Friday, November 25, 2016

Book Review: Jesus

Jesus. A.W. Tozer. 2017. Moody. 208 pages. [Source: Review copy]

First, I just want to say that I really love the fact that Moody is publishing so many Tozer books. I love, love, love A.W. Tozer and "new" Tozer books are always welcome at my house. The theme of this collection--compilation--is JESUS. There are seventeen chapters. The chapters are logically arranged taking readers on quite a journey. It opens by establishing certain things about God. He is infinite and eternal--and he's three-in-one existing as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Readers briefly learn a tiny bit about what God was up to before "In the Beginning." The next step, being, of course, creation. Most of the chapters, however, focus on his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. (All but four chapters).

This would be a WONDERFUL introduction to A.W. Tozer, in my opinion. Tozer is always passionate, always zealous, always opinionated. But when he talks of Jesus, he is even more so. For I think Jesus was the love of his life. And everything always came back to JESUS for Tozer. Tozer was always urging listeners--readers--to take Jesus seriously, to take our Christian lives seriously. He wanted the church to be THE CHURCH: standing strong in the truth, countering culture, reflecting transformed lives, offering hope to a broken world. An indifferent, luke-warm, compromising church INFURIATED him.

Tozer is very straightforward in his writing. He leaves no question as to what he means!

Favorite quotes:
Our chief business is not to argue with our generation, nor is it largely to persuade or prove. With our declaration, “Thus saith the Lord,” we make God responsible for the outcome.
God is not glorified until men and women think gloriously of Him. Yet it is not what people think of God that matters.
The eternal Son came to tell us what the silence never told us. He came to tell us what not even Moses could tell us. He came to tell us and to show us that God loves us and that He constantly cares for us. He came to tell us that God has a gracious plan and that He is carrying out that plan. Before it is all finished and consummated, there will be a multitude that no man can number, redeemed, out of every tongue and tribe and nation.
The incarnation remains forever a fact, for “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
When God justifies a sinner everything in God is on the sinner’s side. All the attributes of God are on the sinner’s side. It isn’t that mercy is pleading for the sinner and justice is trying to beat him to death, as we preachers sometimes make it sound.
Always, always, always God acts like God.
Let me warn you that many preachers and Bible teachers will answer to God some day for encouraging curious speculations about the return of Christ and failing to stress the necessity for “loving His appearing“! The Bible does not approve of this modern curiosity that plays with the Scriptures and that seeks only to impress credulous and gullible audiences with the “amazing” prophetic knowledge possessed by the brother who is preaching or teaching!


© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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