The Big —

From within comes …

For the past few years I felt there was a book inside me struggling to get out. I’m not a Writer, but that is the best way to describe how through a change of job and three house moves the idea remained. Finally there was nothing for it but to squeeze my brain and push it out. I squeezed and pushed. Then I looked at the result. What on earth is it?

A Child?

When writing brings forth a creation, nay, a creature, that has a life of its own, a Child is born. As others read, they in turn may be inspired to bring forth other literary children. I thank God more heartily for writers whose work comes to life as I turn the page. It is a great gift.

A Tumour?

Writing spring from the heart and as Jeremiah observes, the heart is deceitful above all other things (17.7-8). Writing is open to vanity, and if the project is nothing but a Vanity Project, then the sooner it is out, the better.

A —!

There is ingestion and digestion behind all writing; the pen feasts on ideas. Reading and writing that bring positive change are a Good Thing and mitigate the realisation that one has brought forth the normal product of digestion, a Big P–. It is time to move on from the Product and rejoice in the change brought by the process. There was a book inside and I have pushed, and pushed. And if it a good book, then even if no-one else benefits from it, I already have. I feel a lot better!

Eugene Peterson Working the Angles

Eugene Peterson’s pastoral writings are well known. But that does not mean they are well read! This is the first of his books I’ve read and it was a rewarding experience.

In this book Working the Angles: Trigonometry for Pastoral Work his target is pastors who have abandoned their calling as pastors in favour of a more concrete role:

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches (p. 2).

Some of the responsibility lies at the feet of the churches:

How do I maintain a sense of pastoral vocation in the middle of a community of people who are hiring me to do religious jobs? (p. 13)

We do not escape, and this book is addressed to pastors.

Pastoral Basics Revisited

The title comes from the idea that “The visible lines of pastoral work are preaching, teaching, and administration. The small angles of this ministry are prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction.” (p. 5) but the metaphor is not sustained as far as I could see. Each chapter is a meditation around a theme.

Prayer

Anything creative, anything powerful, anything biblical, insofar as we are participants in it, originates in prayer. Pastors who imitate the preaching and moral action of the prophets without also imitating the prophets’ deep praying and worship so evident in the Psalms are an embarrassment to the faith and an encumbrance to the church (p. 40)

This is typical Peterson: thoughtful, provocative and hard to pin down a clear biblical justification for it.

Reading

In listening we use our ears, in reading we use our eyes…. When I read a book the book does not know if I am paying attention or not; when I listen to a person the person knows very well whether I am paying attention or not….in listening the speaker is in charge; in reading the reader is in charge. (88)

Peterson reflects on orality (following Ong). “Words work differently when they are read than when they are heard” (114) is true; but it does not mean that they work better and I think he overstates his case here.

There is a telling quote on context:

Every word of Scripture fits into its large narrative context in one way or another, so much so that the immediate context of a sentence is as likely to be eighty-five pages off in words written three hundred years later as to be the previous or next paragraph. (p. 124)

White Jacket

Peterson tells the story from Melville’s White Jacket of the ship’s surgeon who in his enthusiasm forgot to notice that his patient had died some time earlier. It’s a parable of exegesis that kills the living word.

Less convincing is this statement of hermeneutical principle:

They tested it [the congruence of Scripture and Jesus] out in their believing and worshiping lives. It worked. They had their hermeneutical principle. (p. 129)

Spiritual Direction

It is a fringe activity for most pastors and yet, ironically, it is the activity that many people assume pastors do all the time.

Spiritual direction takes place when two people agree to give their full attention to what God is doing in one (or both) of their lives and seek to respond in faith [...they can be planned and unplanned] (p. 150)

Five who Failed Fox

In the final section Peterson draws a lesson from the five clergymen who were called on in turn to counsel George Fox. Each failed him in a different way.

Nathaniel Stephens heard Fox’s troubles and repeated them from his pulpit:

If we reduce a person to sermon material, we are the agents of alienation. (p. 181)

The ancient Priest at Mancetter is like the shopkeeper who sees the subject as customer. When the goods are not wanted, he was  dismissive.

If a parishioner will not follow our advice he or she is aggravating evidence of our incompetence, the easiest way out is to hint among the milkmaids that there are matters of concern here about stability, immaturity, neurosis.

The Priest living at Tamworth was an empty, hollow cask (184). The best preparation, says Peterson, is an honest life,

Prayer and the developing capacity for adoration and joy authenticate pastoral experience (184)

Dr Cradock saw everything through the eyes of orthodoxy or heterodoxy:

He had only to find out how Fox diverged from the model of orthodox Christianity in order to set him straight (p. 185).

Macham, finally, was an activist:

The suggestion to do something is nearly always inappropriate, for persons who come for spiritual direction are troubled over some disorder or dissatisfaction in being, not doing. (p. 187)

So how to do it right? Peterson is optimistic that

More often than we think, the unspoken, sometimes unconscious reason that persons seek out conversation with the pastor is a desire to keep company with God. (192).

More convincing is the advice to remember that the pastor is a supporting player: God is the lead (p. 191)

Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: Trigonometry for Pastoral Work William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1987.

John Piper The Supremacy of God in Preaching

The two lectures that make up the text of this book are concerned with making the glory of God our goal in preaching:

Is this what people take away from worship nowadays – a sense of God, a note of sovereign grace, a theme of panoramic glory, the grand object of God’s infinite Being? Do they enter for one hour in the week – not an excessive expectation – into an atmosphere of the holiness of God which leaves its aroma on their lives all week long? p. 22.

Two obstacles to the goal of preaching are the righteousness of God (how can he give his glory to sinners) and the pride of man (how can we give glory to God), and both are met in the cross of Christ. It “overcomes the objective, external obstacle of God’s righteous opposition to human pride, and it overcomes the subjective, internal obstacle of our proud opposition to God’s glory.

Our authority as preachers comes from the Scriptures with which God has entrusted us:

We are simply pulling rank on people when we tell them, and don’t show them from the text. p. 42.

Preaching and Perseverance

Preaching, following Jonathan Edwards here, is a grave task and the means God uses to enable the perseverance of the saints. It is a confirming ordinance more than a converting ordinance.

[Edwards] saw preaching as a means of grace to assist the saints to persevere, and perseverance as necessary for final salvation. Therefore every sermon is a “salvation sermon” – not just because of its aim to covert sinners, but also in its aim to preserve the holy affections of the saints and so enable them to confirm their calling and election, and be saved.Ibid., p. 80.

Again following Edwards, Piper ends with a list of ten marks of Good Preaching. Preacher, you and I must:

• Aim to stir up holy affections [emotions] in the hearts of those who hear.
• Enlighten the mind: “Heat and light; burning and shining; it is crucial to being light to the mind because affections that do not rise from the mind’s apprehension of truth that are not holy affections.” Ibid., p. 85.
• Saturate with Scripture which means reading out and not merely citing them. (It was striking that Jay Adams’ book on preaching quoted every text cited, even if only as a footnote)
• Use analogies and images. “[Edwards] knew that abstractions kindled few affections, and new affections was the goal of preaching.” (p. 88)
• Use (biblical) threat and warning because the Bible does.
• Plead for a response. “It is a tragedy to see pastors state the facts and then sit down. Good preaching pleads with people to respond to the word of God” Ibid., p. 95.
• Probes the human heart, like surgery.
• Yields to the Holy Spirit: “Good preaching is born of good praying” (100)
• Is broken and tenderhearted. (For more on this see the more recent book by Paul Tripp, Dangerous Calling (First edn, IVP, 2012) Chapter 8) and my review here.
• Be intense.

Compelling preaching gives the impression that something very great is at stake … Lack of intensity in preaching can only communicate that the preacher does not believe or has never been seriously gripped by the reality of which he speaks – or that the subject matter is insignificant. Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 103.

Conclusion

Who but preachers will look out over the wasteland of secular culture and say, “Behold your God!”? Who will tell the people that God is great and greatly to be praised? Who will paint for them the landscape of God’s grandeur?… Who will cry out above every crisis, “Your God reigns!”? Ibid., p. 109.

John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching 2nd Revised edition ed. Kingsway Publications, 1998.

 

 

Paul Tripp Dangerous Calling

This book is written to confront the unhealthy shape of pastoral ministry when the preacher’s outer life does not match his inner life because he is not living by the grace he preaches to others. The danger this poses is heart-rendingly described by stories Tripp tells, beginning with his own. What’s frightening is that the disconnect between the public persona and the private man is widespread and so hard to spot. It makes me ask, ‘am I a different man in public and in private?’. (The answers my wife gave were encouraging and at the same time unexpected. You should try asking your wife the same question).

The clear signs of living in this danger zone, explored in following chapters, are to

• Let ministry define identity: “My faith had become a professional calling” (22).
• Let biblical and theological literacy define or substitute for maturity
• Confuse success with God’s endorsement of a lifestyle.

Brokenness that has been healed by the Gospel is a great asset here:

You are most loving, patient, kind, and gracious when you are aware that there is no truth that you could give to another that you don’t desperately need yourself. You are most humble and gentle when you think the person you are ministering to is more like you than unlike you.(Tripp, Dangerous Calling, p. 23)

Worship requires change

Ministry, including preaching, must have change as its goal and not mere knowledge:

The content and theology of the word of God is not an end in itself but must be viewed as a means to an end. The intended end of this content is God-honoring, life-shaping worship. … When the Word of God, faithfully taught by the people of God and empowered by the Spirit of God, falls down, people become different. Lusting people become pure, fearful people become courageous, thieves become givers, demanding people become servants, angry people become peacemakers, complainers become thankful, and idolaters come joyfully to worship the one true God. (Ibid., p. 51)

Pastors need friends in Church

In his own words:

Is it biblical to tell pastors that they won’t be able to be friends with anyone, that they must live in an isolation that we would say is unhealthy for anyone else? (69)

and

How can we realistically expect someone in the middle of the sanctification process to live outside of one of God’s most important means of personal insight and growth and be spiritually healthy at the same time? (Ibid., p. 78)

And

[The pastor] is a member of the body of Christ who himself desperately needs the ministry of the very body he has been called to train and lead. (89)

This takes us on to the church which needs to be an ‘intrusive, Christ-centered, grace-driven, redemptive community’ (84).

Ministry is war!

Pastoral ministry is a war, and the war is waged within the pastor’s heart:

Pastoral ministry is always shaped by a war between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God, which is fought on the field of your heart. The reason this war is so dangerous and deceptive is that you build both kingdoms in ministry by doing ministry!(Ibid., p. 98)

In Part 2, Tripp explores the different dangers:

• Familiarity that leads to a loss of awe
• Dirty Secrets by which he means fear which can only be conquered by a greater fear:

It is only when God looms larger than anything you are facing that you can be protected and practically freed from the fear that either paralyzes you or causes you to make foolish decisions. (Ibid., p. 129)

• Mediocrity and specifically lack of preparation:

[Preaching] is bringing the transforming truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ from a passage that has been properly understood, cogently and practically applied, and delivered with the engaging tenderness and passion of a person who has been broken and restored by the very truths he stands up to communicate. You simply cannot do this without proper preparation, meditation, confession, and worship. (Ibid., p. 145)

• Pride
• Self Glory
• Neglecting to feed oneself: “You have forgotten your dual identity when you forget that in addition to be an instrument of the work, you are also a recipient of it.” (193).

Tripp is persuasive and clear, and his remarks are pertinent to the pastoral situation. All this is about rebuilding spiritually healthy ministry which has integrity – which is God’s desire for our lives and our churches.

It is now clear to me that some of the most significant periods of ministry hardship were God-sent to pry the grip of my hands off my ministry…they were to tools God employed to rescue my ministry and to recapture my heart. (Ibid., p. 215)

Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling First ed. ivp, 2012.

Graeme Goldsworthy – Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture

Christ the Key

Anyone who has heard, let alone attempted, Christian preaching from the Old Testament will know that there are more pitfalls than clear pathways. They key to holding the whole Scripture together, and therefore to preaching the whole Bible as Christian Scripture is Jesus Christ:

It is vital for us to remember that our reference point is Jesus of Nazareth as he is testified to by Holy Scripture. The apostolic testimony to him shapes our approach to the Bible as a whole.

Therefore the goal of every sermon must reflect the goal of every scripture:

How does this passage of Scripture, and consequently my sermon, testify to Christ?

The whole bible is united in testifying to Christ. That does not mean that the whole Bible speaks of him in the same way; but neither does it mean that any part (including the family trees!) is irrelevant to us.

Macrotypology

While there are individual texts that testify directly to Christ (e.g. Isaiah 7.14 and so on), the majority of texts, especially in the OT, testify by means of macrotypology in which whole epochs of revelation are fulfilled in Christ: from Creation to the Schism we find the Kingdom in history: in this epoch “the major thrust of the narrative as a whole is the revelation of blessing in the form of the promise and its fulfilment in the kingdom of David and Solomon”. From the Schism to the return from Exile it’s the Kingdom in prophecy, and in the New Testament, the Kingdom fulfilled in Christ. In other words we work out how the whole text may safely be related to the current day by looking at it in large chunks, hence macrotypology.

Dale Ralph David in The Word Became Fresh says something similar:

I think Jesus is teaching that all parts of the Old Testament testify to the Messiah in his suffering and glory, but I do not think Jesus is saying that every Old Testament passage/text bears witness to him. Jesus referred to the things written about him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms – he did not say that every passage spoke of him (v. 44). Therefore I do not feel compelled to make every Old Testament (narrative) passage point to Christ in some way because I do not think Christ himself requires it.

Preaching Christ in Every Sermon

Davis at this points differs from Goldsworthy to whom the gospel of Christ is so essential to Christian application that Christ must be the subject of every sermon. Merely theocentric sermons are not enough, for Goldsworthy. Preaching without the gospel of grace

… is at best an exercise in wishful and pietistic thinking. It is at worst demonic in its Christ-denying legalism.

Our imperatives must never be separated from the Gospel indicatives:

We can preach our heart out on texts about what we ought to be, what makes a mature church, or what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives, but if we do not constantly, in every sermon, show the link between the Spirit’s work in us to Christ’s work for us, we will distort the message and send people away with a natural theology of salvation by works.

(Davis would not advocate Christ-less preaching! But Goldsworthy would not consider an aspect of God’s being (e.g. His Sovereignty) a sufficient topic for a sermon if it came at the expense of linking this to Christ).

Preaching Christ from every text

The second half of the book works through every major section of the Bible, applying the macrotypology. Even the New testament must be placed in theological context. Here’s an understatement:

The placing of the Gospels in biblical -theological context is not something that automatically happens

Keeping God on the throne

The nub of it all is that the hero of the Bible is God, and specifically his saving work in Jesus Christ. We preach the Bible faithfully when we place Him in the centre, and ourselves on the receiving end:

The exemplary sermon is more inclined to ask, “How does this character (or event) testify to my existence?” By contrast the redemptive-historical approach is more inclined to ask, “How does this event (or character) testify to Christ?”

Graeme Goldsworthy Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (IVP, 2000).

Dale Ralph Davis, The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach From Old Testament Narrative Texts Mentor, 2006.

Jay Adams Preaching With Purpose: The Urgent Task of Homiletics

Jay Adams taught counselling and then preaching at Westminster Seminary. He sees the church’s most urgent need is to recover preaching that has a sense of purpose:

Whatever you do in a sermon, you should do consciously and deliberately to achieve some purpose.

Preaching for Change

The purpose (or telos as he calls it) is specifically to seek change in the congregation according to the Spirit’s purpose in giving us the Scriptures:

Preaching that stops short of asking for change that is appropriate to the Holy Spirit’s letters to His church is not preaching at all; at best, it is lecturing.

Preaching must have purpose because, quite simply, the Bible has this purpose. Adams says:

It is God’s task to apply the Scriptures, not yours. Your task is to discover what that application is and to translate the passage into contemporary forms.

In order to bring about the change that God desires, a hearer needs to leave church with the following:

1. A clear understanding of the meaning and telos [aim] of the preaching portion
2. A knowledge of how God wants him [sic] to change,
3. An understanding of what he must do to effect the change, and
4. An assurance that all the preacher said came from the Scriptures and therefore is authoritative.

Application must be faithful to the text and pertinent to the congregation. It must also reach into the details of their situations and the excuses they (we) will make for avoiding the implications of the text. In other words, purposeful preachers must act as counsellors from the pulpit:

When preaching, counseling preachers will know at which points excuse makers tend to bail out of sermons and will be waiting for them at the door. He will not let them leave so easily.

Preaching with purpose

The whole sermon must be constructed with this end in view:

There are four principal factors that converge as joint carriers of the preacher’s message: language, order, voice, and body.

The process begins with the faithful study and exegesis of the text and in homiletical construction Adams favours speaking from an outline rather than a full script, but his test would be worth checking for either:

One way to check your sermon outline when you have finished sketching it in rough form is to read the purpose statement at the top, which tells you where you intend to go, and then read over the conclusion to see if you got there.

Stories and Illustrations

Purpose is also the grid through which stories and illustrations must pass: do they serve the aim of the sermon, or are they there for some other reason? Preachers who discover the power of stories may fall prey to the temptation to tell stories and little else:

Their sermons become a string of pearls, in which a string of stories are suspended on a theme. Now each of these stories may be a natural pearl, but Christ sent us to preach His Word, not to string necklaces.

Illustrations are best drawn from everyday situations. There’s a fascinating exercise in which the preacher is invited to spend time every day for six months writing two illustrations a day onto index cards drawn from the church building only. The following six month period can be used in drawing stories from the home – only! We reserved Brits mind find this over-the-top, but it makes the point very well that:

The wide-awake preacher is gathering material all the time.

Style and Delivery

A good preaching style does not draw attention to itself but gets the job done with the minimum of fuss:

Style is

content’s right-hand man, ready to run any errand that content requests of him.

Because delivery (voice, body) counts for half of the message’s carriers (quoted above) we should pay attention to it.

Delivery will take care of itself to a great extent when you allow yourself to feel, or experience, the emotional impact of what the content is teaching. When you are willing to relive the event about which you are speaking, or prelive it in your imagination if it is something not previously experienced, rather than reporting (or preporting) it, you will find that delivery follows and flows from content very naturally.

Still urgent?

Adams wrote thirty years ago about the urgent need for preaching with a purpose. Flaccid preaching will resurface in every generation unless it is killed off by the withering heat of secular apathy. Our hope and confidence lies with God who gave us his word, and who will use means to revive preaching in every generation so that:

It is only when the preacher knows he is saying what the Holy Spirit said, for the purpose of the Holy Spirit in saying it, that he speaks with power and with authority.

Jay Adams Preaching With Purpose: The Urgent Task of Homiletics (Jay Adams Library) Zondervan, 1986.

 

Preaching long stories (2)

Last time we looked at basics of preaching biblical narrative.  What if the narratives are long, in fact too long to be read in your meeting? Here are some possible approaches

Sock it to ‘em

We love biblical narratives and long readings are no problem, right? If your appetite is not as great as mine, you must be immature so … open wide! There is a fine judgement here as to how much it is wise to overshoot the congregation’s appetite. My recent experience in church of trying to read entire chapters of Nehemiah (a story I love) taught me that at the moment the congregation I serve is not ready to hear whole chapters of narrative at a time. It’s too much and simply stuffing it down their throats is unwise and unloving.

Selection

Stories often have a long narrative arc: consequences of an event or critical choice can be played out over many chapters. Large chunks of material can be grouped together if you have chosen to go through 1 Samuel, say, at pace. Instead of reading out all three chapters, you can read out one, representative, passage and make reference to what happens in the others. Especially if the stories are linked by one principle being played out in different ways.

Suspense

On the other hand, some stories are complete in themselves, and the narratives of Daniel fall into this category. For instance, Daniel 2 tells of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, his inability to find someone who could reliably interpret it, the prayers of Daniel and his friends, and eventually the interpretation. It’s a single story of nearly 50 verses and it would be madness to read a ‘representative’ portion.

One attractive option is to summarise the passage, perhaps using a children’s story bible or similar. This seems to me to be using Peterson’s Still (see the quote in previous post) to strip the biblical text of the very features that give it texture. For instance in Daniel 3, the whole empire is commanded to bow to the statue of gold when the band plays, except that both officials and instruments are listed in comical detail each time. The effect is at once sinister and ridiculous – as dictatorships often are. Scripture is written this way, and it would not be a Scripture reading to strip it of the features God put into it. (Note that I am not against summarising the story in the sermon, just as one would if a representative reading was given, as in ‘selectivity’ above.)

Instead I would suggest that the reading be divided into two parts. The first reading stops at a point of suspense. Thus Daniel 2 would stop just at the point where Daniel is about to tell Nebuchadnezzar his dream. The sermon can cover the comments up to that point, and then either the preacher or another reader picks up the remainder of the story.

Chiefly, though, don’t be put off by long narratives. They are God’s good gift to his church: enjoy them!

Preaching from long stories (1)

We recently preached through Daniel 1-7 and I want to share a lesson I learned about preaching from long narratives. This post is two parts: preaching narratives in general and then preaching long ones.

Preaching narrative passages

The basic principles for preaching narratives remain the same:

• Tell the story as well as preaching the story. You may know the story well because you’ve lived with it for a week or more but your hearers met it only for the first time as it was being read – even assuming it was read reasonably well. Your sermon must remind them of what the story says as well as what it means. Even those who ‘know’ the story need to be reminded of what it actually says over against what they remember it as saying.
• Follow the story. That it, let your points follow the development of the story. God gave us stories; who are we to decide he would have done better to give us a list of lessons? Here’s great quote from Eugene Peterson:

Across the land pastors have turned their studies into “stills,” illegal distilleries that extract the ideas and morals from the teeming narrative of Scripture … The practice of distilling truths from Scripture is the hallmark of the gnostic, for whom matter is evil and history inconvenient (Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: Trigonometry for Pastoral Work William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1987).

• Keep the biblical context in mind. Narratives are not primarily there to give us good and bad examples. They are there to bear witness to Christ. Graham Goldsworthy puts it like this:

The exemplary sermon is more inclined to ask, “How does this character (or event) testify to my existence?” By contrast the redemptive-historical approach is more inclined to ask, “How does this event (or character) testify to Christ?” (Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching IVP, 2000.)

Where to read more:

Dale Ralph Davis, The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach From Old Testament Narrative Texts Mentor, 2006.

Richard L Pratt He gave us stories 

Next time: preaching from long passages

The Message of Kings: God is Present

The Message of Kings: God is Present

A new exposition of the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Kings

John W Olley

I was once told that in past times theological students were required to learn the names of the Kings of Israel and Judah before they could be Ordained. No such requirement was ever laid on me: did I miss out in any way? And now that Christian publishers provide colour-coded charts of the Kings ranked by how much good or evil they did in the eyes of the Lord, do we need to read the historical books of the Old Testament at all? And can we do so with profit? The answer is Yes to the last two questions. We must read these books because they are written for our learning and Kings is indeed a light along the path of following Christ today. We can read them with profit because Scripture is clear enough and we may read them better with a skilled interpreter at our side. The expositor aims to be that guide, and Olley’s work is the latest in the Bible Speaks Today series. Has it lived up to the brief?

Olley begins with the important observation that the Exile gives rise to two complementary responses: the words of the writing prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on), and the words of the historical narratives which include Kings.That history is part of the story that belongs to all Christians, part of the history that shapes the life and faith of churches even today. We hear it best when we first ask how 1-2 Kings addresses the exilic situation, and then consider how Christ fulfils it. Olley divides the narrative into six major sections, and traces the way the writer develops the story-line. Judiciously explained details lead us from geography to theology; gently highlighted use of pace, angle, structure, vocabulary bring the text into the light and make it live. All this is vital because of one crucial feature of narratives: they rarely provide an explicit commentary on the action being described. The remark in 2 Samuel 11.27 that “the thing David had done displeased the LORD” is a very rare exception. This does not mean that narratives make no comment and we must supply our own: it means we must let the structure, vocabulary and art of the narrative surrender the message of this ‘preached history’. And Olley does a very good job of showing us the biblical writer’s art and intentions. His treatement of the Solomon and Elijah is particularly refreshing in showing how the text contains all we need for a reliable interpretation. Through Christ, their story becomes our story. The major themes of kingship, prophetic word, covenant, the presence of God, and the diverse cast of characters find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Applications to Christian living are unevenly spaced through the exposition because of the large narrative arcs, but I found them to be thoughtful, helpful and alive to the modern reader’s sensibilities.

Learning the names of the Kings of Israel and Judah may well be a useful pastime. The volume under review helps us to do something far more valuable which is to hear the Bible Speak Today. (The Kings are listed on p 36ff with a note on chronology). I have no hesitation in commending this well written and evenly edited exposition

 Reviewed for Churchman [XX insert link here] Book details:  Nottingham: IVP 2011 pb 376 pp ISBN: 9781844745500 £12.99

Note: another great book on Kings is the exposition in two volumes by Dale Ralph Davis (The Wisdom and the Folly, and the Power and Fury, published by Christian Focus. Davis brought OT narrative to light for me and for many in the UK. His books on the other historical narratives Joshua, 1-2 Samuel are invaluable. I reviewed The Wisdom and the Folly for Churchman in 2002. I now keep both volumes next to my copy of Olley.

Gospel Powered Humility by William P Farley: a review

Pride is a major problem in the contemporary Church. It is blindness. Farley contends that pride has become an infatuation for American Christians because they assume a low view of God and a high view of self. The Gospel of God addresses this problem, and is designed to humble the sinner before a holy God. If the Church is to fulfil its God-given purpose, then it must preach this gospel, and we need to recover the humility that comes from the Gospel. This sounds more like ‘humility powered gospel’ than the other way around: once the main arguments are underway it becomes clear that the title of the volume under review is indeed accurate. The heart of the book is an extended exposition of Romans 1-3, where Paul defends his gospel and shows why he is not ashamed of it. Paul’s gospel is not the popular message that ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life’: no-one gets persecuted for holding to that message! The message that Paul defends reveals the wrath of God before it can unveil the salvation of God in Christ Jesus. This is the message to bring about ‘Gospel powered humility’, and it is rehearsed with clarity and plenty of illustrations.

Some very quotable phrases pepper the text, including the following: ‘God saves those who believe, not those who work’; ‘Because the pride [of the monsters of the twentieth century] was completely unchecked by fear of eternal accounting, they created the closest thing to hell on earth that history has to date witnessed’; ‘The sure way to forfeit the benefits of Christ’s atonement is to deliberately work for them’; ‘Pragmatism occurs when the lust for church growth trumps the fear of God’.

Farley’s intended readership is ‘all doing ministry’. He writes primarily with the American context in view without excluding the rest of us. Those who are already convinced of his reformed message will be refreshed; those needing courage to be faithful will be encouraged, not least by the historical review that shows ‘A quick survey of church experience since the Reformation confirms one thing: the power of the Gospel rides in a chariot that humbles sinners’ (135). All leaders will be helped by the final chapters on the fear of man, and the humble leader. What of the advocates of the false message of self-esteem? If they find their way to this book, it may well be because it has been commended to them by the humility of a brother pastor. Both will be of benefit.

Review submitted for Churchman

Gospel Powered Humility William P Farley

Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing 2011 pb 224 pp ISBN 978-1596382404 $12.99