Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Book review: John Piper- A Sweet & Bitter Providence

A Sweet & Bitter Providence
John Piper

A Sweet and Bitter Providence is a new book by John Piper examining the applicability of the themes in the book of Ruth for Christians today. The main themes he deals with are the sovereignty of God, gender & sexuality and race relations. I was particularly glad to see him deal with the issue of race relations and the racial diversity of God's kingdom because it is an important topic but one that doesn't always get dealt with well in the Christian community.

Compared to many other Piper books, this one is relatively short. This makes it a fairly easy one to get through, although there were some points where i thought further depth was warranted. The book did tend to jump backwards and forwards in the book of Ruth and to other scriptures so I would recommend you read Ruth first to better grasp where Piper is going with his ideas.

I reviewed this book in its audio format. The narration was clear and easy to listen to. It would have been nice to have the author reading the book as he is quite an expressive speaker/reader.

Overall, while not my favorite John Piper book, I'll still think this one is a worthwhile read.



Review copy provided by christianaudio.com