My wife Molly met our sponsored child in El Salvador yesterday. I recommend reading her thoughts on the day.

No, no, no. My friend, Mark Driscoll. No, no, no.

Yesterday you tweeted and facebooked to a gazillion people:

Only the hardcore uber geek theological types who love footnotes will care, but John Sailhamer's The Meaning of the Pentateuch & Andreas Kostenberger's A Theology of John's Gospels & Letters were just released. For both of you - enjoy.

Emphatically, no. To all pastors and serious readers of the Old Testament—geek, uber geek, under geek, no geek—if  you graduated from high school and know the word “m e a n i n g,” sell your latest Piper or Driscoll book and buy Sailhamer.

There is nothing like it. It will rock your world. You will never read the “Pentateuch” the same again. It is totally readable. You can skip all the footnotes and not miss a beat.

'Nough said, buddy. I love you anyway.

P. S. I haven’t read Kostenberger yet.

As a father of a multiply-disabled child, I have consumed dozens of books, articles, and web sites on suffering, disability, and the sovereignty of God. 

What I read yesterday morning from a young man with spina bifida may be the best statement I have ever encountered on this subject.  Here is an excerpt:

Both pain and pleasure are meant to point us to the same reality; namely, that Jesus Christ is infinitely beautiful and so much more than enough for our every need. Living for Him, even suffering for Him, is worth every moment of affliction! Why? Because Jesus shows you such beauty in pain, because He is there and He is carrying us through.

The writer, Joe Eaton, is well-known to us at Desiring God as a volunteer and an intern with Children Desiring God last spring before starting college this fall. I can testify that he lives what he writes.

Today is a very important day in my life—my mother’s birthday.

At my blog, I’m in the middle of a series, telling our adoption story. Today, I skipped ahead a few episodes to describe Mother’s response to our adoption news.

I’m thanking God for Mother, who to this day points me toward him through her life and practical advice.

Bethlehem College and Seminary is offering new undergraduate programs beginning in the fall of 2010.

We'll be offering a two-year degree in Christian Worldview, a four-year degree in Biblical and Theological Studies, a four-year degree in the History of Ideas, and a non-traditional degree completion program.

Whichever of these programs students choose, they will not find a typical college experience.

The classes are small.

For starters, we keep the classes around 16 students per instructor (instead of those mammoth introductory courses at most colleges).

The price is small, too.

For 2009-2010, the tuition was under $5,000 for 32 hours of credit (compared to $24,000 for a typical private Christian college). And if you apply and are accepted before June 1, we'll help you find affordable housing with other students near Bethlehem Baptist’s downtown campus.

The teachers are many.

Besides learning from their regular instructors, students will learn from as many as 40 scholars, pastors, and missionaries, all of them accomplished in their fields.

The coursework is integrated.

In our foundational program in Christian Worldview, we weave Bible, theology, history, anthropology, world religions, biblical Greek, missions, science (and more!) into a single comprehensive course of study.

We take a chronological approach, beginning with creation and moving through to the present day, exploring God’s mission in history and how various religions, philosophies, and worldviews have left their mark on the world.

Our two four-year undergraduate majors build on this integrated foundation.

The college is church-based.

We don’t just want to instruct the minds of our students; we also want to engage their hearts and shape their lives. Thus, the classes don’t just take place at the church building; all of our programs are woven into the life of Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Along with coursework, our programs include mentorship by Bethlehem members, field trips to mosques, synagogues, and temples, and ministry opportunities in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country.

In the end, our goal is simple: to provide a unique, God-centered, life-transforming, cost-effective, undergraduate experience. John Piper explains,

What we have seen, and what we would like to teach, is a God-entranced vision of reality that will make all other study and all the rest of life, deeper, richer, and more in sync with God’s ultimate purposes for your life.

Applications for our primary undergraduate programs are available now. For more information, visit our website, download our undergraduate brochure, and listen to John Piper’s special address on the Biblical Foundations for Bethlehem College and Seminary.

I bought The Complete English Works of George Herbert recently, hoping to add a little more poetry and devotion to my reading list. Not 10 minutes after laying my hands on it I read "Bitter-sweet" and knew I would not be disappointed. I'm tempted to say these are the best 8 lines of English poetry I know of.

Bitter-sweet

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

(I've also discovered that John Piper quotes this poem in When the Darkness Will Not Lift (PDF), pg. 78.)

In this month's World Magazine, John Piper considers Bertrand Russell's "tragically odd" worldview.

"Is religion absurd or good for the world?" As many of you know, this is the question Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens discuss in their movie Collision. Today they're also answering it at The Huffington Post.

Desiring God is participating in Tim Challies' "Free Stuff Fridays" this week. Go on over to his site to enter to win

• When I Don’t Desire God DVD
• God is the Gospel DVD
• Don’t Waste Your Life book
• The Complete Romans Series audio DVD
• Desiring God

One of the main ways that pastors can obey the great commandment and love God with all their hearts and souls is by tending to his sheep.

14 years ago, John Piper did this when he wrote a letter to John Knight, who is now Desiring God’s Sr. Director of Development. The letter was “Words of Hope for a Baby Born Blind.” John Knight has previously written about how God has used his precious, blind son to point him to Jesus Christ and his supremacy over all things while exposing his own sinfulness and neediness.

Be sure to subscribe to John’s blog as tomorrow he plans on posting about “one of the results of Pastor John’s calling on the church to do hard things.”

You may have already heard that the Gospel Coalition unveiled their excellent new site on Sunday.

(Of course, we knew it would be good since the design is by Matthew Taylor, a regular graphic designer for DG, and the website development is by Josh Sowin, formerly of DG, now of Rainsong Media.)

Along with a fresh design, The Gospel Coalition has added some new features including two blogs.

• Between Two Worlds—Justin Taylor has moved his site and is now blogging for TGC.
• The Gospel Coalition Blog—With TGC's new site, they now have their own blog.

Drop on in and give them a visit. While you're there check out the many other resources they offer. You may also want to follow the Gospel Coalition on Twitter.

I've been listening to Augustine's Confessions while doing yard work and exercising. It's been 8-9 years since I read the book and was blown away. The entire book is written as a prayer to God. Listening to it is a different experience.

It's listening to Augustine pray. And listening to him confess his sins, struggles, and intellectual wrestlings in this spiritual autobiography reminds me just how similar we are to our ancient brothers and sisters. As he talks to his Savior I hear what a heart in love with Jesus sounds like. And to listen to him ponder the miracle that is the human memory gives me a glimpse into the brilliant mind this man had.

For what it's worth, I think this audio book is a soul-enriching investment

I recently watched Malatya, a documentary released earlier this year about the first modern martyrs of the Turkish Church.

A little over two years ago in Malatya, Turkey three men, Necati Aydin and Uğur Yuksel (two of the first Turkish Christian converts from Islam), along with Tilmann Geske (a German Christian living in Turkey), were tied up, tortured with butcher knives, and murdered in their own office at a Christian publishing house.

The Malatya film gives gritty, realistic, unassuming access into the lives of the widows and families, as well as into the church-body that is still grieving in Turkey.

This very small community of Turkish Christians has been thrust into a national spotlight. Now the faith that they live to proclaim has been put on display for the whole nation to witness, a nation that is taught from childhood “to be a Turk is to be a Muslim.”

It is very clear that God is using these times of suffering and affliction for his glory. The clearest evidence of this is the widows of the martyrs, who made front-page news and shocked the nation by publicly forgiving the men who murdered their husbands, echoing Christ's words: “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”

We know that God regularly turns the most difficult suffering into joy and salvation for many.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

May God use this event to strengthen, gather, and multiply his church in Turkey as the nation watches the portrayal of Christ’s love through the pain and suffering of his bride.

For more information, or to watch the trailer, visit the documentary's website.

Tremper Longman has produced another beneficial resource for reading and rightly appropriating the Old Testament. This time it’s How to Read Exodus.

Tremper is particularly gifted at engaging with an impressive breadth of Old Testament scholarship. And he does this with an authentic and relentlessly Christ-centered bent, solidly evangelical convictions, and the ability to distill and articulate his findings in such a way that scholars, pastors, and laymen alike get real help.

There are 3 other titles in the “How to Read” series:

• How to Read Genesis
• How to Read the Psalms
• How to Read Proverbs

For introductory help for every Old Testament book, I highly recommend Tremper’s Introduction to Old Testament (co-authored with the late Ray Dillard).

He also has writtern a remarkable (and growing) list of Old Testament commentaries:

• Proverbs
• Song of Songs
• Ecclesiastes
• Jeremiah/Lamentations
• Daniel

The following is a guest post from Dan Cruver, the Director of Together for Adoption.

When James call us “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,” he’s calling us to make much of Jesus. For the Christian, making much of Jesus and visiting orphans are not two separate calls.

The relationship between making much of Jesus and visiting orphans in their affliction is very similar, if not identical, to the relationship between glorifying God and enjoying him forever. Just as we “glorify God by enjoying him forever,” we can make much of Jesus by visiting orphans in their affliction.

Why do I believe this to be the case? Because, in Jesus, God first visited us in our affliction (see Exodus 4:31; Luke 1:68, 78-79; Acts 15:14).

When we as Christians visit orphans in their affliction, we make much of the God who first visited us in ours at great cost to himself. To borrow wording from the Apostle John, “We visit because he first visited us” (1 John 4:19).

The Gospel makes visiting orphans much more than an opportunity to care for the world’s most needy, as important as that is. It makes visiting orphans an opportunity to make much of Jesus before a watching world.

Here are some ways that you can begin the journey of making much of Jesus by visiting orphans:

• Orphan Sunday 2009 — November 8: Christian Alliance for Orphans recently announced the official launch of their 2009 Orphan Sunday campaign. Orphan Sunday is an opportunity for churches all over the world to spread this God-centered, Gospel-driven, Jesus-magnifying vision for orphan care.
• Christian Alliance for Orphans SUMMIT VI will be held in Minneapolis on April 28-30, 2010. John Piper is one of the keynote speakers.
• Together for Adoption Conference 2009 is an October 2-3 event that connects the dots between our adoption by God and the earthly practice of adoption and orphan care.

The newest Bible Study Magazine features an interview with John Piper.

They ask him...

• How do you keep from growing indifferent to the Bible when you're so familiar with it?
• How do you approach the Bible?
• How can we make time for the Bible?
• How do you memorize Scripture?
• Is the Bible easier for you to understand than for other people?
• What would you say to someone who hasn't read their Bible in a long time?

Download the article to read his answers.

Bible Study Magazine is also giving away John Piper's book Finally Alive for Logos Bible Software this month.

Ralph Davis’s The Word Became Fresh is an outstanding resource for those eager to preach from the largest chunk of their Bibles—the Old Testament narratives. In a mere 150 pages, Davis walks through all the basics that are so obvious they take brilliance to see. His style is a wonderful blend of humor and seriousness, substance and simplicity (even if a bit too punchy at points).

In this book, Davis discusses everything from getting a macro sense of whole books to how to apply individual stories to our lives today, all the while keeping the focus on God. Along with covering how to approach narrative, he discusses more specifically certain difficult OT texts and ends the book by using his methods to work through Exodus 1 and 2.

Davis manifestly loves and is unashamed of the biblical text with all its contours and textures. He encourages the preacher to stick to the text and go deep, trusting the God of the text that he knew what he was doing in inspiring it.

Maybe the most beneficial things Davis’s book provides are constant examples of how he approaches and preaches OT narratives. He brims with invaluable illustration after illustration of the techniques he’s teaching. (But sadly, there’s no index!)

Davis nearly (though not quite) broke my heart in the end of chapter 8 when he seems to play theocentricity off against christocentricity. He says, “I do not honor Christ by forcing him into texts where he is not” (138). I agree, but I want to respond with Spurgeon, “I’d rather find Jesus where he’s not than miss him where he is.”

All in all this is a great resource for preachers as they preach the Bible and try to treat even the more difficult passages as inspired by God and profitable for teaching.

Muslim-Christian relations are troubled, important, and necessary. The necessary navigation of these important, troubled waters requires a trusted, Gospel-saturated, experienced, courageous follower of Jesus. I only know a few such trusted navigators.

One of them has been blogging for about six weeks now. The blog is called His Peace Upon Us. I have read enough and I know him well enough to recommend him to you. Here is what he says about himself at the blog:

I am a Christian follower of Jesus who loves the people of the Middle East. The basic premise of this blog is that we cannot love those we do not know. So I am hopeful that this blog is one way Muslims and Christians get to know each other.

I thank God for my wonderful wife and three beautiful children. I enjoy people of other cultures, telling Arabic jokes, eating shawarma and falafel, and studying US presidential history.

Walk with him as he walks with Jesus among Muslims in the Middle East.

In June, a few of us at DG visited China in order to increase our understanding of the history and culture of this great nation and how we might more effectively meet some of the needs of the rapidly growing church there.

One of the places we visited was Shepherd’s Field Children’s Village in Tianjin. It is an amazing place, providing an openly Christian home, school, and even vocational training for well over 100 orphans, many of whom are living with disabilities. We had the privilege of spending time with some of the orphans and touring the campus.

While there we became aware of a financial need. Tim Baker, the founder and head of the ministry, showed us a construction site for a new building that will prepare orphans who have aged out of the adoption process for independence with vocational and life skills training.

But due to some construction timelines imposed on them by the authorities, construction on the building had to begin without having the funds in hand. So the Foundation is seeking to raise a significant amount by June 1, 2010, in order to complete the building.

We do not make it a practice to highlight the financial needs of other ministries, or our own, on this blog. But since few know about this project, and because of the Bible’s clear instruction about caring for orphans (James 1:27), we felt that we should make this need known.

If you would like more information or if you feel moved to help complete this vocational and therapy center, you may contact the staff at Shepherd’s Field (link fixed).

This morning I read a booklet by Michael Haykin of Southern Seminary titled, In God We Trust: What Is God Saying In The Midst Of This Financial Crisis. He provides a brief survey of historical financial crises, beginning with Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem saints up through the Great Depression and highlights the spiritual fruit that came from them.

I love how he exhorts us Christians to be radically generous in the face of financial uncertainty since it is precisely during these times when our trust in God can be most clearly seen. Here’s a quote:

In such times as these, it would be so easy and so natural to keep to ourselves what financial resources we have left. While provision needs to be made for our own families, times like these call for open hands and generosity on the part of those who call Christ, Lord. The words of… the Apostle Paul, are as germane as ever: "as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone."

The booklet can be read in 15-30 minutes and would be a helpful resource for families, congregations, Sunday schools, and small groups.