Fool's Gold

Fool’s Gold – Discerning Truth in an Age of Error

John MacArthur - General Editor

This is the first book I have read this year with hopefully many more to come. I have decided to write reviews of the books that I have read for two reasons: to help me remember what it is that I have read, to let others know what I am reading and to give others ideas of things worth reading so here it goes.

This review ended up being quite long as each chapter addresses a separate topic therefore I have decided to break up the review into two posts.

This book is very useful to American Christians as it addresses several trends that have come about in the last few years in the Christian community. The chapters are written by a number of people who have knowledge or insight on the particular subjects covered. Some of the topics covered include The Purpose Driven Life, The New Perspective on Paul by NT Wright, Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, and Bible-zines (the New Testament in magazine format created for teens).

I don’t want to be dishonest in my admiration for MacArthur and his ministry. I think that most of what comes from his ministry is very biblically-based. The first two chapters I want to write about are chapters 2 and 3 (Plexiglas Preaching: The Devastating Consequences of a Watered-Down Message and A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life) as I believe they are linked. In chapter two MacArthur takes a firm, controversial stand against what he sees as watered-down messages in the church:

“Proper biblical preaching should be systematic, expositional, theological, and God centered. Such preaching is in short supply these days. There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement, but today’s sermons tend to be short homilies that massage people’s egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects like human relationships, “successful” living, emotional issues and other practical but worldly- and definitely not biblical- themes. Like the ubiquitous Plexiglas lecterns from which these messages are delivered, such preaching is lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more that as ephemeral impression on the minds of the hearers.”(p. 36)

While I do believe that some preaching can be topical and it should be applicable to the lives of the congregation, I would agree with his assessment that systematic and expositional preaching are in short supply in much of modern evangelicalism. The watering down of preaching has also crossed over to other forms and can been seen in the wildly popular book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. The chapter on this book, I think, correctly states that the 5 purposes given by Warren are very biblical concepts and should desired. However, it also correctly points out that Warren uses faulty hermeneutics to attach scripture to his points. The reviewer also states that the book seems to downplay attributes like holiness, wrath, and judgment while elevating love, kindness, and care.