Packer on the Word...

Mark Driscoll blogs on a lecture he observed from Jim Packer (or 'J.I.', if you know him well) here. Reading Knowing God again has made me realise how brilliantly rich Packer's writings are. You just long to keep devouring the pages as he throws his flashlight on the glorious God of the gospel, inviting us to grasp something of who God is, and marvel and change. Driscoll writes that Packer's address ended with three exhortations, which I'll quote here:

1. The hope of our glory must always lie beyond this world and to nurture that hope a reading of the Puritan Bunyan's book Pilgrim's Progress is essential.
2. Total and continual immersion in the Psalms is exceedingly good for the soul and too infrequently practiced.
3. Studying the lives of those who faithfully handled God's Word is helpful and Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones must be included at the top of that list.

HT: The Resurgence

Goldsworthy and the Bible...

Having spent most of the last few weeks trying to submerge myself in the writings of Graeme Goldsworthy for my dissertation, I'm now a massive fan of his work. He's passionate about understanding the Bible as a whole, and a whole that points to Jesus Christ, which is what he calls biblical theology.

Justin Buzzard interviews Goldsworthy on his blog here and it really brings out Graeme's heart for biblical theology to be pastoral, that every Christian might long to see how the Scriptures testify to Jesus Christ.

The Morning I Heard God Speak...

Cracking article by John Piper here. Read and marvel.

HT: Nathan

A flippin' brilliant book...

Have been reading Dig Deeper! by Nigel Beynon and Andrew Sach - it's really, really brilliant! Billed as a toolbox of tools to help you unearth the Bible's true meaning, it does exactly what it says on the tin. In fact, I can't recommend this book enough; short chunky chapters each focus on a different 'tool', e.g. 'the Repetition tool', 'the Bible Timeline tool', before giving a worked example of that tool in action and a passage to apply the tool yourself. Definitely a great resource enabling individuals to get to grips with the Bible in their own time, and to help others.