Book Recommendation: Too Great A Temptation by Joel Gregory

One of the greatest blessings that we can be thankful for is the vast amount of books that are available to Americans.  If reading is a vice, then I am guilty of it in the worst kind of way.  I have an addiction to books!  I enjoy new bookstores, particularly Barnes and Noble, although bargain books are usually kept in a much larger selection at Books-A-Million.  I enjoy going to used book stores and thrift stores because they have a market on older books that may be out of print.  I have gotten some very good books very cheaply at used book stores and thrift stores. 

I am doing my diligence to write much more for the Barnabas Blog than I did the last three years.  What I noticed about the last couple of years is my lack of book reviews and recommendations.  I have discovered on several blogs that I usually go to daily how they have recommended books that have been very valuable to my personal and spiritual growth.  I tell you about one such book with this post.

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 6

We have come to the end of this series on the Puritans. Having spent the last month describing the preaching of the Puritans and then working with Thomas Shepard and Thomas Brooks, it is my hope that you will invest some time and energy in reading the rich material that these men have given. There is no possible way to give the rest of the devices of the devil from Brooks’ Precious Remedies from Satan’s Devices, so I will pull one more of them and summarize it as we did in the last post.

As you can see Brooks had great proficiency with Scripture and had an ability to make it be very applicable to the daily walk of the believer. I am pulling from the list of twenty-five devices of Satan is the fifth one under the heading of “devices to pull the soul into sin.” This device speaks so clearly to our day. In a day when sin is prevalent under the big tent of Christianity, Brooks has pegged it quite well with this device.

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 5

I am continuing with a couple of more posts about Thomas Brooks before moving on to some other matters in April. As we have been discovering with the material of Thomas Brooks (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), he was solidly biblical with his approach to his work with Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. He uses 2 Corinthians 2:11 as a springboard to present all of his material from. We are not, as Christians, to be ignorant of the devices of the devil. He presents as a doctrine that Satan has devices, machinations, or strategies to gain an advantage of the soul of man. Brooks compares him to a greedy merchant that seeks to take every opportunity to beguile, deceive and entrap others. He is a wily merchant who does not key in on widow’s houses but rather on men’s souls.

He determines to prove this point from Scripture. Then he wants to make sure that people are aware of the various devices that he will use. However, Brooks points out that for every device the devil may have that there is an adequate and powerful remedy to overcome the assault. Brooks also desires to show how those devices are developed in the spiritual war and explain some points of information about the devices.

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 4

As we have noted in the past in describing the Puritans, Alexander Whyte, one of the old Scottish preachers, noted them to be “specialists at sin.” They had the ability to look at human nature and character and draw out the nuances of behavior and use them effectively in their preaching. One aspect of their pastoral ministry was directly related to taking the Bible and using it in such a way that it shed great light on the walk of every Christian moving toward the ultimate end of Heaven being his final resting place. To do this kind of effective preaching warranted a time away from the public and locked into places of thoughtful study of the Word and prayerful looking to that Word.

The Puritans saw the devil as very real and very active in trying to trip up believers at every turn in life. He may depart for a season but he would be back with his imps to harass and buffet the best way that he could with all sorts of mayhem. So when Thomas Brooks wrote his most famous work, Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, he had looked at a number of biblical characters and presented their mistakes, not with condescension, but with a measure of warning to all who read about them in the Bible.

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 3

Since I am devoting the month of March to the Puritans, I only have a few more days left to go with this endeavor. We are currently introducing Thomas Brooks (Part 1 & Part 2) who preached a farewell sermon to his church because of his failing health. In a very similar format to Jonathon Edward’s resolutions, Brooks had some admonitions to the church that came in the form of “legacies.” There were a total of twenty-seven, of which fourteen were listed in the last post. I now give you the remainder of them.

Legacy 15: Look upon all the things of this world as you will look upon them when you come to die. At what a poor rate do men look on the things of this world when they come to die! What a low value do men set upon the pomp and glory of it, when there is but a step between them and eternity! Men may now put a mask upon them, but then they will appear in their own colors. Men would not venture the loss of such great things for them did they but look on them now, as they will do at the last day of their life.

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 2

Thomas Brooks was a truly unique character in his efforts at pastoral ministry. This is one thing that you really notice about the Puritans is the dedication that they had to pastoral ministry. They weren’t just concerned with numbers of people who attended their churches but they were very much intent on making sure that they understand and applied the Bible in their daily lives. They seemingly were not just interested in people coming in for a weekly session at church but deeply desired for their prayers to have vitality and their daily devotion to God to be rich and experiential. Some have attempted to place the Puritans into a dry, rigid formalism but that would be quite exaggerated to do so.

If you have ever ventured across the Resolutions of Jonathon Edwards, you are well aware of the goals that he set about to conduct his life in a godly manner. However, Thomas Brooks wrote something similar to them long before Edwards wrote his. Thomas Brooks wrote something called “legacies” to his local church in what was identified as his farewell sermon because of his fading health. His whole focus of leaving the congregation with the thoughts was that their soul was the most important thing they could preserve. He also asserted that the longer a man lives the more treacherous the spiritual battles become. I am certain that if you have been converted for any length of time that you find that the prayer and devotion that served you in your earliest times would never suffice for the present. That is why the Apostle Paul noted that there was a pursuit that went into this work of the Gospel (Philippians 3:13-14).

A Month With the Puritans--Thomas Brooks--Part 1

I am continuing this series for the rest of the month of March. I have chosen to attempt to introduce you to a few of the Puritans that I have found stimulating to me over the last few years. Oddly enough very few Pentecostal preachers have discovered the rich depth of the Puritans. It is immediately clear when you begin to read their sermons and commentaries that these men were much given to the preaching of Scripture.

Having covered Thomas Shepard (Part 1, 2) and a series on the preaching of the Puritans (Part 1, 2, 3, 4), we now turn toward Thomas Brooks. Brooks was another accidental find for me. In the fall of 2006, I received a flyer in the mail advertising a book by Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson entitled Meet the Puritans. The book had close to nine-hundred pages and was being offered for $20. Since I like cheap books, I sent the card back in and received it.