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[T]here is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship.  In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.  Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God.  As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.  – D.A. Carson in Worship by the Book

Readability:  1

Length:  191 pgs

Author:  Michael Reeves

Michael Reeves has written an introduction to the reformation that is fun to read, brief, accurate, and inspiring.  He begins by giving the necessary historical backdrop to understand the reformation, dealing with figures such as John Wycliffe and Jan Huss.  He then goes on to Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin; followed by a look at the reformation in Britain from Thomas Cranmer to the Puritans.   The Unquenchable Flame also includes a helpful timeline and further reading suggestions.  Mark Dever’s endorsement says it best,

With the skill of a scholar and the art of a storyteller, Michael Reeves has written what is, quite simply, the best brief introduction to the Reformation I have read.

‘What then is the Bible about?’ asks someone.  Surely there can be no hesitation about answering that question; the Bible, in its essence, is the grand story of redemption.  It is the history of what God has done about men and women as the result of their sin, and everything else that we find in the Bible is, in reality, incidental to that.  The Bible is concerned with presenting to us the message of redemption by God, and from God, in a way that we can understand and see and believe.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible Vol. 1, Pg. 2

In his excellent book, The Gospel Driven Life, Michael Horton comments on the disciples that,

They sought to learn the wisdom of his ways and imitate his example.  However, they missed the most important elements that true discipleship entailed.  They misunderstood the point of the journey.  They failed to realize that the most important part of following Jesus was realizing that they could not go everywhere that he was going; could not do everything that he alone could accomplish; and could not even understand why he had come, apart from the Spirit opening their hearts to recognize Christ in all the Scriptures.  The most important things that had to be done for the establishment of this kingdom Jesus had to do by himself.  In fact, the disciples had fled for their lives.

We are just as foolish.  We try to make this text all about us.  No doubt Christ is our example in overcoming temptation and we can glean many practical helps form our text, but this text is primarily about Jesus overcoming temptation, not us.  We are arrogant little fools trying to skip the prerequisites and go straight to graduate work.  Without the prerequisites we flunk temptation.

Jesus is doing here what we cannot, what we did not, overcoming temptation and resisting the devil.  Remember Jesus has just identified Himself with us in His baptism.  Notice all the other marks of identification here.  He is in the wilderness for forty days and then He quotes from Deuteronomy 8. 

The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.  And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.  And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years.  Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.  – Deuteronomy 8:1-5

So Israel, God’s son failed the test of living by God’s Word alone, but the true and greater Israel, God’s only begotten Son doesn’t.  He succeeds where they, where we failed.  In His second and third temptation Jesus does more of the same. 

Also there is something implicit here that Luke make more clear in his gospel account.  Both Matthew and Mark go straight from Jesus’ baptism to His testing, but Luke, he inserts a genealogy in between.  What a weird place for a genealogy right?  But remember unlike Matthew who works forward from Abraham to Jesus, Luke works backwards from Jesus all the way back to Adam.  Now we can compare the first Adam in whom we fall to the Second Adam in whom we are risen to newness of life.

The first Adam had every provision, he could eat of every tree save one; the second Adam had been fasting for forty days.

The first Adam falls after one temptation and is driven out; the second Adam resist three temptations and Satan is driven out.

Here is the point, we fall to temptation continually, He didn’t, ever!  His victory over Satan, sin, and temptation is ours.  The prerequisite for overcoming temptation is union with Christ (Romans 6:6-7; 1 John 5:4; Revelation 12:11).  His victory is ours.  Faith, not merely technique is the key to overcoming temptation.

All divine power and strength against sin flows from the soul’s union and communion with Christ (Rom. 8. I0; 1 John 1. 6, 7). While you keep off from Christ, you keep off from that strength and power which is alone able to make you trample down strength, lead captivity captive, and slay the Goliaths that bid defiance to Christ. It is only faith in Christ that makes a man triumph over sin, Satan, hell, and the world (1 John 5. 4). It is only faith in Christ that binds the strong man’s hand and foot, that stops the issue of blood, that makes a man strong in resisting, and happy in conquering (Matt. 5. I5-35). Sin always dies most where faith lives most. The most believing soul is the most mortified soul. Ah! sinner, remember this, there is no way on earth effectually to be rid of the guilt, filth, and power of sin, but by believing in a Saviour. It is not resolving, it is not complaining, it is not mourning, but believing, that will make thee divinely victorious over that body of sin that to this day is too strong for thee, and that will certainly be thy ruin, if it be not ruined by a hand of faith.  – Thomas Brooks in Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices

DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo.

Readability:  1

Length: 234 pgs

Author:  Joshua Harris

Are you looking for a book that would serve as an introduction to theological terms such as: theology, orthodoxy, doctrine, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscient, inerrancy, clarity, sufficiency, the person of Christ, incarnation, atonement, penal substitution, propitiation, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, indwelling sin, spiritual gifts, the church?  Do you also want the book to be practical, applying these doctrines and truths to everyday life?  Do you further desire that the book be deeply honest and personal coming from a humble author giving great illustrations from his own life?  Do you think your desires to be too big to ever be realized?  Read Joshua Harris’ Dug Down Deep.

Harris doesn’t wade in the deep end of the pool, but he helps you to get there and makes you want to dive… or dig.  Theology matters – Harris humbly seeks to convince you of this, and I think he does an excellent job.  If you are new to the Christian faith, or new to that faith being talked about in vibrant, robust theological terms this would be a great theological primer.

But the hardest work of all is putting truth into practice. … Church affiliation and a list of beliefs are never enough.  Doctrine and theology are always meant to be applied to our lives – to shape and reshape not only a statement of faith but also the practical decisions of how think and act.  Book knowledge about building on rock has no value if we’re still resting on shifting sand.

Once when my little brother Isaac was four years old, he grabbed a shovel and headed toward the woods.  My mom asked what he was doing.  He answered, “I’m going to dig for holes.”  The story has become family favorite, and Isaac is tired of having it repeated.  But it’s a good description of what we do when we study and argue over beliefs without putting them into practice.  We’re digging for holes.

We need to dig for rock.

Fast Tube by Casper

Can you say quite honestly that you have a deeper affection for, and a deeper understanding of, you fellow Christians that you have for your natural relatives who are not Christians?  That is a very good test of our position as Christian people.  It is a proof of your regeneration, and it is also a proof that you have paid heed to this exhortation and are putting it into practice.  A Christian should feel a closer bond with another Christian than he feels with a relative who is not a Christian.  This is true of necessity.  The new nature is in us.  We are all children of God and belong to the family of God.  And this is a relationship that will not only last while we are in this world of time, but will last throughout eternity.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 12, Pg. 352

Readability:  1

Length: 234 pgs

Author:  Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

I love Kevin DeYoung’s writing (Ted’s as well, he makes me laugh).  I love that he loves the church, so much so that he wrote a book about it.  This is my favorite DeYoung book alongside Just Do Something.  Why We Love the Church is an unfortunately an unusual book.  Go to your Christian bookstore and it will be easy to pile up a plethora of books criticizing the church.  Without covering any of her warts this pair of gifted writers wants to remind us of her beauty. 

Kevin spends his time responding to four categories of reasons why the church is not currently loved; the misssiological, personal, historical, and theological reasons.  Ted gives humorous and honest personal reflections in-between.

Kevin has a habit of writing books I recommend a lot, not only because they are so well written, but also because he has written on such pertinent issues.  At a time when so many loud voices are calling for an exodus from the church, DeYoung and Kluck are calling for a return.  May God bless this book toward that end for many.

If decapitation, form the Latin word caput, means to cut off the head, then it stands to reason that decorpulation, from the Latin word corpus, should refer to cutting off the body.  It’s the perfect word to describe the content of this book.  If our editors had been asleep at the wheel, we could have called it Recent Trends in Decorpulation.

John, well, he’s different.  Jesus’ kooky cousin wears camel’s hair and eats locusts and wild honey.  His baptism is a little different too.  Christian baptism symbolizes and identifies us with the death burial and resurrection of our Lord (Romans 6:1-11).  That hasn’t happened yet so what is John’s baptism about?  It is the baptism of repentance (symbolizing repentance) in preparation for the coming King’s redemptive rule (Acts 19:1-7 emp. v. 4).

So if John’s baptism is symbolic of repentance, what is sinless Jesus being baptized for?  Matthew’s account is written to give an answer to that question.  All four gospels record Jesus’ baptism, only Matthew includes Jesus’ explanation,  “To fulfill all righteousness!”  That only seems to make things worse!  But notice Jesus says to fulfill, not because He lacks but to fulfill.  Not because he is repentant, but to fulfill.  Three interpretations have gained favor among evangelicals.  The first two fall flat to me, I hold to the third.

1. Jesus’ baptism is anticipatory of His death, burial, and resurrection whereby he will fulfill all righteousness and make many righteous.
2. Jesus’ baptism is merely His obedience as a man to the new command of God going out through John.
3. In Jesus’ baptism He is identifying Himself with the sinners for whom He came to fulfill all righteousness.

So Jesus is fulfilling all righteousness not for Himself, but us, as our substitute.  He doesn’t lack righteousness, we do.  He comes as the second Adam, achieving all righteousness in our place (Romans 5:18-19).

Theologians have a helpful way to understand this; it is called the active and passive obedience of Christ.  Christ not only passively bore your sins and the wrath of God, He also actively achieved all righteousness in your place.  The language is a little misleading for in going to the cross to bear our sins Christ was actively obeying, laying down His life and drinking the cup of the Father’s wrath down to the dregs.  The cross is both the ultimate, climatic act of passive and active obedience.  Christ fulfills all the obligations we shirked, and bears the penalty we deserve.  He didn’t just die in your place, He lived in your place.  He has become to you righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30)!  In Christ you become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:20).

This is how the Holy God of heaven now sees you, righteous in Christ.  As God is well pleased with His Son, He is well pleased with us.  We are loved in the Beloved.  His love toward His beloved is His love toward us.  The rays of the Father’s pleasure that go out toward His Son are the very rays of bliss that strike us.

And what a comfort is this, that seeing God’s love resteth on Christ, as well pleased in him, we may gather that he is as well pleased with us if we be in Christ!  – Richard Sibbes

If the dynamic concept of the Kingdom is correct, it is never to be identified with the church. The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are people of God’s rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men.

In summary, while there is an inseparable relationship between the Kingdom and the church, they are not to be identified. The Kingdom takes its point of departure from God, the church from men. The Kingdom is God’s reign and the realm in which the blessings of his reign are experienced; the church is the fellowship of those who have experienced God’s reign and entered into the enjoyment of its blessings. The Kingdom creates the church, works through the church, and is proclaimed in the world by the church. There can be no Kingdom without a church – those who have acknowledged God’s rule – and there can be no church without God’s Kingdom; but they remain two distinguishable concepts: the rule of God and the fellowship of men. – George Eldon Ladd

One of the greatest dangers, it always seems to me, is to interpret the Scriptures in the light of our experience, instead of testing our experience by the teaching of Scripture.  So often this happens at the present time.  People lay down as the norm what they have and what they are familiar with, and test everything by that.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 12, Pg. 227