“You are going to die. Take a moment to let that sink in. You are going to die.”
Those cheerful words open this book:
Michael E. Wittmer. The Last Enemy: Preparing to Win the Fight of Your Life. Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2012. (13-page sample PDF) 
This devotional book is sober and edifying, and Mike is a gifted writer. [Read more…] about Death
Good news: Videos of all 44 stories in The Jesus Storybook Bible are now available. (Before only some of them were available.)
Sally Lloyd-Jones and Sam Shammas. The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name; Curriculum Kit: 44 Lessons for Early–Middle Elementary; with Notes for Teachers Based on Material by Timothy Keller. Grand Rapids: Zonderkidz, 2012.
Bad news: The stories don’t play continuously. You have to click on each individual one. (They are about five minutes each.)
Good news: The videos come on a DVD loaded with PDFs of a new children’s curriculum that supplements The Jesus Storybook Bible. (View two PDFs here: the table of contents and introduction and a sample lesson.)
Related:
Jonathan K. Dodson,“Gospel-Centered Questions to Ask,” appendix 1 in Gospel-Centered Discipleship (Re:Lit; Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 155–56 (formatting added):
Here is a list of questions to help you cultivate gospel motivations.
Questions 11–15 are taken from Sam Storms’s book A Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ.
See . . . forty-five more questions in David Powlison’s list of “X-ray Questions.”
- What do you desire more than anything else?
- What do you find yourself daydreaming or fantasizing about?
- What lies do you subtly believe that undermine the truth of the gospel?
- Are you astonished with the gospel? [Read more…] about 15 Gospel-Centered Questions to Ask
This accessible booklet came out at the end of last month:
Jim Newcomer. Help! I Can’t Forgive. Living in a Fallen World. Leominster, England: Day One, 2012.
It’s 64 pages, but its dimensions are only 5.6 x 4 inches. (Many paperbacks are about 8 x 5 inches.)
Newcomer unpacks and applies Matthew 18.
If you’re preaching through Revelation, you’ll want to include this book on your shortlist of helps:
James M. Hamilton Jr. Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches. Preaching the Word. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 457 pp. (20-page sample PDF)
Jim embraces historic premillennialism.
His sermons in print follow this basic structure (pp. 15–16, formatting added):
In the introduction I seek to do five things:
- (1) Grab attention.
- (2) Raise awareness of a real need that people have, a need that is addressed by the teaching of the text. The goal is to make people feel that they need to listen closely. Ideally, the need we have will be connected somehow to the opening attention-grabber.
- (3) State the main point of the text. [Read more…] about Jim Hamilton on Revelation
This is the most thorough resource I’m aware of that explains why the temple’s curtain tore in two when Jesus died:
Daniel M. Gurtner. The Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 139. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
It focuses on Matt 27:51a but takes into account the other Synoptic references and the explanations in Hebrews.
Dan Gurtner teaches New Testament at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and serves as an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church (where John Piper is pastor for preaching and vision). He earned his PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland under Richard Bauckham, and this book is the published version of his dissertation on the tearing of the temple’s curtain in Matthew 27:51a. [Read more…] about The Torn Veil
Books on the rise of Jeremy Lin are starting to become available (e.g., Ted Kluck and Timothy Dalrymple), and I just read one of them:
Mike Yorkey. Linspired: The Remarkable Rise of Jeremy Lin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012. 176 pp.
Yorkey was following Lin long before Linsanity began.
(By the way, Lin had surgery on his knee this week, and the Knicks expect him to miss the rest of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs.)
Bob Yarbrough has authored two articles on what 1 Thess 4:3–8 teaches about sex:
1. Robert W. Yarbrough, “Excellence in Christian Living: Sex Ethics à la First Thessalonians 4:3–8,” Reformation and Revival 5:4 (1996): 67–76.
Outline
- A Modern Ancient Problem
- Paul’s Commitment to True Excellence
- God’s Will: Sex Ethics at Center Stage
- The Gravity of Sexual Misconduct
- Paul’s (God’s) Call to Excellence Today [Read more…] about Sex Ethics in 1 Thess 4:3–8
