pilgrim people

Pilgrim People's recommended book for the month of October is Mike Horton's latest release on Baker, The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World. I admit that, at first, I wasn’t all that interested in reading it (shhh, don’t tell him I said that). When I obtained my copy, I scanned the table of contents and thought, “Well, I know what he’s going to say in each of these chapters.” I mean, it isn’t as if Horton’s material is new to me. I have read every book (and I’m pretty sure every magazine and journal article) he has ever published. I have read his entire dissertation on Thomas Goodwin. I have probably heard every episode of the White Horse Inn since about ‘97 or ‘98. I studied under him at WSC from 2000-04. And I have the rare privilege of interacting with him on an almost weekly basis as a fellow minister and friend at Christ URC. So, one might cut me some slack for assuming that I already know where he is going in each of his chapters of Gospel-Driven and being tempted to leave it on the shelf and move on to other reading.

Well, now that I am about halfway through it, I realize that I was only partially correct in my assumption. Yes, Horton pretty much goes where I figured he would go in each of his chapters. He builds a case for the Gospel being the source for our sanctification, the fuel for driving the Christian life, and the wind in the sails that moves the boat across the water.

Now, if you have read/listened to Horton for any amount of time but you haven’t yet read Gospel-Driven, then I know what you may be thinking, because it is probably the same thing I was thinking when I received my copy: “What? A whole book on Horton’s analogy of the Gospel acting like wind in the sails of the Christian? I already know that, love that, and seek to live by that. What else is there to read?”

Think again.

Click to read more ...

For the two or three people in the universe who may have read the brief survey I offered of the views of the Mosaic covenant by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed writers, I want to make a few concluding observations:  

First, it is important for us to understand that any interaction with the covenant theology of the Reformed orthodox must take into serious consideration the wide variety of their views regarding Sinai and its place in the historia salutis, as well as their variegated interpretive nuances. As with other doctrines, there was not a monolithic unity among the Reformed orthodox on this point. There were, instead, an assortment of formulations on how the Mosaic covenant related to the covenant of works, covenant of grace, and new covenant.

Click to read more ...

Here and here. Definitely worth reading.

Here.

at 7:00pm in the North County (Shamouns) and East County (Jumpers).