The Holy Place

Sometimes preposition the New Testament uses is the preposition into. We believe in true Christ on this is the fundamental thing that happens to us when we born again when we are confesses to Christ, our faith unites us to him, the spirit unites us to him, and in that way we are bound together, and underneath all that is the fact that in everything Jesus did, he was representing us and because he was representing us everything he has done is really ours. None of these things are what we want In ourselves. All of these things we draw down from our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is everything that he fills our nothingness union with Christ a teaching series with Sinclair Ferguson visit Lincoln here.org/teaching series to learn more today on Renewing Your Mind. The holiness of God. There is something about the holy that draws us to want to step more closely to it to find out what it's about.

And yet there is something so mysterious, so different about it that we want to run your mind on this Monday and that all this, we are pleased to bring you portions of Dr. RC Sproul's classic series, the holiness of God. RC believe that holiness is the one attribute of God that should inform our thinking about worship. He said it defines God's character and should be manifested in how we respond to it.Tristan worship but in all that we think and do. So let's join Dr. scroll now as we continue our study of the holiness of God. We remember that in our first segment of this series that I recounted a personal experience that was a crisis moment for me in my life back in the days when I was going to college and I had listened to a lecture from the writings of St. Augustine and if you recall, I mentioned how Augustine opened up for my understanding a whole new dimension of the character of God, and that I was stricken as I listened to Augustine explain power and the majesty and the holiness of God. While Augustine himself wrote an interesting passage about his own personal experience with the presence of God. Here is what he said what is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding it. I am both a shot or and aglow shutter insofar as I am unlike it aglow, insofar as I am like it. Augustine had a tremendous gift for articulating his innermost thoughts and feelings and here he talks about a question he asked what is it that smites my heart without wounding it. They see the contrast between those images. Something that pierces him something that strikes him something that hits them with an enormous force doesn't harm doesn't wound leaves no scar, but as Augustine reflects on this question. He expresses an attitude of ambivalence about there is something that is at the same time attractive to him about this that smites his heart and yet there is something that frightens him about it.

At the very same time he says. At the same moment. I feel a shutter and aglow with does he mean by a shutter that is a shuddering experience and experience that causes him to tremble. We remember the old spiritual were you there when they crucified my Lord and the refrain go. Sometimes it causes me to tremble tremble tremble and I think we can identify with that can there are those moments in our own experience when we contemplate the mystery of Christ, the greatness of God. The secrets of the workings and operation of the Holy Spirit that it causes us to tremble. There is something fearful about it early in the 20th century a German theologian who was also an expert in the field of sociology and anthropology wrote a small book that had an enormous impact on the thinking of his generation's name was Rudolph auto and his book when it was originally published had a very short and crisp title simply in German DOS highlight which literally means the holy one was translated into English.

The English title for this book was called the idea of the holy lotto didn't carry any brief or traditional, conservative evangelical Christianity.

He was examining not simply something about God, but he was perhaps even more interested in people's study was a study on how human beings react and respond to what ever they consider to be holy and maybe the feelings and reactions of people and primitive tribes to animistic spirits that frighten them. It may be a priest in a temple that may be a Christian in prayer and he said how do people respond emotionally, intellectually and psychologically to a sense of the presence of the holy and basically he said that the normal human response to the holy is ambivalence but that which is sacred tracks and repels at one and the same time there is something about the holy that draws us to want to step more closely to it to find out what it's about.

And yet there is something so mysterious, so different about it that we want to run for auto use a technical term to describe this sensation of the holy which he called, using the Latin phrase the mysterious and tremendous tremendous mystery or the mystery that produces tremble worse tremble within us. Have you noticed in our own day and in our own culture how people seem to be fascinated with the cold that will rush to the movie theater to see films like the exorcist there interested in reports of Satan worship and yet there's something ugly about these things that is grotesque from which we want to flee were not quite sure we were fascinated. We want to draw near. It seems like that we will follow anything that gives us some hope of penetrating the barrier of the secular and of the profane, something that will open a gate for us into the realm of the supernatural and frightens and fascinates all of the same time. I remember that when I was a boy.

We used to listen to the radio there will was no such thing as television, then I'm dating myself. I got but the difference between radio and television is that when we were restricted to following our favorite programs. By way of radio that we only heard the story we listened to the dialogue and the descriptions that were given to us by the narrator. We didn't see anything except the plain front of our Philco radio and that left it to our imagination to fill in the gaps we would visualize in our minds by Superman or the Lone Ranger and Tonto fact, I can see certain advantages to that that for the developing of creativity that were forced to use our imagination will are all kinds of different programs soap operas during the day adventure stories at night.

Stories of Western heroes like Gene Autry in the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers and so on. One of the most popular genres of radio programs in the 40s were the mystery stories or the detective stories like gangbusters or Mr. King tracer of lost persons and they also had a program that was extremely scary called suspense at the scariest program of all programs on the radio that I recall as a child was one that was on in the evening and the lead into the radio was the opening of the door of a vault in a cemetery in the mausoleum. This door of the crypt swung open and we always spoke about the creaking door and the sound of the creaking door was the lead into this program and is that the Norwood Creek and we would shiver in fear as little children, and then the voice of the narrator would announce the program in her sanctum Hale I am a divorce and her sanctum and we were terrified of the thing that I'm fascinated now in reflection on is that and when I was a boy I didn't know what inner sanctum meant. Now I know that the words inner sanctum mean with in the holy, I think back on it I think it is astonishing that the producers of radio programs in the entertainment world when they were looking for something that would hold people spellbound and evoke feelings of terror within them that they couldn't think of anything more mysterious anything more frightening to a human person than to be close, so close to be virtually within the holy.

It's that kind of reaction that Rudolph auto examined by looking at various civilizations and cultures that he said when were talking about the holy we are talking about something that is one of the most difficult things in human experience to define with precision and with clarity.

In fact, auto says that with respect to the holy word dealing with what he calls a certain class. This strange word to use his loss. Whenever we use the word plus we use it in arithmetic or in mathematics. It's a form that indicates some type of addition something added on is a plus something that is extra. One of the most popular movies ever to be seen in the United States of America had perhaps the shortest title of any movie ever there was a movie I saw when I was a boy called. She SAG that's pretty sure title with this title was word was to initials EPET the whole country fell in love with this strange visitor from outer space. What does ET me extra terrestrial.

ET is the abbreviation that we give for one who is alien, one who comes from outside our experience and our environment, one who is different. One who is extra. He is a part. He is strange he is alien. One would think that the title ET would even more suitably apply to God who is above and beyond this terrestrial ball. This sphere and environment that is locked by this land in which we live.

That God is the supreme alien, the one who is supremely extra and so what auto was getting at when he talks about the holiness of God as communicating a certain class he's talking about that sense in which God is above and beyond anything that we experience on earth. We may be made in his image. We may enjoy a certain likeness or similarity with our maker, but beyond that likeness and beyond that similarity is the enormous difference that dissimilarity between who God is and who we are again let me go back to that statement. I read to you at the beginning. From St. Augustine. He asked the question what is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding. I am both the shutter and aglow shutter that is afraid, trembling, insofar as I am unlike it aglow, insofar as I am like, and so Augustine roots. This ambivalence of which Rudolph auto space in the fact that their son sense in which were like God we are made in his image, and because we are made in his image and made for his glory and made originally to have fellowship with him. Augustine you recall, began his famous book on the confessions with the prayer in which he says all God has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the ET wanted to go home and we responded to that he wanted to go to his heavenly residence.

We can understand that because there's a sense in which we have built in to our own nature as creatures made in the image of God and eternal longing for our residents. In his presence is as if there is some kind of empty void within us a vacuum that haunts us in the depths of our soul until we can reach out and embrace. In a harmonious relationship with God who made us, and yet because of our estrangement from God and because of the dissimilarity between who he is and who we are, we remain shutter whenever he intrudes into our presence, so that it intrusion.

Those precious moments, those pregnant moments where we do sense the presence of God are filled with this ambivalent reaction of attraction and a fear I may read briefly to you what auto says in the description of this awful mystery.

He says the feeling of that may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with the tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set a lasting attitude of the soul. Continuing as it were so thrillingly vibrant and resonant until at last it dies away in the soul resumes its profane nonreligious mood of everyday experience. Can you relate we've all had those mountaintop experiences that are swirling that inevitably fade and we return to our earthbound profanity. He says it may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions or lead to the strangest excitements to intoxicated frenzy to transport the ecstasy it has its wild and demonic forms and can sing to an almost grisly horror and shattering it has its crude barbaric antecedents in early manifestations and again may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious.

It may become the hottest, trembling and speechless. Humility of the creature in the presence of whom or what, in the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures what he is describing here is what I call the human experience of holy dread of pervasive, chilling, bloodcurdling sensation that we associate with drawing near to the living. We need to explore that and to explore, which is what we will do in the days so that we hope you make plans to be with us all week here on Renewing Your Mind to understand, to experience to be in the presence of a holy God is something that is far beyond this, but as we learn about God's holiness. We find that even catching a glimpse of the holy one of Israel changes everything. This is the theme of doctors postclassic book the holiness of God and today we are making the special 25th anniversary silver edition of the book available to you for your donation of any amount. This edition was a special project that is not been available for sale to contact us today and requested@renewingyourmind.org you can also call us with your gift at 800-435-4343 I'm actually holding a copy of this edition is so beautifully done.

Silver hardback with embossed lettering, so I hope you'll contact us today with your gift and requested the holiness of God by Dr. RC Sproul number again is 800-435-4343 web address is Renewing Your Mind.org and in advance let me thank you for your generous donation. Well, if you have been blessed by RC's teaching on the holiness of God. Let me encourage you to check out our leg, and your mobile app there is a vast library of audio and video content there. If the weeds at rich tapestry of theology, apologetics, church history and biblical studies you can enhance your small group or personal study when you take advantage of all that's available to you on the link in your app but before we go. Here's RC with a final thought force. As we consider our thought for today of quorum day of living before the face of God.

I want to leave you with this question that you I hope you will ask of yourselves. How do you feel how do you respond when you have any sense of the presence of God. If you can think in those moments in your life where you have sensed his presence did you want more, or that you want less that you want to come closer, or did you want to fall back and retreat do you relate to the sense of ambivalence, of which Rudolph auto speaks in his book does the presence of God make you glow or does it make you shutter or perhaps like most of us it does both think about tomorrow. The crystal continues this series by looking at the life of King Uzziah like in this Old Testament monarch teach us about ourselves and the holiness of God. We hope you'll join us Tuesday for Renewing Your Mind