ligonier on fire

Ligonier Ministries’ blog has been on fire lately. Yesterday they put up an interview with Sinclair Ferguson that included these two bits and more:

Sometimes I feel this is actually what has happened in popular evangelicalism. Our “Jesus” is actually a reflection of ourselves. This is the constant danger when we don’t simply open the Scriptures and listen to their testimony about Jesus: we make a Jesus in our own image, usually domesticated. Sadly, much that dominates the Christian media seems to fall foul here. Any Jesus who isn’t both Savior and Lord, Sacrificial Lamb of God and Reigning King, cannot be the Jesus of the Gospels. And any Jesus who does not call us to radical, sacrificial, and yes, painful, discipleship, cannot be the real Jesus. I sometimes think that our danger as evangelicals is that we use what I sometimes tongue-in-cheek call the “Find Waldo Method” of reading the Gospels. Remember Waldo — the little fellow in the red and white sweater in the midst of the vast crowds? The whole point of the Waldo books was to try to find him. Many people read the Gospels that way, always asking “What does this have to say about me?” But that means that at the end of the day we’re looking for what they have to say about me, and my life, and my improvement. Yes, the Gospels have much to say to me. But they aren’t about me… they’re about Christ. And we need to listen to them and master them, or better be mastered by them and by the Christ they describe.

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We have also spawned a cult of the personality and the guru. I have seen pulpit search committee material stating in black and white that they need an “outstanding communicator” to be their minister. Much of our thinking has actually become very worldly.

One indication of this recently is in the ease with which Christians now speak about “the quality of our worship” but unlike their forefathers do it only once on Sunday (and many ministers know that an evening service would not be well attended …. for all kinds of reasons that I suspect will not hold up before the God of the universe who is worthy to be worshiped and adore world without end! I wonder what he thinks of the quality of our worship!). It is also a concern to me that we are living in the age of the worship leader and the counselor rather than the preacher (what we do and what we talk about–sadly usually ourselves–takes precedence over God talking to us.

and then this morning there is an extended look at R.C. Sproul’s book, The Holiness of God or here.

one of the excerpts is this one:

Pages 28-30 – If ever there was a man of integrity it was Isaiah Ben Amoz. He was a whole man, a together type of fellow. He was considered by his contemporaries as the most righteous man in the nation. He was respected as a paragon of virtue. Then he caught one sudden glimpse of a holy God. In that single moment all of his self-esteem was shattered. In a brief second he was exposed, made naked beneath the gaze of the absolute standard of holiness. As long as Isaiah could compare himself to other mortals, he was able to sustain a lofty opinion of his own character. The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was destroyed – morally and spiritually annihilated. He was undone. He came apart. His sense of integrity collapsed.



see Isaiah 6