Just a couple weeks ago I decided to finalize my annual best books, audio, and video post. To my shock I could not find a draft for 2023. My practice every year is to start a draft for this post when I finish the first good book of the year (maybe January). But for some reason, I didn’t this year. The whole year went by without me writing down any favorites.

I concluded that 2023 must have been unremarkable, as far as books were concerned. But upon going on a scavenger hunt through my posts and quotes over the year, I realized that wasn’t true. In fact, I learned what a long year it has been—there were quite a lot, actually. I thought some of the best books and videos were from last year, not this one. I didn’t even remember the book studies that I led.

Without further delay, here we go: the best books, video, and audio from 2023.

As always, several resources are free. All links are included.

Best Books

Duties of Christian Fellowship by John Owen

Squeaking in at the beginning of the year (January 30) is this little book by John Owen. In it he provides biblical rules for the congregation’s duty to pastors, and congregants duties toward each other.

This was a rich book lecture series. For such a small and concise book, you could really spend a lot of time reflecting and applying each part. The range of topics covered is remarkable. We often engaged in prolonged discussions, because many of us had experienced unhealthy evangelical church culture.

One feature of it can hardly escape the reader’s attention—John Owen is here, for once, a master in the art of concise writing.
—William H. Goold 1850

This Banner of Truth “Puritan Paperback” is modernized and with questions added for discussion. It will serve as a great Sunday school series for a congregation. Get the original in ebook formats for free.

Believers must strive and fight with determination, in every legitimate way, by their actions and sufferings, for the purity of the ordinances, for the honour, liberty and privileges of the congregation, and in order to help others in the face of all opponents and adversaries.
(40)

“Separation without a proper cause from churches that are established on true scriptural grounds (though perhaps failing in practice in matters of small concern) is no small sin; but separation from sinful practices and disorderly ways, and false unwarranted methods of worship, is a fulfilling of the command not to take part in other men’s sins. To delight in the company, fellowship, society and conversation of dubious and headstrong people manifests a spirit that is not committed to Christ.”
(49–50)

Building a Godly Home: A Holy Vision for Family Life by William Gouge (eds. Scott Brown & Joel Beeke)

Oh, what can be said other than William Gouge is the best you can read on marriage and family. The original title of his single-volume was Of Domestical Duties. Joel Beeke and Scott Brown have done the work of modernizing the English and dividing the massive tome into three more digestible volumes. This past year, we worked our way through volume 1. We’ll be starting volume 2 in January.

I pitched the book lecture series in this way:

If you are a minister or elder (or aspire), this book will help equip you for counseling and shepherding.
Need marriage counseling? (Yes, you do) This is a good start.
You want a home economics conference? This is the extended edition.

Enjoy the recent sermons through Ephesians’ household code? This is the deep dive into that text.
If you’re married, I exhort you in the strongest terms to buy a copy, pay the small registration fee, and join the study together with your spouse.
The elders of course must set the example. They will diligently attend with their wives, for the good of themselves and the church.
You who plan on marriage, I strongly advise it.

One regrettable edit in this RHB edition is removing Gouge’s treatment of the third part of the household code: masters and slaves. I understand that this isn’t applicable to the United States. But there are many societies in the world where it is, such as ours. We’ll just have to read the original edition for that. The original one-volume, old-English edition is free as an ebook.

It has pleased God to call everyone to two vocations. One vocation is general, in which certain common duties are to be performed by all men (as knowledge, faith, obedience, repentance, love, mercy, justice, truth, etc.). The other is particular, in which certain specific duties are required of individual people, according to those distinct places where divine providence has set them in the nation, church, and family.
“Therefore God’s ministers ought to be careful in instructing God’s people in both kinds of duties; both those which concern their general calling and those which concern their particular calling. Accordingly Paul, who, like Moses, was faithful in all the house of God (Num. 12:7), after he had sufficiently instructed God’s church in the general duties that belong to all Christians, regardless of sex, state, degree, or condition (Eph. 4:1–5:21), proceeds to lay down certain particular duties, which apply to particular callings and conditions (Eph. 5:22–6:9). Among these particular duties, he notes those which God has established in a family. (1)

Two of our sessions were so good that I had to post them for public viewing. Here they are:

Living in a Godly Marriage by Joel Beeke & James La Belle

I bought the ebook edition almost on a whim during a massive RHB sale. I’m thankful that I did. When I started pre-marriage counseling, I turned to this book for some material, and realized what a goldmine I had. Now, Gouge is the absolute best work on marriage, and I think the Puritan on the subject. But if I could recommend a single-volume on the subject, it would hands-down be this one. You want the distillation of Puritan thought on marriage? It’s this book. It’s full of William Gouge, of course, as well as Richard Baxter. It’s so good that several pre-marriage counseling session came straight from the chapters on duties of husbands and wives. I highly recommend it.

Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle (Introduction by Michael Foster)

How had I not read this book until now? Ryle is my favorite author. And when this audiobook became available on Canon+, I decided our family would listen in the car. The Intro by Foster is excellent, and I determined to buy a hardcopy just for that.

“Ryle was manly. Pulpits have long been attractive to soft men seeking an easy life. This is not the reality of the job, because there is nothing soft about being a shepherd in a land of wolves.”
—Michael Foster

In this book I found some of the most popular Ryle quotes that circulate online. It’s dense, despite being brief. It may be short (2 hours), but does it pack a punch, right in the nose. If Ryle isn’t the guy to slap you and make you motivated to walk the path of righteousness, all at the same time.

I’m glad it’s brief, so it’s an easy recommendation to men. I hope to read this in a group, someday. My dudes: read this little book. Get the free ebook.

Masculine Christianity by Zachary Garris

This book right here is stupendous. I just might read this every year, it’s so good.

This isn’t the “masculinity” book you’re used to, written by an evangelical “complementarian” who is secretly an egalitarian, and isn’t willing to consistently grant male headship in the civil sphere. No, sir. “Christianity is Patriarchal” (Ch. 4).

Unlike most, he gives attention—all of chapter 9—to the “women should keep silent in church” passage in 1 Corinthians 14:34–35. He also takes you through the objections to hierarchy and authority. I didn’t realize there were so many bad explanations of key passages.

The Pastor and Counseling by Jeremy Pierre & Deepak Reju

This was such a page-turner. I was in Cebu for a whole day and read this whole book at a coffee shop. I whole-heartedly agree with this recommendation:

This is the best primer for pastoral counseling I’ve read—and I’ve read many. Frankly, reading it is the equivalent of at least two excellent seminary courses on pastoral counseling. Read it, apply it, and be equipped for the personal ministry of the Word to God’s people in your church.
—Bob Kellemen, Academic Dean and Professor of Biblical Counseling, Faith Bible Seminary; author, Grief: Walking with Jesus

The Toxic War on Masculinity by Nancy Pearcey

I was privileged to be on the launch team for this book. Here’s my recommendation:

Nearly everything falls apart without masculinity functioning has God intends

In her usual fashion, she has engaged in extensive research in order to assemble considerable data—this time to show how men have been devalued and the resulting crisis of manhood in society.

I was shocked to learn that the modern savage rhetoric against masculinity today is not too different than what has been published in the past couple centuries. A couple examples:

The language used to malign the male character was almost as inflammatory as anything we hear today. For example, Sarah Hale blamed men for the world’s entire history of war and bloodshed: “Man the Murderer, Woman the Mourner!” Astonishingly, Hale even believed that women were not as affected as men by the fall into sin: “Man, by the ‘fall,’ was rendered incapable of cultivating, by his own unassisted efforts, any good propensity or quality of his nature. . . . But woman was not thus cast down.”

The early feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton used equally censorious language to condemn men. In a speech titled “The Destructive Male” (1868), she said,

The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal!

What America needs, Stanton concluded, is “a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue, morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of thought and action.” The word evangel means “gospel,” so Stanton was preaching a religion of feminism.
—Nancy R. Pearcey. The Toxic War on Masculinity (Kindle Locations 2466-2477). Kindle Edition.

The results are in! Nearly everything falls apart without masculinity functioning has God intends—as men, as husbands, as fathers.

I suggest you purchase this book, read it, and consider what God has made men to be. And pass some on to other men in your life.

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller

A modern classic. I read it the week before I preached Psalm 23. What an uplifting little book. You’ll really appreciate the shepherd imagery by hearing from a shepherd.

Sheep do not “just take care of themselves” as some might suppose. They require, more than any other class of livestock, endless attention and meticulous care.

It is no accident that God has chosen to call us sheep. The behavior of sheep and human beings is similar in many ways . . . Our mass mind (or mob instincts), our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallels of profound importance.
(7)

In a sense the staff, more than any other item of his personal equipment, identifies the shepherd as a shepherd. No one in any other profession carries a shepherd’s staff. It is uniquely an instrument used for the care and management of sheep—and only sheep. It will not do for cattle, horses or hogs. It is designed, shaped and adapted especially to the needs of sheep. And it is used only for their benefit.

The staff is essentially a symbol of the concern, the compassion that a shepherd has for his charges. No other single word can better describe its function on behalf of the flock than that it is for their comfort.

Whereas the rod conveys the concept of authority, of power, of discipline, of defense against danger, the word “staff” speaks of all that is longsuffering and kind.
(92)

Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition by Glenn Sunshine

This was most informative. I would enjoy listening through it a second time. It’s especially helpful to think through these issues, since 2020.

2000 Years of Christ’s Power Volume 3: Renaissance and Reformation by Nick Needham

A church history book that’s a pleasure to read. I like the organization of the book by region, rather than chronology. I learned about reformation movements in other parts of Europe, the areas that we never hear about.

For Luther himself, the pilgrimage to “holy Rome” was profoundly disenchanting. He never forgot the cynical attitude to religion that he found there, or the obsession with money. He was later fond of repeating the Italian proverb, “If there is a hell, Rome is built over it.”

The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

It’s a classic for good reason. I hadn’t even finished it before I knew it needed to be on my annual re-read list. Thankfully, the ebook is free.

God seeth it fit we should taste of that cup of which his Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what his Son’s love was; but our comfort is, that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will succour us, that our spirits utterly fail not under that little taste of his displeasure which we may feel. He became not only a man, but a curse, a man of sorrows for us. He was broken, that we should not be broken; he was troubled, that we should not be desperately troubled; he became a curse, that we should not be accursed. Whatsoever may be wished for in an all-sufficient comforter, is all to be found in Christ,

Authority from the Father, all power was given him,’ Matt. 28:18.

Strength in himself, as having his name the mighty God, Isa. 9:6.

Wisdom, and that from his own experience, how and when to help.

Willingness, as being flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, Isa. 9:6.”

—Richard Sibbes. Bruised Reed (Kindle Locations 948-955). Kindle Edition.

In the House of Tom Bombadil by C.R. Wiley

“Tom is nobody’s fool and nobody’s tool.”

If you loved The Household and the War for the Cosmos then you’ll love this, too. And if you haven’t read either yet, shame on you and get going! You’ll be glad you did.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs

The most convicting book I’ve read all year. And longer. An ebook edition is free.

I have spent many sermons over this lesson of contentment, but I am afraid that you will be longer in learning it than I have been preaching of it; it is a harder thing to learn it than it is to preach or speak of it.

Fidelity: How to Be a One-Woman Man by Douglas Wilson

Most of this book I found to be solid. A few things were new and unusual to me.

Don’t miss this vital book for men. The need for wisdom in sexuality from coaches to pastors to congressmen has hardly disappeared since this book was first published 13 years ago. An integral part of the best-selling Family Series, the new revised edition of Fidelity includes two all-new chapters and updates throughout.

Fidelity: How to Be a One-Woman Man hits hard, offering pointed help to Christian males everywhere. Leaders are tempted to gloss over sexual issues, but Wilson uses clear language to confront specific sins with specific solutions. He shows how effeminate slackness leads to pornography, how being seduced is a failure to lead, why masturbation is lousy theology, and much more.

Grace-centered masculinity should be self-disciplined and strong, not compromising and hypocritical.

Single & Satisfied by Nancy Wilson

I wish all the unmarried ladies in my congregation could read this. It contains some advice that would spare from much disappointment and frustration. Like, what do you do when your pagan father doesn’t want to be involved at all in your engagement and marriage? I appreciate the author’s challenge to using the term “single,” at all.

In this helpful volume, Nancy Wilson provides straightforward counsel and encouragement for those struggling with “the wait.” She addresses practical concerns like building a career but focuses more specifically on important relational issues such as interacting with competitive women, respecting your parents even after you’ve left their home, establishing standards for male friends, and keeping the right outlook on your life. Whether a woman is called to singleness for just a short time or for her whole life, she is called to be fruitful in God’s kingdom.

This is the second and revised edition of Why Isn’t a Pretty Girl Like You Married?

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

This was the year I went through all of the Jungle Book stories. This was our family car ride audiobook, and the narrator is great.

The result? I absolutely hate the movie adaptations of The Jungle Book. Not even close, and so much less wholesome. Baloo is not a lazy bufoon! And Shere Khan is straight up bloodthirsty. There’s nothing noble about him. Read it for yourself to see how Mowgli deals with him.

This is actually a collection of stories, not just about Mowgli, but all of them about animals. I was surprised to find that one of my favorite stories growing up was included: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi! There are many good lessons in this short story. Don’t let the snake escape alive.

This collection is excellent reading for families, and will teach important masculine virtues to young boys, especially.

The Holy Spirit by Sinclair Ferguson

The classic book on the Holy Spirit by Sinclair Ferguson, part of the Contours of Christian Theology series. I finally had the opportunity to read it. I think this will benefit Pentecostals and Charismatics, or those who have come out of that.

Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell

Ironically, I listened to Chapell’s class at Covenant Seminary way back in 2012-13ish. I had never read the book until now. It’s as good as the class was, and even better in its 3rd edition.

There are some great little gems in here that a preacher can appreciate, regardless of how many homiletics books have been read or sermons delivered.

Sexual Intimacy in Marriage by William Cutrer, MD and Sandra Glahn, PhD

“The Sex Book.”

With several marriages approaching, and the weight of pastoral responsibility encroaching, I speed-read two books about sexual intimacy in marriage, in the week of June 16. This book won out over the other not just because of content, but because it’s really funny. And you have to have a sense of humor when you’re talking about this. Otherwise, it’s just painfully awkward.

Sexual intimacy in marriage is absolutely vital. You can argue that it’s a major part of the Christian life. Simply because it’s normal for Christian adults to get married, and most of their life will be lived in marriage. And sex is a big part of marriage. It’s in fact a duty. Any Christian submitted to Scripture will obey God’s commands to not deprive their spouse. One is not submitted to Christ if they are disobedient about this. God made man and woman as sexual beings, he instituted marriage, and his law regulates our sexual relations. It’s so important. To ignore it, depreciate it, and pretend that it’s not that big of a deal is to court disaster.

This book, now in its fourth edition, has helped many Christians. That application for pastors: be ready to deal in this area. And you’ll likely need help, which is what this book is for.

Best Video

W. Robert Godfrey: A Pillar and Buttress of the Truth

So many good points in one address. It’s really packed and worth re-watching.

First Timothy 3:15 tells us that the church is “a pillar and buttress of the truth.” The church is entrusted with the task of holding up the truth of God before the watching world. In this message, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey looks at the importance of the church and the means of grace in making disciples who will stand firm, stressing that we cannot live a healthy Christian life without corporate worship and fellowship, the preached Word, the sacraments, and prayer.

This message is from Stand Firm, our 2023 National Conference.

Masculine Christianity | Zach Garris

Man Rampant. “Let’s talk about masculine Christianity, shall we? The Christian faith is undeniably masculine when it comes to Her leadership – that’s right, “her.” This male leadership is over the Bride of Christ. So how are we to reconcile that? How do you reconcile the overwhelmingly masculine leadership in the church with the fact that She is Christ’s Bride?

“Let’s talk about masculine Christianity, shall we? The Christian faith is undeniably masculine when it comes to Her leadership – that’s right, “her.” This male leadership is over the Bride of Christ. So how are we to reconcile that? How do you reconcile the overwhelmingly masculine leadership in the church with the fact that She is Christ’s Bride?” Here’s one of the best parts:

I think it’s important here that we understand preaching to be a masculine task, just the way God has designed it. It’s exhortation. And so, it’s fitting that men do this. But not just men, but courageous, masculine men. It really is tied up with God’s design for man. A sermon should not be just a talk. We often hear these words today, it’s a “talk” or a “message.” It is a message, but it’s a Divine message, and it’s carrying God’s authority—it’s an authoritative message. And if we understand preaching in that way, I think it makes sense why God has given this task only to men, and not all men of course, but some men.
—Zach Garris

Also see this episode of the Canon+ Book Club | Masculine Christianity with Zachary Garris

Puritan: All of Life to the Glory of God

This documentary is wonderful. The full interviews were good too. “Steelbook box that includes the complete film and over five hours of never-before-released extended interviews with MacArthur, Mbewe, and others.”

It’s Good to Be a Man: A Map to Manhood

A great documentary that summarizes key points from Michael Foster’s great book by the same title.

Men don’t know how to be a man anymore. Some are comfortable being effeminate, but many are looking for guides like Jordan Peterson and Jocko Willink. They get angry because ‘I won’t be able to have what my father, what my grandfather had.’ That rage is not going to fix anything. Yeah, you had a bad deal, and these things aren’t all your fault, but you’re still responsible for your response to the time that God has put you in. It’s your job to stop being a victim even if you’ve been victimized.

Christianity & Liberalism

A great series in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Christianity & Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen.

In 1923, J. Gresham Machen wrote his classic work Christianity and Liberalism. Machen understood that he lived in a time that needed answers. People needed to know the fundamental doctrinal convictions of Christianity in an age of compromise. Modernism was threatening the church, and liberals within the church were seeking to accommodate it, calling into question bedrock doctrines of the faith. In this teaching series, Dr. Stephen J. Nichols reminds us of who Machen was, why his book is still important, and how it teaches us that there is only one true, uncompromising Christian faith.

Time For an Intervention? | Doug Wilson & Friends (w/ ND Wilson, Rachel Jankovic, & Rebekah Merkle)

Fresh from No Quarter November, the Wilson kids’ intervention with their father was full of good, wholesome content on family and child-rearing. And it’s pretty hilarious throughout.

Dragons Abounding: The Great Errors Confronting the Church | Dr. Voddie Baucham

An address about manhood, womanhood, marriage, and family at a missions conference? Absolutely. Didn’t expect patriarchy to be a vital issue for missions, did you? Well, I learned this the hard way. The biggest clashes I have experienced, and the most heated opposition in the ministry, has been over matters of gender and marriage. I appreciate this message because Voddie Baucham articulates so well what myself and our church continue to experience. Several of us watched it together, and it resonated with us all.

“When talking about missions and the threat to our mission, a lot of these errors sort of culminate in errors about manhood, womanhood, marriage, and the family. So many of them center there. . .”

“I think it’s very important for us to look at this in terms of missions. Because, often times when we talk about missions, when we talk about the establishment of the Lord’s church, when we talk about advancing the Lord’s church, especially when we talk about breaking new ground with the Lord’s church, one of the things that we often fail to keep in mind is that when the Gospel breaks forth in cultures . . . inevitably we talk about dealing with family structures in the midst of broken, sinful, pagan cultures, that find this as foreign as the Gospel. And so this is important ground to cover.”

The Essential Church

This takes the cake for this year. This documentary had to be made. There is a reckoning to be had for how the state and church behaved from 2020 onward.

The most surprising—and moving—part of this documentary was the account of the Covenanters and their standing firm to the death for keeping pure and entire the public worship of God.

Over the last few years, far too many who claim to be their spiritual descendants shut down worship altogether, under just a fraction of the hostility. Every one needs to watch this film. More Christians need to be willing to throw their stools at those who threaten or alter divine worship.

Best Audio

“Roast What You Kill: Becoming a Man Who Follows Through”

“Incomplete”

“Men, how many tasks have you started strong and finished weak (or not at all)? How many deer have we killed but never tasted? How much nourishment has laziness robbed from our souls, our families, our churches, our world?

“I think this spirit of so-far-and-no-farther plagues our generation. We recreate at life; we rarely commit. Manhood seems less tethered to follow-through, to roasting the meat we hunt. Consider just a few examples.”

Relationships: date, but never marry.

Church: attend, but never join.

Work: labor, but for appearances.

Voddie Baucham on Home Education

Delivered at the 2012 Texas Home School Coalition Convention.

Westminster Seminary Press podcast

The Christianity & Liberalism series was great, but the episodes with Rosaria Butterfield were gold. She nails the typical evangelical posture of cowardly accommodation, making peace with idols. You must suffer for the truth, like Machen did. Her two interviews:

It’s about time I transcribe that killer line about offending people for God’s glory:

We’ve failed to distinguish between friends and enemies. We don’t want to love our enemies, we want to make believe that our enemies are our friends. You can’t be a soft presence anymore in the world. If you try to be a soft presence in the world, what you’ll end up, at best, is being “righteous Lot.”

So, and then everybody’s like “Well, aren’t we supposed to be Christians in the world but not of the world?”

Yes, are you strong enough? Because If you’re strong enough, then you’re going to go have an intervention.

See, to be a Christian in the world right now, means you get up every morning and what you say, “Lord, may all the people I offend today be offended to your glory, and if I lose my job please protect my family.”

So, that’s what it means to be in the world—are you up for that?
—Rosaria Butterfield, Episode 2: “Reinvention”

After that, the podcast transitioned to Things Unseen by J. Gresham Machen. This is the collection of Machen’s radio broadcasts on Christian doctrine. I have the hardcopy of the book, but I do like being able to listen to whole chapters while driving. So I appreciate that.

If you regard religion merely as a means to attain worldly ends, even the highest and noblest of worldly ends—if you regard religion, for example, merely as a means of meeting the present emergency in this world—then you have never begun to have even the slightest inkling of what the Christian religion means.
—Machen, “The Present Emergency” (Chapter 1)

Chapter 33 on the doctrine of sin was so refreshing. In it, Machen crushes the spirit/body dichotomy that’s endemic in evangelicalism.

As thus used, the word [flesh] does not designate a lower part of man’s nature as over against a higher part. It designates all of man’s nature, in its present sinful state, as over against the divine holiness. It does not designate the body of man as over against the spirit of man, but it designates the whole of man as over against the Spirit of God.
—Machen, “What is Sin?” (Chapter 33)

The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Trilogy narrated by Andy Serkis

Since I had read them before when I was younger, and this was my first time with the Audible editions, I’ll throw this down here. I re-read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, this year. I have intended to make The Lord of the Rings an annual read, for some time. When these editions narrated by Andy Serkis (the voice of Golum) went on sale, I had to the get them. I had listened to a bit of his live-reading of The Hobbit when the lockdowns first began. He’s a superb narrator.

Tag: faith

Best of 2023