The Truth will Set you Free: Not Our Buddy: A Call To Revere God's Holiness

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Not Our Buddy: A Call To Revere God's Holiness

By Jim Bublitz @ http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.558

God is not our buddy. In fact, He levels this charge against sinful man: "These things you have done, and I kept silent. You thought I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face. Consider this you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces with none to rescue" (Psalm 50). When pastors, preachers, or bible teachers attempt to "make God more relate-able" and bring Him down to a more accessible level that people can appreciate, by representing Him as having human attributes, ideas, techniques, or behaviors, they are actually representing God in a way that is exactly opposite of who and what He is. God is Holy, apart and separate from human folly and thinking.

As Isaiah 58:8 says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord".

These churches should reconsider the damage that they are doing to this solemn yet beautiful attribute of God's holiness. To turn the pulpit into a place to elicit belly-laughs not only has zero-precedence in scripture, but it's outright irreverent, thoroughly demeaning, and utterly distracting to the holiness of God and to the reverence that He rightly deserves. It's significant that . . .

Anyplace scripture ever describes anyone, anywhere, anytime, who has actually entered into the presence of God, every single one of those people went immediately DOWN - down on their faces, in holy reverent awe and respect. Old Testament and New.

It's also worth noting that in all of the sermons found in scripture, none of them are ever flip, funny, or casual.

This 13 minute audio includes actual sermon clips
from God is our buddy churches, but a couple of
other examples worth noting include this video from Community Christian Church in Illinois, in which Jesus is depicted as a high-fiving employer that you can horse-around with, and this video (from the same church) in which Jesus is playing baseball with the guys.

May you be blessed by this audio clip on the holiness of God.
It's from the Attributes of Christ video series from CrossTV,
which borrows heavily from AW Pink's book.