadth of emotions, and joy is one of those, which you pointed out in a conversation you and I were having of this old doctrine that a lot of people misunderstand, the impassibility of God. Can you just comment on that? What is the impassibility of God?
Derek: Well, the impassibility of God is the idea that God is not emotional in the way that we are emotional. He’s not moved in the way that we are moved, and in this way, it’s been communicated in a way that implies that He is without emotion, and what we are suggesting here is that Scripture clearly teaches that God is a God of emotion. He’s not controlled by His emotions like we are. I think that’s what impassibility would want to protect, that He’s not controlled. He’s not a victim to His emotions. He is not a being like us. He’s not a human, so that’s another thing that impassibility is trying to communicate, but we want to be careful that we don’t over-correct and suggest that when Scripture speaks of God’s emotions that these are merely anthropomorphic, or that they have no meaning in terms of the being of God and who He really is. In fact, we have to take these descriptions of God’s pleasure and His joy as real descriptions of who God is in and Himself. So, just like you said, a good balance, I think.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely. There are literally systematic theologies you can read where they say that God has no passions, and it basically, like you said, it makes God’s just a stoic, and Pastor Piper counteracted that wrong representation of who our great God is. A God of joy and a God of pleasure.
Derek: Yeah, and I believe, I can’t remember if it’s the first chapter, maybe the first or the second, where he says that God’s pleasure is first and foremost in His Son, and that’s just a really delightful reality to meditate upon. In fact, that’s kind of the basis of our salvation. God is pleased in His Son, and then when we are united to Him, He is therefore pleased in us, and so it doesn’t ultimately even rest on us. Our salvation rests in God and the pleasure that He has in His Son. So, just again, just a delightful read. Great book.
Cliff: So, we have The Bible Knowledge Commentary by John Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck is a good resource, and then book number two, John Piper, The Pleasures of God. So, I’m going to go with my second book now. Again, it’s another resource doing this kind of chronologically in my own Christian life. Again, when I was in college and a new believer, I grew up not in a Bible-believing home, but I grew up in a home with a lot of religion going on, from Roman Catholicism to siblings who were Mormons, to a sibling who was Jehovah’s Witness, to siblings who were involved in Transcendental Meditation, and more. So, all these worldviews were represented in my immediate family, so I was quite confused in terms of religion. Then I get saved when I’m 19, and then I had a passion to know the truth about the religions of the world, and God allowed me, put me in an opportunity or position in college as a young Christian to actually meet Dr. Walter Martin and spend some time with him, and he was known as the Bible Answer Man. He had a radio program, and you would call into the Bible Answer Man, Walter Martin, and ask questions about apologetics or the religions of the world. But anyway, Dr.Martin, his life’s work and the culmination of his work, and I think byproduct of his PhD studies, was a best-selling book that’s been around for 30, 40 years, and that’s The Kingdom of the Cults. So, that’s the second book I want to recommend that every Christian should have on their bookshelf. That is a book that I got, again, in the 80s as a new Christian, especially when I first met Dr. Martin and had lunch with him, and he treated me to a slurpee at 7-Eleven. I’ll never forget that back in 1987. And I just keep going back to his book, The Kingdom of the Cults, as I tried to remember the best way to witness either to Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses who keep knocking on my door, and they do. They keep on knocking on mine too. Yes, and so in his book there, in The Kingdom of the Cults, he’s got several of the most prominent non-Christian religions in America, and he, to this day, here it is 40 years later, nobody has really topped his research, and he’s an excellent communicator and an excellent writer, easy to read, but just a treasure trove of information on the dominant false religions here in America and really around the world. So, I just recommend that every Christian have that kind of in your apologetics section, and you will be blessed if you do. There’s been six, at least six different editions by different so-called general editors. I would recommend any edition prior to 1997, after 1997, because the most recent one, General Editor Ravi Zacharias. So, you don’t want that copy. Yeah, but just a great book. Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults.
Derek: Great. Well, I will kind of step back in time a little bit with a book by a man named J.C. Ryle. He was born in 1816, died in 1900. He was an Anglican bishop. He was evangelical, and he was an excellent writer, and his book that I want to recommend is Holiness, and this is just kind of a classic, really, a Christian classic focused on our call and our pursuit of holiness, but he has just incredible insights into the Christian life. He talks about the necessity of assurance in pursuing holiness, that you can’t pursue holiness without a right sense of Christ’s work on your behalf and His love for you, but it’s one of those books. I’m sure you have books like this where you feel like you either have or you could underline every single sentence, and then it becomes, well, I might as well not underline any of it because I’m just underlying all of it. So, this kind of book where every sentence is just loaded with really, really helpful insights into the scripture and to Christ and what He’s done for us, the pursuit of holiness, and so this book is excellent, and I commend it to you. There’s a few versions out there, and so you just have to look around a little bit to make sure you get the right one, but the full title is Holiness: Its Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots by J.C. Ryle.
Cliff: Hmm, excellent. And is this pastoral in terms of how it’s written?
Derek: Oh yes, exceptionally pastoral. He was very pastoral in his writing. Clear, lucid, simple prose, not convoluted and technical, but simply.
Cliff: Would the average Christian be intimidated by it in terms of being scholarly or anything?
Derek: Not at all. Not at all.
Cliff: That’s excellent. Yeah, that’s an absolute classic. Give us the title and author again, Derek.
Derek: J.C. Ryle. Let me give you the full title. I think I missed part of the title. Holiness:Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots by J.C. Ryle. R-Y-L-E.
Cliff: Excellent. Thanks for that jewel. Okay, my next one. This came up recently. I had to give this as a recommendation to somebody a couple of weeks ago. A book that I got hot off the press, I think around 1988, called The Gospel According to Jesus by Pastor John MacArthur. And so, 1988, we’re going on 30 plus years of that book, and I’m still pulling it off the bookshelf at times. And I would recommend every Christian, at least here in America, needs to have that book on their bookshelf and read it and be familiar with it, because it’s one of those rare books that, when it was written, it kind of drew a line in the sand in the Christian world. And Pastor MacArthur had been researching the topic of this book, which was basically the nature of the gospel. What is the gospel, and how do we preach the gospel to nonbelievers? So it’s basic Christianity, and it was hard to believe that there was such a controversy over what is the gospel, and how do you evangelize an unbeliever, but there was. And there was a, I think there was a hidden kind of a virus or a strain of wrong thinking and teaching in the Christian world here in America, in the evangelical world, for decades. It just went unnoticed, undetected, undiagnosed, unarticulated. And then John MacArthur finally did, I think, the Church a favor by not only writing this book and framing the debate of what we call Lordship salvation versus non-Lordship salvation, but along with framing the debate of diagnosing a problem that nobody seemed to be privy to or fully aware of. And that’s what this did. And it was a bombshell when he wrote it in 1988, and the reverberations shook all over the world in terms of evangelical Christianity. As a matter of fact, not long after that book was written, because it created such a stark contrast between two camps of thinking among evangelical Christians about what is the gospel and how do we witness to unbelievers. I’ll give you an example of the contrast. Pastor MacArthur in his book was proposing that when we talk to an unbeliever, when we give them the gospel, we should give them the good news, but we should also talk to them about sin, their sin, and we should call them to repent of their sin. And those on the other side of the camp, taking issue with Pastor MacArthur’s view, were saying, no, absolutely not. When you’re talking to an unbeliever and evangelizing them and giving them the gospel, you don’t talk to sin about them or with them, and you don’t call them to repent of their sin. And the reason was because the unbeliever can’t repent of sin, because that is a human work. And so, that was a very significant debate, because it’s what is the gospel, and when we’re talking to an unbeliever, what are we calling them to? Do we call them to repent or not? And I just couldn’t believe there was a debate over that, because it seemed like such a no-brainer in the New Testament. Jesus and Paul and the apostles are evangelizing, and they are calling people to repent. So, this book outlines that debate. To this day, over 30 years later, there’s a large segment of evangelical Christianity still arguing, adamantly so, telling us that we should not be asking unbelievers to repent of their sin in order to become Christians. And that’s what this book is about. And every Christian needs to be aware of this, because the doctrine of non-lordship salvation is literally ubiquitous in American churches, actually in around the world. And a lot of people don’t even realize it. They don’t know the issues at stake. So, this will be very helpful, very enlightening. It’ll help you in your discernment at the most fundamental doctrine of the faith, and that is, what is the gospel, and how do I evangelize truly to an unbeliever?
Derek: Yeah, excellent. I read that several years ago, and similar kinds of thoughts, that if you just read through the gospels as an example, Jesus is calling people to repent. You read through Acts, and the apostles are calling people to repent, and that repentance is not a work, it’s what true faith does. And when it sees Christ and sees your sin. And so, just, yeah, an excellent work. Well, I’ll do one more here. We went from newer to older. How about back to newer? Real new, actually. This one came out in the last few years, but I thought it was so excellent, I’ve been assigning it in my bibliology class, my doctrine of the Bible class at seminary. And because it’s so comprehensive, but that shouldn’t scare anybody. I think this was written for the lay person. It’s not a technical work, per se. It’s not aimed at the scholar. It’s really a scholar who’s taken all that work and brought it down to an understandable format and level.And it’s called God’s Word Alone: the Authority of Scripture by Matthew Barrett. Matthew Barrett is a scholar. He’s younger. He’s actually a little younger than me. We went to seminary together, but he’s just an excellent scholar, very productive, writing a lot. But he writes really, really well on a level that everybody can understand. And this book was fantastic. He gives you the history of the doctrine of the authority of Scripture. He gives you the doctrine itself, talks about how you can understand Scripture’s authority and inerrancy and inspiration from Scripture itself. He takes you through the Reformation to show you how the Reformation recaptured the idea of Scripture’s authority. He talks about the role of tradition and just all these things, very comprehensive, excellent book that I commend to you. God’s Word Alone: the Authority of Scripture really is foundational just for a healthy Christian worldview. I mean, we’re lost if we don’t know where to get the truth. And he sets you on a sure foundation so you can be solid in your understanding that Scripture is God’s Word. It is our supreme authority, and we yield to it. And all creeds yield to it, and all institutions yield to it. And that has been the view of the Church, and it was the view of the Reformation, and it should be our view today.
Cliff: Excellent. How do you spell his last name?
Derek: B-A-R-R-E-T-T.
Cliff: Matthew Barrett, excellent. Thank you for that recommendation. Um, so that’s about our time. So I think that’s a good representation, Derek, because we’ve got six different authors, so there’s some variety there, from different eras of Church history and covering just all different topics. So that’s a healthy balance for our listeners. Consider those and start adding those to your library if you haven’t, and begin reading slowly and over and over again some of these excellent books. Yeah, excellent.
Derek: Well, thank you for that, Cliff. Thank you for your recommendations, and we are thankful to you for listening to With All Wisdom. And again, we want to point your attention to WithAllWisdom.org, where you can find even more resources, and you can look up some of our resources on reading. We’ve written on how to read well. You can just look in this, you can write in the search bar some keywords, and you should be able to find those articles, and we look forward to seeing you again next time.