The Holiness of God

The greatest saints, whether it's Job, Elijah, Habakkuk, Peter, Paul, it doesn't matter, universally, when the holiness of God is present, human beings quake in terror. When we encounter God's majesty, His perfection, His blazing glory, it changes everything. It certainly did for R.C. Sproul, and it established the foundation for his five decades of ministry in the classroom, the pulpit, and on this program. This week on Renewing Your Mind, we're celebrating R.C. 's ministry through the decades, bringing you some of his most pivotal messages. And the one we're going to hear today is one we've never aired before.

It's an early lecture from 1979, recorded in the Sproul's living room there at the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Pennsylvania. Consider how often the Bible speaks of holiness in one dimension or another. Almost at the beginning of the book there's the commandment, you shall be holy, even as I am holy. Or God, when He calls Israel and sets them apart from the rest of the nations and enters into a unique covenant relationship with them, what does He do? He sanctifies them. He consecrates them, which means what? He makes them holy. In the New Testament, the believers in the Christian church are called what? Saints, or the hagioi, which means literally what?

The holy ones. Our identity, our call, our purpose, our roots, our destiny, all of those things are wrapped up and enveloped in this biblical concept of holiness. And in fact, if I were to ask you what was the purpose of creation in the first place, what would you say?

Where's the crowning act, the ultimate point that expresses the purpose of creation? First day? Second day? What day? The sixth.

I trapped you. Why would we say the sixth? Because the sixth day we see the crowning act of God's creation, the creation of man.

But why does He create man? Does God look at the sixth day and hallow it? In the whole understanding and mystery that is connected with Hebrew numerology, the number system that we find in the Bible with the sevens and the tens and the forties and the sixes and all of that, is six ever a good number?

No. What's the good number? Seven. If you want to look for completeness, for goals, for purpose, you don't look at the sixth day. You look at the seventh day, where God creates the Sabbath and consecrates it. And that theme goes through all of Scripture, Sabbath holiness, that man is created as the image of God to mirror and reflect the very nature of God Himself. That's our goal. That's our end. You see, the sixth day is the penultimate day of creation.

The ultimate is the seventh. And again, all wrapped up in this concept of holiness. Now, let me ask you, what does the word mean? Yes. Set apart for a special purpose. Okay, set apart for a special purpose. Is God's holiness tied up in the fact that He set apart for a special purpose?

No. When I think of that, I think more of like Israel was, they were the holy ones. They were the holy ones because they were set apart to be what? To mirror and reflect God.

Yeah. In other words, their consecration itself was unto holiness. But to find the real meaning of it, we've got to go somehow back to the holiness of God. To the holiness of God. And when I say that God is holy, what do I mean? Perfect. Morally?

Yeah. What's the difference between God's holiness and His righteousness, or are they the same thing? His righteousness is part of His holiness. His righteousness is part of His holiness. Well, tell me something about that holiness that's not a part of His righteousness. And then His character and basic being is made up of holiness, you know? That's what His essence is, perfection, holiness. Okay.

Now we're getting down to it. His perfection, His essence is holiness. We tend almost to equate righteousness and holiness, to almost think of holiness, particularly when we think of God's holiness, as exclusively a moral quality. It includes it, as some of you have pointed out, that God's righteousness is part of His holiness, but His holiness goes beyond His righteousness. Now, let me just take a minute and go to my favorite passage of the Bible regarding this, and that is the sixth chapter of Isaiah.

Now, listen to what it says here. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. And above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two He covered his face, with two He covered his feet, and with two He did fly.

And you get the picture. Isaiah comes into the temple, and he has a vision of the Lord Adonai, Adonai, the sovereign one of Israel, seated on a throne. Did you realize that the throne of Israel is empty?

The king is dead. Isaiah comes to the temple, and he sees a vision of the throne, and who's sitting in the throne? God, the Lord, Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, is seated in this throne. And His glory fills the temple, and His train fills the room, we see.

You see God sitting on the throne, and His robe comes down over the back of the throne, and the train then spreads out and completely engulfs and fills up the whole temple. And he noticed that there in the throne, he's seeing the seraphim flying around. And to describe these beasts seems to be the most hideous, grotesque animal in all of creation, six wings. Now, somebody once made a statement, God doesn't make any junk. God doesn't waste what He makes. And one of the most remarkable testimonies of this world to the genius of God is the incredible way in which all the vastly diversified animals and birds and fish and insects are so finely adapted to their environment. And here we are as the lords of this planet inhabiting it, and yet we can't fly through the air without machines, but birds can just take to the wing any day. We're not built to fly.

It's not built into our composition and our structure and our makeup. But when God builds a creature to fly, what does He do? He gives a pair of wings. But why six wings? Do you have to have six wings to fly? But wings are usually associated with flying. And it takes two wings to fly, and the seraphim have two wings. But because of where they fly, God equips them with four more wings.

Where do they fly? In the presence of God. In the presence of God. In the holy of holies. And because they are in the presence of God, God makes them two more sets of wings, two to cover their feet.

Why that? What do the feet symbolize? We talk about feet of clay. Moses, Moses, take off your shoes from off your feet, for the ground we're on now standing is holy ground. The feet are the base, the foundation of what we walk with and stand upon, and they become a symbol in Hebrew literature of creatureliness. And so the bird that flies in the presence of God covers His creatureliness with two wings. And the other two wings, He covers His face.

Why? He cannot look unveiled at the refugence of the glory of God. And so Isaiah is seeing this experience, and he can't believe what he's seeing. There are these birds that are coming out of the eyes, covering their feet, flying around, and they're singing. The really greatest hymn of the church, the tritagion, the three times holy. They sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of His glory. If here in our culture we want to emphasize a point that we are making with the written word, how would we do it? What literary devices do we have to emphasize a point? Exclamation points, italics, underline it, right? Capitalize it, you know, bold print. I mean, there are all kinds of things that we can do as a literary device to say, this is very important.

It's underlined, exclamation point, we could put it in brackets or in quotes, whatever. But for the Jew, one of his favorite ways of calling attention to something very important and to bring emphasis to it was to repeat it twice. But on very, very rare occasions, the Bible will be so emphatic about something that it moves from the comparative to the superlative degree of repetition. Notice that the seraphim do not say, holy is the Lord, the Lord of hosts. And they don't even say, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

They say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. That's the only time in the Word of God where a, quote, attribute of God is magnified and elevated to the third degree. Bible says that God is love, that He's merciful, that He's righteous, that He is wrath.

The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, mercy, mercy, mercy, wrath, wrath, wrath, righteous, righteous, righteous. We describe God in His essence and in His being by listing His attributes, His characteristics. And we think that God is the sum total of His attributes and His characteristics, that He is a being who is infinite, eternal, wise, righteous, merciful, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. We talk about these as attributes. And it's customary to include holiness as one attribute. Now, I think it's a mistake to try to construct a hierarchy of attributes with God and try to balance them one with the other or trade one against the other and all of that, because God is a unified being. But if there's any of those attributes which is not an attribute as such, but which represents the whole sum and substance and essence of who God is, it is His holiness. Because the word itself simply means His otherness, His transcendence, which is that aspect of God that differentiates Him from anything else. God that differentiates Him from anything created.

It refers to His uniqueness. And then we go to the New Testament, and we see this happen. The disciples go out on the sea with Jesus, seasoned veteran fisherman. God on Lake Galilee, and all of a sudden, this violent storm comes up, and the waves are gigantic. And, you know, it's just like the little fishing men are out there in the middle of the sea, and He says, Oh God, your sea is so big and my boat is so small. These guys are in imminent danger of capsizing and being destroyed by the turbulence around them.

The winds howl and the rains beating down. What's Jesus doing? He's sound asleep. He's asleep, taking a nap in the back of the boat, and the narrative tells us that when the sea starts to roar like this, the disciples were afraid.

So what do they do? They could wake Him up. What would you do? You'd go to your leader right away, right? Do something. They don't want to, you know, master, do something, or we perish. And they're frantic. And Jesus sort of stretches out and He yawns a couple of times and wipes His eyes and looks around, you know, at all these waves. And He turns His attention from the men, and He looks out at the water, and He says, Peace. Peace still. Like He's talking to a dog or something, right?

And instantly, the sea is like glass, and there's not even a zephyr in the air. And the disciples rejoiced exceedingly. Is that what it says? What's it say? Is that what it says?

What's it say? And the disciples became very much afraid, saying, What manner of man is this? Every time God is present in the Bible, universally, whether it's a sinner, a rank, you know, debased, corrupt person, or the greatest saints, whether it's Job, Elijah, Habakkuk, Peter, Paul, it doesn't matter. Universally, when the holiness of God is present, human beings quake in terror before it. There is nothing in this whole universe more intimidating and threatening to man than the holiness of God. And even when we're Christians, reconciled, at peace with God, we still retain part of that tendency in our being to flee from the presence of God, to veil that holy. Even the people of Israel, when Moses came down and his face was shining just as a reflection from being with God, they said, Moses, we can't stand it.

Cover your face. See, there's nothing more foreign to our being than the unmitigated holiness of God. If I look at you, I can say, now here, He's a white man. He's a bearded man. He's a bespectacled man. He's a young man. You know, He's a Christian man. There's all kinds of things I can say that puts Him into character. He's an American.

I got all those categories that help me relate to Him so that He's not totally a stranger to me. Why do you suppose there's so much strife and conflict when people from different ethnic and cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds get together and mix? They don't understand each other. They don't have common values. They don't have common heritages.

They don't have a common root. And we have a tendency to fear the stranger, the one whose ways are different from our ways. But for Jesus, there was no category. What manner of man is this?

What do they try? Well, He's a prophet. He's this. He's that. When they saw Him do that, they ran out of categories.

There's something totally alien about Him, and it wiped them out. Wouldn't it be great if we could hate what God hates and love what God loves, affirm what God affirms and reject what God rejects, and be perfectly upright with no shadow of turning within us? You can't even hope to do that until we start thinking like Him, come to grips with His Word. And the starting point for me is His holiness. I'll tell you why I'm preoccupied almost with holiness.

Do I look to you like a holy man, a really righteous man, a spiritual giant type of person? I was converted to the Christian faith from the streets. There are so many wounds and scars on my soul from my pre-Christian days that have been carried over and there's so much garbage that still is going on in my life that it would be very easy for me to succumb to that.

That's why I get really panicky when I see Christian leaders lowering the standards, because I want so much for the standards to be lowered. And the only safeguard I have is to keep looking at who God is, so I can say no to that junk that would seduce me all around. And to know at the same time that the only way I can live in the presence of God is not by being a legalist, you know, checking the list every day and being a Pharisee.

I'm not that way. The only way I can live there is in grace and forgiveness. But that forgiveness itself comes with a cutting edge of a reminder of the holiness of God and that I am not holy. But because of the cross, we don't say, Depart from me. We say, Embrace me. Heal me. Forgive me.

And now we have as the first fruits of our justification peace with God, that we're welcome in His presence because we've been clothed with the righteousness of Christ. And I can remember when I worked in a hospital and worked with the electricians one day, I got an emergency call to go up to the pediatrics ward and to go in where they had the newborn infants. And there was a two-pound preemie, premature baby in an incubator, and the nurses were running around not knowing what to do.

They knew how to handle the medical dimension of it, but the switch on the incubator was broken, and it took an electrician to fix the switch. And I was the only one there. Oh, I had never bargained for that. And they have those glass enclosures, and you put your hands in. Well, I had to go in there. I had to get all this surgical dressing on, the robes and the gowns and the gloves and the hat and the mask and everything.

And I felt like a surgeon. I went in there, and the baby's in there, and I'm playing with this switch to do it. But you see, I couldn't go in there and be in the presence of that baby unless I was dressed right. When you go into the presence of a holy God, you have to be dressed right. You've got to have the righteousness of Christ. You've got to be clothed. But once you have that clothes on, there's nothing to fear because you're acceptable in the Beloved. And finally, we've got two minutes.

Let me just finish this text. Fourth verse, the whole earth is full of His glory, and the posts of the door moved at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. I don't know how people can read the Bible can read the Bible about the holiness of God and not be moved.

Does it move you to contemplate the holiness of God? Do you know what happened in the temple when God showed up? The doorposts moved.

Inanimate wooden objects moved. How can we not be moved who are animate, living, breathing, and vital human beings? I was with a fellow last week, and we were in a service of worship inside Stillwater Prison in Minneapolis with the inmates. This was a maximum security facility, hardcore killers, rapists, all of that. Seventy-five guys out of 1,200 are Christians in that place. And there we were having a worship service together. It was one of the most moving, moving experiences in my life.

And I'll tell you, the guy who was with us was Lem Barney, used to play cornerback for Detroit Line. And Lem came out of the prison, and he says, man, if that doesn't turn you on, you ain't got any switches. I said, amen. I said, when God comes, even the doors move.

And the seraphim said, this is what we need to do is to enlarge our understanding of the majesty of God. That's Dr. R.C. Sproul teaching at the place where it all began 50 years ago at the Ligonier Valley Study Center. The setting was a small group in the Sproul's living room with as many people as they could squeeze onto the couches and folding chairs, some even sitting on the floor.

No one in that room, including Dr. and Mrs. Sproul, would imagine that Ligonier would grow into the international outreach that it is today. This week on Renewing Your Mind, we are so pleased to share messages through the decades celebrating God's work through the life and ministry of Dr. Sproul. And our resource offer this week is a very special book. Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Stephen Nichols, has spent the last few years researching and writing a comprehensive biography of Dr. Sproul, and it's just been released.

The title, R.C. Sproul, A Life, and we'd like to send it to you for your donation of any amount. It is a beautiful hardbound edition, so contact us with your gift at renewingyourmind.org or call us at 800-435-4343. Well, I hope you'll join us again tomorrow as we go back to the early days of this ministry. We'll bring you a message from the 80s titled, Dry Bones. We hope you'll join us Wednesday on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.