This Made Me Laugh...

Book plugs are always one of the tough gigs to do in the student world, at CU, church, conferences, etc.
Don't want to trivialise the book; do want to make the book sound attractive without being too geeky; don't want it to sound like the book-plug they heard last week; do want to look like I'm not just reading out the blurb on the back.
This video, one of the highlights from the student stream at New Word Alive, takes up the challenge with hilarious results.

HT: Bish

Pierced for our transgressions...

This book is making quite a buzz across the country at the moment. Released next month, it looks set to become the must-read as we see how the wonder of the cross has become sidelined and shamed over the last few years particularly in Christianity.

Steve Chalke's comments in The Lost Message of Jesus are probably but the visible tip of a mammoth iceberg that is subtlely undermining Scripture's rich but clear revelation about what God was doing at Calvary 2000 years ago. Garry Williams has written a few articles recently that I found very useful when defending the penal and substitutionary nature of Jesus' death in a Theology essay last year, and Jim Packer's RTSF monologue What did the Cross achieve? is a classic work of recent years. But I can't think of such a systematic study of the biblical texts, the history of the doctrine, and the common ways in which penal substitution is called into question that has been quite so extensive. I hope in fifty years, God willing, I'll have a well-worn and much-prized copy of this on my bookshelf.

You can read John Piper's foreword on the book's site here, but here's a snippet that caught my eye:

There was only one hope for me – that the infinite wisdom of God might make a way for the love of God to satisfy the wrath of God so that I might become a son of God.

This is exactly what happened, and I will sing of it forever. After saying that I was by nature a child of wrath, Paul says, ‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ’ (Eph. 2:4-5 ESV). What a grievous blindness when a teacher in the church writes that the term ‘children of wrath’ cannot mean ‘actual objects of God’s wrath . . . [because] in the same breath they are described as at the same time objects of God’s love’. On the contrary. This is the very triumph of the love of God. This is the love of God – the ‘great love with which he loved us’. It rescued me from his wrath and adopted me into sonship.

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.

Old but never out of date...

Have been reading Ryle's brief account of the life and death of John Bradford, one of the English reformers of the sixteenth-century who was burnt at the stake.

Here are some words of Bradford's in a letter to the Earl of Bedford in 1554:

Remember He lost more for you than you can lose for Him. Remember you lose not that which is lost for His sake, for you shall find much more here and elsewhere. Remember you shall die; and when and where and how you cannot tell. Remember the death of sinners is most terrible. Remember the death of God's saints is precious in his sight. Remember the multitude goeth the wide way which windeth to woe. Remember the strait gate which leadeth to glory has but few travellers. Remember Christ biddeth you strive to enter in threat. Remember he that trusteth in the Lord shall recieve strength to stand against all the assaults of his enemies.

These are the words of a man who would rather be burnt to death than compromise the gospel message. Immense grace at work.