Dever - The Message of the New Testament (Foreword by John MacArthur)

Here is a vigorous, juicy, engaging, life-centered, God-honoring set of sermons, brilliantly overviewing the entire New Testament: a truly rich resource from which to benefit and borrow. Dr. Dever is a Puritan in twenty-first-century clothing, and it shows.

J. I. PACKER Professor of Theology, Regent College

Mark Dever knows that Christians cannot be powerfully influenced by the Bibles they do not know. So here is the antidote: a biblical flyover that reveals the contours and glories of the New Testament landscape so that it becomes familiar geography to the soul. This book will grace many lives.

R. Kent Hughes,
Pastor, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois

In our transient age, one of the pressing responsibilities of the faithful expository preacher is to, within a reasonably short span of years, walk his congregation through the whole canon of Scripture. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through preaching one-sermon whole-Bible-book overviews. Mark Dever is a master at this, and his gifts (first given to his own flock) are now here made available to preachers and congregants everywhere who want a thorough survey of the New Testament literature, not in the form of a scholarly introduction, but instead as a pastoral overview from the heart of a preacher who wants his people to know and live the truth. These expositions are theologically rich, biblically faithful, loaded with superb introductions, illustrations, and applications, and a model for how to preach didactically, practically, apologetically, and evangelistically all at once.

J. Ligon Duncan III
Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi
President, Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
Adjunct Professor, Reformed Theological Seminary
Chairman, Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Whether you are a pastor seeking to preach the whole counsel of God or simply an individual wanting to understand your whole Bible, this unique and invaluable resource provides a wealth of insight that will serve you for years to come. We can never know our Bibles too well or preach them too fully. This wonderful book will help individual Christians and pastors do both.

C. J. Mahaney
Sovereign Grace Ministries
Author, The Cross Centered Life

This outstanding series of birds-eye studies of the New Testament books will enable all Christians to feed deeper from Gods Word and equip teachers to feed others. They expand the mind, warm the heart, and challenge the will.

Vaughan Roberts
Rector, St. Ebbes Church, Oxford, England
Author, Gods Big Picture

Unusually prophetic utterances from the heart of the nations capital, these overview introductions to the most salient truths of each book of the New Testament are vintage Mark Dever. Devers scholarship abounds as all of his knowledge is here poured into truths that will transform a person, a church, or a nation.

Paige Patterson
President, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Fort Worth, Texas

Is biblical exposition a lost art? Not if this book is any indication. Dr. Mark E. Dever is a masterful expositor who combines stellar scholarship with a tremendous ability to communicate Gods revealed truth. These sermons and essays represent more than brief introductions to the books of the New Testament. Mark Dever helps draw the reader into the text and texture of each book, while providing a constant frame of reference that sees the New Testament not only as a collection of books but as a book in itselftelling the Christian story and grounding the church in Gods truth. This book is a gemand it belongs on every Christians bookshelf.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Kentucky

Many Bible readers know individual verses and sometimes even chapters but often do not see the message of books as a whole. They are familiar with individual trees while failing to see the forest. They are in great danger of misinterpreting the parts of the Bible they read because they do not see the entire structure of a Gospel like John or an epistle like Ephesians. Mark Dever fills a gaping need with his sermons on each of the individual books. Readers will be given a vision of the landscape of each of the New Testament books. Pastors will see the importance of preaching sermons that cover an entire book. All will be strengthened by the biblical truth, the insightful introductions, and the relevant application found in this work.

Thomas R. Schreiner
Teaching Minister, Clifton Baptist Church
Professor of New Testament, Associate Dean for
Scripture and Interpretation, The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

The heart of biblical preaching is exposition: explaining what the text of Scripture is saying and applying it. But sometimes this approach is allowed to degenerate into laborious verse-by-verse expositions in which the larger view of the forest easily becomes lost to the minute details of the trees. This book provides an encouragement for another way which complements the systematic exposition of whole units of the biblical literature. Mark Devers approach is thematic without ignoring the literary and theological structure of the books and is thus a stimulus to doctrinal preaching. This is not only a book for preachers but a challenging read for all who listen to sermons.

Graeme Goldsworthy
Moore Theological College, Sydney

THE MESSAGE OF
THE NEW TESTAMENT

OTHER CROSSWAY BOOKSBY MARK DEVER

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church
(2000, 2004)

The Deliberate Church
(with Paul Alexander, 2005)

THE MESSAGE OF
THE NEW TESTAMENT

P R O M I S E S K E P T

MARK DEVER

F O R E W O R D B Y

JOHN MACARTHUR

The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept

Copyright 2005 by Mark Dever

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Getty Images

First printing 2005

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, references are from the Holy Bible: New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All emphases in Scripture citations have been added by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dever, Mark.
The message of the New Testament : promises kept / Mark Dever.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-58134-716-2 (HC : alk. paper)
1. Bible. N.T.Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. N.T.Sermons.
3. BaptistsSermons. 4. Sermons, American21st century. I. Title.