Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

Today there are new Kindle deals on books from Kevin DeYoung, Ray Ortlund, and others.
Meanwhile, Westminster Books has pre-order deals on some of the books due to be published in the weeks ahead.
(Yesterday on the blog: You Just Can’t Have It All)
Job and the Deadly Spiritual Equation
Pierce Taylor Hibbs: “Job is one of my favorite books of the Bible. That usually catches people by surprise. Why would a book about a holy man falling prey to Satanic torment be something you want to read? Despite the initial fear the book induces, it’s extremely comforting and relevant for our understanding of trauma and suffering. Job shows that the worst still leads to the best. And of the many ways in which the book is still relevant, there’s one that stands out to me because of how prevalent it is in our times. It’s what I call ‘the deadly spiritual equation.’”
Did Jesus die for the sins of every person or only for the elect?
Here, courtesy of Ligonier Ministries, is a solid series of answers to a common question.
Humility Is the Main Ingredient of Prayer, Repentance, and Thanksgiving
Thomas Schreiner: “C.S. Lewis famously said, ‘If you don’t think you are conceited, you are very conceited indeed.’ Certainly that applies to humility: if you think you are humble, you are probably suffused with pride. In this article, we will consider briefly how prayer, repentance, and thanksgiving are related to humility.”
While You Were Sleeping
In this article, Madelyn Canada reminds us that God’s plans carry on, even when we can’t clearly see them.
Glue Sticks and Bible Songs
I enjoyed this little celebration of children and their teachers. “In his wisdom and grace, God gives us people, situations, and experiences that we often don’t recognize as priceless gifts at the time. Some of those gifts were given to me 20 years ago, and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to truly appreciate those busy days of teaching, corralling, discipling, and loving the lively and earnest little children that were entrusted to my care every Sunday morning.”
By Steps and Degrees
“Certain doctrines of Reformed theology, and their associated sub-doctrines, are brought into the limelight more than others. For example, there is a rich endowment of Protestant works on the doctrine of justification. One cannot say the same, however, of the sub-doctrine of ‘preparatory grace,’ which has not historically garnered much public attention within Protestant soteriology.” Here’s a short introduction to it.
Flashback: How to Make Accountability Work
Here are seven principles for effective accountability; each is further explained by showing what effective accountability is and is not.

Living like Christ without ever teaching our children about Christlike living is similar to lifestyle evangelism without ever sharing our faith. —Bob Kellemen

Though we are 2,000 years past the founding of the New Testament church, we are seemingly still confused about how we ought to worship God. There are many competing philosophies of worship, many disagreements about everything from its purpose to its God-ordained elements and methods. We know we must worship, but we so often don’t know how.

It is for this reason that we continue to see so many new books on the subject and for this reason that we need to. This includes, most recently, H.B. Charles Jr.’s On Worship: A Short Guide to Understanding, Participating in, and Leading Corporate Worship. He confesses that, though he has previously written on preaching and pastoring, he found it surprisingly difficult to write on worship. “I believe I have a biblical philosophy of these [other] ministry subjects. After more than thirty years of experience in pastoring a church and preaching each week, I feel comfortable writing about those subjects. Who, truly, is competent to write about worship? And if writers feel confident that worship is a subject they have thoroughly mastered, should we be reading what they think?”
Though he does not claim to have thoroughly mastered the subject of worship, he has made a long and careful study of the matter and over many years of leading a church has attempted to refine his convictions along Reformed, Protestant lines. The result is On Worship which “is not a theological treatise, biblical study, or comprehensive handbook on worship.” Neither is it meant to be. It is instead “more like a compass than a road map” that “seeks to point you in the right direction.”
The book is comprised of thirty chapters that fall into three parts. The chapters are deliberately short and are not always entirely thematically sequential—perhaps a bit more like essays or blog posts that could be read in any order rather than having to be read one after the other.
The first section is dedicated to understanding worship not just as a brief time on Sunday mornings but as a whole-life pursuit that is meant to be the priority of every Christian. Worship that honors God depends upon worshipping in the ways he instructs us to, acknowledging his supremacy, depending upon his Word, and being filled with his Spirit. It requires us to be bound to the local church, to faithfully steward our entire lives, and to live with joy and generosity.
The second section is for those who participate in worship (which is to say, for every Christian). All Christians are to be committed to participating in public, corporate worship and all Christians are to carefully prepare themselves for such worship. The gathered church is to read the Word and pray together, to sing and to “amen,” to exercise their gifts and so build up and encourage one another and in that way to carry out the work of the ministry.
The third section is for those who are involved in leading worship. Here Charles writes about specific elements of a service like a call to worship and leading singing. He discusses the importance of racial diversity in the church and the ways churches can honor and integrate young people. He points out that in a society in which biblical knowledge is waning, we must explain everything and take for granted nothing.
In the end, the three sections and thirty chapters lead to a well-rounded and biblically-faithful understanding of why and how God calls us to worship him. It leaves room for different Christians to worship in ways consistent with their traditions and culture, yet also calls us to ensure that, no matter what, our worship is “shaped and governed by the Word of God. Sacred Scripture should be foundational to all that happens in our public and corporate worship assemblies. Beyond the foundation, however, God’s Word should explicitly structure our worship lives—privately and publicly.”
As is the case with all of Charles’ books, On Worship is filled with instructive quotes and punchy one-liners. It leans upon other useful worship resources and amplifies the voices of other helpful authors. His hope, he says, is to lift the reader’s gaze “beyond mundane, secondary, and worldly thoughts to the ultimate goals of true worship.” And that is a hope he realizes well. This is a book that will benefit every Christian, for whether or not we have been called to take a leadership role in worship, it most certainly falls to each one of us to understand it and participate in it.

Buy from Amazon

It’s Reformation Day today, and the occasion got me thinking about some words I had run across earlier this year when reading the works of De Witt Talmage and Theodore Cuyler. Both reflected on Calvin and Wesley, one standing in as the chief Reformed theologian and the other as an avowedly Arminian evangelist. Here is what they said, beginning with Talmage.

As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then he gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience, another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks, the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater, taffrail, ballast.
Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the opposites. I have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a driving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the centre. John Wesley balances Calvin’s Institutes. A cold thinker gives to Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that God has put us, or intended we should occupy.
To these words, I add a brief excerpt from Theodore Cuyler:
“Blessed are the dead—who die in the Lord.” To them the perils of the voyage are over. They have cast anchor in the haven. They are safe. Peter shall never deny again, and Paul will no more be obliged to battle with an unruly “body.” Calvin and Wesley can clasp hands over the glorious fact that neither one of them shall ever fall from grace. That is a joyful anthem which sings itself so sweetly over a believer’s dust, “Blessed is he—for he died in the Lord.”