Commentary Collections

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to translate for a very prominent preacher of the Southern Baptist Association. While sipping espressos in the Argentine airport waiting for our flight to the conference engagement we had pending he and I talked. We talked about various authors and books. I confessed of my deep appreciation for C.S. Lewis and he smiled at this. Then I told him I liked Ravi Zacharias and several other authors. My lips accidentally spilled the name MacArthur. This caused quite a commotion. Apparently my preacher friend had received the entire MacArthur Bible Commentary set as a church anniversary gift. He said that while reading them there were many he kept and several others he threw away. One of the tomes he threw out was Hebrews. Now Hebrews is a great book, one of my favourites in the New Testament, but I realized how little I knew of it. Quite frankly I doubt my pastor friend should have thrown it out, it seems almost sacriligeous to break up a good set of commentaries, but that is his choice. I don't know why he threw them out (although I do know for a fact that he resented the Calvinistic undercurrents flowing throughout MacArthur's books), but I am intrigued by the fact that he had such a passion for his library that he perused or read to their entirety every book in the set. His passion was so intense that he also got rid of what was, in his opinion, unworthy. In my own library I have the Matthew Henry commentaries. I also have the J. Vernon McGee commentaries. There are also a few others and I have several select tomes to sets that I don't yet own. My wish is to get entire sets. I'd like to get Weirsbe, Walvoord, MacArthur, and others but that'll be later on in life. My concern is that I get them and then only reference them. That's what I do now with the ones I've got. I use them for a reference. That's not the way it should be. It should be that I read them all and get to know them. Then, once that's done, I should be able to reference them for sermons or studies or whatever falls my way.