Diamonds and Pearls

Just finished another book review for Steve. It was great to get in some Puritan reading. I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms since Rob, Andy and myself stopped meeting to read John Owen’s Overcoming Sin & Temptation. But Richard Sibbe’s The Bruised Reed has now displaced that as my favourite Puritan work. Wow! This was encouraging stuff. Here’s my thoughts….

Review of Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax, in Alexander B. Gossart (ed.) Works of Richard Sibbes (Banner of Truth, 1973), pp. 42-101.

The Bruised Reed and the Smoking flax is an exposition of Isaiah 42:1-4, where it states that God’s coming servant will not break a bruised reed or extinguish a dimly burning wick (or smoking flax). Richard Sibbes shows this to be an illustration of how God deals with us in his act of grace through Christ in the believer’s life.

Banks’ Idea of Pastoral Disunity

Here’s my review of the latest book Steve’s given me to read: Robert J. Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting (Paternoster, 1980).

**Please note this is a review of the first edition of the book, not the revised edition (as pictured). For a review of the revised edition see 9Marks.org **

This book sets out to give an account of the Apostle Paul’s view of church which is comprehensive yet readable, and to some extent it achieves this aim. Robert Banks is clearly a fine scholar and has a great knowledge of the first century Mediterranean world into which Paul wrote. He is therefore very proficient at demonstrating how Paul’s understanding of what the Christian community should look like was entirely unique within the time he wrote; there is no comparison to Paul’s understanding of church in Jewish or Greco-Roman culture in Banks’ eyes.