I want to begin our study of the holiness of God by looking at an Old Testament king, King Uzziah. King Uzziah was a good king. We shouldn't take that for granted. If you look at the kings in Judah and Israel, the majority of them were really a mess. They were either running after other gods, they were corrupt. They were pursuing their own well-being, their own wealth, indulging themselves, and so on. And that doesn't really surprise us, because that's the way people often are throughout the history of the world. But it was certainly true with God's people. And the thing that's remarkable about King Uzziah is not only was he a good and wise king that God blessed and gave prosperity to all his people, He reigned for 52 years. We have to think about that for a moment, because it's an extraordinarily long time for one person to rule. 52 years ago, Richard Nixon was the President of the United States. President Nixon, President Ford, President Carter, two terms of President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, two terms of President Clinton, two terms of George W. Bush, two terms of President Obama, one term of President Trump, and now President Biden, all in the span of one reign of good King Uzziah. And one of the things that meant was, is by the time King Uzziah died, Almost everybody in Israel, the vast majority of people, because most of them would have died by the time they were 55 or 60 years old, most of them had only known one king. And then he had died. What if you were living in a culture like that? I mean, what would you be thinking? It would be like the foundations had been shaken. And you would be just wondering what comes next. Are we going to have all this infighting and civil war? Are we going to be ruled by a corrupt ruler, by someone who doesn't care about God, by someone who brings judgment upon us? And all those things were possible. And in the midst of that, we're told that the prophet Isaiah has a vision from God. And in chapter six, he says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. What was God doing? God was telling Isaiah, yes, it's true. Good King Uzziah is dead. But I, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, I sit enthroned on the universe, and I am reigning forever. Do not be afraid. And then in that vision, we're told that there are angels crying out to one another. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory. And you remember what happens to Isaiah. Isaiah says, woe is me. I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the Lord. So that's a reaction to the holiness of God. And so as we study this really wonderful book together, The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, we're going to be grappling with both sides of this. On the one hand, the sinners coming into the presence of a holy God can be utterly terrifying. It can break up our worldview. It breaks up our confidence and many other things that we just sort of take for granted our day to day lives. On the other hand, the holiness of God is a wonderfully attractive characteristic. And so we need to answer questions, of course, like, what does it mean to say that God is holy? And what does it mean for us? After all, the Lord says, be ye holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. This isn't just something we're supposed to observe. We're supposed to worship God for his holiness, but we are also supposed to pursue holiness in our own lives. Well, we're not going to answer all these questions tonight. Tonight, we're just going to get started. And I should tell you that this first chapter isn't simply about holiness. R.C. is talking about the bigness, the majesty, the grandeur of God in a broader stroke than simply the doctrine of God's holiness here. And that's a really fitting way to introduce us to this story. So what I want to do is have more discussion tonight than we've normally done in our Bible studies, for good reason. If we're going through Zechariah, which is a very difficult book to interpret, I'm going to have to say a lot, and it's going to be hard for us just to pool our ideas. That's not really true with a book like this, right? We're going to read these chapters, and it's going to be accessible to a large degree to all of us, and we should share what we're learning together. So I have basically six things I'd like to talk about tonight. But if there are additional things, they're all from, well, the first five are all from the chapter. If you have additional things, let's just throw them out there. We'll have a good discussion together. We'll learn from each other. And we'll just take it from there. Before I launch into what those things are, why don't we go before the throne of grace and prayer and ask that the Lord would bless our study together. Let's pray. Father, we confess that we are in utter awe of who you are, of your majestic power that you would simply speak the word and the entire universe would leap into existence. We are in awe of your holiness, and we are in awe of your grace that you would stoop, not simply to forgive people like us, but to bring us into your family, that we would know you and love you and glorify you forever. And so we ask this evening is we begin this study of this important aspect of your character, your holiness, that you would cause each of us to come to know you better, that we would see with greater clarity who you are and what you are like, that we would be drawn closer to you, that we would glorify you more fully in this world. Father, use our words to build each other up and to glorify your holy name. We ask this in Jesus's name, amen. So I would like to do six things tonight. If you have one right off the top of your head, you can say it now. But we can also talk about them as we go through the chapter this evening. The first I want to talk about, experiencing God. R.C. Sproul begins by describing an experience that he has. But second, I want to talk about what's behind that experience, what drove that experience. It wasn't just a random night that he was having. It had to do with theology that he was learning, the truth of God showing up in his experience. Third, I want to talk about something he only mentions in passing. I don't want to talk about it a little bit, but I think it's helpful. And that's the fact that it's possible to be an unintentional Unitarian. That is, it's possible to be a Christian who really doesn't know very much about who God is or his character. The fact that he's triune and draws near to us and is a majestic God. And so we want to be able to move past that, but I think it's worth mentioning in passing, since R.C. talks about it in the chapter. Fourth, I think we ought to talk about some of the challenges we face in this world. Just as we think about God, in the book R.C. mentions Uzzah stretching out his hand and touching the ark, and it's striking him dead. And as a young man, he said that really bothered him. He didn't understand. It seemed like Uzzah was well-intentioned from our human standpoint, and God killed him. Or you think about God ordering the Israelites going into the promised land to kill all the Canaanites. How do we make sense of that? And we're going to see that the holiness of God is central to being able to resolve those sorts of natural difficulties and challenges that we face. fifth, and this is really at the end of the chapter, embracing Jesus's own priorities. Jesus, after all, teaches us to pray, hallowed be thy name. I think we ought to talk a little bit about how that fleshes out in our prayer life and how we think about God and how we think about our own walk with him. But sixth, I want to begin by just sort of fleshing out a little bit, at least tentatively, what exactly do we mean by holiness? You'll notice that R.C. doesn't really define it in this chapter, and I think it'll be helpful for us to at least approach a definition of holiness so that we have a clearer idea of what we're talking about. Does anybody have anything else off the top of their head or maybe you wrote it down that you want to make sure we talk about tonight that we don't miss, or do you just want to dive in and we'll see when we get there. I'm going to take Simon's consent to move on. I got a couple of shaking heads here. Please, I really do hope this is going to be more of a discussion than we've had in the past. And so we begin tonight with the beginning of the chapter with an experience that R.C. had while he was in college. And if you don't really know his background story, R.C. became a Christian in college. He had been raised in a Christian family of sorts. They were a bit nominal in terms of how they approach things, according to R.C. Of course, none of us know his family. But he went to a Christian college, a Presbyterian school. And while he was there, he became a Christian. God caused him to be born again. The story he recounts here is later in his college experience. He talks about going out, but he felt gripped while he was getting ready to sleep in the middle of the night. You know, that stage where you're kind of falling asleep, but you're still aware of things. You can still hear things, kind of that in-between sense. And he had this profound sense that he needed to get up and go do something. And he went to the Gothic Chapel on campus, and there he had this sense of encountering, meeting God in prayer. Not that he had words for it, right? He acknowledged he didn't have anything particularly to say to God, but he was experiencing God as being bigger than he thought before. I want to ask if anybody has any thoughts about RC story or also if anybody would like to share some experiences that you've had where God deeply impressed you with something about his greatness, his majesty, his holiness, his power, anything at all. We're all among friends here. And if no one has anything, I'm going to call on Al. Yeah, it's funny you say that, because when we were first reading it, I'm going, I didn't think R.C. was charismatic. R.C. is actually a bit charismatic, by the way, when you say that. I think that was a part that they didn't really advertise too much, but he was. But I also want to say two things about this, Al, and I'll come back to you with it. First of all, as a matter of literary license, it makes sense to start by talking with experiences and things that are engaging. as long as you're not grounding things on that, that makes good sense. And secondly, Christianity is experiential, right? Doctrine drives experience, but it's not like we just have doctrine. We do have a lived out life of faith. But I'll go back to you, Al. Yes, so R.C. was a little charismatic. That surprised you? I did. I mean, not like I know him, you know, extremely well. But you know what I have listened to him, you know, it did strike me a little bit. Oh, that's a little bit strange, you know. But the only thing that I could say that I was ever close to that was when I had ruptured my Achilles, and it was a middle of the night, and I was in excruciating pain. And I remember I just cried out, you know, Lord, I don't even remember what I said, but I cried out something. And I fell asleep. And when I woke up, the pain was gone. And, you know, whether it was an hour or whatever it was, but it was that noticeable. And it struck me that I was like, wow, you know, the Lord heard me. Any answer. Other thoughts or other experiences people have had where there was a place in your life, a time in your life, maybe many of them, where you just had this sense of the greatness of God, the mercy of God, the holiness of God. We've actually all experienced this to some degree. I mean, you have conviction of sin. You have a sense of the greatness of God and therefore the horror of my own sinning against him. So you don't have to get in details about that. We don't wanna have, this is not a true tales told Zoom cast. Anything else about experiences? It's a shy group. Oh, boy. Hey, Mona. Hi. We're talking about experiencing God. And people are sharing when they've had experiences where they had a sense of the weightiness of God, the greatness of God, or something like that. We'll get myself a chair. Hang on one second. OK. Anyone else before we get Mona a shot? I know I've had a few experiences. I can think of like... two specific times. One was hiking in the mountains and it was a beautiful clear day. So I stopped, we were taking a break, looking out over the mountains. And I remember looking down and seeing a group of hikers and they looked so small. And I had that feeling of like, we're really small in these mountains and these mountains are really small compared to other mountains. And the mountains are small compared to the world and the world is small compared to the universe. And it just sort of had this like piling weight. of realizing just how vast the universe is and how great God is and compared with everything. And I think I've had another experience like that, looking out on a really clear starry night. You go up where there's nothing else, and you look out at the stars, and you have that feeling of sensing how great God is in comparison with all creation. So Mona, you have the seat. You want to share an experience? It's funny that I should say that because as a teenager, I had watched, you know, one of those earth type series that was made by Christians. I don't even remember where the video came from, but it was about the universe and the galaxies. And, and I would just remember laying in bed and feeling God's like vastness and greatness beyond my comprehension to a point where I felt like my mind was boggled. I couldn't keep thinking about it because I was just standing in awe of who God is and it was mind boggling. Yeah. I've had a few experiences like that, too. I also have the other side of it, which R.C. talks about, is this was followed by a flooding of peace in him. And one of the ones I think of in my own life about peace is I was in the Indian Ocean in a ship in a typhoon, and the waves were humongous. I don't know, they were 65, 70 feet high, whatever, and the ship's doing this. Kenneth Klemow, Ph.D.: : And I just prayed went to sleep, I was like if I die die that's fine you know, and I had that complete sense of resting in god's arms I wasn't at all concerned about it. Kenneth Klemow, Ph.D.: : And I do think that's very much something that the Lord sometimes does he gives us. As we sing, you know, "'Tis grace that taught my heart to fear, "'tis grace that fear relieved." And God does both of those things with him. He gives us a sense of his extraordinary awe, and then he says, fear not, right? Fear not, I am for you, I am with you. Ray, were you gonna say something? Yeah, a couple of things. For me, when the first Sunday I came to worship, Merrimack Valley Church with Steve Magotsky was pulpit supply 27 years ago. And I remember turning to Ellen right after the sermon. And I said, you know, I haven't been a Catholic my whole life. And I turned to her and I said, this is it. I said, you know, the first time that I heard a sermon preached faithfully from the Bible. And it just struck me as like, wow, I just never ever heard that before. And in other occasions, every once in a while, and it comes down to realizing and just thanking God for his amazing goodness to me, and being overwhelmed to the point you just saw. Yeah. And that's happened, you know, a few times, sometimes you could be through scripture, you could be hearing some something on the Christian radio and it just hits you and go, man, it just overwhelms you. Yeah. No, that's wonderful. Here's an important thing, though, which is, Al was talking about R.C. being a bit of a charismatic. The way he words the beginning here is actually a little dicey, but his experience was not raw experience. It was experience that arose out of something, something that had happened earlier that day. What had happened earlier that day? Does anyone remember? I know a couple of you haven't read this for a little while, but what was the experience earlier in the day that actually drove this experience? He was in psychology class, right? He was in a philosophy class, which I thought was kind of funny. And do you remember what they were talking about? Go ahead, sweetheart. St. Augustine. Yeah, I thought that was funny, by the way. Now, I do know that philosophy classes talk about St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas because they're two of the most brilliant people who've ever lived. But it was funny that R.C. referred to him as a philosopher. He was a pastor. He was the Bishop of Hippo, right? He was he was not in the Greek Academy, you know, with debating various ideas that Greeks had about reality or something. He was someone who was teaching and expounding God's word. as a minister of the Word of God. And what they were talking about was creation. And in the discussion that St. Augustine had about creation, he pricked R.C. to realize he had this very shallow thing. He had read, you know, Genesis 1, we all have, in the beginning God created, but he stopped and thought about it. Not only what does that tell us about the event of creation, but what does it teach us about God as creator? So R.C. has this fairly lengthy thing about trying to think about nothing. God creates ex nihilo from nothing. Nothing's not the material. There was nothing there. And God brought material reality into existence. He created time. He created light and all those things that we sort of just take for granted as though they're always just there. And it overwhelmed him. Is that something that you think about much in terms of God's awesomeness as a creator? I was reminded of this just again with the with the web telescope about how enormous the universe is and some of the photos they were bringing back and you think it's just beyond my imagination how big the universe is and our God simply spoke the word and it leapt into existence. I was going to echo that, that both dimensions going farther out just continues to expand and then continuing to look closer in, we're finding even more unique particles within the atom. So it's just phenomenal creation that we're placed in the middle of. Let's flesh out some of the ramifications of that for us, because if you think of something like, you might travel to go to the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum in New York and look at these beautiful artworks, and then we have to realize that when you go walk through the White Mountains or the Green Mountains, you go out to the ocean, everything, and you see everything that's made God made that. He made it with power, but he made it with beauty. I remember years ago, just thinking about the fact that God made things in color. For utilitarian value, there are utilitarian purposes for color. But really, he made things for beauty. In fact, the first thing we're told about the tree that he makes in the garden is he made it beautiful. Before we're told, he made it for food. God made all this beauty. He is the great artist. And so it should change the way we think about God with a sense of awe. I mean, if you had an opportunity to go hang out a bit with Michelangelo, you would be awed because of the great artwork he did. And there's an infinite gap between Michelangelo and God because God created Michelangelo, right? What else does it talk in terms of our relationship with God? That God is creator as you think about that. What does that make you, me? A lump of clay. A lump of clay. Well, it does change things, Ray, because it makes us think about the sovereignty of God. So you have that wonderful picture in Jeremiah of God as the potter. Well, it's a picture of the potter. He's molding the clay and he throws it down and he does it, right? And it reminds us that God has the right to do that, right? Here's an interesting question. Why is it wrong for you to kill another human being? It's obviously wrong. It's a big deal. God in the Old Testament gave capital punishment was the consequence of first degree murder. Why is it wrong? They're made in the image of God. Yeah, they're made in the image of God. And that actually is a very practical ramification because it means it's wrong for me to kill them. It's not wrong for God to kill them. Let me say that again. It's wrong for you to kill me. It is not wrong for God to kill me. After all, I am a guilty sinner. If God kills me, I am his creature. He has all the right in the world to do it with complete justice. By the way, that'll help when you start thinking about things like God commanding the destruction of the Canaanites. Really bad if you and I decide to invade our neighbors and kill them. completely right and just if the creator of all things, who owns them as his creatures, chooses to do the very same thing. So we have to remember, there's an enormous difference. Van Til used to draw two circles on the board, a big circle for God, a little circle for us. And he'd draw lines, and he'd talk about the creator-creature distinction. And we have to remember, God is not simply a bigger version of us. He's the creator where the creature is. He's different than us. He's majestic. And so what else would you think about with God being a creator or did anyone get hung up on contemplating nothingness, which RC was doing in college. He just couldn't get his mind wrapped around nothingness. Actually, he's put that to good use. He read a very helpful book later on in life called Not a Chance, which is very, very helpful. Any thoughts at all? Okay, so God being creator is a big one and I think that's what's going to come back to us over and over again we think about the transcendence, the greatness of God, but you can do that with a lot of different characteristics of God, and you think about those characteristics, and they should lead you to worship. By the way, I don't think it's accidental that R.C. went to the chapel, the Gothic chapel, on campus when he had this sense. Now, I've had these experiences just walking in the snow at night or whatever, right? I mean, you do not have to be in a building. But we are not disembodied minds in vats, right? Having a church where we go and we worship God, that's a natural place to think you go to a sanctuary in a church building and you draw near and you worship God there. So I don't think that's really a strange thing. RC mentioned he had been an unintentional Unitarian. Did anyone pick up on that or have any ideas what he was talking about when he said he was an unintentional Unitarian? It was just a little piece. Well, I think part of that, What he was saying that even though he knew he was a Christian, he really didn't understand the full depth of what that meant. Yeah. Other ideas. That's true. Other ideas that go with that about what R.C. was talking about when he said he was an unintentional Unitarian. He was he was thinking of Jesus more the person of Jesus versus understanding God the Father. So it seemed like thinking about God the Father was what drew him also to worship and to feel his awe. Yeah, Jodi, that's good. I'm going to fill in a little bit because I've read like 60 of R.C. Sproul's books and have listened to a thousand hours of him teaching. So I will occasionally fill in things from elsewhere. I think that when he talks about being a Jesus only Unitarian, it's not just that he was thinking about Jesus and not the father. That is what he says in the book. But he was thinking about the transactional nature of what Jesus had done for him. My sins are forgiven because of what Jesus has done. Jesus, after all, does fully reveal God. But he was thinking of it very narrowly in terms of, I trusted Jesus. My sins are forgiven. I should follow Jesus now. And he also, just as he hadn't come to know the majesty of God yet. And we're all in process on this, right? None of us goes, oh yeah, I've got this. I've been a Christian for 20, 30, 40 years, so now I got it. No, we all see just a little bit. But R.C.' 's experience, I think, is very common, which is he started with a sliver of understanding God. And in particular, because this is the way the gospel is primarily presented, the sliver that says, I am a sinner. I needed to be forgiven. I am forgiven because of Jesus. And as he grows in his knowledge of the Father, he's actually also growing in his knowledge of Jesus and his robust majesty. I think we want to put those things together. Here's my warning, or at least encouragement. I know you, so I don't think this is an issue for us. But that's a practical danger in the church. A lot of people don't seem to want to know very much about God. The worst selling books in theology Well, I should ask you this. What are the two worst selling categories of theology books, if you had to guess what they would be? I'll give you a hint on the other side. The two best selling categories for the last 30 or so years have been books on end times, and books that have to deal with something in my heart, my life, finding God's will for my life. Those are the two best, broadly speaking, categories. What are the two worst selling categories? And by the way, this is true for R.C. Sproul's own books, excepting this one, The Holiness of God. The Attributes of God? Attributes of God are one. And what's the other one? Is there a book Knowing God? That one is sold very well, but you got to keep in mind, it's an exception. The other category is books about Jesus. I think it's a fascinating thing. R.C. Sproul wrote a number of books about Jesus, and they were his worst-selling books. People want to know, quote, practical stuff about their lives, about how Christianity impacts their lives. Honestly, that's a perfectly good thing. But it is interesting that many American Christians, I have no idea if this is true in other parts of the world, or if it's been true throughout church history, tend to be quite happy with a pretty simple knowledge of God. And so wanting to know things about, as Peter said, the attributes of God and what does it mean for God to be simple, to have existence in himself, his omniscience, how does that impact us, and so on. Those are actually not that popular, and we should realize that's a bad thing. We should want to know God better. I trust you're on this call, in part because we all want to know God better. But we need to resist that temptation to be practically Unitarians. And those of us who are elders, we need to be careful in the life of the church that we're not saying, here's three tips on how you can be better parents this week. Here's four tips on how you can manage your money better as a Christian, and so on. And what we're actually doing is talking about how God is like a laundry detergent that makes our life better. Rather than focusing on God himself and saying, I want to know him, or you put that in terms of Jesus, Paul says, I want to know Christ and the power of his sufferings and his resurrection. So anyway, that's just a passing comment. David, I just, one of my friends that came to the church study that we had the Southern Bible study, one of the things that she said, I thought was really interesting as she walked out the door, she said, I didn't realize how little I know about God. And I thought that was very, you know, honest. It's also helpful assessment, you know, like how little we know about God, you know, what we're all in that category right God is infinite we're finite, and we know, not that much now thankfully we know stuff that's true God has revealed himself to us he's revealed himself in Jesus. He's revealing himself in his word. But God is immensely bigger than everything we know. Reminded of a wonderful scene in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. One year, Lucy, when she goes through the wardrobe, I think you all know the story. It's these young children are going through the back of a closet, a wardrobe in England, and they're passing into this new world, this fantastic world where Aslan the lion represents Jesus Christ. And one year when Lucy goes through this wardrobe, she's eventually sees Aslan and she runs up to him and she says, oh, Aslan, you're so much bigger than you were last year. And Aslan says, well, actually, Lucy, in your world, it's only been a year and in this world, it's been thousands of years. But it turns out that not all that time. I haven't changed at all. I am the same yesterday, today and forever. But I've noticed this, the better people get to know me, the bigger I seem to them, though I haven't changed at all. And I love that picture because that's so true of us, right? God isn't getting bigger, but as we get to know him better, we start to realize how extraordinary he is in his majesty and in his holiness. C.S. Lewis often had a wonderful way of putting his finger on things like this. Well, that leads us to R.C. talking about some of the challenges he faced as a young man, challenges some of you may still have in your thinking right now. Think about that story of Uzzah. That's what he mentions. So the ark is being brought back to Jerusalem. It's put on a cart and the cart's rocking. And Uzzah sees this, looks like the holy ark of the covenant might slide out and fall into the dirt. And he stretches out his hand to steady the ark and he touches it. and God kills him on the spot. And you go, wasn't Uzzah just trying to do a good thing? Why would God kill him? And so I ask you that question. Why would God kill Uzzah? Does that trouble you at all? It would have troubled me if I didn't understand why he did it. So Ray, why does God kill him? primarily because they were carrying the Ark incorrectly against his, how he told them to carry it. They were supposed to carry it, not put it on a cart. Yeah, so they were violating his commandments. Second, related to this, Uzzah had the very strange idea that the dirt would defile the Ark, but he wouldn't, right? You know, the problem isn't me, right? I am a good person. But behind that has to be something else. What's that? Why doesn't God just go, hey, no big deal. I'll give you another warning. Look, you shouldn't have done that. But it's all OK. Let's go out and get ice cream together. I think on occasion, God does things right away, I guess, to prove a point, for lack of better words. So it puts the fear of himself and others around him that he is all powerful and he's holy and he's the creator. Yeah, so that's true, Ray. So thankfully, God doesn't always do this. Otherwise, there'd be a lot more dead people. You think about Ananias and Sapphira lying to the Holy Spirit. God does not ordinarily strike people dead right away like that. Although we should realize he does. And Paul says about those who are coming to the Lord's table with evil thoughts towards their brothers and sisters in Christ coming to cavalier manner that some of you are sick and some of you have died because of doing that. God is a holy God. That's the thing that's behind this. God is holy. And we've got to ask, what does it mean for God to be holy? But because God is holy, he doesn't just say, no big deal, I don't care. Yeah, you know, I really, you shouldn't have done that, but it's fine. Right? God doesn't do that. And we have to figure out what does it mean that God is holy? That means that God isn't going to do that. He's not going to allow people to trample his commandments underfoot. And as the Hebrews says, if capital punishment was carried out upon ancient Jews for breaking the law of Moses, how much more will people suffer if they trample the blood of Jesus Christ underfoot is an unclean thing. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Other problems like that. Anyone have difficulty with God saying, I'm going to kill all the Canaanites? There is actually, right now, a cottage industry of books coming out by people that, let's just say loosely, are Old Testament scholars, dealing with that problem. Because it just seems so untenable to tell people that God would actually command the destruction of an entire people. By the way, I've had personal discussions with some of these ministers and professors that think it's just outrageous to think that God would say that. I mean, if you have problems with that, maybe you don't want to admit it on camera. That's okay. I think in the opposite direction, if we look at Abraham and what he was called to do with Isaac. Yeah. He took the approach that it was more important for him to obey and trust God than to spare Isaac's life. Yeah, Peter, that's a really good point. You have those choices in life of who do I try to please? And you've heard me say this a number of times when I asked the question, do I want the praise of God or the praise of the world? My answer is both. I want both. The question is, is when those things come into conflict with each other, what do you choose and Abraham when he brings his son Isaac amount Mariah chose obedience to God and pleasure of God, even over that which was most valuable to him. I do want to say there's a richness there that complicates this, that Abraham believed that God was going to raise Isaac from the dead. I don't think that means it wasn't a horrible thing to have to go through with. But God had made a promise through Isaac that his seed would be fulfilled. And Abraham reasons something like this, and we get this from Hebrews. God has never raised anyone from the dead before. But it's not impossible for God to do that. It is impossible for God to lie. And God has told me my seed will go through Isaac. And so if I kill Isaac, God is going to raise him from the dead. But we all come back and kind of stagger a bit at the fact that God would ask him to do that. And of course, what God was doing is he was setting up a picture of him offering up his own son, Jesus Christ, on that very same mountain. After all, Abraham doesn't go through with it. But yeah, Peter, I like that a lot. God, Abraham held almighty God in awe. Other thoughts about challenges that maybe the doctrine of the holiness of God will help us get at? We'll have to talk about what that is, and I think that'll help fill in the blank, but challenges. sometimes it's hard to go, did God really do that? Wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah? Or do we just go, well, that was a long time ago, so I don't really worry about, I don't know any Sodomites or people that lived in Gomorrah, so I don't really have an emotional attachment to it. Al, were you gonna say something? Yeah, I never had a problem with those passages because you know, as you look at him, and I know I've said this before, and it goes back to Abraham, where Abraham says, you know, does not the God of the universe do right? And so I just always knew that whatever God is doing is right, and he's doing it for the right reason. And we know that these people were wicked, and their time had come. And he said, now it's time for judgment. So the fact that he kills everybody, I never really had a problem with it. Which then obviously goes, all right, in our day and age, when is the time come when he goes, this is it. It's done. I'm judging. I'll you know I'm with you as when I was very, very young, I had a very strong sense of God being God. And I can't tell you how that all came about and everything. And so I've never had a problem, it never occurred to me to put God in the dock to UCS Lewis's terms. that I'm going to stand in judgment over what God is doing. I always realized I'm the one in the dock, God is the one on the throne or on the judge's bench to fit the analogy. So I've never wrestled with this either, but I do understand from talking to people that many people have, many people do. And I actually think the majesty of God is part of the answer, but in particular, the holiness of God is something that will help us put that in its right place. I want to skip ahead a little bit to defining holiness. I think that'll help us here and then come back to Jesus's priorities. So I'm sure you have all heard suggested definitions of what it means to be holy or what holiness means. And I just want to get a couple of them out there. Let's just throw them out on the table. What have you heard? What does it mean to be holy? thing is he has to judge sin. He doesn't have a choice. So I think that's true. I'm not sure it works as a definition of holiness, though, Ray. It's like, because God is holy, he must judge sin. I'm not sure that tells me what holiness is. What is holiness? Set apart. Set apart. We're just gonna get ideas on the table here. What other ones? So set apart is a very common definition. Without sin. Without sin. What else? It's a long raise point, perfect justice. Perfect justice. Other. Other. Other is very common, by the way, particularly I think in the last 30 years or so, people talk about holiness in terms of the otherness of God. Other definitions of holiness? Al was going to say like Kristen, but he didn't want to embarrass her. I don't have those scruples. David. Okay, so. Perfection. Without sin, perfect justice, other or the otherness of God and perfection. What I'd like to do for a second is just go through these and see how they work and do they work. And we'll see, I think, but they all are partially true. They're partial definitions. But if we want a definition that's going to work for holiness, we want one that's going to fit all the biblical data. And the idea of holiness, the word holy, shows up a lot in the Bible. So here's three big things we have to get a definition to fit. God is holy. God calls us to be holy, right? Be holy for I am holy. And holiness also can be positional. That is the moment you, the very first moment you believe in you're in Christ, you were declared to be a saint, you are holy, right? So our definition of holiness ideally should be able to handle all three of those ideas. Does that make sense? Otherwise it's a little bit inadequate. So the first thing is being set apart. Here's a group of pens. I took this pen, I set it apart. Did that pen become holy? No. No. No. Yeah. So being set apart in itself is an inadequate definition, but it's on the right track. You want to say not simply set apart from, but set apart to. Set apart to belonging to God in a special way. Right. Did you see how that's a better definition, not not set apart from primarily but set apart as belonging to God. Now that creates a problem for us. How is God set apart as belonging to God, because we have to have holiness that talks about God was holy holy holy. I think we can answer that but we're gonna have to come back to that. I have, I have some looks going on here, do you see that simply setting apart doesn't do it. So actually that's really relevant we think about our lives, because you can think of your holiness is being set apart from the world. Right. I am holy because I am not worldly. But actually, all you're saying there is that you have moral uprightness. Moral uprightness and holiness are not the same thing in the Bible. They overlap because to pursue holiness, you have to pursue moral uprightness, but they're not the same thing. We'll see if that makes more sense in a second. Would you also include holiness for God's purposes? Yeah, yeah, so being devoted being being set apart to God for God, you throw those two things together right and I think we're getting really close to what holiness means. Without sin, well, God is, of course, without sin, right? And being without sin or being sanctified isn't going to make you without sin, but less sinful, right? More like Jesus is, in fact, something that holiness involves. But it won't quite do as a full orb definition. And there's a bit of the danger of the same track, which is I'm getting better is my definition of holiness. But of course, there is some overlap. Third, we have perfect justice. God does execute perfect justice. However, when we talk about the attributes of God, we actually distinguish the attributes of God being holy and God being just, because the Bible distinguishes those. So they do overlap with each other, right? But they also are distinct categories, I shouldn't say separate. God being other. That's a surprisingly popular definition today. The otherness of God reflects his holiness. Does anyone have a verse that creates a problem for that? Calling God other is being holy. Why does that create a problem? I'm gonna call on one of my three favorite piano players. Oh, yes, yes, she knew I would do that. Marissa, give me a Bible verse. Why does describing God as other as a definition of God being holy, why is that problematic? Uh-oh, you're on mute. You have to come off mute. All right, a Bible verse that says it? A Bible verse that makes that wrong. You can't say otherness is the definition of holiness. Um, I don't think I can come up with a Bible verse, but I can give you an idea of what I might think. Um, I think that because God calls us to be holy, like we can't be other like God because we're his creatures and he's our creator. That was a fantastic answer. And it was precisely the Bible verse I was looking for. Oh, great. Be holy by the Lord your God and holy right that that's a fundamental command to us as Christians be holy and God isn't saying be other. Right, like me this doesn't work right so so other in itself isn't going to really. carry things out. Now, by the way, in Neo-Orthodoxy, there's a real problem with talking about the otherness of God. Karl Barth, probably the most important theologian of the 20th century, who is Neo-Orthodox in this point, would talk about God as being totaliter aliter, that is, totally other. And one of the things R.C. Sproul has made a great point about over and over again, which for some reason people have difficulty with, is if God is totally other, you can't know anything about him. Because the reason why you know anything about God is by analogy. God is like this. And if God is entirely, totally other, you can't do an analogy. So be a little careful around that use of the word other as it connects to God. It is true that God is different than us. God is the creator. We are the creature. But we were created in God's image. And God created us in his image, so that there's characteristics that are like precisely so we can have a relationship with them. Right, you can't have a relationship with someone who is totally other. Well, we can come back to that at some other time. I want to stick with holiness here. The last one is perfection. Well, God, of course, is perfect. And he is perfect in his holiness. But actually, God's perfect in everything. He's perfect in his justice, in his grace, in his mercy, in his knowledge. He's perfect in all things. And therefore, you can't say perfection is holiness. So let me give you one to try out. I think we're actually very blessed that in English, we have a word that works to cover all of these things, and that word is devoted. Holiness is to be devoted to God. Let me say that again. Holiness is to be devoted to God. Let me give all three of those categories for you, and you'll see how that works. Think about objects in the Old Testament. If you're an 800 BC, and you will have a vessel, let's say a silver vessel, and you wanted to donate it to the temple for God's use, you would devote that vessel to the temple, and there would be a ceremony involved with that, and that vessel would go from being common to being holy. Do you have that picture in your mind? It's a very common thing that would happen in the Old Testament. Things would be set apart as belonging to God, as Ray was saying, not just set apart, but set apart for God's purposes, and that vessel would now be declared holy. Now, nothing changed in the vessel. The molecular makeup of the silver was exactly the same as it was before, but positionally, it had become devoted to God. It therefore was called holy. That's what happens to you the moment you first believe. When you first believe, you're united with Christ by faith, and you are set apart as belonging to God, devoted to God positionally. Your life hasn't changed yet. I mean, in one sense it has, if you've experienced this in your mind and your heart, but all your behaviors, all your patterns, all your living it out, coming to know God better is in the future. But right at that moment, you are a saint. That's the way the Bible talks about it. When you read the New Testament, all the New Testament epistles essentially, not 100% of them, but essentially they are, they're all addressed to the saints. And you look at the church in Corinth and you don't say they're living really well, right? Those are really role model people. The way saint came to be used in 400, 500 AD and then through the middle ages to talk about role model Christians. Biblically, every single person united to Christ by faith is positionally holy. That is, they're a saint. That's what saint means is holy ones. Do you get that much. You see how devoted to God works just like a vessel being devoted to the temple, you've been devoted to God. But second, the word devotion works well because it also expresses something we can do. That be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy is a call for us to pursue holiness. Positionally, we're set apart as being devoted to God. Now live that way. Live as though your life is for God's glory, for his good, that you're seeking his pleasure, walking quorum deo throughout the day. And we use the word devoted that way. I'm going to be devoted to God. I'm going to be committed in that way, profound way, to pursuing a life that is pleasing to him. But here's the key thing. It also works for God himself. God is devoted to himself. And so again, God is devoted to himself, God is devoted to his own glory. This sometimes troubles people because it makes God seem like he's a bit of an egotist. You know, we're supposed to seek God's glory. And many people think, and God should seek our glory. But you have to remember God's not an idolater. But the problem with us treating ourselves like God is we're not God. God is not an idolater. He's therefore rightly devoted to his own glory. And of course, there's three persons in the trinity. They're seeking each other's glory as they seek to bless each other. And because God is devoted to his own glory, that's why when people like Uzzah, who are supposed to know better, do know better, betray God's glory, God strikes them dead. That actually goes back to what Ray was saying earlier about God can't look upon sin without judging it. The reason why God can't look upon sin without judging it is he's devoted to himself. And therefore, he cannot simply pass off like it's no big deal that people are flaunting his laws, flaunting his righteousness, refusing to bow the knee to him as the king that he is. questions on that or comments, thoughts about it. I think you'll see as you go through this series that this language of devotion is really helpful. Positionally devoted to God, practically in our lives pursuing devotion to God, and God being devoted to himself works really well for figuring out what holiness is. And it looks like I put you all to sleep. Marissa, I'm going to call on you again. How does that work for you? What do you think of that definition? I think it's a really good definition, thinking of Uzzah and the cart, because he was supposed to be devoted to God. Like those people carrying the ark incorrectly were not being holy. They weren't devoting themselves correctly in obedience. Although God was being holy on his part, kind of in that justice aspect. because he kept his word. He was saying, I'm all about my glory. And I know it's hard to grapple with the fact that God is that powerful when it comes to, like you said, wiping out all the Canaanites. But recognizing the fact that he is our creator and we are the creature, I think really helps. Of course, we have to remember with the Canaanites, one of the things that's really striking to me, and people see this differently. I'm going to go with Al as probably on my side on this. The thing that amazes me about the Canaanites is not that God would kill them all. It's that God would give more than 400 years for them to repent before he killed them all. So the thing that's most striking to me is actually God's longsuffering, that he tells Abraham, hey, you know what? Your descendants are going to be in captivity for 400 years. because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet filled up. And let's just be honest, most of us, if we had the power of God, we probably would not have been that patient. Yeah. Other thoughts on that idea of holiness being devotion to God. God's devoted to himself, we're positionally devoted to him, we are called to be devoted to him. I think you'll find that that works out well. And I wanted to get that on the table because R.C. does not start with a definition of holiness. And it can be very easy for us to start with holiness just means God's big and powerful, which, of course, is. But the book is the holiness of God, so. Ray, sharp rebuttals, you don't like that definition? I was going to say, would you would use it in the same category as when God says He is zealous for his own glory. You could also say he's zealous for his own holiness. I would say that zeal for his own glory is an expression of his holiness. Yes. That those are really overlapping ideas. Yeah. And actually, it's really good for us, right? Because God has so ordered the universe that his glory and the good of his people are never in conflict with each other. When God is glorified, his people are blessed, not all people, his people. And when God blesses his people, he is glorified. So we should realize there's no tension there. But we should also realize that we talk about the gospel being good news. It's not literally good news for everybody. I was just talking with David Furey the other day. And one of the things he pointed out was the very first declaration of the gospel in the Bible is God telling the gospel to Satan. Right. Genesis 315. And it's bad news for Satan that the seat of the woman is going to crush Satan's head. It's bad news. The gospel is objectively good news. But if you reject it and you spurn God's grace, that's a really awful thing. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Well, we had one other thing that he mentions here, but I think it's worth pointing out, which is Jesus's priorities in the Lord's Prayer. The very first petition of the Lord's Prayer is, hallowed be thy name, which I think sometimes, as he points out, people miss, they forget that's a petition. What does it mean to hallow something? Not hollow, hallow. What does it mean to hallow something? praise and worship. That's more narrow than that. It does include that. It's more narrow than that though. I got you all in English here. I won't call on our English teacher because she teaches many things and I've already called on her a couple of times. What does the word hallowed mean? I'll give you a hint. Go ahead. Judy, you're going to take a shot at this? Judy Beresford, I think that's Judy Beresford in the square. No, your square lit up. I thought you were gonna say something. Hallowed, oh, it means treat as holy. Yeah, so it's right on this topic of the book. So the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, we're praying that God's name would be treated as holy in the world. Here's a really helpful thing, by the way, when you're praying. Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer as a guide for prayer. And there are two very practical ways we can pray the Lord's Prayer. Of course, we just read through it when we're going in church, right? You just pray the words. But in your own private devotions, I want to give you two ways to pray the Lord's Prayer. One is you pray the whole Lord's Prayer about one aspect of your life. So you're thinking about your job and you pray, our father who art in heaven, would your name be hallowed in my workplace today? And would your kingdom come in terms of your will being done through me in this job and so on? You could pray through aspects of your life that way. But another useful way to pray the Lord's prayer is to take one petition of the Lord's prayer, like hallowed be thy name, and pray that about all the aspects of your life. Right? Lord, would your name be hallowed in my heart, right? That I am honoring you and I'm holding your name up, that your name would be honored on my lips, that it would be honored in my family as holy, that it would be set apart as holy in our church family, in our workplace, in our country, right? Our neighborhoods. That's actually a really useful way to pray through the Lord's prayer. And what Jesus is giving us is the very first thing to pray for is not for our daily bread, And God knows we need her daily bread right he loves us where his children is going to provide for us. The very first thing he says we ought to pray for is that god's name would be treated and revered as holy. Then you think of course how the lord's name is dragged through the mud all the time and taken in vain that's a real problem in our culture, but honestly often in the Church. Right? People treat Jesus, they treat the Father, they treat the Holy Spirit lightly in the church. And we ought to pray that's not true of us. We ought to pray also that by God's grace, that it would not just be hallowed with us, but that God would cause it to be hallowed in all his churches and increasingly throughout our neighborhoods. Does that make sense to everybody? To think hallowed is not simply a praise word. It's saying, I'm praying that God's name would be revered as being holy. Okay, here's the really trick question for someone who's much better educated than I am, that really confused me with the chapter. The chapter begins with a quotation from a poem from Edgar Allan Poe. gaily bedlight a gallant night in sunshine and in shadow riding along singing a song in search of El Dorado. Does anybody know how that relates to this chapter? I was a poor engineer and not a poet in college. I am baffled. Jody's got an answer for me. Come on, Jody. How does this relate to the chapter? I don't, I'm not sure, but El Dorado, I think that's the, like the fountain of youth that they were searching for, I believe. And so it's, I think it's kind of like living forever. So I guess, I don't know. Search of the holy. Yeah. God, we live forever because of God and holiness, I guess. I don't know. Could be. Or Judy said just the idea of searching, right? So here's someone searching for the fountain of youth, eternal life, or something like gold, whatever they happen to be searching for. And he's saying we ought to be searching for the holiness of God in that way. I think that's also possible. I would also throw in that R.C. Sproul wasn't a poet either. So maybe it's not a, yeah, right. In Puerto Rico, there's a Dorado beach and a golf course, Dorado golf course. I don't think that's it, but you could be right, because I don't know the answer. Anyway, other thoughts on the chapter? Other thoughts on the holiness of God? Things you hope to learn in the coming weeks? Things you hope to teach me in the coming weeks? I guess one of the things... That doesn't help. You have to turn your volume down. Okay. Sorry. We have two. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm going to mute everybody. Kristen, would you talk? You got to unmute yourself. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. One of the things that I thought about as I was reading this chapter was how understanding the holiness, the majesty, the awesomeness of God affects our worship of him and deepens our worship. Also, speak to that. What's that? Flesh that out a bit. How does thinking about the holiness of God deepen your worship and our worship? I think because I have a greater understanding of who God is, his awesomeness, his majesty. I'm able to think more about his characteristics, those characteristics of God when I enter into worship. There's really a wonderfully virtuous circle here rightly worshiping God leads us to understanding him better and understanding him better leads to deeper. worship of him right you can't worship a God you don't know. And I want to say that this also plays into our studying to the degree that we can. Now, not everybody's going to be an academic study or like Silas is, or like I have the privilege of being as a pastor, where we get to read a lot of theology all the time. But the reality is, is taking that time to study about God, studying his word deeply, is then when you enter into corporate worship, you're bringing more with you. Right? You can think about learning how to sing, something I know nothing about. So my wonderful mother-in-law is going to cringe and then correct me on air here. That's fine. I love her. She's a wonderful person. But, you know, when you first start learning to sing, you don't know anything about music. You don't sing very well. And if you study and you learn more, you learn some music theory and you practice and you work on doing scales and you start getting all that done right, your singing is going to get better. In an analogous way, I think that's true of our theology and our worship right as we come to fill out those gaps and know God better and know what he's done and also experience him in our lives. Then, when we gather together to worship when we come before the throne of grace, it is going to be richer and more meaningful for us. That is, right worship that honors God as holy is actually also good for us. Those things are not in tension with each other, as though I either have to focus on me or focusing on God. Focusing on God is good for me. It's also good for my brothers and sisters in Christ. Other thoughts? We'll wrap this up for tonight. I think also, as we're focusing on God, because we've you know, seeing his holy attributes and, you know, are looking at him more clearly, it changes our behavior. And when we're tempted to disobey like Uzzah was, you know, with thoughts of good intention, we're more likely to look at our actions once again, if they're in disobedience to God. Yeah, so I think you're totally right. But I would also add, they aren't good intentions. We claim they're good intentions for ourselves. And when we look at other people, it's good for us to be charitable. We assume there's good intentions. We have to remember that behind those intentions is a self-centered view of ourselves. Uzzah was sinning when he did this. He wasn't doing something out of good heart that he happened to slip and make a mistake. It might have been an instinctual thing, right? But he was sinning when he did this. And we do that too. We have an obligation to know God and to pursue him. The Roman Catholics actually have a very helpful category for this. That's true in Protestantism too, but we don't talk about it as much. And that is, we do have an obligation to follow our consciences. But the obligation to follow our consciences entails an obligation to rightly form our consciences. and Uzzah had failed to rightly form his conscience. And I'm not picking on Uzzah here. I'm picking on me. We all have to do this for ourselves. And that's one of the reasons why Luther's statement at the Council of Worms is so important. Catholics and Protestants agreed you had to follow your conscience. Luther said, yes, but you have to form it according to the word of God. And of course, as Protestants, we agree with that. So what we have to do is get God's word into our minds and hearts so we think about God the way he has revealed himself to us. And as we know him better, yes, that will change the way we live. It'll change the way we think. And it won't just be behavior modification. You think about this in relationships with friends and marriages, parents and children and stuff. Behavior modification is sometimes good. You want people to act differently, act better. The behavior modification is no substitute for a changed heart that drives the new behavior, because it's the relationship that matters. And that's what God is looking for with us. He wants us to have a right relationship with him. Therefore, he wants us to know him better. Part of knowing him better is knowing his soul. I think the flip side of that is also true. The more we know God and see his holiness, the more we're weaned from the world and we see the wickedness and the evil of the world. Yeah, Martha, that's so true. And I will say, though, that we should remember this is not like storing up knowledge for a test. We can lose things from the front of our thinking and the pulsating center of our lives, even with a lot of knowledge in our heads. This is why when people walk away or drift away from the church, and they're not actively worshiping God with God's people for a period of time, it becomes easier and easier for them to live worldly lives. Right, whereas if you're actually encountering God's word and opening your heart to him in prayer and confessing your sins, that's a very practical check on us in terms of our behavior and worldliness. And I think part of what you're saying that's so important is worldliness is not just bad behavior, right? It's not drawing near to God. If you know God is holy, you know his character, you want to please your father in heaven. So why don't we stop here? We have a lot to talk about in the coming three, four months, however long it takes us to go through the book. And we'll move to prayer together. Let me get us off the recording here.