Years ago and early in his ministry at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, Mark Dever preached through the whole Bible in 66 weeks. That is, he preached a sermon on each book of the Bible, and somehow still managed to make them expositional sermons (“the point of the passage is the point of your sermon,” as he often says). He then published those volumes as The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made and The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept. While these sermons are available for free on the CHBC website, they have also been republished by Crossway as new editions of the old volumes.
For the most part, the differences between the volumes are minor (an introduction by Thomas Schreiner replaces that of John MacArthur in the Message of the New Testament volume, for example–both intros are excellent). What’s more telling is that Crossway saw fit to republish these–again, the contents (aside from the introductions) are available for free on the website. And while Dever is an okay-ish writer (and I think he’d be the first to support that description), he is an excellent preacher and the audio is far better than the print version in this case. Again, Crossway think either that these sermons need to be out there with the attention that a reprint garners, or that they will make money on the books, or both.
This tells us something about the state of Evangelicalism (or at least about the state of Crossway, though I am less competent to comment on that). We are thirsty for good Biblical theology, good sermons, and good preaching. So thirsty that we want additional versions of excellent materials already available. That’s not to say there isn’t excellent new stuff available as well (watch for my forthcoming review of Bingham’s A Heart Aflame for God). Just that we want the good stuff from the recent past to be kept around along with the excellent old stuff and the good new stuff.
All of which to say, you should pick up and read these two books. They would make especially good gifts for your pastor, though you should read them too.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and teaches Political Science and History in Southwest Missouri.
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