Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job

Title: Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job
Author: Layton Talbert
Publisher: BJU Press, 2007
Number of pages: 375
Begun: February 2, 2009
Finished: April 15, 2009
Rating: *****

I used this book as a guide for my private devotional studies of the book of Job over a two-month period of time. It helped to provide some of the most enriching times of spiritual meditation I have experienced in a very long time—perhaps ever. There is so much to unpack in this story of God’s seeking to reveal more of Himself to a man through affliction, thereby demonstrating His authority to afflict, the necessity of human submission to Divine affliction, and the vast mercy He shows through affliction.

Though Talbert refuses to call his book a commentary, he clearly and thoroughly covers the background and context, as well as interpretational keys, and does a great job of expositing the text, if not always in a verse-by-verse manner, at least in a way that addresses every section and theme, and in a very readable and easy-to-attain style. (I was actually surprised at how easy to read the book was.) Perhaps the most challenging thing about the format of the book was having to stop so frequently to read the endnotes—but they were worth every bit of the price of the book! I highlighted nearly as much in the endnotes as in the rest of the book.

I profited so much on so many different levels from this book that the thought of trying to communicate all of that in a book review that would be short enough for you all to still want to read it is quite the daunting task! I will let it suffice to say that the overwhelming message that I walked away with is that God has all authority to do whatever He pleases, and I am responsible to submit to anything He chooses to do, and that in whatever He chooses for me, He is showing great mercy, however pleasant or ill it may seem at the time. (Sound familiar? Seems like I just said that.) To give you a little taste I will paste in the six lessons Job learned which Talbert cites in chapter 21. I used these as an outline for a lesson I taught in a ladies’ Sunday School class recently.

• Man is ignorant of the vastness of God’s ways and works, and it is imprudent to advertise that ignorance by unwarranted theological confidence (Job 42:3).
• God is free and sovereign to purpose what He pleases and to perform what He purposes (Job 42:2).
• Man is small and demonstrates supreme contemptibility by speaking rashly to God and about God (Job 40:4).
• Personal familiarity with God is worth supremely more than secondhand hearsay and academic knowledge (Job 42:5).
• Correct theology expresses itself practically in personal humility and submission before God (Job 42:6).
• It is necessary for an individual’s spiritual well-being to forgive those with well-intentioned or but erroneous or ill-applied theology (42:7-11).

And what can we learn from the book of Job about how a believer should respond to trials?

1. Believe Him implicitly, with or without proof, because He has spoken.
2. Trust Him submissively, with or without understanding, because He is sovereign and good.
3. Worship Him reverently, with or without reward, because He is worthy.
4. Wait for Him patiently, with or without reprieve, because He will come (James 5:7-11).

Dick and Jane and Friends

I got this book last fall from Daddy. I started it in November of 2008, and I finished it on March 7, 2009.

My favorite, favorite person in this book is Dick. This is the biggest book I've ever read. It has 193 pages. Baby Sally is a little girl. There are a couple stories where we see that Spot digged in the ground. Puff is their little cat. There is a story of Spot and Puff and Little Tim that is a bear that she really loved and cared for. And one morning or one day (I don't know), Spot, Tim and Puff and baby Sally went out. And they went jumping, and they got on the railing and they jumped off.

My favorite story is about two boats who were racing. One was Dick's--the yellow boat, and one was Jane--the middle sized girl. And her boat was blue. And Baby Sally--the youngest--had like a little train thing that could hook onto a train and drive it. But when she put that thing into the water, it sank. And Dick knew that that would happen and he got a stick and apparently got it out while the wet water was dripping.

I would sometimes read this book in my mind, sometimes to my sister. I would sometimes read it to my daddy. And I would sometimes read it to my mommy. I love almost all the stories because they are very special to me.

Feed My Sheep

Title: Feed My Sheep, A Passionate Plea For Preaching
Authors: Eric J. Alexander, Joel R. Beeke, James Montgomery Boice, Sinclair B. Ferguson, Don Kistler, John MacArthur, R. Albert Mohler Jr., John Piper, R. C. Sproul, R. C. Sproul Jr., and Derek W. H. Thomas
Publisher: Reformation Trust, 2008
Pages: 155
Begun: April 8, 2009
Completed: April 12, 2009


This book was originally written and published in the late 90s by Soli Deo Gloria Publications and then was republished again in 2004 by Ligonier Ministries. The newest publication of the book is the second edition published by Reformation Trust now in an attractive hardback cover. The work consists of eleven chapters, each chapter written by the eleven contributing pastors listed above. The overall theme as indicated by the book's subtitle is "a passionate plea for preaching." The book, then, is a biblical defense of preaching in general and of the lectio continua method in particular. Specific topics discussed are the primacy of preaching, the foolishness of preaching, expository preaching, experiential preaching, preaching to the mind, preaching with authority, and evangelistic preaching.

The two chapters that made the deepest impressions upon me were Ferguson's on "Preaching to the Heart" and Piper's on "Preaching to Suffering People." Ferguson gives five characteristics of heart preaching:

1. A right use of the Bible.
2. Nourishment of the whole person.
3. An understanding of the condition of the hearers.
4. The use of imagination.
5. Grace in Christ.

I like what he says here: "Preaching to the heart, then, is not merely a matter of technique or homiletic style. These things have their proper place and relevance. But the more fundamental, indeed, the more essential thing for the preacher is surely the fact that something has happened in his own heart; it has been laid bare before God by His Word. He, in turn, lays his heart bare before those to whom he ministers. And within that context, the goal he has in view is so to lay bare the truth of the Word of God that the hearts of those who hear are opened vertically to God and horizontally to one anther." (104)

He goes on to say: "In the last analysis, this is what preaching to the heart is intended to produce: inner prostration of the hearts of our listeners through a consciousness of the presence and glory of God. This result distinguishes authentic biblical preaching from any cheap substitute; it marks the difference between preaching about the Word of God and preaching the Word of God." (104-5)

In discussing grace in Christ as it affects the manner of our preaching: "For while preaching involves bringing the world of the Bible to bear upon the world of our contemporaries, it also involves bringing the message-in-words of the Scriptures through the message-in-manner of the preacher. There needs to be a marriage between the message and the manner; therein lies the heart of the mystery of preaching." (114)

Piper, in his chapter on Preaching to Suffering People, begins with five assumptions:

1. Preaching is expository exultation.
2. Preaching is a normative event in the gathered church.
3. The aim of preaching is the glory of God through Jesus Christ.
4. God is most glorified in our people when our people are most satisfied in Him.
5. Suffering is a universal human experience, designed by God for His glory, but endangering every Christian's faith.

If all these assumptions are true which they are, then "our preaching must aim, week in and week out, to help our people be satisfied in God while suffering. Indeed, we must help them count suffering as part of why they should be satisfied in God. We must build into their minds and hearts a vision of God and His ways that helps them see suffering not merely as a threat to their satisfaction if God (which it is), but also as a means to their satisfaction in God (which it is). We must preach so as to make suffering seem normal and purposeful, and not surprising in this fallen age." (131)

God uses our own suffering as preachers to affect our preaching to suffering people in the following ways:

1. God has ordained that our preaching becomes deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.

2. God has ordained that when we preach from weakness and suffering sustained by joy in Christ, the people see that Christ is treasured and they are loved.

3. The suffering of the preacher helps him see from Scripture what he must say to his suffering people.

Piper's conclusion: "We must preach with a passion to produce people whose satisfaction in God is so solid, so deep, and so unshakable that suffering and death will not make our people murmur or curse God, but will help them count it all joy and say with Paul, 'To live is Christ and to die is gain.' How will that happen? I said that the preacher must suffer. That is what I have tried to show thus far. And then the preacher must rejoice. He must be hurt in the ministry, and he must be happy in God." (138)

I have found this a helpful resource on preaching that I want to reread in the future. It was greatly convicting and encouraging at the same time. I would highly recommend it to my fellow preachers.

Title: If God Should Choose: The Authorized Story of Jim and Roni Bowers
Author: Kristen Stagg
Publisher: Moody Press
Number of pages: 221
Begun: April 4, 2009
Finished: April 7, 2009

If God Should Choose is the story of a young ABWE missionary couple who in 2001 were flying in a small plane over the Amazon when they were shot down by the Peruvian air force which had assumed them to be drug traffickers. I remember cursorily following the news about the incident back when it happened, but had not given it much thought in recent days until I downloaded and listened to a Mother’s Day sermon by John Piper. In the sermon, titled “To Be a Mother is a Call to Suffer,” Piper utilizes Jim Bowers’ testimony as a primary example of the fact that God’s sovereign plan for a parent (and really for any Christian) may well be a call to suffer loss for His sake. Piper isolates one statement from Jim’s memorial service testimony in which Jim dubs the instrument of both his wife’s and infant’s deaths “a sovereign bullet.” Both Tim and I could not help but be moved by the sermon, and it was somewhat ironic that just a week later our host in Mentor offered me this book which recounts the Bowers’ story.

The thing that struck me the most about the book was just how “normal” this young couple was. Granted, it’s not just anyone who leaves the comforts of an American home to become a missionary family living on the Amazon in a homemade houseboat barely larger than an RV. But even so, their struggles with things like finances, relationships and infertility were no different than we and a lot of other people with whom we all regularly brush shoulders experience. And yet within a few hours time, the Bowers went from relative obscurity to becoming the centerpiece of an international news event. Shot down without warning, 35-year-old Veronica “Roni” Bowers and adopted 7-month-old daughter Charity were killed instantly by the same bullet, fellow missionary pilot Kevin Donaldson was seriously injured, and Jim Bowers and 6-year-old Cory, though uninjured, were forced through the ordeal of a major cockpit fire, a nosedive into the Amazon, and a grueling afternoon spent guarding their loved ones’ expired bodies while waiting for all the government officials to make their assessments of the situation.

In addition to providing historical background and context, the author dedicates the first part of each chapter and then two entire chapters at the end to a detailed play-by-play of the incident. It truly was remarkable to learn of the many ways in which God provided superhuman grace to Jim and Cory throughout this trial and into the broad spotlight where Jim was able to publicly affirm that "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. " The most inspiring thing for me was to see illustrated a real-life, grace-filled, totally-submissive response to human loss. In the memorial service testimony that took place only one week after the incident, Jim listed out 14 different reasons why he knew his circumstances were Divinely purposed and enacted.

Equally moving is the encouragement Steve Saint gave publicly to 6-year-old Cory at the same service. He reminisced about how he had lost his own father, Nate Saint, at nearly the same age as Cory, and how people had often commented to him and his mother about that horrible “tragedy.”

And you know what? Now when people say, ‘That was a tragedy,’ I know they are wrong. In life, many of us Christians have tried to preach and have tried to believe that the life of a believer is all joy and no pain. That isn’t so. And we’ve tried to believe that for those people who don’t know the Lord as we do, their life is all pain and no joy, and that isn’t so. You know what the difference is? For them, the pain is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won’t last. For us, the pain is superficial and the joy is fundamental. … Cory, I believe that when you’re as old as I am that you’ll understand like I do now, Jesus never wastes a hurt. (emphases mine)

This book was profitable for me in that many of these same concepts have been reinforced in my recent study of the book of Job (guided by Layton Talbert’s book Beyond Suffering). I’ll close with the poem Elizabeth Elliott read at the memorial service for Roni and Charity Bowers:

I stood a mendicant (a beggar) of God before His royal throne
And begged Him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out his hand, but as I would depart
I cried, ‘But Lord, this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me.’
He said, ‘My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee.’
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

Martha Snell Nicholson

Worship Matters

Title: Worship Matters
Author: Bob Kauflin
Publisher: Crossway, 2008
Pages: 259
Begun: February 9, 2009
Completed: April 8, 2009

Bob Kauflin, director of worship development at Sovereign Grace, has penned his thoughts on worship and music for the 21st century church. Though I do not entirely agree with some of his applications, especially in the music realm, I appreciated his obvious passion for biblical worship. He writes some excellent chapters on biblical worship that made the reading well worth it. I would describe his approach in this book as being philosophically practical. He shares a number of illustrations from his personal life. Consider some compelling statements:

"The Great God values not the service of men, if the heart be not in it: The Lord sees and judges the heart; he has no regard to outward forms of worship, if there be no inward adoration, if no devout affection be employed therin. It is therefore a matter of infinite importance, to have the whole heart engaged steadfastly for God." (26)(This is actually a quotation by Isaac Watts.)

"The better (i.e. the more accurately) we know God through his Word, the more genuine our worship will be. In fact, the moment we veer from what is true about God, we're engaging in idolatry. Regardless of what we think or feel, there is no authentic worship of God without a right knowledge." (28)

"There are many things we can proclaim during and after a time of corporate worship. God's glory is unending, and his perfections are infinite. But the fuel of our praise will always be the gospel of Christ who has redeemed us and brought us to God." (134)

All in all, this was a good read. A drawback for me personally was his wordy and rambling writing style. But that is a relatively minor thing compared to the core message of the book.

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

published by RuthBix

Title: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong (Why We Love France But Not the French)
Author: Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barrow
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc. (Naperville, IL)
Number of pages: 343 (111 pages read this year)
Purchased: Gift from Mom and Dad Bixby
Recommended by: Mom Bixby
Begun: September 28, 2007
Finished: March 23, 2009

As we began gearing up for deputation well more than a year ago, Tim and I were also becoming increasingly interested in beefing up on our knowledge of the French culture and thought. This book is the first of several we have been reading/have purchased to read in an attempt to better prepare ourselves for future life and ministry in France. Mom and Dad Bixby gave us this book as a gift for our seventh anniversary, and I have been reading it aloud to Tim little by little on long road trips. We have learned a lot from this book—in fact, more than I could ever convey here. It has also been confirming to find many of the same concepts reinforced through other reading that we had been doing concurrently with it (Au Contraire! and The French Way). The book really is as interesting as the title would lead one to believe, though honestly it plumbs such depths that I still don’t feel as if I have begun to grasp all of its implications. But it has provided us with a helpful framework to begin to understand how the French are different from us as Americans, and why we can’t begin to understand their thinking and perceptions by analyzing them through our “American glasses”.

The French Spirit
Written by a Canadian duo, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, which spent two years living in and studying France, the book is divided into three main sections: spirit, structure and change. In the first section on the French spirit, the authors undertake the task of explaining some of the intricacies of French culture and how so much of France’s modern orientation and worldview is derived from her long history. How her passion for the land and her sense of nobility go all the way back to the days of feudalism (when, I might add, no one but some Indians were running around in North America).The authors relate how attached the French are to rhetoric and how much they value the process of developing thoughts more than the ultimate goal of getting to a solution. In a chapter titled “Private Space,” the authors describe the French notion of public versus private, including what sorts of things the French would consider acceptable for public conversation (e.g. politics) and what topics would be considered completely taboo (e.g. religion) to their way of thinking. The authors also dealt with World War II and the Algerian Conflict and explored the many ways in which those major events have defined more recent French culture and thought.

The French Structure
The second division of the book identified the basic governmental and sociological structures upon which modern France is built. This section was especially helpful to my understanding of how France operates. Though it may seem paradoxical when one considers the significance of the French Revolution, the authors recount that the French have kept an undeniable attachment to absolutism. “The French, it seems, can’t resist making kings” (p. 118). The authors also observe how, unlike North Americans who build entire platforms around the notion of keeping the government out of their business, “the French look to the State for answers to everything” (p. 127). This section contained descriptions of the French judicial system, educational system, and their view of their own language. (“Anglo-Americans consider language a tool, but the French regard it as an accomplishment, even a work of art. … It’s their national monument” (p.162).)

As a future immigrant to France, I found the topic of assimilation to be especially interesting. The authors explain that because the French are so committed to the concept of the State (l’Etat), they are consciously committed to ignoring facts like one’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation. “Once you’re French, you’re nothing else. This attitude means the State doesn’t give—or really permit—anyone to have any other identity” (p. 139). Of course, where the rub comes in is in the fact that if one’s devotion to one’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation is perceived to be stronger than one’s commitment to the State, then you may be perceived to be at odds with the State, which necessarily puts you at odds with the common good of the entire French people.

Future Change
The final section summarizes the French worldview as presented in previous chapters. Here are some highlights (taken from pp. 283-85):

• Because of their centuries-old attachment to the land, restriction is their second nature, not expansion.
• The French glorify what’s elevated and grand, not what’s common and accessible.
• They value form as much as content.
• The French don’t just glorify their élite; French society needs a clearly identified élite.
• They affirm the State’s role in virtually everything—culture, language, welfare, and the economy.
• The French have learned to live with the idea that they are neither the biggest, nor the strongest, power on earth. But they still believe they are the best.

The authors conclude by showing that the French are becoming more flexible than they used to be, recognizing the necessity of change in order to accommodate relationships with the European community and the world at large.

“One thing is certain: France is not what it used to be. France has never been what it used to be, and it never will. So we might as well enjoy it while it lasts” (p. 343).