Fear and Trembling with R. C. Sproul, “Be Holy As I Am Holy,” 6

We used to have a five-minute radio program at Ligonier, and the name of the program was Ask R .C. And the radio listeners were encouraged to send in or call in their theological questions, and I would try to answer them on the radio.

In fact, I guaranteed that I would answer every question that they sent in, if the answer might be, I don't know, or it might be a wrong answer, but I'd say something. We kept track of the questions that people sent to us, and the number one question that we received in terms of frequency was this question, how can I know the will of God for.

My life?

Maybe you've asked yourself that question a few times, and my answer to that question is somewhat of a standard reply. I would say to people, if you're asking me whether you should be a butcher or a baker or a candlestick maker, I can't answer that question.

I can't read God's mind. All I can tell you is to do what Scripture tells you to do, and that's to make a sober evaluation of your gifts and talents and to see where you can be used of God in this world and try to find your vocation in that manner.

If you're asking me, should I get married to Janet or Susie or Ella Mae, whatever, I can't read the mind of God on that as well. But if you really want to know the will of God for your life, the most important aspect of the will of God for your life, you can listen to what the Scripture says.

Sanctification as the Will of God

The Scripture said, this is the will of God for you, even your sanctification. What does that mean? That means that as Jesus said, if you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all the rest of these things will be added unto you so that the primary call of God on your life is your sanctification.

Well, what's that? The idea of sanctification comes from the same word that we've been talking about in this series. To be sanctified means to be made holy, and it is a process that begins with the beginning of your Christian life.

When you become a Christian, you are not made instantly holy. One of the greatest difficulties we have as Christians is that when we become Christians, we still sin. Our lives should change, and we should be growing and progressing towards our conformity to the image of Christ, and that process and that progress that takes time is what we call sanctification.

And we remember what God said to His people when He first called His people to Him.

He said what?

You shall be holy even as I am holy. And so Christians in the New Testament are called saints, and the word that is translated by the English word saint means literally holy one. You read Paul's letters, for example, to the Corinthians, you know, and to the Galatians, and he said to the saints that are in Corinth, and then as soon as he addresses them as holy ones, he then starts chastising them for their disobedience and for their sinfulness.

You saints have got to stop your sinning, because he realized that these people were still a work in progress. Now, that process by which we are to become holy and to become sanctified is one that the Scriptures tell us involves work.

What does the apostle say when he writes to the Philippians? He says, work out your salvation. That doesn't mean work for your salvation. It's not that we are saved by our works. We are saved by the works of Christ, and the moment we have faith in Christ, God transfers to our account His righteousness, and God considers us holy in His sight.

But once He has accepted us and redeemed us, He puts us to work. Now how are we supposed to approach this work of sanctification? He says, work out your salvation with what? Let me write it down. With fear and trembling.

That's the call that God makes on our lives, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. What does that suggest to you? Have you ever approached any task in your life with fear and trembling? Where you were nervous, where you were shaking, and why would you be nervous and shaking?

Because you would realize that this particular task was supremely important, and you wanted to do well, to please somebody, to please your friends, to please your parents, to please your teacher, to please somebody, please your coach.

And so you took that task very seriously. But today, it seems that our concern to become holy, to become righteous, if we have a concern at all, is somewhat cavalier, isn't it? We don't get all that excited about it.

So we're working out our Christian life, we're working out our salvation sort of in a lackadaisical cool way, no sweat. But God calls us to make the seeking of His face, the seeking of His kingdom, the main business of our lives.

I used to love to play golf. I played golf for years and years and years until a back injury took me off the golf course. But I had this notebook where I kept track of every round of golf I played, and every shot that I hit, and I would evaluate them at the end of the round, and I would say where the strengths were and where the weaknesses were.

And so I could detect a pattern so that I could go to work, go to the practice tee, and work very hard on my weaknesses so that I could improve and that I could get better. I read everything I could read.

I took lesson after lesson after lesson. In other words, I devoted myself to achieve a certain level of excellence in the game of golf. And I can remember many times going to bed at night after one of those workouts and say, wow, if you would give this kind of energy and this kind of commitment to your sanctification, wouldn't that be something?

See, I was working out my golf game with fear and trembling, but not my salvation. Because we get lulled into thinking righteousness is no big deal. And yet Jesus said to His contemporaries, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of God.

And we read that and we say, well, big deal. It was the scribes and the Pharisees that killed Him. The scribes and the Pharisees were nothing but hypocrites, and so it shouldn't be any great task for us to exceed in righteousness the scribes and the Pharisees.

But remember, the Pharisees were that group of people who made the main business of their life the keeping of the law of God. And what does Jesus say about them? He said, you search the Scripture thinking that in the Scriptures you have life, but they were hypocrites.

They were hypocrites, but at least they searched the Scripture. They were diligent in their study of the Word of God. Jesus said, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. He said, you tithe your mint and your common, and yet you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy.

In a recent poll, it showed that of those people who identified themselves in America as evangelical Christians, who said they were born of the Spirit of God, of that group 4 tithe, which means that 96 of professing Christians systematically, regularly steal.

From God.

The Pharisees wouldn't think of doing that. They were so scrupulous about paying their tithe, you know, from their produce and everything, if a sprig of mint grew up on their sidewalk, they would give a tenth of it to the work.

Of God.

It would be like if you found a dime on the street, you wouldn't just put it in your pocket and forget about it, but you would remember to make sure that you put an extra penny in the collection plate next Sunday.

That's how scrupulous they were about that. Or on another occasion, Jesus said to them, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you go over land and sea to make one convert, and after you've made him, you make him twice the child of hell than you are yourself.

But how about their zeal for missions? How about their zeal for evangelism? They'd go across land and sea to make one convert. Somebody writes me from Los Angeles, and they want me to come and speak in Los Angeles.

The first question I'm going to ask is how many people are going to be there, because I sure don't want to have to travel, you know, thousands of miles to speak to one person. The Pharisees did. Jesus rebuked them for their hypocrisy in their prayers, but they were diligent in their prayer lives.

In other words, what I'm saying is they read the Scriptures daily. They prayed daily. They gave at least ten percent of their money to the work of God. They were committed to the life of the church. They were committed to evangelism.

They were committed to mission, and Jesus said, and if your righteousness doesn't exceed those things, you'll never see the kingdom of God. Now maybe all He meant was that's why you've got to have My righteousness, Jesus' righteousness as the grounds of your salvation, because Jesus' righteousness, of course, does exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

I hope that's what He meant, because if He meant you have to manifest a level of sanctification that goes beyond these standards of the Pharisees to demonstrate you're really a Christian, then we're in trouble because we are not approaching our sanctification with fear and with trembling.

Isaiah's Vision, Disintegration, and Cleansing

Well, early on in our discussion here about holiness, we looked at the experience that Isaiah had when he saw God high and lifted up, and he had the vision of the seraphim singing the trisagion, the holy, holy, holy.

And you remember that when we read that account, I stopped at the point where Isaiah pronounced that curse upon himself, where he said, woe is me, for I am undone. I am undone, or I am ruined. What Isaiah was experiencing when he had this vision of the holiness of God was the psychological process that we call disintegration.

Have you heard somebody say to you, well, that's so and so there. He's got his act together. He's got it together. He's a whole person. To have your act together, to have everything going for you means that every aspect of your life is knitted coherently together.

It's integrated. When something disintegrates, it falls apart, and that's what Isaiah is saying when he cries out, woe is me, I am undone. I'm coming apart at the seams. Before I saw who God was, I was secure.

I thought I was a pretty good guy. Everybody complimented me on my righteousness. In fact, people kind of regarded me as the paragon of virtue in and around Jerusalem. And then I saw real holiness.

It's devastating.

But what about the rest of the story? What did God say? Stay on your face, Isaiah. That's where you belong.

You're right.

Your mouth is filthy, and you dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. So just wallow in the dirt, and I'm going to crush you where you are. That's not what happened.

Listen to what happened.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth with it. Here is Isaiah trembling before God, terrified. Talk about fear and trembling.

If ever a human being was in a state of abject fear and trembling, it was Isaiah at this.

Moment.

And while he is crying and screaming this curse, God directs one of the angels, one of the seraphims, to the altar where there they had the burning brazier, and it's filled with white-hot coals. And it's so hot that even the angel can't touch it, and so he takes tongs, and he takes one of these coals with the tongs, flies over to Isaiah, and then what?

Puts it on his mouth. I mean, you can hear the sizzle. That white-hot coal against flesh, one of the most sensitive parts of the human body, when you kiss somebody, you use your lips because of the intense feeling that can be communicated there, and imagine putting your mouth around a white-hot coal that's taken from a barbecue pit in your backyard.

Why does God do this?

To torment or to torture Isaiah in his guilt?

No.

You want to know what repentance looks like? You're reading about it here, as Isaiah is acknowledging his guilt before God, and he cries out for God. Now, if this were written in today's culture, it would go something like this.

Isaiah screams, I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amidst a people of unclean lips.

Woe is me.

And we say, now, come on, Isaiah. Don't be so hard on yourself. You're going to have a bad self-image. I need to be concerned about your self-esteem. Look, it's no big deal.

Boys will be boys.

Just get up and carry on for the rest of the day. You don't sin. You make bad decisions. Now, God does not deny the reality of this experience, and the coal on the mouth is not designed to torture him.

It's designed to cleanse him. God is cauterizing the wound. He's purifying the wound on the lips of Isaiah. You've seen movies, cowboy movies or movies of the Civil War when somebody gets shot, and after the bullet is being removed, then they'll heat up the branding iron that they have out there in the ranch, and the hot coals until it's glowing, and then they'll use that branding iron to sear the wound, to cleanse it from all infecting bacteria, cauterizing it, making it pure.

And then listen to what Isaiah hears. He touched my mouth with it and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged. Your iniquity is removed.

It's taken away.

And the Bible says, As far as the east is from the west, so God removes our transgressions from us. In the cross, we read in the New Testament that Christ performs a work of expiation. And what expiation means is the removal of our guilt.

It's taken away. Do you remember in Old Testament Israel, every year on the Day of Atonement, more than one animal was killed. Not only was the lamb slain and offered, but before any of that took place, there was first the scapegoat.

Do you remember the story of the scapegoat? Where this goat would be brought before the high priest, and the high priest would walk over and lay his hands on the back of the goat.

And then what?

The goat would then be sent outside of the camp, out into the wilderness, out into the area that was forsaken, away from the presence of God. What was the symbolic significance of that? Well, when the priest laid his hands on the goat, what he was doing symbolically was taking the sins of the people, their guilt, and transferring it to the back of the goat.

And then the goat is sent outside of the camp, outside of where the presence of God is concentrated, out into the outer darkness, out into the place of forsakenness. This is exactly what happens to Christ when God takes your sin, your guilt, your filthy mouth, when you cry out to Him like Isaiah did, and God places it on Christ.

And when He did that, what happened? The lights went out. Darkness came. Christ is executed outside of Jerusalem, outside of the camp. He's the scapegoat. But He's also the Lamb that satisfies the demands of God, the Lamb without blemish, whose lips were not dirty, offers Himself to God, pays the penalty that we deserve, then transfers to us the righteousness that He earned for Himself.

And so the Christian life begins with forgiveness. It begins with our justification. And what happens in our justification is this, that we who are unholy, we who are unjust are declared by God to be just.

Do you remember how David raises the question? He says, if the Lord should mark iniquities, who would stand? If the Lord took out that grade book, that black book that I was talking about with my college students, and wrote down in that book every time you violated His law, every time you disobeyed Him, every sin you ever committed, and judged you on the basis of that, David said, if the Lord would mark iniquities, who would stand?

That's a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious, nobody. Nobody could possibly stand. How could an unholy person ever survive standing in judgment before a holy God? Well, the only way is if His unholiness is purged, if His unholiness is removed, if His unholiness is covered.

That's what redemption is all about, is that Christ in His holiness grants His holiness to us because we don't have it. And then as He reconciles us to God, as He justifies us before God, then He says, go to work with fear and trembling.

Work out this salvation. I've often wondered what I would feel like if I didn't just hear a missionary or a minister or a preacher or an evangelist telling me that I could have my sins forgiven, but what would I really feel like if I were alone in the room and Christ walked in the room and put His hands on my head and said to me, R .C., listen to me.

I forgive you of every sin you've ever committed. I'm removing your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west, and I am purging you of your guilt, and I'm making you clean. If Christ said that to you, I'm making you clean, I'm forgiving you, I'm making you spotless in the sight of God, what would you do?

Here's what God said. As soon as He said, your iniquity is taken away, your sin purged, then Isaiah said, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? I notice in Scripture that God never says, come unto me, without saying to those who come unto Him, go ye.

We come to Him, He heals us, He forgives us, and then He sends us. Whom shall I send?

Who will go for me?

And Isaiah says, here am I.

Send me.

I'll go. Hey, God, if You're going to forgive me of all my sins, if You're going to cleanse me of my filthy mouth, if You're going to allow me to stand in Your presence even though I am not holy, I will crawl over glass to tell everybody I ever meet about Your mercy and about Your grace.

Be holy, God says, because I am holy. And it's because He's holy, and we are not, that we need a holy Redeemer who not only justifies us, but gives to us then the Holy Spirit to help us as we seek our sanctification.

The True God Revealed in Christ

Work out your sanctification, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, why? For God is at work within you, both to will and to do. On the last night of Jesus' life, His disciples said to Him, show us the Father, and that will satisfy us.

And if Jesus was ever frustrated with His disciples, it was then because He said to them, how long have I been with you and you didn't know me? Don't you know that if you see me, you see the Father? Now what Jesus did in His lifetime was He turned His world upside down because in His presence, with His presence, He smashed all the false idols, all of the misunderstandings and misconceptions of God.

He revealed to us the true character of God. And we live in a time where anything goes in religion. People can worship whatever they want to, the God of their own hands, the God of their own making. But, friends, there's only one God who is the true God, who's the biblical God.

It is the God who's revealed in the person of Christ. And I'm asking you to search for that God, for that God who is majestic in His holiness, who is transcendent in His greatness, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you will make the seeking of Him the main business of your life, you'll turn your world.

Upside down.