In keeping with James Boice’s passion for leading people to God’s Word, I have compiled a year-long devotional from his sermons and writings, covering all but four books of the Bible. It will be available in September from Baker Publishing.

“The study of the Bible must be the consuming passion of a believer’s life,” James Montgomery Boice exhorted us in a sermon in Psalm 119. Those of us who sat under his thirty years of expositional preaching, would attest that such was the consuming passion of his life. He preached systematically through twenty-seven books and extensively through another five.

The plaque in the sanctuary commemorating Boice’s life and ministry presents the passage considered the theme of his life work, Romans 11:33-36, which extols the glory of God. That is an accurate summary of his aim in ministry and to which he pointed those under his teaching ministry – to give all glory to God. But if that was his aim, the means by which he most believed in achieving that aim was to know and to obey God’s Word.

In keeping with James Boice’s passion for leading people to God’s Word, I have compiled a year-long devotional from his sermons and writings, covering all but four books of the Bible. It will be available in September from Baker Publishing. I had two purposes in compiling this devotional.

First, I hope this collection will keep Boice’s legacy alive for a new generation of Christians. Most of these devotions are culled from his published sermons. They give but a taste of his fuller exposition of the texts. To help with further reading, footnotes accompany daily devotions. A number of selections come from unpublished material. All but one of the Revelation devotions come from the last series of sermons he was preaching when he died in 2000. A few come from messages given in his early life before coming to Tenth, so that the body of work covers his full span of ministry.

The second purpose is the one that James Boice himself would have had for such a work, which is to aid readers in studying the most important book – the Bible. As helpful as the words of the expositor may be, he would have had you value much more highly the Word of God. With that in mind, each reading includes not only a sample Scripture text, but cites the fuller Bible reading that should go along with the devotion.

The origin of the book’s title, Come to the Waters, comes from one of the hymns written in collaboration with the Director of Music at Tenth Presbyterian Church, Paul Jones. The “waters” are the waters of life, the gospel of Jesus Christ. As you will see time again in these devotions, it is knowing Jesus Christ that matters above all else. We are to live with the aim of glorifying God, but that cannot be done without being cleansed by the blood of Christ and then living in Christ. Yes, the means to glorify God is to know and to obey his Word, but we will not understand the Word of God if we do not see that it is leading us to the “waters” of the gospel –- to the person and work of Jesus Christ. These devotions are not intended to simply make us a better person, they are to lead us again and again to our only hope – Jesus Christ – for glorifying God.

Here is an excerpt from the devotion for August 7:

“When the Bible is opened and we see the Lord Jesus Christ as he is interpreted to us by the divine operation of the Holy Spirit, we will never be the same again. The Word itself will be different. It will not be a mystery. It will make sense. What is more, it will be a great blessing. For it will be the place where we meet with Jesus, who died for us and who now lives to be known by his followers.”
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Rev. Marion Clark is Executive Minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Penn.