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Tag Archives: Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith by R.C. Sproul


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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS


C is for Christian: An A-Z Treasury of Who We Are in Christ by Alistair Begg. Illustrated by Emma Skerratt. The Good Book Company. 100 pages. 2024
****

My wife Tammy and I have appreciated the ministry of Alistair Begg since first seeing him speak at the 1997 Ligonier National Conference. This is his first book for children, written for those for those 5-11 years old. It is beautifully illustrated by Emma Skerratt.
Begg writes that being a Christian is the most wonderful, exciting, life-changing thing anyone can be. But he asks, what is a Christian? What words can we use to describe what it means to call yourself a Christian? In this book, you will find 26 words that complete this sentence “A Christian is…”. Each of the 26 words begins with a different letter of the alphabet. Begg says to think of this as an A to Z of what a Christian is.

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BOOK REVIEW: 
Joseph: From Dreamer to Deliverer by R.C. Sproul. Ligonier Ministries. 115 pages. 2024
****

R.C. Sproul went home to be with the Lord in December, 2017. Fortunately, Ligonier Ministries has continued to release his teaching material in a variety of formats since then. For this book on the life of Joseph, Ligonier Ministries edited and adapted Dr. R.C. Sproul’s original material with the assistance of his wife Vesta Sproul.
Joseph is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. Dr. Sproul tells us that so extraordinary is Joseph’s virtue that throughout church history, many interpreters have seen him as a type or forerunner of our Lord Himself. In this short book, Sproul takes us through Joseph’s incredible life in which we see God’s sovereign hand of providence working from the time he was betrayed by his brothers at age seventeen, to serving as second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, and being reunited with his brothers and his dear father Jacob.

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Joni Eareckson Tada: The Girl Who Learned to Follow God in a Wheelchair by Kristyn Getty. Illustrated by Hsulynn Pang. The Good Book Company. 24 pages. 2024
**** 

This new book by Kristyn Getty is a part of the Do Great Things For God series from The Good Book Company, which includes twelve books about inspiring women such as Susannah Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, Corrie Ten Boom, Fanny Crosby and others. This book is about Joni Eareckson Tada, one of my wife Tammy’s and my heroes of the faith. Paul Miller, in his book J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life, wrote that Joni combines the best of Martin Luther and Mother Teresa. High praise indeed.
This book tells Joni’s life story. She trusted Christ at a church camp at age 15. Just two years later, while swimming with her sister, she dove off of a float, but the water was too shallow for diving. Her head hit the bottom, breaking her neck. She would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She would go through emotions of sadness and anger.

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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance. Harper Paperbacks. 291 pages. 2018
****

I read this book when it was first released, and again recently as Vance, now a U.S. Senator from Ohio, has been named as the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee.
This is Vance’s incredible story of growing up poor in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as he can remember. His grandparents, neither of whom graduated from high school, raised him. He almost failed out of high school. He served as a Marine in Iraq and graduated from Yale Law School, and is a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.

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The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. Penguin Books. 431 pages. 2013
****

Earlier this year, I enjoyed the film The Boys in the Boat, directed by George Clooney, and based on this book by Daniel James Brown. You can read my review of the film here. A friend, who also saw the film recommended that I read the book, as he had done twice, and I’m glad that I did.
Descriptions of the book state that it reads like a novel. I agree. The book gives so much more of the story than the Clooney film did, or any film based on a book really can. The author was able to spend a few months with Joe Rantz, one of the oarsmen for the University of Washington rowing team that won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, before he died. Rantz agreed to let Brown write the book, but said it could not be just about him, it had to be about the boat. The book is about the men in the boat (or shell), their coach Al Ulbrickson and George Yeoman Pocock, who made the shells, in particular the Husky Clipper. It’s also about some of the history of the times that the story took place, particularly in Germany, where the Olympics were held. After Joe died, the author worked closely with Joe’s daughter Judy to tell Joe’s story, and the larger story of the 1936 Olympic crew.

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Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield. Crossway. 369 pages. 2023      ****

This is the fourth book by Rosaria Butterfield, all of which I have read and learned from. She writes that this book is for Christians, especially Christian women, who are not ashamed of the Bible and its teachings—or who are and want to change. Butterfield, formerly a lesbian English professor at Syracuse University and now a pastor’s wife, writes that this is a book about dismantling the idol of our times – the world of LGBTQ+ that she in her sin helped build. She weaves in aspects of her story throughout the book.
She tells us that overnight, a civil war within Christianity has broken out, where it feels like we are living at ground zero of the Tower of Babel. She writes that the book offers one simple answer: the world is in chaos, and the church is divided because we have failed to obey God and value his plan for how men and women should live. We foolishly believed that we could reinvent our calling as men and women, defy God’s pattern and purpose for the sexes, and somehow reap God’s blessing.

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A Field Guide on Gender and Sexuality by Ligonier Ministries. Ligonier Ministries. 120 pages. 2024
****

This new resource from Ligonier Ministries offers biblical answers to questions about gender, sexuality, and identity. Each answer seeks to help Christians stand firm in their convictions, navigate relationships with true compassion, and proclaim the liberating hope of the gospel. If you have been to a Ligonier Ministries conference, the book is set up similar to one of the “Question and Answer” sessions from the conference. I’ve heard some of these questions asked and answered over the past few years.
The field guide is arranged in the four main sections:

  • Being Human
  • Homosexuality and Transgenderism
  • Events and Associations
  • The Gospel and Love

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BOOK REVIEW: 
Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul. Ligonier Ministries. 99 pages. 2024
****

This is the ninth volume in R.C. Sproul’s excellent expositional commentary series, from his preaching at St. Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, which began in 1997. Sproul urges his readers to use these books as an overview and introduction.
Sproul writes that the majority viewpoint today is that in all probability, the epistle to the Ephesians was originally written as a circular letter. He tells us that rather than the Apostle’s writing a specific message to a particular congregation concerning a definite problem that had arisen, Paul wrote an epistle that he intended to be circulated to all the churches in Asia Minor.
Ephesians is often lumped together with Philippians, Galatians, and Colossians as the Prison Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Sproul estimates that Paul wrote this letter, which is rich not only in its theological content but in its devotional spirit, sometime between AD 60 and 62 while he was under house arrest in Rome. Sproul tells us that the riches of grace could be said to be the central theme of this entire epistle, and a secondary theme would be Paul’s expression of what the church is supposed to be.

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Hard Sayings: Understanding Difficult Passages of Scripture by R.C. Sproul. Ligonier Ministries. 152 pages. 2023
****

Ligonier Ministries, with the assistance of Vesta Sproul, edited and adapted R.C. Sproul’s original teaching material to create this book. I remember listening to the various “Hard Sayings” teaching series when they were available on cassette tape.
Sproul begins by asking what makes a saying hard? He tells us that in the first place, a saying of Scripture may be a hard saying if it appears to us to be somewhat harsh in its orientation. The second category of hard sayings is one that’s hard to understand. The third category, similar to the second, is a hard saying that has become controversial in the history of biblical interpretation, usually because of one of the first two reasons.
In this book, Sproul explores twenty-seven of the more prominent hard sayings of Scripture. Among the hard sayings addressed in the book are whether the earth was created in six twenty-four-hour days, the hardening of Pharoah’s heart, Rahab’s lie, the unpardonable sin, the rapture of the church, head coverings for women, whether Jesus descended into hell, and many more.

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Right with God by Michael Reeves. Union Publishing. 35 pages. 2023      ****

Seminary president and professor Michael Reeves writes that this is a little book about being right with God. It is a book about the wonderful doctrine of justification.
The author tells us that to be justified is to be a sinner on whom God has graciously pronounced the verdict “righteous.” It is to be declared righteous, not slowly transformed to become righteous. We are justified when God announces the verdict that we have a righteous status before him. To be justified means to come before God the Father not righteous in myself but clothed with the righteousness of my perfectly righteous first-born brother.
The author utilizes a good deal of scripture in this book, as well as writings from Luther, Calvin, Bunyan, Sibbes and others. He states that Paul’s letter to the Romans gets to the heart of the apostle’s understanding of how to get right with God. He also looks at the objections to justification, beginning with the letter of James.

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