First of all I would like to thank Crossway Publishing for sending me a copy of this book to review and place on my blog. God bless you Angie and my other friends at Crossway.
What a unique and wonderful collection of sermons regarding the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. Douglas O’Donnell gives us six sermons from the Wisdom literature. He preaches the first and last chapters of three different books, Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes.
The seventh chapter is, “How Shall Wisdom Be Preached?” and is included to help the lay person and pastor evaluate how they will approach the study of wisdom literature and then communicate it to their listeners in an appropriate way. This is the practical chapter and is well written and helps us see how Christ used the wisdom literature to convey New Testament truths to His listeners.
O’Donnell has two goals in the writing of this book. “1) To help you know and enjoy the Wisdom Literature so that you might preach on it more often; and 2) to show you how to preach Christ from this genre.” I believe that he accomplishes his goal. The first six chapters handle his first goal and the seventh chapter and the Appendixes handle the second goal.
I believe that not only are his two goals met, but I think there are two benefits that the reader will get from this book. Benefit #1 is that you will be encouraged and challenged by the sermons in the first six chapters. Benefit #2 you will find tools that are helpful in your study and understand of the Wisdom Literature and how they relate to the New Testament.
This is a quick read, if you want it to be. But it is a long read if you take the time to digest all that is said, all that is developed and then you seriously apply the principles that you will learn about teaching the Wisdom Literature.
Both laymen and Pastors will benefit from this short work and find that it is not overly academic, but instead, highly practical and encouraging.
Enjoy!
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