Reading Theology

I just re-started a book by Karl Barth.  I picked it up at a library sale (I think) and started it right away.  I was sidetracked by The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink, so I put it down for awhile.  Since I am done with that now, it is time to pick it back up again. It is called God in Action: Theological Addresses .

I have to say, I am really enjoying these theological works.  I've been trying to read some other books and even some fictional stories, but I just can't get into them.  Reading theology, especially accurate and well-written theology, can be very uplifting.  It is about God.  It is about who He is.  It is about what He is like and what He does.  They remind me that He is a rock... He is my rock.

If you have never taken the time to read any theology, I would like to recommend a place to start, so that you are not overwhelmed.  The book is Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (RE: Lit) by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Bershears.  It is a really good book on doctrine that follows the story line of the Bible.  It was really easy to read, but at the same time it was chock-full of information.  There were footnotes in the hundreds.

Feeling discouraged at the state of the world today?  Get away from your TV and jump into a good solid book.

(Don't forget.  If you buy something through Amazon, use one of my links.  I will get a small portion for advertising.)

The Sovereignty of God - Book Review

The Sovereignty of God
by A.W. Pink.

You may have noticed that I have included a few quotes from this book lately.  I've really enjoyed it, but I might be a little biased because of the "fluff" that I've been reading along side this book.  I only have a couple of pages left in this book, so I thought I would go ahead and type out a short book review.  (Reviews of the "fluff" will come later.)

This book is clearly about the sovereignty of God.  From God's sovereignty in creation, administration, and the natural world, to His sovereignty in salvation.  The book seemed to start a little slow, but that was mostly because it was dealing with topics that most people wouldn't question.  When you deal with sovereignty in creation, that's simple.  Sovereignty in administration (the workings of the world), that doesn't press any buttons.  As the book progressed, it picked up steam as it inched closer and closer towards that inevitable conclusion... God is sovereign in salvation.

I picked up this book with many of those understandings and teachings already, but as I progressed through this book it built in me a love for the topic.  Pink discussed the sovereignty of God the way someone might describe a beautiful painting or the way a husband might describe the beauty of his wife.

Whether you are into old theology books or not, I highly recommend this book.

The Kindle Edition is available for only $0.99!  Click through now to get it: The Sovereignty of God  Use these links that I've provided so that I get credit!

Your Thoughts of God are Too Human

I have been reading (and loving) the book, The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink.  I have a few more quotes coming from him in the next few days.  Then I hope to do a book review.

For now, I actually found a quote from him on another blog that I felt needed to be shared.
(via Blogging Theologically)

In one of his letters to Erasmus, Luther said, “Your thoughts of God are too human.” Probably that renowned scholar resented such a rebuke, the more so, since it proceeded from a miner’s son; nevertheless, it was thoroughly deserved. We too, though having no standing among the religious leaders of this degenerate age, prefer the same charge against the majority of the preachers of our day, and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept the teaching of others. The most dishonoring and degrading conceptions of the rule and reign of the Almighty are now held almost everywhere. To countless thousands, even among those professing to be Christians, the God of the Scriptures is quite unknown. 

Of old, God complained to an apostate Israel, “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself” (Psa 50:21). Such must now be His indictment against an apostate Christendom. Men imagine that the Most High is moved by sentiment, rather that actuated by principle. They suppose that His omnipotence is such an idle fiction that Satan is thwarting His designs on every side. They think that if He has formed any plan or purpose at all, then it must be like theirs, constantly subject to change. They openly declare that whatever power He possesses must be restricted, lest He invade the citadel of man’s “free will” and reduce him to a “machine.” They lower the all-efficacious atonement, which has actually redeemed everyone for whom it was made, to a mere “remedy,” which sin-sick souls may use if they feel disposed to; and they enervate the invincible work of the Holy Spirit to an “offer” of the Gospel which sinners may accept or reject as they please. 

The “god” of this twentieth century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun. The “god” who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday School, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day, and preached in most of the so-called Bible Conferences is the figment of human imagination, an invention of maudlin sentimentality. The heathen outside of the pale of Christendom form “gods” out of wood and stone, while the millions of heathen inside Christendom manufacture a “god” out of their own carnal mind. In reality, they are but atheists, for there is no other possible alternative between an absolutely supreme God, and no God at all. A “god” whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title to Deity, and so far from being a fit object of worship, merits naught but contempt.

How big is your view of God?

sweet force

"Why was I made to hear is voice,
And enter while there's room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?
'Twas the same love that spread the feast,
That sweetly forced us in;
Else we had still refused to taste
And perished in our sin."
~Isaac Watts 


Quoted in The Sovereignty of God by A.W.Pink

the superficial work of many evangelists

I've been reading A.W. Pink's book, The Sovereignty of God during my bus trips to work and back home.  I Read this bit on the bus this morning:

The superficial work of many of the professional evangelists of the last fifty years is largely responsible for the erroneous view now current upon the bondage of the natural man, encouraged by the laziness of those in the pew in their failure to "prove all things" (I Thess. 5:21). The average evangelical pulpit conveys the impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner whether or not he shall be saved. It is said that "God has done His part, now man must do his."  Alas, what can a lifeless man do, and man by nature is "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1)!  If the truth were really believed, there would be more dependence upon the Holy Spirit to come in with His miracle-working power, and less confidence in our attempts to "win men for Christ."

As much as I agree with every word that Pink is saying, I still find myself relying on my preaching and my persuasive abilities for people to repent.  I need to repent.  It isn't that I shouldn't seek to be persuasive, it is that I shouldn't rely on that.  Listen to the rest that Pink has to say:

When addressing the unsaved, preachers often draw an analogy between God's sending of the Gospel to the sinner, and a sick man in bed, with healing medicine on a table by his side: all he needs to do is to reach forth his hand and take it. But in order for this illustration to be in any wise true to the picture which Scripture gives us of the fallen and depraved sinner, the sick man in bed must be described as one who is blind (Eph. 4:18) so that he cannot see the medicine, his hand paralyzed (Rom. 5:6) so that he is unable to reach forth for it, and his heart not only devoid of all confidence in the medicine but filled with hatred against the physician himself (John 15:18).  

O what superficial views of man's desperate plight are now entertained! Christ came here not to help those who are willing to help themselves, but to do for His people what they were incapable of doing for themselves: "To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house" (Isa. 42:7).

Other Wise than God has Eternally Purposed

A. W. Pink, from his book, The Sovereignty of God, at the end of his chapter on the Sovereignty of God in Administration, states this profound paragraph:

The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.  His government is exercised over inanimate matter, over brute beasts, over the children of men, over angels good and evil, and over Satan himself.  No revolving of a world, no shining of a star, no storm, no movement of a creature, no actions of men, no errands of angels, no deeds of the Devil -- nothing in all the vast universe can come to pass other wise than God has eternally purposed.  Here is a foundation for faith.  Here is a resting place for the intellect. Here is an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast. It is not blind fate, unbridled evil, man or Devil, but the Lord almighty who is ruling the world, ruling it according to His own good pleasure and for His own eternal glory. 

Possibly as a moment of worship, he goes on to quote Isaac Watts:

Ten thousand ages ere the skies
Were into motion brought;
All the long years and worlds to come,
Stood present to His thought:
There's not a sparrow or a worm,
But's found in His decrees,
He raises monarchs to their throne
And sinks them as He please.

Amen.