Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson. Ligonier Ministries. 570 pages. 2024
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This book is based on the popular Things Unseen daily devotional podcast that respected theologian Sinclair Ferguson produced with Ligonier in 2023 (and is still available today). The book contains all 260 episodes edited from the spoken to the written form. The book has 52 topics, one for every week of the year, and follows each theme through from Monday to Friday. Each of the short readings can be completed in just a few minutes each weekday. I used this book as a part of my daily devotional readings in 2025.
Here are 30 helpful quotes from the book:
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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller
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- When we deny God, we lose our identity as His image bearers. We no longer know who we are.
- One of the greatest blessings of being a Christian is that, contrary to the people around you, you know who you are, and you know what you are made for.
- Faithfulness isn’t really faithfulness unless it’s faithfulness in everything. Being faithful in the big things doesn’t minimize the importance of being faithful in the small things.
- Transformation takes place by the renewal of the mind, and the renewal of the mind takes place through the truth of Scripture.
- Faithfulness means being consistent, reliable, trustworthy, and dependable.
- Only the Spirit of the Lord Jesus can make us like Jesus and produce in us the fruit of the Spirit. And when He does that, our lives become like trees that are bearing fruit and blossoming wonderfully.
- This is perhaps the single most important thing for us to remember: God’s law is given in the context of God’s grace.
- An idol is just about anything or anyone that we think about more often than we think about God—anything that stimulates our affections more than God does.
- If the name of the Lord has been put on you in baptism, then the rest of your life should be one in which you give yourself entirely to the Lord, whose name has been placed upon you.
- The Sabbath commandment isn’t just about keeping or guarding the Sabbath; it’s about living a healthy, balanced life all week long.
- Always honor your parents, no matter what age you are. And when you are young, that means obeying them as a way of pleasing the Lord and blessing them.
- Our security doesn’t lie in ourselves. It doesn’t even lie in what God has done in us, wonderful though that is. It lies in Jesus and His intercession for us.
- It’s a great thing for Christians to know that we are all made in the image of God and that we’re called to reflect Him and to live for His glory according to His Word.
- Sometimes Satan uses the best gifts God has given us to draw us away from God Himself.
- The marvelous truth of the gospel is that God the Father loves us, Jesus Christ has acted to save us, and His Spirit is sent to bring us to Himself.
- The whole Christian life is a process of souls that have been sinfully bent out of shape being bent back into shape by grace. That can be a painful process, but it’s gloriously worth it.
- The Christian life is not only about knowing but about being. It’s not merely about what we know but about what we become because of what we know.
- Baptism points us to what Christ has done. But many of us tend to think that baptism points to us and to our faith. But in fact, it is a sign of God’s gospel promise. It points us to Christ and to the way in which God’s promises are all fulfilled in Him.
- You see, we not only need the finished work of Christ for us on Calvary; we need the ongoing work of Christ interceding for us in heaven.
- If I’m a believer, I am “in Christ”—that is my identity. I’m no longer a citizen of the kingdom where sin reigns both over me and in me. I’m a member of a new kingdom. I have a new family, a new citizenship, a new identity altogether.
- An indicative is a statement of fact, such as “God loves you.” An imperative is a statement of command, such as “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
- When we understand the biblical teaching on the supper, we realize that it’s a visible dramatization of the message of the gospel. The broken bread portrays Christ’s body, sacrificed on the cross for us. The poured-out wine portrays His blood, shed for the forgiveness of our sins.
- The pattern is unvarying: God saves His people, and then He calls them to live in a way that pleases Him. He makes His covenant with us and binds Himself to us, and then He summons us to live in a way that conforms to His wonderful grace. And as we do so, we enter into His promised blessings.
- Here’s the truly wonderful thing about the gospel: when we believe into Jesus Christ, we, too, are fully and finally justified. From the moment you trusted in Christ, you were as justified as He now is—as completely, permanently, irreversibly, eternally justified as the Savior because you’re justified with His righteousness and His justification.
- When we breathe our last, we will be able to say to those whom we love in Christ: “I go gently into this good night to be with Christ. I love you, and I will see you in the morning.”
- God’s judgment will result in glory and honor for those who are His but wrath and fury for those who have rejected Him.
- We know that Jesus will come, but how will He come? The central answer is this: He’ll come gloriously.
- If we’re going to enjoy Christmas in the midst of all the busyness, it’s only the expulsive power of a new affection for Christ that is going to help us. Then we’ll see other things in their proper place.
- We don’t get God’s grace by what we try to do. It’s God’s grace that transforms all we do.
- It’s only when we come to recognize our own spiritual bankruptcy and entrust ourselves to Him as our Savior and embrace Him in all His saving sufficiency that our life begins to change.
- Carl Trueman’s Answer to the Modern Self. Tyler Hurst reviews Carl Trueman’s new book The Desecration of Man. He writes “Trueman’s title echoes that of C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Both books address the ways subtle cultural trends undermine a biblical view of humanity. Like Lewis’s classic, The Desecration of Manwill help church leaders understand the philosophical currents shaping our culture.”
- Men Can Use Authority Well. Tim Challies reviews Jonathan Leeman’s book Using Authority Well. He writes “I’m certain that any man who leads in any way will benefit from reading it and carefully applying it to his life.”
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you have read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
- Diagnosing the Moral Collapse of Western Civilization. James Anderson reviews Carl Trueman’s new book The Desecration of Man. He writes “Trueman makes his case with wit and verve, and the book abounds with insightful observations, not to mention eminently quotable sentences. Pastors will certainly find it to be a valuable resource to recommend to congregants who want to better understand the times.”
- My Book Reviews. Enjoy nearly 600 of my book reviews on Goodreads. Read my recent reviews of Romans 8-16 For You by Tim Keller and John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie.
Won’t you read along with us?
What Is Wrong with the World?: The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller
Please join us in reading the first book of Tim Keller’s that has been released since his death in 2023.
From the Amazon description:
“During his tenure as founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Timothy Keller explained on a weekly basis how the Bible provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated response to the fundamental questions of life. In What Is Wrong with the World?, based on a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Keller answers the title’s pressing question by revealing that the only thing that can account for the world’s pain and chaos is what the Bible calls sin. This clear-eyed and ultimately hopeful book reveals how sin is not simply a “bad” thing we do but something much more subtle and complex, affecting our relationships, our thinking, and every aspect of our existence. And only when we recognize sin for what it is can we find the profound, life-transforming answer our souls long for.”
This week, we look at Chapter 2: Sin as Self-Deception. Here are a few helpful quotes from the chapter:
- Self-deception may not be the worst thing we do, but it’s what makes us capable of terrible things.
- Self-deception is the ability to know the truth and yet not know it because you don’t want to. Self-deception is the tendency to rationalize and justify things we know are wrong.
- We have an infinite capacity to lie to ourselves. If we don’t like the truth, we develop ways not to know it.
- Three of the most prevalent ways we smother truth are blaming others, focusing only on our goodness, and minimizing our sin.
- At the heart of self-deception is a refusal to handle the most earth-shattering truth of all. If there is a God, he owns you utterly and you must obey him completely. If there is no God, your life is meaningless and nothing is truly right or wrong and no one knows which end is up.
- We all know in our hearts that we’re sinners. We don’t want to see it. But if we do not understand the grace of God, we can’t escape self-deception. It is inevitable.
