Steve Lawson, senior pastor at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, has started a project - a big project. The project, "A Long Line of Godly Men" is a book series that will survey the doctrines of grace as they have been taught and defended from the time of Moses, to the apostle John, to Augustine, to Luther and Calvin, to Warfield, to present day teachers such as A.W. Pink, Martyn Lloyd Jones, John Piper and John MacArthur. The first installment of this series entitled Foundations of Grace (1400 BC - AD 100) resides on my reading list and hopefully will soon be plundered!
Companion to this series are Lawson's "Long Line of Godly Men Profiles." The first book from this Profile series is "The Expository Genius of John Calvin." In this meaty little book, Lawson, after a short overview of Calvin's birth, early life and conversion, first examines his approach to the pulpit. Here we learn that Calvin's unwavering belief in Biblical authority profoundly shaped his preaching ministry. Calvin himself stated, "We own to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God because it proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with it" (27). It was this foundational conviction that propelled and shaped Calvin's ministry. When Calvin when to the pulpit, it was to preach the actual words of God.
Lawson continues from here to outline a total of 32 distinctives of Calvin's preaching, examining everything from Calvin's preparation for the pulpit to the actual sermons themselves. Lawson looks at how Calvin introduced his messages, with what care Calvin took to ensure his message was truly and consistently from the text of Scripture, how he applied the truth to his hearers, and how he concluded his messages. At the end of each chapter, Lawson offers a short prayer to God to raise up men who will be characterized by the previous distinctives he had just laid out in that particular chapter, thus demonstrating that this is not, for Lawson, merely an interesting walk through church history - it is a longing for men of this generation to be found boldly, accurately, and passionately preaching the Word and only the Word.
Lawson is not seeking Calvin clones - Calvin was in his own league - but he is endeavoring to provide preachers with a glimpse of what made this man great, so that we might learn from him and thus become better preachers ourselves for the glory of God and the good of our people. This is an edifying and helpful little book and I recommend it to you.