Few of us are eager to proclaim ourselves prophets, and yet is the duty of Christians — and especially of ministers in the church — to serve in the office of prophets, voicing truth from God's Word to the church. Yet there is a great principle of deformation that always opposes this calling, a principle that is especially influential in our own day. This is the idea that it is more important to be winsome, more excellent to be pleasing in the sight of men, regardless of what you do or say, than it is to guard and proclaim the truth of God. Just as in Jeremiah's day, the pragmatists and the lovers of the new and the allies of the world hate and attack the prophetic voice because it unsettles the people. "Your words mark you as a traitor," they said to Jeremiah, and so they still say today.
If there is one certainty in the Evangelical Movement today, it is that those who confront error and compromise, those who deliver bad though biblical news, just like those reformers the prophets, will be cast aide, will be mocked and abused, will be denied access to major media, will be ridiculed and marginalized, just as the prophets of old were put to death with stones and cast into cisterns. Indeed, as Jesus Himself lamented, this treatment of prophets is veritably the spectator sport of deformation history.
- Richard D. Phillips, Turning Back the Darkness: The Biblical Pattern of Reformation, (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Il, USA, 2002), p. 107-108
3 comments:
This is an excellent sermon that goes well with this post. It is called "Blessed are the Peace-Makers (not the Peace-Keepers!)" by Mark Keilar of Boynton Beach Baptist Church.
You will find it VERY encouraging. People who are genuinely interested in true peace will pay a high price and be publicly abused and humiliated. We see it happening in churches all around and in families as well.
Paula:
thanks. However, I think there is something wrong with your link; I can't access anything.
Oh, never mind. I found the link to the sermon. Thanks.
Post a Comment