The Importance of God's Holiness

my dear friend Steve Lawson gives me the task of speaking immediately after lunch now I promise you that in this time together I will not fall asleep but if you do you will have not only an auditory H but a existential experience of the wrath of God I mentioned last night my distress when our pastor spoke about Sanctified magic and how gnosticism has crept into his thinking and so at lunch he and his lovely wife an took us to his home to treat us to a meal and as we pulled into the neighborhood Steve said isn't it enchanting then he started singing his favorite hymn Some Enchanted Evening but it really is it's magic is enchanting because before we left I said where's your house he says it's exactly 8 Miles 8/10 of a mile to our house and I said fine so we got in the car and we rode and we rode and we rode and we rode and uh we must have been on a Magic Carpet because uh sure seemed like more than 8/10 of a mile by the time we got there and I said are you sure that's say t oh yeah I drive that every day I said I I bet you it isn't and we had this long discussion and he said well we'll measure it on the way back and we came on a shortcut because we didn't have to go around a one-way Street and it was 2 and a/4 miles and I thought this really is Enchanted you know one way it's 8/10 of a mile and you come back the other way it's two and a quter wow well I'd like you to turn in your Bibles please to the Book of Leviticus chapter 10 verse 1 chapter 10 of Leviticus and verse one amen now naab and ab who the sons of Aaron each took his sensor and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord which he had not commanded them and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord and then Moses said to Aaron this is what the Lord has said among those who near me I will be regarded as holy and before all the people I will be glorified and Aaron held his peace and Moses called mishel and alapan the sons of yuel the Uncle of Aaron and said to them come near carry your brothers away from the front of the sanctuary and out of the camp so they came near and carried them in their coats out of the camp as Moses had said and Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and ithamar his sons do not let the hair of your heads hang loose do not tear your clothes lest you die and wrath come upon all the congregation but let your brothers the whole house of Israel bewail the burning that the Lord has kindled and do not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting lest you die for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you and they did according to the word of Moses and the Lord spoke to Aaron saying drink no wine or strong drink you are your sons with you when you go into the tent of meeting lest you die it shall be a statute forever throughout your Generations you are to distinguish between the unclean and the clean between the holy and the common and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses let's pray together again our father and our God we ask for your help that you would send the spirit of Truth to illumin the text that we have just read for our understanding for our instruction for our reproof and for our training in righteousness for we ask these things in the name of Jesus Amen and the first job I had in a church it was in a large Presbyterian Church in Ohio in the United Presbyterian Church of the US and was the denomination into which I was originally ordained I left that denomination after 10 years but when I was working in this particular Church the denomination had had compiled a new curriculum for junior high students and for senior high students and they sent copies of the curriculum to the various local churches that they may use it in their educational program and I was the minister of theology at this particular church and so the session gave me the task of reviewing this curriculum to see whether we would use it in our Sunday school and in our youth programs well the junior high program was a study in the Old Testament and part of that study included the episode of the sudden execution of the sons of Aaron that I just read to you about in Leviticus 10 and the comment in the curriculum was this reading this passage from the perspective of the Old Testament or from the perspective of the New Testament we understand that this writing reflects the pre-scientific uh pre- educated primitive Hebrew as he sought to understand his environment and the things that took place but now on this side of the New Testament we know that God in his love and mercy would never do such a thing as suddenly destroy these two young priests but obviously what had happened was that uh the fire burst up or something at the altar with their experimentation and they were so frightened that they dropped dead of heart attacks and uh said said well what do you think of this curriculum I said I don't think we should use it because it seeks to improve on the biblical interpretation of the activity of God in the Old Testament but the response of the denomination at that time was typical wasn't it that there are many people who are modern day marianites who struggle with the portrait of God God that is revealed to us in the Old Testament and we frequently hear the contrast between the god of wrath that is found in the Old Testament and the god of mercy and love who is revealed to us in the New Testament and I see this of course as a false dilemma because both Testaments are equally revelatory both are the inspired Witness of God himself and at the same time there is no place in all of the Bible where we see a more Fierce exposure of the wrath of God than we find in the New Testament at the cross and yet we still struggle with these stories well let's take a look at it together this afternoon in in your bright wakefulness we read now naab and Abu the sons of Aaron each took his sensor and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered what one translation says unauthorized fire before the Lord another translation reads Strange Fire before the Lord that which God had not commanded them and then we read read that the fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord suddenly without warning without a simple rebuke God strikes down the sons of Aaron for this experiment in worship perhaps naab and Abu had laid read the latest addition of church growth methodology and found a way to improve on the ceremonies of worship that God in his Sovereign Authority had commanded in any case their reward for their experimental worship was sudden execution and we read this text and you see that the immediate response of Aaron is one of profound consternation if we read between the lines you can hear Aaron say what's going on here these are my sons I've given my whole life to the service of God I've trained my sons to follow in my footsteps they've been consecrated to this task they're young they're trying new things a little bit of novelty in the worship that God has prescribed and what does he do he strikes them dead and he goes and he lays his complaint at the feet of Moses and obviously wants Moses as the mediator to take his complaint to God for what God had just done to his sons listen to the answer that Moses gives to Aaron Aaron don't you remember what God said about our worship this is what the Lord has said among those who come near me I will be regarded as holy and I will be honored and glorified among all the people anyone who comes near to me this is no time this is no place to bring your Novelties this is not fun and games I've not ordained My Worship of me for the entertainment of the people but I will be regarded as Holy by anybody who comes near me do you remember that Aaron you know sometimes I Marvel at the understatement with which scripture describes things because the next line of the text is this and Aaron held his peace you better believe Aaron held his peace what was he going to do start a war with the almighty what could he say God had spoken they had disobeyed God's judgment fell end of the discussion and Aaron held his peace he shut his mouth before the righteous Judgment of God this is a real live experience in Old Testament days of exactly what our Lord himself told us would be the situation that the last judgment that on the day of judgment every mouth will be shut today when people are accused of this wrong or that wrong they're filled to the gills with excuses and they want to debate they want to argue they want to plead their case but who can plead his case against an omniscient deity who knows the absolute truth of every Human Action who knows the deepest motivation of every human heart he knows Every Idle Word that we've ever uttered and so there's no more useless Enterprise no greater waste of energy than to debate with God at the last judgment every mouth will be shut just as Aaron's mouth was shut here but you would think okay God said now I've taken your sons I made a spectacle of their sin I've made my point now I'll show you my grace and we can put this behind us and move on no no no God wasn't finished Moses called Michel and alaban the sons of uziel the uncle of Aaron and said to them come here carry your brothers away from the front of the sanctuary and out of the camp I don't just want these boys to be killed I want their corpses out of here they are to be taken outside the camp outside that place where the presence of God was concentrated you remember on the day of atonement that Not only was the one animal sacrificed by its blood UNP poured over the Throne of God and the holy of holies but the other animal the goat where the high priest took his hands and laid his hands on the scapegoat symbolizing the transfer or imputation of the sin of the people to the back of this goat what' they do with the goat they sent it outside the camp into the outer Darkness into that place that was was desolate that place that was re removed from the redeeming presence of God remember when the Israelites were moving about as semi Nomads living in tents and their church was a tent it was a tabernacle and when they would go to a new place they would arrange the order of the tribe tries in a circle according to the instructions that God gave to them and the reason why it was a circle so that every tribe's Camp would be equid distance from the center of that Circle where every other tribe was encamped because what was in the center the Tabernacle the place of meeting that's why the Jews would say we won't be moved because God is in the midst of her in the very middle and the further you are removed from that midpoint of the circle the farther away you are from the blessedness of God's presence and so symbolically on the day of atonement the scapegoat is sent outside the perimeter of the camp to the outer Darkness to the place where the stranger and the Foreigner to the Covenant of God would dwell and so God now orders that the corpses of naab and Abu be removed not only from the Tabernacle but from the encampment outside in the darkness where our Lord said there will be weeping mashing of teeth get these corpses as far away from the presence of God as you can take them because even in their death they profane the holy place and I will be regarded as Holy by the those who draw unto me and I will be honored in the midst of the people so they came and carried them in their coats out of the camp and then Moses said to Aaron elazar ithamar don't let the hair of your heads laying loose don't tear your clothes lest you die and wrath comes on the whole congregation but let your brothers bewail the burning that the Lord has kindled and don't go outside the entrance of the Ten of meeting or you will die you're not even allowed to mourn for these guys I won't permit you to Rend your garments or put on sackcloth and Ashes there will be no mourning in this camp for these ones whom I have just executed and you people need to learn the difference between the common and the holy between the profane and the righteous at St Andrews where I preach we have bulletins every week that we give to the congregation that they may follow the order of worship and we have written on the bulletin that when you enter into the church you make a transition you cross a threshold from the common to The Uncommon from the secular to the sacred from the profane to the holy because this is not the world this is where God calls his people to meet with him and it's Holy Ground if we've lost anything in the church today it's that sense of transition Now we move from the common to the common from the secular to the secular from the profane to more profane that we might be with it and communicate with the world no no no no no we are to never obscure the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary between the profane and the holy I'm going to ask you this pastors when your people come into your Sanctuary on Sunday morning do they sense that they have crossed a threshold do they sense that they have entered into a whole new milu do they have a sense of the presence of the Holy in your worship worship well this is not the only example of this kind of experience of the sudden and dramatic wrath of God consider the experience of Aza when David was in a hurry to restore the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and took it out of the H home of eleazer and in order to accomplish this great transition of the Throne of God being restored to Jerusalem he has them put the cart or put the Ark of the Covenant on a cart which in itself defied the instructions that God had given to Moses on how the ark was to be moved and you recall that the Ark of the Covenant was constructed of gold and all the rest this wonderful wood and it had the these Rings along the side and those Rings were designed so that the ark of the covenant could be transported by The coites Who had long wooden poles and they would go through the Rings and the men would pick up the poles and carry the Ark on foot and the absolute reason why they had these poles was that so that the coites themselves as Fallen human beings would never ever ever ever touch the ark then God told them if you ever touch the ark you will die well you know the story The Ark has being transported The Oxen stumble the ox cart tilts to the side and the most precious vessel in the whole realm of Israel was now sliding and in danger of fallowing falling into the mud to be desecrated so instinctively without malice of forethought Aza stretches out his hand to study the ark and what happened God speaks from the heaven and cries out thank you Aza for keeping the ark from falling into the mud no but again instantly God kills Aza Jonathan Edwards preaches on that and he said the sin of Aza was the sin of presumption because Aza supposed that his hands were cleaner than the mud but it's not the dirt on the ground that is filled with total depravity dirt does what God ordained it to do that when it's mixed with water it becomes mud that's what it's supposed to become there's no Rebellion from the dirt against God it's the hands of human beings that defile the Throne of God you know Hans Kung the PEC bad boy of the Roman Catholic communion who more than once is been disciplined by the pope for his radical teachings his attack against infallibility to mention others he wrote a book in the middle of the 20th century that was somewhat startling to the Roman Catholic world he wrote it in German its title was being translated simply means justification and in that lengthy study of the doctrine of justification Professor Kung dealt with this particular problem he said you know it seems at times that God's Wrath in the Bible is arbitrary in fact some theologians of the early part of the 20th century said that the Biblical teaching of the wrath of God has to be taken seriously but what it reveals to us is that there's a shadow side to God himself that there resides within the very character of God the Demonic and so Kung was responding to that and he said wait a minute how are we to deal with these sudden Acts or eruptions of divine wrath that come seemingly without warning to naab and Abu to Aza to Kora in kora's Rebellion against Moses to the New Testament couple of ananas and Safara who were struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit how are we to deal with these sudden paroxismo out he said you know we come to the New Testament and we see that arguably there's only one sin that's a capital offense premeditated murder whereas when we look at the Civil sanctions of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament there are 25 or 30 sins that are deemed to be capital offenses that if you commit them you are to be executed practice of homosexuality consultation with necrom monsters or Wizards public blasphemy you know radical Disobedience to your parents and the list goes on and Kung says it looks like that in contrast that you have 25 or 30 crimes in the Old Testament that require the death penalty and then you go to the New Testament and that number is radically reduced to one now wonder we struggle he says but we forget that in the Mosaic law with death penalty offenses the number of offenses that are deemed to be capital offenses in Israel already reflects a radical reduction in punishment because as Kung points out originally every sin was a capital offense the the soul that sins shall die you know in the United States we have very few crimes that warrant the death penalty but one of them is treason treason against the government of the United States is a capital offense in Israel every sin was an act of treason the slightest sin that you commit the slightest sin that I commit pad delos by comparison to more Grievous sins in the smallest sin that I commit I am guilty of cosmic treason in the very Act of sinning I elevate my will over the will of God every sin I commit is an act of overt defiance to God's inherent right to rule over me I say no to his Sovereign lordship over me every time I sin but we're so accustomed to sinning that our hearts have become calcified reified our necks have become stiff our consciences have become seared and so we have as Jeremiah said the forehead or the forehead of the Harlot what does he mean by that the forehead of a harlot is the forehead that no longer has the capacity to blush the more we sin the more accustomed to sinning we are and Kung goes on to say that the whole history of the Old Testament the whole history of redemption is the history of God's patience it's the history of his forbearance it's the history of his Mercy which is designed to give us time to repent and to experience the grace of redemption but the more merciful god is the more patient he is with our sin the harder our hearts become and we become at ease in Zion not even worried that the hammer were have fall you know there are millions of people out there who don't give a second thought to the idea that at the end of their lives they're going to be held accountable for every single thing they did people do not believe one of the most common teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that we will all come before the Judgment of God God hasn't judged us this far why should we worry about what he will do when he die when we when we die there is no fear of God Among Us and so his patience merely hardens us and so Kung says and speculates that the reason why there are the Aza stories and the naab and Abu stories and the story of ananas and Safar is from time to time God reminds his people that he's not playing games that his wrath is real and that it is Dreadful several years ago I was asked to speak at the uh Christian book sellers Association a different time from the one I mentioned last night and I thought about what I would speak on and I decided to speak on the subject save from what and I ran the risk of insulting the intelligence of everybody was there because I was going to be speaking on such an elementary foundational level that people might feel offended and I started a story by telling him a a fellow that button hold me once and said to me brother are you saved and I was in a hurry to teach one of my classes and I didn't want to be way laid and but I didn't want to be rude and I didn't say what I wanted to say I wanted to say am I saved Sav from what I'm certainly not saved from strangers coming up to me and making me late for my class well if you look at the Bible you see that the primary meaning of the term to save is to be rescued or delivered from some clear and present danger from real catastrophe from a serious Calamity and so I ask you this morning we're Sav from what I said to that group what you're saved from is God they couldn't get over it what safe from what I said salvation that has been accomplished from Christ is that he has saved us from the Wrath that is to come and it is God's Wrath that is to come and that's what we're saved from if indeed we are saved but we hear so much about God's grace so much about his mercy so much about his love and we sing at almost every funeral Amazing Grace how sweet the sound but nobody in the world's Amazed by Grace we expect it yay we demanded my favorite illustration of this came an experience I had teaching in a Christian College in 1966 you can do the math I was a professor of Bible and I had to teach introduction of the Old Testament to all 250 students and the only place that was big enough to meet the whole class was in the chapel of the school so first day of class I gave them their syllabus I gave them the assignment and I told them we have three short papers five pages long as all that you have to do during the course of the semester and the first one's due September the 30th unless you're confined to the infirm infirmary the hospital where there's a death in immediate family the second one's due is October 30th third when November 30th and I should not remember that if you don't get these papers in you'll get a zero get an F is that understood oh yes so on September 30th 225 freshmen came with their term papers or their little papers 25 of them didn't have their papers they were terrified so where are your papers they said oh Professor Sproul we didn't make the transition from high school to college like we should we didn't budget our time the way we should have and we don't have our paper please don't flunk us for this assignment give us another day or two to get this papers in and I said okay I'm going to give you a break this time I give you two more days to have these papers but don't do it again oh no everything was great until October the 30th October the 30th 200 students came with their term with their papers 50 of them didn't have their papers where's your papers oh Prof midterm exams homecoming we had these assignments and all these other classes oh we're sorry you know but please just give us one more shot and I said okay but I'll tell you what this is absolutely the last time and you know what happened spontaneously they started to sing I'll never forget it we love you Pro spro oh yes we do I was Mr popularity on that campus and my popularity reached at Zenith that day and didn't it wasn't diminished at all until November the 30th when 150 students came with their paper I'll never forget it 100 didn't there was one older student he walked in the back he had on Army fatigues and I said Mr son so I said yes sir I said where's your paper he said hey don't worry about it Prof I'll have it for you in a couple days so I picked up my black book had all the names takeing th names keeping track and I said whatever his name was you don't have your paper he said no sir I said f there's this gasp in the room and I looked there I said Johnson where's your paper I don't have it sir I said f Reynolds where's your paper F and as if they were orchestrated again with one voice they all cried out what that's not fair I said what did you say we said that's not fair it's not fair I said Beach yes I said weren't you late with your paper last time he said yes sir and you're late this morning he said yes sir I said okay so I give you f for today and it's Justice that you want I want to give you justice I'm going to change your grade from the last one the one you were late for and I'm going to give you an F for that one okay and I said now who else wants Justice and I said you people be careful about ever asking for justice you you just might get it but what had happened they' grown accustomed to my grace and first they appreciated it then they expected it and finally they demanded it and that's who we are in the first chapter of Romans where Paul introduces the good news of the Gospel he announces that righteousness which is by faith to Faith by which the just shall live by faith and he's about to unfold to us the great news of the sweetness and Excellence of the Gospel you would think the next verse he would set forth the doctrine of justification by faith alone but no the next verse begins like this but the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men the word for wrath in the text is the Greek word oray from which we get the English word orgy what in the world is the link between the Greek word for wrath and the English word for unbridled sexual Lous how do those two go together it's simple it refers to unbridled unmitigated passion when Paul speaks of the wrath of God that is revealed from Heaven it is a wrath that is not the mild displeasure of God it is his Divine Fury an anger that is kindled beyond imagination the kind of anger that the theologians at the turn of the 20th century were arguing indicated a an unfair arbitrary demonic Shadow side of God an unfair judgment what is it to which that wrath is directed all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men God's Wrath is not arbitrary God's Wrath is not frivolous God's Wrath is not capricious God's Wrath has a well-deserved Target ungodliness and unrighteousness specifically in this case the wickedness of taking the truth that God reveals of himself so clearly in nature and suppressing it pushing it down and changing it for a lie and serving and worship the creature rather than the Creator God will have none of that later on in Romans when Paul does unfold the truth of the gospel and speaking about the substitutionary atonement of Jesus saying for scarcely for a good man will a man die but Jesus died for us while we were still still Sinners and our sin is imputed to him and quoting the psalm Paul says blessed is the man to whom God does not impute sin in that case Jesus was not blessed Jesus was cursed because my sin and your sin was imputed to him and because of that he experienced the unmitigated wrath of God because God didn't just pass over but we think that God is obligated to forgive us without his Justice ever being satisfied but the Marvel of the Gospel is that there's nowhere where we see more clearly the reality of God's Wrath and the reality of God's mercy Paul says that he may be both just and the justifier how is God's justice seen in the cross it's seen in the cross that God justly punishes sin how could God be holy and wink at sin how's it possible for God to be who he is and not have Wrath W if you have stripped wrath from your understanding of God you are left with a God who is not God but who is an idol that's what happened on the cross it wasn't the it wasn't the Thorns it wasn't the spear it wasn't the nails thousands of men had experienced that but only one was exposed to the absolute Fury of God against sin were not for that you and I would be like Aza like naav and Abu stricken by God and our corpses carried outside the camp into the outer Darkness I have two men in my congregation who came to Faith in the last year and they they gave their testimony in this way they said what gave drove them to the gospel was that they became convinced that they were going to hell they became convinced of the reality of the wrath of God would that God would awaken our nation to the reality of that wrath that is to come that people may Flee for safety to a savior who will take their wrath for them let's pray our father and our God forgive us when we don't believe in the reality of your wrath forgive us even more when we consider it unfair we're unjust for we know oh Lord if thou wouldst Mark iniquities against us that none of us could possibly stand give us a fresh understanding of the astonishment of your grace that we may never ever ever take it for granted amen thank you Dr sprouls so much the gravity of our preaching that we discussed last night lies in the gravity of our God the gravity of our preaching is in the gravity of our God there is this heaviness about the Eternal weight of Glory that belongs to God alone and as God has called us to preach his word and to expound the scripture and to exag the text and to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is this weightiness about the Oracles of God that each of us are to assume we must not put our hands to God's work lightly or flippantly but with rever and awe and the fear of God we are to handle holy things I trust that the truth that we have heard this afternoon from God's word will weigh heavy upon us and that we will feel the weight of responsibility before our God to carry out the ministry to which he has called us let us fear the lord let us rejoice in our God but let us take him very seriously in the call and the task to which he has appointed us we will be having a question and answer session with Dr Sproul at 3:30 is that correct we have almost an hour for you to enjoy fellowshipping with each other uh to enjoy looking at the bookstore uh to enjoy walking around and just uh stepping out maybe to the sidewalk and fellowshipping with some brothers and interacting with each other we'll be back here at 3:30 for this question and answer and again this is such a rare opportunity you go to a lioner conference there'll be 5,000 6,000 the line to get to the microphone um is enormous and so this is a very intimate setting for us to spend with Dr Sproul whom I believe God has singularly appointed in this generation to call the church back to a reformed theology and so what a privilege it is for us to spend these few moments with him and I trust that as we come back for the Q&A that you'll be attentive you'll be on time and you'll be alert God bless you you're dismissed

my dear friend Steve Lawson gives me the task of speaking immediately after lunch now I promise you that in this time together I will not fall asleep but if you do you will have not only an auditory H but a existential experience of the wrath of God I mentioned last night my distress when our pastor spoke about Sanctified magic and how gnosticism has crept into his thinking and so at lunch he and his lovely wife an took us to his home to treat us to a meal and as we pulled into the neighborhood Steve said isn&#39;t it enchanting then he started singing his favorite hymn Some Enchanted Evening but it really is it&#39;s magic is enchanting because before we left I said where&#39;s your house he says it&#39;s exactly 8 Miles 8/10 of a mile to our house and I said fine so we got in the car and we rode and we rode and we rode and we rode and uh we must have been on a Magic Carpet because uh sure seemed like more than 8/10 of a mile by the time we got there and I said are you sure that&#39;s say t oh yeah I drive that every day I said I I bet you it isn&#39;t and we had this long discussion and he said well we&#39;ll measure it on the way back and we came on a shortcut because we didn&#39;t have to go around a one-way Street and it was 2 and a/4 miles and I thought this really is Enchanted you know one way it&#39;s 8/10 of a mile and you come back the other way it&#39;s two and a quter wow well I&#39;d like you to turn in your Bibles please to the Book of Leviticus chapter 10 verse 1 chapter 10 of Leviticus and verse one amen now naab and ab who the sons of Aaron each took his sensor and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord which he had not commanded them and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord and then Moses said to Aaron this is what the Lord has said among those who near me I will be regarded as holy and before all the people I will be glorified and Aaron held his peace and Moses called mishel and alapan the sons of yuel the Uncle of Aaron and said to them come near carry your brothers away from the front of the sanctuary and out of the camp so they came near and carried them in their coats out of the camp as Moses had said and Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and ithamar his sons do not let the hair of your heads hang loose do not tear your clothes lest you die and wrath come upon all the congregation but let your brothers the whole house of Israel bewail the burning that the Lord has kindled and do not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting lest you die for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you and they did according to the word of Moses and the Lord spoke to Aaron saying drink no wine or strong drink you are your sons with you when you go into the tent of meeting lest you die it shall be a statute forever throughout your Generations you are to distinguish between the unclean and the clean between the holy and the common and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses let&#39;s pray together again our father and our God we ask for your help that you would send the spirit of Truth to illumin the text that we have just read for our understanding for our instruction for our reproof and for our training in righteousness for we ask these things in the name of Jesus Amen and the first job I had in a church it was in a large Presbyterian Church in Ohio in the United Presbyterian Church of the US and was the denomination into which I was originally ordained I left that denomination after 10 years but when I was working in this particular Church the denomination had had compiled a new curriculum for junior high students and for senior high students and they sent copies of the curriculum to the various local churches that they may use it in their educational program and I was the minister of theology at this particular church and so the session gave me the task of reviewing this curriculum to see whether we would use it in our Sunday school and in our youth programs well the junior high program was a study in the Old Testament and part of that study included the episode of the sudden execution of the sons of Aaron that I just read to you about in Leviticus 10 and the comment in the curriculum was this reading this passage from the perspective of the Old Testament or from the perspective of the New Testament we understand that this writing reflects the pre-scientific uh pre- educated primitive Hebrew as he sought to understand his environment and the things that took place but now on this side of the New Testament we know that God in his love and mercy would never do such a thing as suddenly destroy these two young priests but obviously what had happened was that uh the fire burst up or something at the altar with their experimentation and they were so frightened that they dropped dead of heart attacks and uh said said well what do you think of this curriculum I said I don&#39;t think we should use it because it seeks to improve on the biblical interpretation of the activity of God in the Old Testament but the response of the denomination at that time was typical wasn&#39;t it that there are many people who are modern day marianites who struggle with the portrait of God God that is revealed to us in the Old Testament and we frequently hear the contrast between the god of wrath that is found in the Old Testament and the god of mercy and love who is revealed to us in the New Testament and I see this of course as a false dilemma because both Testaments are equally revelatory both are the inspired Witness of God himself and at the same time there is no place in all of the Bible where we see a more Fierce exposure of the wrath of God than we find in the New Testament at the cross and yet we still struggle with these stories well let&#39;s take a look at it together this afternoon in in your bright wakefulness we read now naab and Abu the sons of Aaron each took his sensor and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered what one translation says unauthorized fire before the Lord another translation reads Strange Fire before the Lord that which God had not commanded them and then we read read that the fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord suddenly without warning without a simple rebuke God strikes down the sons of Aaron for this experiment in worship perhaps naab and Abu had laid read the latest addition of church growth methodology and found a way to improve on the ceremonies of worship that God in his Sovereign Authority had commanded in any case their reward for their experimental worship was sudden execution and we read this text and you see that the immediate response of Aaron is one of profound consternation if we read between the lines you can hear Aaron say what&#39;s going on here these are my sons I&#39;ve given my whole life to the service of God I&#39;ve trained my sons to follow in my footsteps they&#39;ve been consecrated to this task they&#39;re young they&#39;re trying new things a little bit of novelty in the worship that God has prescribed and what does he do he strikes them dead and he goes and he lays his complaint at the feet of Moses and obviously wants Moses as the mediator to take his complaint to God for what God had just done to his sons listen to the answer that Moses gives to Aaron Aaron don&#39;t you remember what God said about our worship this is what the Lord has said among those who come near me I will be regarded as holy and I will be honored and glorified among all the people anyone who comes near to me this is no time this is no place to bring your Novelties this is not fun and games I&#39;ve not ordained My Worship of me for the entertainment of the people but I will be regarded as Holy by anybody who comes near me do you remember that Aaron you know sometimes I Marvel at the understatement with which scripture describes things because the next line of the text is this and Aaron held his peace you better believe Aaron held his peace what was he going to do start a war with the almighty what could he say God had spoken they had disobeyed God&#39;s judgment fell end of the discussion and Aaron held his peace he shut his mouth before the righteous Judgment of God this is a real live experience in Old Testament days of exactly what our Lord himself told us would be the situation that the last judgment that on the day of judgment every mouth will be shut today when people are accused of this wrong or that wrong they&#39;re filled to the gills with excuses and they want to debate they want to argue they want to plead their case but who can plead his case against an omniscient deity who knows the absolute truth of every Human Action who knows the deepest motivation of every human heart he knows Every Idle Word that we&#39;ve ever uttered and so there&#39;s no more useless Enterprise no greater waste of energy than to debate with God at the last judgment every mouth will be shut just as Aaron&#39;s mouth was shut here but you would think okay God said now I&#39;ve taken your sons I made a spectacle of their sin I&#39;ve made my point now I&#39;ll show you my grace and we can put this behind us and move on no no no God wasn&#39;t finished Moses called Michel and alaban the sons of uziel the uncle of Aaron and said to them come here carry your brothers away from the front of the sanctuary and out of the camp I don&#39;t just want these boys to be killed I want their corpses out of here they are to be taken outside the camp outside that place where the presence of God was concentrated you remember on the day of atonement that Not only was the one animal sacrificed by its blood UNP poured over the Throne of God and the holy of holies but the other animal the goat where the high priest took his hands and laid his hands on the scapegoat symbolizing the transfer or imputation of the sin of the people to the back of this goat what&#39; they do with the goat they sent it outside the camp into the outer Darkness into that place that was was desolate that place that was re removed from the redeeming presence of God remember when the Israelites were moving about as semi Nomads living in tents and their church was a tent it was a tabernacle and when they would go to a new place they would arrange the order of the tribe tries in a circle according to the instructions that God gave to them and the reason why it was a circle so that every tribe&#39;s Camp would be equid distance from the center of that Circle where every other tribe was encamped because what was in the center the Tabernacle the place of meeting that&#39;s why the Jews would say we won&#39;t be moved because God is in the midst of her in the very middle and the further you are removed from that midpoint of the circle the farther away you are from the blessedness of God&#39;s presence and so symbolically on the day of atonement the scapegoat is sent outside the perimeter of the camp to the outer Darkness to the place where the stranger and the Foreigner to the Covenant of God would dwell and so God now orders that the corpses of naab and Abu be removed not only from the Tabernacle but from the encampment outside in the darkness where our Lord said there will be weeping mashing of teeth get these corpses as far away from the presence of God as you can take them because even in their death they profane the holy place and I will be regarded as Holy by the those who draw unto me and I will be honored in the midst of the people so they came and carried them in their coats out of the camp and then Moses said to Aaron elazar ithamar don&#39;t let the hair of your heads laying loose don&#39;t tear your clothes lest you die and wrath comes on the whole congregation but let your brothers bewail the burning that the Lord has kindled and don&#39;t go outside the entrance of the Ten of meeting or you will die you&#39;re not even allowed to mourn for these guys I won&#39;t permit you to Rend your garments or put on sackcloth and Ashes there will be no mourning in this camp for these ones whom I have just executed and you people need to learn the difference between the common and the holy between the profane and the righteous at St Andrews where I preach we have bulletins every week that we give to the congregation that they may follow the order of worship and we have written on the bulletin that when you enter into the church you make a transition you cross a threshold from the common to The Uncommon from the secular to the sacred from the profane to the holy because this is not the world this is where God calls his people to meet with him and it&#39;s Holy Ground if we&#39;ve lost anything in the church today it&#39;s that sense of transition Now we move from the common to the common from the secular to the secular from the profane to more profane that we might be with it and communicate with the world no no no no no we are to never obscure the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary between the profane and the holy I&#39;m going to ask you this pastors when your people come into your Sanctuary on Sunday morning do they sense that they have crossed a threshold do they sense that they have entered into a whole new milu do they have a sense of the presence of the Holy in your worship worship well this is not the only example of this kind of experience of the sudden and dramatic wrath of God consider the experience of Aza when David was in a hurry to restore the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and took it out of the H home of eleazer and in order to accomplish this great transition of the Throne of God being restored to Jerusalem he has them put the cart or put the Ark of the Covenant on a cart which in itself defied the instructions that God had given to Moses on how the ark was to be moved and you recall that the Ark of the Covenant was constructed of gold and all the rest this wonderful wood and it had the these Rings along the side and those Rings were designed so that the ark of the covenant could be transported by The coites Who had long wooden poles and they would go through the Rings and the men would pick up the poles and carry the Ark on foot and the absolute reason why they had these poles was that so that the coites themselves as Fallen human beings would never ever ever ever touch the ark then God told them if you ever touch the ark you will die well you know the story The Ark has being transported The Oxen stumble the ox cart tilts to the side and the most precious vessel in the whole realm of Israel was now sliding and in danger of fallowing falling into the mud to be desecrated so instinctively without malice of forethought Aza stretches out his hand to study the ark and what happened God speaks from the heaven and cries out thank you Aza for keeping the ark from falling into the mud no but again instantly God kills Aza Jonathan Edwards preaches on that and he said the sin of Aza was the sin of presumption because Aza supposed that his hands were cleaner than the mud but it&#39;s not the dirt on the ground that is filled with total depravity dirt does what God ordained it to do that when it&#39;s mixed with water it becomes mud that&#39;s what it&#39;s supposed to become there&#39;s no Rebellion from the dirt against God it&#39;s the hands of human beings that defile the Throne of God you know Hans Kung the PEC bad boy of the Roman Catholic communion who more than once is been disciplined by the pope for his radical teachings his attack against infallibility to mention others he wrote a book in the middle of the 20th century that was somewhat startling to the Roman Catholic world he wrote it in German its title was being translated simply means justification and in that lengthy study of the doctrine of justification Professor Kung dealt with this particular problem he said you know it seems at times that God&#39;s Wrath in the Bible is arbitrary in fact some theologians of the early part of the 20th century said that the Biblical teaching of the wrath of God has to be taken seriously but what it reveals to us is that there&#39;s a shadow side to God himself that there resides within the very character of God the Demonic and so Kung was responding to that and he said wait a minute how are we to deal with these sudden Acts or eruptions of divine wrath that come seemingly without warning to naab and Abu to Aza to Kora in kora&#39;s Rebellion against Moses to the New Testament couple of ananas and Safara who were struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit how are we to deal with these sudden paroxismo out he said you know we come to the New Testament and we see that arguably there&#39;s only one sin that&#39;s a capital offense premeditated murder whereas when we look at the Civil sanctions of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament there are 25 or 30 sins that are deemed to be capital offenses that if you commit them you are to be executed practice of homosexuality consultation with necrom monsters or Wizards public blasphemy you know radical Disobedience to your parents and the list goes on and Kung says it looks like that in contrast that you have 25 or 30 crimes in the Old Testament that require the death penalty and then you go to the New Testament and that number is radically reduced to one now wonder we struggle he says but we forget that in the Mosaic law with death penalty offenses the number of offenses that are deemed to be capital offenses in Israel already reflects a radical reduction in punishment because as Kung points out originally every sin was a capital offense the the soul that sins shall die you know in the United States we have very few crimes that warrant the death penalty but one of them is treason treason against the government of the United States is a capital offense in Israel every sin was an act of treason the slightest sin that you commit the slightest sin that I commit pad delos by comparison to more Grievous sins in the smallest sin that I commit I am guilty of cosmic treason in the very Act of sinning I elevate my will over the will of God every sin I commit is an act of overt defiance to God&#39;s inherent right to rule over me I say no to his Sovereign lordship over me every time I sin but we&#39;re so accustomed to sinning that our hearts have become calcified reified our necks have become stiff our consciences have become seared and so we have as Jeremiah said the forehead or the forehead of the Harlot what does he mean by that the forehead of a harlot is the forehead that no longer has the capacity to blush the more we sin the more accustomed to sinning we are and Kung goes on to say that the whole history of the Old Testament the whole history of redemption is the history of God&#39;s patience it&#39;s the history of his forbearance it&#39;s the history of his Mercy which is designed to give us time to repent and to experience the grace of redemption but the more merciful god is the more patient he is with our sin the harder our hearts become and we become at ease in Zion not even worried that the hammer were have fall you know there are millions of people out there who don&#39;t give a second thought to the idea that at the end of their lives they&#39;re going to be held accountable for every single thing they did people do not believe one of the most common teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that we will all come before the Judgment of God God hasn&#39;t judged us this far why should we worry about what he will do when he die when we when we die there is no fear of God Among Us and so his patience merely hardens us and so Kung says and speculates that the reason why there are the Aza stories and the naab and Abu stories and the story of ananas and Safar is from time to time God reminds his people that he&#39;s not playing games that his wrath is real and that it is Dreadful several years ago I was asked to speak at the uh Christian book sellers Association a different time from the one I mentioned last night and I thought about what I would speak on and I decided to speak on the subject save from what and I ran the risk of insulting the intelligence of everybody was there because I was going to be speaking on such an elementary foundational level that people might feel offended and I started a story by telling him a a fellow that button hold me once and said to me brother are you saved and I was in a hurry to teach one of my classes and I didn&#39;t want to be way laid and but I didn&#39;t want to be rude and I didn&#39;t say what I wanted to say I wanted to say am I saved Sav from what I&#39;m certainly not saved from strangers coming up to me and making me late for my class well if you look at the Bible you see that the primary meaning of the term to save is to be rescued or delivered from some clear and present danger from real catastrophe from a serious Calamity and so I ask you this morning we&#39;re Sav from what I said to that group what you&#39;re saved from is God they couldn&#39;t get over it what safe from what I said salvation that has been accomplished from Christ is that he has saved us from the Wrath that is to come and it is God&#39;s Wrath that is to come and that&#39;s what we&#39;re saved from if indeed we are saved but we hear so much about God&#39;s grace so much about his mercy so much about his love and we sing at almost every funeral Amazing Grace how sweet the sound but nobody in the world&#39;s Amazed by Grace we expect it yay we demanded my favorite illustration of this came an experience I had teaching in a Christian College in 1966 you can do the math I was a professor of Bible and I had to teach introduction of the Old Testament to all 250 students and the only place that was big enough to meet the whole class was in the chapel of the school so first day of class I gave them their syllabus I gave them the assignment and I told them we have three short papers five pages long as all that you have to do during the course of the semester and the first one&#39;s due September the 30th unless you&#39;re confined to the infirm infirmary the hospital where there&#39;s a death in immediate family the second one&#39;s due is October 30th third when November 30th and I should not remember that if you don&#39;t get these papers in you&#39;ll get a zero get an F is that understood oh yes so on September 30th 225 freshmen came with their term papers or their little papers 25 of them didn&#39;t have their papers they were terrified so where are your papers they said oh Professor Sproul we didn&#39;t make the transition from high school to college like we should we didn&#39;t budget our time the way we should have and we don&#39;t have our paper please don&#39;t flunk us for this assignment give us another day or two to get this papers in and I said okay I&#39;m going to give you a break this time I give you two more days to have these papers but don&#39;t do it again oh no everything was great until October the 30th October the 30th 200 students came with their term with their papers 50 of them didn&#39;t have their papers where&#39;s your papers oh Prof midterm exams homecoming we had these assignments and all these other classes oh we&#39;re sorry you know but please just give us one more shot and I said okay but I&#39;ll tell you what this is absolutely the last time and you know what happened spontaneously they started to sing I&#39;ll never forget it we love you Pro spro oh yes we do I was Mr popularity on that campus and my popularity reached at Zenith that day and didn&#39;t it wasn&#39;t diminished at all until November the 30th when 150 students came with their paper I&#39;ll never forget it 100 didn&#39;t there was one older student he walked in the back he had on Army fatigues and I said Mr son so I said yes sir I said where&#39;s your paper he said hey don&#39;t worry about it Prof I&#39;ll have it for you in a couple days so I picked up my black book had all the names takeing th names keeping track and I said whatever his name was you don&#39;t have your paper he said no sir I said f there&#39;s this gasp in the room and I looked there I said Johnson where&#39;s your paper I don&#39;t have it sir I said f Reynolds where&#39;s your paper F and as if they were orchestrated again with one voice they all cried out what that&#39;s not fair I said what did you say we said that&#39;s not fair it&#39;s not fair I said Beach yes I said weren&#39;t you late with your paper last time he said yes sir and you&#39;re late this morning he said yes sir I said okay so I give you f for today and it&#39;s Justice that you want I want to give you justice I&#39;m going to change your grade from the last one the one you were late for and I&#39;m going to give you an F for that one okay and I said now who else wants Justice and I said you people be careful about ever asking for justice you you just might get it but what had happened they&#39; grown accustomed to my grace and first they appreciated it then they expected it and finally they demanded it and that&#39;s who we are in the first chapter of Romans where Paul introduces the good news of the Gospel he announces that righteousness which is by faith to Faith by which the just shall live by faith and he&#39;s about to unfold to us the great news of the sweetness and Excellence of the Gospel you would think the next verse he would set forth the doctrine of justification by faith alone but no the next verse begins like this but the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men the word for wrath in the text is the Greek word oray from which we get the English word orgy what in the world is the link between the Greek word for wrath and the English word for unbridled sexual Lous how do those two go together it&#39;s simple it refers to unbridled unmitigated passion when Paul speaks of the wrath of God that is revealed from Heaven it is a wrath that is not the mild displeasure of God it is his Divine Fury an anger that is kindled beyond imagination the kind of anger that the theologians at the turn of the 20th century were arguing indicated a an unfair arbitrary demonic Shadow side of God an unfair judgment what is it to which that wrath is directed all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men God&#39;s Wrath is not arbitrary God&#39;s Wrath is not frivolous God&#39;s Wrath is not capricious God&#39;s Wrath has a well-deserved Target ungodliness and unrighteousness specifically in this case the wickedness of taking the truth that God reveals of himself so clearly in nature and suppressing it pushing it down and changing it for a lie and serving and worship the creature rather than the Creator God will have none of that later on in Romans when Paul does unfold the truth of the gospel and speaking about the substitutionary atonement of Jesus saying for scarcely for a good man will a man die but Jesus died for us while we were still still Sinners and our sin is imputed to him and quoting the psalm Paul says blessed is the man to whom God does not impute sin in that case Jesus was not blessed Jesus was cursed because my sin and your sin was imputed to him and because of that he experienced the unmitigated wrath of God because God didn&#39;t just pass over but we think that God is obligated to forgive us without his Justice ever being satisfied but the Marvel of the Gospel is that there&#39;s nowhere where we see more clearly the reality of God&#39;s Wrath and the reality of God&#39;s mercy Paul says that he may be both just and the justifier how is God&#39;s justice seen in the cross it&#39;s seen in the cross that God justly punishes sin how could God be holy and wink at sin how&#39;s it possible for God to be who he is and not have Wrath W if you have stripped wrath from your understanding of God you are left with a God who is not God but who is an idol that&#39;s what happened on the cross it wasn&#39;t the it wasn&#39;t the Thorns it wasn&#39;t the spear it wasn&#39;t the nails thousands of men had experienced that but only one was exposed to the absolute Fury of God against sin were not for that you and I would be like Aza like naav and Abu stricken by God and our corpses carried outside the camp into the outer Darkness I have two men in my congregation who came to Faith in the last year and they they gave their testimony in this way they said what gave drove them to the gospel was that they became convinced that they were going to hell they became convinced of the reality of the wrath of God would that God would awaken our nation to the reality of that wrath that is to come that people may Flee for safety to a savior who will take their wrath for them let&#39;s pray our father and our God forgive us when we don&#39;t believe in the reality of your wrath forgive us even more when we consider it unfair we&#39;re unjust for we know oh Lord if thou wouldst Mark iniquities against us that none of us could possibly stand give us a fresh understanding of the astonishment of your grace that we may never ever ever take it for granted amen thank you Dr sprouls so much the gravity of our preaching that we discussed last night lies in the gravity of our God the gravity of our preaching is in the gravity of our God there is this heaviness about the Eternal weight of Glory that belongs to God alone and as God has called us to preach his word and to expound the scripture and to exag the text and to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is this weightiness about the Oracles of God that each of us are to assume we must not put our hands to God&#39;s work lightly or flippantly but with rever and awe and the fear of God we are to handle holy things I trust that the truth that we have heard this afternoon from God&#39;s word will weigh heavy upon us and that we will feel the weight of responsibility before our God to carry out the ministry to which he has called us let us fear the lord let us rejoice in our God but let us take him very seriously in the call and the task to which he has appointed us we will be having a question and answer session with Dr Sproul at 3:30 is that correct we have almost an hour for you to enjoy fellowshipping with each other uh to enjoy looking at the bookstore uh to enjoy walking around and just uh stepping out maybe to the sidewalk and fellowshipping with some brothers and interacting with each other we&#39;ll be back here at 3:30 for this question and answer and again this is such a rare opportunity you go to a lioner conference there&#39;ll be 5,000 6,000 the line to get to the microphone um is enormous and so this is a very intimate setting for us to spend with Dr Sproul whom I believe God has singularly appointed in this generation to call the church back to a reformed theology and so what a privilege it is for us to spend these few moments with him and I trust that as we come back for the Q&amp;A that you&#39;ll be attentive you&#39;ll be on time and you&#39;ll be alert God bless you you&#39;re dismissed

Transcript for:The Importance of God's Holiness

Transcript for:
The Importance of God's Holiness