Boice’s Expositional Commentaries

I'm looking for opinions and comments on the subject commentary set.

https://www.logos.com/product/2665/boices-expositional-commentaries

For some reason I am not able to view the sample pages on the bottom of the product page so I would also appreciate some examples.

Thanks 😊

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Fred Chapman

Is there a particular passage you are interested in seeing a sample of?

Levi Durfey

Don't forget that you can see sample pages over at Amazon.

Excellent. Detailed, expository, pastoral. One of the commentaries I always consult during sermon preparation.

GaoLu

Boice has a knack for clarity and listener-friendly wordings. One of my favorites.

John Connell

Living Water

John 4:7–14

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

In the city of Philadelphia, where I live, there is a beautiful drive that leads out of the city along the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River. Along the drive there is a section of the riverbank lined with boathouses, called Boathouse Row; and across from Boathouse Row there is a statue of a pilgrim with a Bible under his arm. Many who pass the statue by car never see more than the pilgrim. But if a person is on foot and is exploring the riverbank, he soon finds a stream that empties into the Schuylkill near the pilgrim, as well as a trail that winds along it. If he follows this trail up over Sedgley Hill toward Brewery Town, he comes upon the source of the spring. There, over the spring’s source, he sees an inscription once placed by the city government—“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.”
The quotation over the source of Sedgley spring is true, so far as it goes. No one would think of denying it. But it is only half a quotation. For the other half of the quotation one must turn to Christ’s words to the woman of Samaria when she came to Jacob’s well to draw water.
As Jesus spoke to the woman about water he made the obvious statement—“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.” But then he also made a second statement, and in this statement there is a great promise. He offered a new kind of water, saying, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). This promise is the basis for our study in this chapter.

A Weary Christ

It is not often that I have been really thirsty—certainly not in this country—but of one thing about thirst I am convinced: most people understand very little about it until they spend time in a tropical land, particularly an arid and extremely warm land such as the Middle East. Several times when I have been traveling in the Middle East I have found myself in places where a traveler dared not drink the water. I remember vividly how uncomfortable and at times almost desperate one becomes until a place is reached where the water is drinkable and intense thirst can be quenched. People seldom experience this in America and other English-speaking lands. So in our literature water appears often as a symbol of beauty or perhaps (in great quantities) even of destruction but seldom as a symbol for life. It is entirely different in a culture where water is a symbol of that without which a person will surely die.
We must see this as we turn to Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Samaria, for the point there is that Jesus is as necessary for spiritual life as water is for physical life.
Jesus had been traveling with his disciples from the area of the lower Jordan to Galilee and had to go through Samaria, as the story tells us (v. 4). This was not entirely true in a purely geographical sense. From the area of the lower Jordan to Galilee there were two routes. One led through Perea on the eastern side of the Jordan to the northern end of the valley where it crossed over into Galilee. The other, the way Jesus took, went through Samaria, the country west of the Jordan. Normally, orthodox Jews would take the eastern route; it was longer but it avoided Samaria. They did this because of their hostility toward the Samaritans. When John tells us, then, that Jesus “must needs” go through Samaria, he obviously means Jesus had to go that way to meet the Samaritan woman.
So Jesus went through Samaria. About noon on the second day of travel he came to the vicinity of the Samaritan town of Sychar. Being tired from his journey, he sat at the foot of the hill leading up to Sychar, on the edge of Jacob’s well. The disciples were sent off to the city to buy something to eat while Jesus rested.
What a picture of Jesus! Here was a Jesus who was not wearied merely by the heat. He could have stayed in the cooler area of the Jordan. Here was a Jesus who was wearied in his search for sinners and who had become thirsty seeking those to whom he was to offer the water of life. On the same errand he would one day experience an even greater thirst on the cross. One of the great devotional writers of our time, Geoffrey T. Bull, a missionary the Chinese imprisoned on the Tibetan border from 1950 to 1953 but later released, remarks on this aspect of Jesus’ encounter with the woman: “If she could have seen just then what Jesus saw, she would have glimpsed another noonday when the sun would mourn in blackness and this same Stranger cry out from a Roman cross, ‘I thirst!’ She would have seen in him the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, the smitten Christ from whom the living waters flow.… He was thirstier than she knew. He was speaking for the very heart of God. He was moving in the travail of his soul and looked for satisfaction in the restoration of this sin scarred woman.”
Jesus became man and experienced all that we experience, but the point of the incarnation is that he did this to redeem men. So if he was weary, thirsty, hot, and on the road to even greater suffering, he was weary and hot for your sake and mine. Jesus suffered for the Nicodemuses, the women of Samaria, and the others whom this world holds. If you are already a believer, perhaps you should ask yourself whether you have ever wearied yourself in the pursuit of other men and women. Have you ever become hot or uncomfortable trying to communicate the gospel to others?

A Thirsty Woman

There is another picture in the first verses of John 4. The one picture is of a wearied Christ. The second is of the woman. She was a Samaritan, and she undoubtedly had had many opportunities to return the hatred of the Jews for the Samaritans by hating the Jews in return. Perhaps she had even had a taste of their hostility a few minutes before meeting Jesus, for she was coming down the hill at the same time that Peter and the other disciples had gone up, and we can be certain that at this stage of their lives, Peter and the others would never have moved off the path for any woman, much less a Samaritan and one with loose morals at that. Perhaps she had been pushed aside or made to wait while the body of Galileans marched by.
Probably she came to the bottom of the hill with this fresh reminder of the hatred of the Jews in her mind, and as soon as she got to the well the first thing that she discovered was another Jew. She could tell he was a Jew by his dress. She was silent. She wasn’t about to speak to him! While she was getting ready to lower her bucket into the well, however, Jesus made a request. He asked for a drink. When she remarked at the fact that he, a Jew, should do something as unheard of as to ask water of a Samaritan woman, he aroused her curiosity even further by offering her a new kind of water, “living water,” that would be a spring of water within her “welling up to eternal life.”
This is always the way it is in the spiritual realm. Jesus comes to us first. If we were left to ourselves, we would leave him sitting on the edge of the well forever. But he does not leave us to ourselves. Instead he comes to us. He asks the first question. He initiates the conversation. He uses all devices to break through to our hearts. Sometimes it is a question, sometimes a command, sometimes a chance remark made by someone else, but it is always from him.
Jesus offered the woman “living water.” But what does that mean? What does it mean when he offers it to us? The woman, of course, at first understood the words with crude literalness, just as Nicodemus had understood the words about being “born again” literally. In Jewish speech the phrase “living water” meant water that was flowing, like water in a river or stream, as opposed to water that was stagnant, as in a cistern or well. Living water was considered to be better. Therefore, when Jesus said that he could give her “living water” the woman quite naturally thought of a stream. She wanted to know where Jesus had found it. From the tone of her remarks it is evident that she even thought his claim a bit blasphemous, for it was a claim to have done something greater than her ancestor Jacob had been able to do. Had Jacob been able to find a stream he would certainly not have taken the trouble to dig a well that was roughly a hundred feet deep. This was the level on which the woman was thinking.
Still the phrase should have meant more than this to anyone who was accustomed to thinking biblically. It should have meant more than this to the woman. Many times in the Old Testament God is pictured as the One who alone can supply living water to satisfy the thirst for God that exists in man’s soul.
Isaiah wrote, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3). David said, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1). God declared through Jeremiah, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer. 2:13). In Isaiah 44 God makes the promise, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land” (Isa. 44:3). In chapter 55 he declares, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!” (v. 1). Several times in the writings of Ezekiel and Zechariah there is a picture of a river of life flowing out from God’s presence in Jerusalem (Ezek. 47:1–12; Zech. 13:1; 14:8). In the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, there is a reference to these themes in the promises for the end time, “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17).
Much of the Old Testament is filled with this pictorial religious language revealing the thirst of the soul, a thirst that can be satisfied only by God. However, the woman chose to misunderstand Christ’s words by taking them literally. She was blind because she would not see.
Jesus was claiming to be the One who alone can satisfy human longing. Have you tested his claim? You may try to fill your life with the things of this world—money, fame, power, activity—but though these will satisfy for a time, they will not do so permanently. I have often said that they are like a Chinese dinner. They will fill you up well, but two or three hours later you will be hungry again. Only Jesus Christ is able to satisfy you fully.

A Springing Fountain

There is one more point that is of great importance to this study. Up to now we have been thinking mostly about the phrase “living water” from verse 10. Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” This verse is important, but we must not overlook the point that four verses further on, in verse 14, Jesus repeats his offer with a significant variation. In verse 14 he says, “But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
No one has ever seen a well of water springing up. Only the water in a spring springs up. The water in a well just lies there. So Jesus is not talking about a well. The woman had come to a well. Jesus has invited her to a spring. Now he adds that if she allows him to place this spring within her, the spring will never cease but will continue to bubble away forever.
Imagine, if you will, that you have just purchased a piece of property upon which you are going to build a house. There is water on the property. If the water is in a well, the water will give you no trouble. If you are there with your bulldozers to clear the ground for your house, all you have to do is push some dirt into the hole and the well will be gone forever so far as you are concerned. It is entirely different, however, if the source of the water on your property is a spring. Try to do the same as you did with the well. You push some dirt over a spring, and it seems to be gone. Five o’clock comes. The workmen go home. But the next morning, when the workmen come back, the stream will be there again, having simply pushed its way through the ground. A well can be covered. A spring seeps through anything you may place over it.
This is what the Lord Jesus Christ is saying. He is promising to place a spring within the life of anyone who will come to him. This spring will be eternal, free, joyous, and self-dependent. But he is also warning you that you will never be able to bulldoze anything over it!
We try, of course. I have done it myself. I know of many who have believed in Christ but who have come to a place in their lives where his way seems inconvenient and who have tried to stifle his presence by piling some foreign substance over the spring. Some have said, “I’m glad that I’m saved, but I’m going to go my way while I’m young. I paid too much attention to religion in my youth. Now I’m just going to cover it up.” So they try. But instead of succeeding they discover that God just comes bubbling through.
Let me ask another question: What happens when a spring comes bubbling through dirt? The answer is: It produces muddy water. Is it the spring’s fault? No! The fault lies in the dirt that has been pushed on top of it. Does this describe your life? Are you a Christian who has run from God, trying to cover over his presence, but instead only had your life filled with muddy water? If this does describe you, why don’t you allow the Lord Jesus Christ to remove the dirt and purify the spring of his life within you?
Let me warn you that you cannot go your own way indefinitely. You will never get away with that. God must be true to his character, and God says that in his holiness he is determined to perfect the image of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, within you. If God were to allow you to go any way you want and make a success of it, then he would be a liar when he says that Jesus Christ is the only way, the only truth, and the only life. God is no liar. So he will make a mess of your life, a ruin of your life, if he has to, until you come to the point where you will let him perfect that work in you he began when you first tasted of the Lord Jesus.
Will you yield to him? If you do, he will satisfy any longing that you may ever have had. He put it there in the first place. And he will do with you that which is pleasing in his si

James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 276–281.

Milkman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1083007#Comment_1083007

Second that. [Y]

mm.

Excellent. Detailed, expository, pastoral. One of the commentaries I always consult during sermon preparation.

Milkman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1083034#Comment_1083034

Christ in You

It is important that we do come to this fuller experience of God’s love because it is from such loving conduct that the gospel of Christ is communicated to the unsaved world. Someone has said that God has really given men five gospels. There is the gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Luke, the gospel according to John, and the “gospel according to you.” How, then, do men come to know God? They come to know him through Jesus Christ. And how do they come to know Jesus Christ? They come to know him as they see him in the Scriptures and in your conduct. You are the closest some men and women will ever get to Jesus Christ. If they do not see Christ’s love in you, they will never see it.
Some time ago I read a story in one of the books of Dr. H. A. Ironside that illustrates this graphically. Once when Ironside was in Ganado, Arizona, at a Presbyterian Mission Hospital there, he met a poor Navajo woman who had been nursed back to health through the consecrated work of a Christian doctor and the Navajo nurses. She had been cast out by her own people when they thought she was going to die, and was found after three or four days of exposure. After nine weeks in the hospital she recovered enough to begin to wonder about the unexpected care she had received. She said to one of the nurses, “I can’t understand it. Why did the doctor do all that for me? He is a white man, and I am an Indian. I never heard of anything like this before.”
The Navajo nurse, a Christian, said to her, “You know, it is the love of Christ that made him do that.” She said, “Who is this Christ? Tell me more about him.” The nurse called a missionary to explain the gospel. The staff began to pray. Several weeks passed. Then a day came when she was asked, “Can’t you trust this Savior, turn from the idols you have worshiped, and trust him as the Son of the living God?” As the Navajo woman pondered her answer, the door opened and the doctor stepped in. The face of the old woman lit up. She said, “If Jesus is anything like the doctor, I can trust him forever.” She came to the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted him as her Savior.
Do you see what it was that reached her? It was love. But it was not man’s love. It was God’s love manifest in a man. God’s love! That is what you and I are to show forth to an ungodly and rebellious world, and we are to do it as sons of our Father so that many may come to faith in his unique Son.

Boice, J. M. (2002). The Sermon on the Mount: an expositional commentary (pp. 144–145). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Milkman

If you're looking for one volume Systematic theo by Boice, then check this out. He basically follows Calvin's Institutes but in a more easily read format.

At the end of each chapter there is a Questions For Further Study and Discussion plus Recommended Reading For Further Study.

What I try to do is to read Boice first then do the Questions and then go back to Calvin and either skim or re-read what Boice was just talking about.

Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Comprehensive & Readable Theology Revised and Expanded

This volume is not a rehash of the Institutes, however, although I am greatly indebted to Calvin and although the theology of this work is Calvinistic. Rather, it is an attempt (a) to cover the same ground in highly readable language, yet at the same time (b) to introduce themes that Calvin did not treat but that call for treatment today, and (c) to seek to relate all doctrine to contemporary rather than ancient views and problems. Book one deals with the doctrine of God and how we know God, book two with sin and the redemptive work of Christ, book three with the Holy Spirit and the application of redemption to the individual, and book four with the church and the meaning of history.

Boice, J. M. (2019). Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Comprehensive & Readable Theology (Revised & Expanded, p. xvi). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press.

I'm looking for opinions and comments on the subject commentary set.

https://www.logos.com/product/2665/boices-expositional-commentaries

For some reason I am not able to view the sample pages on the bottom of the product page so I would also appreciate some examples.

Thanks 😊

(‾◡◝)

... so I would also appreciate some examples.

Perhaps the best example of Dr. Boice is to listen to him - after all, his commentaries were all first preached. HERE is today's sermon.

What a gift to the saints in these last days which are filled with all sorts of false teachers, buffoons, heretics, bad theology and exposition, worship service antics, vapid praise ditties, etc., that we have access to recordings of men like Boice, Lloyd-Jones, SL Johnson, and many others.

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1083070#Comment_1083070

... so I would also appreciate some examples.

Perhaps the best example of Dr. Boice is to listen to him - after all, his commentaries were all first preached. HERE is today's sermon.

What a gift to the saints in these last days which are filled with all sorts of false teachers, buffoons, heretics, bad theology and exposition, worship service antics, vapid praise ditties, etc., that we have access to recordings of men like Boice, Lloyd-Jones, SL Johnson, and many others.

Thanks for the link to his preached sermons 👍😁👌