Christmas Giveaway

Head over to Trevin Wax’s blog to enter his Christmas giveaway. You could win 10 books plus an ESV Study Bible and a copy of Trevin’s book Holy Subversion.

Memorizing Scripture

Have you ever attempted to memorize a Bible verse? What about an entire chapter or book of the Bible? I once set out to memorize the book of Ephesians. I made it to chapter 4, but never finished.

Recently, as I was reading John Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God, I was encouraged to begin memorizing significant portions of Scripture again. Piper writes,

If you are not a memorizer at all, shift up to memorizing a Bible verse a week. If you only memorize single verses, shift up to memorizing some paragraphs or chapters (like Psalm 1 or Psalm 23 or Romans 8). And if you have ventured to memorize chapters, shift up to memorize a whole book or part of a book. Few things have a greater effect on the way we see God and the world than to memorize extended portions of Scripture.

Piper recommends a little booklet on Scripture memorization by Andy Davis entitled An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture (free PDF). I read through the booklet last night and found its practical advice very helpful.

If you’re ready to start memorizing books of the Bible check out the booklet. If you’d rather start off with individual verses you may want to look at the Topical Memory System from NavPress or Desiring God’s Bible memory products.

Read for 15 Minutes Each Day

In When I Don’t Desire God John Piper demonstrates how much reading you could do in 1 year simply by reading for 15 minutes each day.

Suppose you read slowly like I do–maybe about the same speed that you speak–200 words a minute. If you read fifteen minutes a day for one year (say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute, and you get 1,095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now an average serious book might have about 360 words per page. So you would have read 3,041 pages in one year. That’s ten very substantial books. All in fifteen minutes a day.

Or, to be specific, my copy of Calvin’s Institutes has 1,521 pages in two volumes, with an average of 400 words per page, which is 608,400 words. That means that even if you took a day off each week, you could read this great biblical vision of God and man in less than nine months (about thirty-three weeks) at fifteen minutes a day.

The Cross Makes True Joy Possible

The fight for joy is a fight to grasp and marvel at what happened in the death of Christ — and what it reveals about our suffering Savior. If it were not for the death of Jesus in our place, the only possible joy would be the joy of delusion — like the joy on the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg. Without the cross, joy could be sustained only by denying (consciously or subconsciously) the inevitability of divine judgment. In fact, that’s the kind of joy that drives most of the world — a joy that preserves the power of its pleasures by being oblivious to the peril just ahead. If the passengers were suddenly made aware that in a matter of hours most of them would drown in the icy ocean, all their merrymaking would cease. Their joy depends on their ignorance (John Piper, When I Don’t Desire God, 71).

Preaching from the Fourth Gospel

In the introductory material of his commentary on The Gospel According to John, D.A. Carson includes a helpful section on preaching from the fourth Gospel. Carson reminds preachers and Bible teachers that John’s Gospel is about Jesus; his person and work and “his place in the sweep of redemptive history”. He then remarks,

“…John’s stated purpose in composing the Fourth Gospel is not that his readers might believe, but that his readers might believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, and that in believing they might have life in his name. To hammer away at the urgency of belief without pausing to think through what it is John wants his readers to believe and whom it is he wants them to trust is to betray the Gospel of John. Preaching from the Gospels is above all an exercise in the exposition and application of Christology (102, emphasis in the original).

D.A. Carson Publications

Justin Taylor has some info on a new bibliography of D.A. Carson’s publications compiled by Carson’s research assistant Andy Naselli. The bibliography contains links to over 300 free PDFs of articles written by Carson.

Happy downloading!

Recommended – The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

In The Prodigal God Tim Keller “lays out the essentials of…the gospel” by examining Jesus’ parable commonly known as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. As you can tell from the title of the book Keller has a different take on the parable than most other preachers.

Keller contends that the parable isn’t merely about the “prodigal” son (younger brother). Rather it’s a story about two lost sons and a father who’s love extends to both of them. It’s a story in which Jesus shows that the Gospel is for both the outwardly sinful and the religious because both are in desperate need of salvation.

I think that this book, like Keller’s previous book, will appeal to both believers and unbelievers alike since it focuses on a message that both groups need to hear.

Recommended: Paul and First-Century Letter Writing

I recently finished reading Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection by E. Randolph Richards. The book challenges a number of common assumptions about Paul as a letter writer by drawing on what is known about letter writing in the first century as well as evidence internal to Paul’s letters. As the title indicates, Richards spends a considerable amount of time addressing the role of secretaries in the composition of the epistles of Paul.

I found the book to be interesting and well written. Richards’ arguments and conclusions have aided and enhanced my understanding and appreciation of a large portion of the New Testament. If you’re at all interested in New Testament and Pauline studies I recommend getting a copy of Paul and First-Century Letter Writing.

Recommended – Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor by D.A. Carson

I received Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor for Christmas and enthusiastically read it in one day. The book, written by D.A. Carson, is about the life and ministry of his father, Tom Carson. Tom Carson was an “ordinary” pastor in the sense that he never preached to thousands, wrote a book, or even had a “successful” ministry. Yet, he was a faithful pastor who pressed on in the Christian life and ministry despite what seemed to be a lack of fruit from his work.

I found the book to be very encouraging, even moving. It’s the type of Christian biography that would be useful to pastors and non-pastors alike. If you’re looking for a biography to read this year this one should definitely be on the list. If you want to know more about Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor check out Tim Challies’ review or watch this interview with D.A. Carson.

Reading and Study Plans for 2009

2009 is here and there are a few reading/study projects I plan to engage in throughout the year.

Reading

• The Bible – I’ve attempted to read through the entire Bible each year for the last 10 years. Some years I was successful and others I was less so. I’ve discovered that I don’t do well with most of the Bible reading plans I’ve tried. Some of the plans require too much reading per day while others require too little. This year I’m using the Bible Reading Record (download PDF) from bulletininserts.org. I first tried this tool in 2008. It’s simply a list of each book of the Bible along with the chapter numbers. I find that it provides an easy way for me to keep track of what I’ve read. I typically work through both the Old and New Testaments at the same time.
• Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Calvin) – I’ve read various parts of the Institutes in the past, but never the entire 2 volumes. I’ll be following the reading plan made available at Reformation 21.
• A few books in the New Testament studies category – I’ve already started Paul and First-Century Letter Writing by E. Randolph Richards. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham is also on my list.

Study

• New Testament Greek – I want to work my way through A New Testament Greek Primer by Dr. Steven Baugh of Westminster Seminary California. I worked on the first several lessons a few years ago, but this time around I plan to complete the entire primer.
• The Book of Ephesians – I’ve studied Ephesians numerous times, but plan to spend the entire year mining its depths.

There are other books I want to read and topics I would like to study, but the items listed above should keep me sufficiently busy in addition to my family, church, and work responsibilities.