The heart of Lewis Allen's The Preacher's Catechism is a series of 43 questions and answers that relate to the ministry of preaching. A small portion of related Scripture is then supplied, followed by a further exploration of the particular question and answer that forms the bulk of each chapter. Lewis has broken the questions …
In Ephesians 6:4, parents are commanded to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Thankfully, one great blessing of living in the Information Age is the availability of so many great resources for teaching children the stories and doctrines of God's Word. Below are some of our family's favorite kids books …
Continue reading A List of Great Theology Books & Resources for Children
This past Sunday I introduced the passage of study with a quotation from N. D. Wilson about how life gets progressively more and more difficult, regardless of how much you have actually matured. It seemed to capture the essence of Israel's sudden battle with the Amalekites. Ready or not, battle was thrust upon them. And …
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0jASJMEzjyeqHHuEX1Ebil?si=6Z-Hlz4vRkKvSbkrWEQdtg In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, which predicted the apocalyptic death of millions in the 70s and 80s as the result of over-population. Surely you have heard the nutshell of his argument before: the earth and its resources simply cannot sustain humanity's ever-growing population. Sixty years later, the fact …
Continue reading Facing an Empty Planet and the Shock of Global Population Decline
While my favorite aspect of Matthew Henry’s commentaries are his brief yet piercing nuggets of application, my journey with Henry through Genesis 3 led me to the insights below, which were captivating enough to me that, instead of highlighting a couple of sentences like I normally do, I simply wrote at the top of the …
I have little more than 100 pages left to read before finishing John Piper’s Providence, and it has been a truly profound book. The great value of John Piper’s ministry (sort of like John MacArthur’s ministry) is that even if you disagree with him, his reasoning is so rooted in Scripture that your knowledge of …
As I’ve noted previously, I am taking up Spurgeon’s recommendation for ministers to read through Matthew Henry’s commentaries. Thus far, I have not been disappointed. Henry’s explanation of the text is certainly valuable, but his nuggets of application are where he really shines. Below is a sampling of some of those gems taken from his …
I am a sucker for reader's Bibles, that is, Bibles without chapters and verses. As a lover of the English Standard Version, I regularly use the six-volume edition and the individual volumes of Psalms and Proverbs. But when Crossway (the publisher of the ESV) released a boxset of the four Gospels and a volume of …
In the introduction to Ford Lewis Battles' translation of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, the role of piety in Calvin's thinking is briefly described. One who takes up Calvin’s masterpiece with the preconception that its author’s mind is a kind of efficient factory turning out and assembling the parts of a neatly jointed …
Concluding any sermon series is always a bitter-sweet affair. The sadness of leaving the study of a book of the Bible is only balmed by the excitement of venturing into another one. There is one moment in particular that cements this transition. At the beginning of every series, I take my core resource books off …
B. C. Newton 