Logos users, remember that this month there is a sale on many of the best commentaries you can get. And, as far as I’m concerned, building a commentary library is the number one reason to use Logos! (You should also take a look at their free and nearly-free selection for the month.)

Today’s Kindle deals include a couple of interesting titles.
The Abuse of Headship in the Home
Victor Sholar reacts strongly against some of the excesses and abuses of those who say they are “complementarian” or otherwise aligned with the Bible’s perspective on husbands and wives.
CityAlight – He Calls Me Friend (Live)
Here’s a sweet new single by CityAlight. They just keep writing great songs! This one is about our friendship with Jesus.
“Christ must be our all or our nothing.”—Conrad Mbewe

This is because of who He is as the infinitely glorious God-man and because of the indescribably wonderful salvation He has procured for us. Paul Washer does an excellent job of showing us these breathtaking realities in this Scripture-saturated and historically reinforced book. It will leave you worshiping God as your soul is saturated afresh with the unsearchable riches of Christ!” —Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church and founding chancellor of the African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia (Sponsored Link)

Powerful Photos of Older People With Down Syndrome Defy Misconceptions
I so appreciate this gallery of older people with Down syndrome. “A powerful photo essay entitled Here I Am challenges people’s false assumption that individuals with Down syndrome do not live into their senior years.”
What Anti-Trafficking Experts Think of the Hit Movie ‘Sound of Freedom’
Christianity Today spoke to anti-trafficking experts who, without criticizing Sound of Freedom, explain what their work and ministries usually look like. “Staffers with experience in anti-trafficking ministries that CT interviewed recognize that this is a movie, so the story will be dramatized. But they want audiences to understand that a lot of anti-trafficking work in the US looks different from what’s in the film.”
Why We Need to Hear Sermons in Person
Joe Carter explains why it’s essential for Christians to hear sermons together and in person.
Of Joy or Despair in Ministry Success
“Are you a worker in your church? Are you a volunteer? Are you a pastor? Are you one of those who gives his or her all for the sake of the gospel and the love of the Lord and his people? If you are one who sees the importance of the glory of God in his church, I would guess that you are also one who knows what it feels like to experience some pretty sweet joys and some pretty significant pains. Ministry can be great. Ministry can be hard. Being a pastor can be so very sweet. Being a pastor can be so very discouraging.”
Flashback: Making the Christian Life More Complicated Than It Needs To Be
He calls each of us to be obedient in the context he has ordained for us. For the end of the matter, when all else has been heard, is that we are to simply fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the sacred duty of every man, the kind expectation of a loving God.

We cannot produce by ourselves what God has planned to produce in us through the impact of the preaching of his word. —Sinclair Ferguson

We hear a lot about “deconstruction” these days and a lot about “exvangelicals.” And though the terms may be new, the reality is as old as the church itself—some will profess faith for a time and then fall away. There was a time when Christians referred to such people as “infidels,” those who had come to reject the faith they once professed. In my ongoing reading of the sermons of De Witt Talmage, I came across some of his writings on infidelity and found them as appropriate to our day as they were to his. I thought I’d share a few choice snippets.

In this first one he explains why infidelity attracts so much attention.

I know infidelity makes a good deal of talk in our day. One infidel can make great excitement, but I will tell you on what principle it is. It is on the principle that if a man jumps overboard from an ocean-liner he makes more excitement than all the five hundred who stay on the deck. But the fact that he jumps overboard does not stop the ship. Does that wreck the five hundred passengers? It makes great excitement when a man jumps from the lecturing platform or from the pulpit into infidelity; but does that keep the Bible or the Church from carrying millions of passengers to the shores of safety?

Then he shows how those who reject the faith invariably leave nothing better or more hopeful in its wake:

These infidel advocates demonstrate the meanness of infidelity, by trying to substitute for the chief consolation of the world absolutely nothing. You have only to hear them at the edge of the grave, or at the edge of the coffin, discoursing, to find out that there is no comfort in infidelity. There is more good cheer in the hooting of an owl at midnight than in their discourses at the verge of the grave. You might as well ask the spirit of eternal darkness to discourse on the brightness of everlasting day.
…
They despise what they call the apostolic creed; but if their own creed were written out it would read like this: “I believe in nothing, the maker of heaven and earth, and in nothing which it hath sent, which nothing was born of nothing, and which nothing was dead and buried and descended into nothing, and arose from nothing, and ascended to nothing, and now sitteth at the right hand of nothing, from which it will come to judge nothing. I believe in the holy agnostic church and in the communion of nothingarians, and in the forgiveness of nothing, and the resurrection of nothing, and in the life that never shall be. Amen!”

And here is one final snippet in which he demonstrates the true horror of those who seek to draw others away from what God has revealed to be true:

You know what caused the accident some years ago on the Hudson River Railroad. It was an intoxicated man who for a joke pulled the string of the air brake and stopped the train at the most dangerous point of the journey. But the lightning express train, not knowing there was any impediment in the way, came down crushing out of the mangled victims the immortal souls that went speeding instantly to God and judgment. It was only a joke. He thought it would be such fun to stop the train. He stopped it! And so these infidel champions are chiefly anxious to stop the long train of the Bible, and the long train of the churches, and the long train of Christian influences, while coming down upon us are death, judgment, and eternity, coming a thousand miles a minute, coming with more force than all the avalanches that every slipped from the Alps, coming with more strength than all the lightning express trains that ever whistled, or shrieked, or thundered across the continent.

If you have ever visited Wittenberg, Germany and have taken the time to tour its famous Castle Church, you may have made the same observation I did: The best part of the building is its doors. Castle Church is, of course, the spot where Martin Luther chose to post his Ninety-Five Theses. Centuries later, King Frederick William IV chose to commemorate the event by commissioning a beautiful set of bronze doors inscribed with Luther’s words. And, though they’ve been refurbished in the years between, they hang there still as the city’s foremost landmark.

Any tour of the cathedral begins with the doors. Once the tourists have gazed at them for a time, snapped the requisite photographs, and heard how Luther inadvertently sparked what we now know as the Protestant Reformation, the tour leads inside. And the inside is rather uninteresting by comparison. There are a few sculptures high up on the columns and a number of graves embedded in the floor, including Luther’s. But in most ways it is just another of Europe’s innumerable cathedrals without much to distinguish it from all the others.
I don’t know about you, but I consider it a disappointment when the doors to a building are the best part of the building. Likewise, it’s a disappointment when the opening scene of a film goes unsurpassed by any that follow over the next two hours, and a disappointment when the opening strains of an oratorio are the composer’s best. Handel was no fool when he made the “Hallelujah” chorus Messiah’s forty-fourth movement rather than its first.
This life can be pretty good at times. By God’s grace, we experience many pleasures and many joys. This world is full of delights and we honor God when we acknowledge them, experience them, and express gratitude for them. “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun,” says Solomon metaphorically. “So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all” (Ecclesiastes 11:7–8a). We honor God when we marvel at a sunrise, when we savor a cup of coffee, when we raise our hands in worship, when we fall into bed with the husband or wife of our youth.
But even as we acknowledge all this, we must also acknowledge that this world is not Wittenberg and the Christian gospel is not Castle Church. The doors are not the best part. Rather, the pleasures of this life are nothing more than the the foyer, the atrium, the entranceway to much greater joys beyond. After all, no joy here is untouched by at least some measure of sorrow and no pleasure here is unattended by at least some element of pain. None of our pleasures are pure and unadulterated, but all are in some way clouded, all in some way alloyed. Every pleasure that fulfills some longing simply exposes another.
There is freedom in understanding and admitting this, for it means we can enjoy our pleasures as they are instead of being disappointed that they are not all we might wish them to be. We can enjoy them even though they are incomplete, even though they inevitably leave us ultimately unsatisfied. We can enjoy them as pleasures that gesture us toward greater pleasures to come. And we can understand that, when compared to the glory that will someday be ours, they are but the plain and unadorned doors that open into a splendid palace that is far beyond all we have ever imagined.