Fear and Trembling with R. C. Sproul, “Cosmic Treason,” 5

Several years ago I was working on the staff of a church, and we received a new curriculum for junior high school Sunday school that the denomination had sent down to us, and I was asked by the session of the church to read through the curriculum and see whether we wanted to use it.

And as I was reading the curriculum, it began to talk about some of the things we read in the Old Testament where God seems so fierce in the manifestation of His wrath where He kills people instantly and things of that sort.

And the curriculum was teaching the children this. It said, when we read these stories in the Old Testament, we have to remember that things didn't really happen like this, that these were myths that were articulated by the Old Testament writers, because these were Jewish people who were warriors, and they were somewhat fierce in their bellicosity and so on, and they were primitive, pre-scientific people who didn't really understand the love of God.

And so we have to understand these passages in light of what we know about God from the New Testament, that He's a God of love, that He's a God of mercy, that He's a God of grace, and a God of kindness, and not anything like this mean God of the Old Testament.

Well, needless to say, we didn't use that curriculum. But you hear this attitude voiced all the time, like there are two different gods, a New Testament God and an Old Testament God, and we just have a difficult time relating to the God of the Old Testament because of certain narratives that we encounter therein.

And I'd like to call attention to a couple of those stories that we read in the Old Testament that cause people to react so negatively to the character of God. The first one is found in the book of Leviticus in the 10th chapter, where I'll be reading verses 1 through 7, and this is the story of what happened to the sons of Aaron, the high priest.

We read in verse 1 of chapter 10 of Leviticus, Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them.

And so fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. And Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke. Now before I read what Moses said to Aaron, let's reconstruct the story.

Here are the two sons of Aaron who have followed in their father's footsteps. They have become consecrated to the priesthood, and they are attending the altar, and they bring this strange fire, fire that was not part of the regular ritual of the altar, and they're sort of playing around and experimenting with profane or secular, unconsecrated, unholy stuff.

And they bring this stuff, and they put it on the altar, and as soon as they do, the fire from the altar gushes up and consumes them and burns them to death on the spot. Now sometimes when the Bible tells stories like this, the Bible does it in a terse manner, doesn't fill in all of the details, but you can imagine how Aaron felt when he hears that God has just executed his two sons for this prank at the altar.

And so what does Aaron do? He goes to Moses, and the Bible doesn't tell us what he says to Moses, so let me have a little license here and let me speculate a little bit. I can imagine what Aaron said to Moses.

I can hear Aaron going into the tent of Moses and looking at Moses and say, What's going on here? I give my life to the service of God. My sons are giving their life to the service of God. One little mistake, and God kills them on the spot.

What kind of a God is that? Let's read what Moses said. Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke, saying, By those who come near me, I will be regarded as holy, and before all of the people I will be glorified.

And then we read after that, And Aaron held his. It's like when he came in all upset, said, What's God doing here? Moses said, Aaron, don't you remember? Don't you remember your own ordination? Don't you remember the elaborate process that we had to go through to be set aside for this sacred task of priesthood?

And don't you remember the commandment of the Lord when He said, I will be regarded as holy by all of those who come in my presence, and I will be glorified in front of all the people? And he shut his mouth.

That was the end of the protest. That's not the only story like that. I won't read the text this time, but you remember in the book of 2 Samuel in the sixth chapter we have the story of Uzzah. Do you remember him?

The Ark of the Covenant was being brought towards Jerusalem for celebration. David wanted to bring it there. And so Uzzah and his friends are responsible for transporting the Ark of the Covenant. You remember the Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred vessel in Israel.

It was the throne of God, and normally the Ark was kept inside the tabernacle in the Holy of Holies. And it was there on the top of the Ark of the Covenant on the mercy seat that the blood was sprinkled by the high priest on the day of atonement.

Do you remember? Well, we also remember that the tabernacle was a big tent, and whenever the tabernacle was moved from one place to another they had to take the tent down and then reassemble it and reconstruct it when their next stop.

And the Kohathites were that subgroup of the Levites who were responsible to move these sacred articles. And if you would read the description of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament, when it was first fashioned, the Ark of the Covenant had rings at its edges, and those rings served a purpose.

These poles were inserted through the rings so that those who carried the Ark of the Covenant could put the poles over their shoulder and walk down the road carrying the Ark without ever touching the sacred vessel.

But on this occasion, they're in a hurry to get the Ark into Jerusalem, so they put the Ark of the Covenant on an ox cart. And the story tells us as while the ox cart is moving down the road toward Jerusalem, one of the oxen stumbles, and the ox cart starts to teeter, and it looks like the Ark of the Covenant is going to fall off of the cart into the mud and be marred and blemished, that this would be a terrible sacrilege to allow this holy vessel to become made filthy by the dirt.

And so instinctively, what does Uzzah do? The Ark's starting to fall into the mud. He reaches out to steady the Ark. And as soon as he touches, what does the Bible say? A voice comes from heaven saying, Thank you, Uzzah, for saving my Ark.

No. The second he touches it. Now again, critics go back and read that story, and they say, Well, see, that's the way primitive people interpreted events. What really happened was Uzzah, when he touched that sacred object, was so frightened he scared himself to death.

He had a heart attack, and he dropped dead there in his tracks, because certainly God would never, ever kill somebody just for stabilizing the Ark. Jonathan Edwards preached on this text many years ago, and he talked about the presumptuousness, the pride of Uzzah, where Uzzah assumed that what would desecrate the Ark of the Covenant would be the dirt on the ground, forgetting that the dirt is in obedience to God.

There's nothing profane or unholy or evil about dirt. Dirt does what dirt is supposed to do. When you put water on dirt, it makes mud, because it obeys the natural laws that God has decreed for dirt and water when they mix.

No. The thing that God commanded so clearly in Israel that should never come in contact with His throne, with His sacred Ark, was not the mud, but the touch of man. It is the touch of man that would mar the holiness of the throne of God.

And so God had decreed that no human being would ever be allowed to touch that Ark, and if they did, they would die. Uzzah touched it. Uzzah died. But again, still, we struggle with this. Why does God do this?

A Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, in one of his books, talks about these episodes as well as others, such as the flood or the Harim, which involved the conquest of Canaan. And you read in the Old Testament how God commanded that the Israelites would go into Canaan and slaughter all the people who were there, men, women, and children, and burn down their villages, and put the ban on these people so that there'd be no mixture between the pagan culture of the Canaanites with His holy people.

And you look at the civil sanctions in the Old Testament, and you'll see that there are about thirty-five crimes in Old Testament Israel that were capital offenses, that were punished by death. If you went and consulted a fortune teller, if you went and had your palm read, you'd be put to death.

If you blasphemed the name of God publicly, you'd be put to death. If you were an unruly, sassy, disobedient child to your parents, you'd be put to death. If you were engaged in homosexual activities, you'd be put to death.

Thirty-some crimes were delineated as being capital offenses, whereas in the New Testament it seems that that list is greatly reduced. And there's a whole different atmosphere in the New Testament of persevering patience and so on.

So again the question is that Kung was struggling with, why these eruptions of fury by God in the Old Testament? And not only in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, remember Ananias and Sapphira?

When they lied to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, what did God do? Executed them on the spot. Hans Kung said, here's what happens. We think that the Old Testament list of thirty-five sins as being capital offenses is cruel, severe, harsh, and barbaric in contrast to the New Testament where it's so loving and kind.

Forgetting that the number of capital crimes that are found in the Old Testament already represents a massive reduction in the number of capital offenses. Hans Kung reminds us that in creation, in creation, every sin is a capital offense.

God said at the beginning, the soul that sins shall die. And that if God were to treat the human race strictly according to His justice, every one of us would have been executed a long time ago. But Kung says that what happens is that God does not institute the death penalty for every sin that deserves it.

We don't really believe we deserve to be killed for our sins, do we? There are few sins that are or crimes that are capital crimes in America, murder still, but there's another one, folks, high treason.

And God is the King of the universe. And every time we refuse to obey His law, we are engaged in treason. We are setting ourselves up as having more authority than He has. And we're saying, you have no right to govern me, and not only am I going to do what I want to do rather than you want to do, but I dare you to do anything about me.

You're not going to kill me. And he says that the basic way that God relates to His people after the fall is with His forbearance, with His mercy, with His grace, with His tenderness. And instead of killing them every time they sin, He is long-suffering and patient, and patient towards them.

And the Bible said that that patience that God gives to us is designed to give us time to repent, to turn from our rebellion to Him. But instead what happens is the nicer God is to people, the harder our hearts become, the more calloused we become in our sinfulness.

In fact, Jeremiah said this. He said to the people of Israel, you have received the forehead of a harlot. What's he mean? He said you've lost your ability to blush. How do you think that harlot felt the first time she was engaged in sex that was prohibited by God?

She was probably sick in her stomach. She hands probably trembled because she had a crisis now of her own identity because she realized she had violated God's holiness. But she did it again, didn't feel so bad the second time, encouraged her friends to get involved, get her culture to accept it, and through repeated offenses she could now be engaged in the worst kind of sexual activity and not even blush about it.

See, that's true not only of the harlot. That's true of the human who takes advantage of the mercy of God. And so what Kuhn says is that because we do this, that from time to time in redemptive history God will send His justice instead of His mercy to remind the people of the difference between justice and mercy.

You may never become professional theologians, but if there are any two concepts in the Bible that you need to get clear in your mind, it is those concepts and the difference between the concepts of justice and mercy.

My favorite illustration of that took place when I was teaching in a college a hundred years ago. I was teaching a class of freshmen, the introduction to the Old Testament, and I had 250 students in my class.

And the only room that was big enough on the campus to have 250 students in one class was the chapel. So the first day of classes for the freshmen, I have to give them their instructions and give them their syllabus, and I said, We have three little term papers during the course of this semester.

The first one's due on September 30th at noon, the second one October 30th, the third one November 30th. And they're all Philadelphia lawyers, so I had to explain to them, I want it on my desk, 12 o 'clock, September 30th, unless you're physically confined to the infirmary or the hospital or there's a death in the immediate family.

Does everybody understand? Right. If you don't turn it in on that day, what you get is F for that assignment. Does everybody understand? They understand. September 30th came. 225 students come with their term paper, dutifully, appropriately.

Twenty-five trembling students are in the back of the room, scared to death because they don't have their papers done. Oh, Professor Sproul, we didn't budget our time right. We didn't make the transition from high school to college like we should have.

Please don't flunk us for this. Give us two more days to get the paper done, and we'll never let it happen again. Okay. I'll do it. But you better have your paper in on time next. Oh, we will. October the 30th came.

200 students came into class with their term papers. Fifty of them don't have their term papers. Where are your term papers? Oh, Professor, this was homecoming week, and we were all caught up with the excitement of homecoming.

Besides that, I had all these midterm exams, and all the professors had papers due. We're so sorry, but we'll have them in in two days. Please give us one more chance. They're begging me. I said, okay, but this is the last time.

You don't get it in next month on time? It's an F for short. Does everybody understand? You know what they did? They started to sing spontaneously. We love you, Prof. Sproul. Oh, yes, we do. I was Mr. Popularity on the faculty, because I gave them a break second time.

November 30th came. You tell me what happened. That's right. 150 students come with their term paper, and 100 of them don't have them, and they're casually strolling in the back door of the chapel, you know, just as cool as they could be.

I said, hey, where's your term papers? They said, hey, Prof, no sweat. Cool. We'll have them for you in a couple of days. Don't worry about it. I said, Johnson, where's your term paper? He said, I don't have it.

I took my little black book, you know, the most dreaded object that the professor has. I opened it up to J. Johnson. Johnson, F. McIntyre, where's your paper? I don't have it, sir. McIntyre, F. Llewellyn, where's your paper?

Don't have it. F. Now what do you suppose they shouted? That's not what? Tell me. Fair. I said, what did you say? We said that's not fair. I said, Johnson, did you just say that's not fair? And he said, yeah.

He said, oh. Do I remember correctly, Johnson, that you didn't have your paper in on time last month either? And he said, that's right. I said, okay. The last thing I want to be to you people is unfair.

Johnson, if it's justice that you want, it's justice that you shall get. And I opened up the book, and I said, I'm going to change last month's grade to your just grade, F. I said, now, who else in here wants justice?

Nobody raised their hand. What happens is we get accustomed to God's grace. At first we're amazed by it. The second time, not quite so much surprised. By the third or the fourth time, we begin to expect it.

Then we assume it, and then we demand it, and we're angry if we don't get it. Because the greatest distortion in our thinking, dear friends, is thinking that God owes us mercy, that God is somehow obligated to be gracious to us.

But think about that. The minute the idea comes in your head that God owes you mercy or owes you grace, let a bell go off in your brain that says, whoops, I'm confusing these concepts. Because grace, by its very definition, is voluntary.

God is not required to be merciful. He reserves the right to be merciful to whom He will be merciful and to be gracious to whom He is gracious. You can plead for grace. You can beg for mercy, but you can never, ever demand it.

Justice may be required, but never, ever. And it's because God is holy that any time He withholds justice, He is giving grace. If He were not holy, then perhaps His grace would not really be grace. But that's the point of the Scriptures, is what Moses was saying to Aaron is, on this occasion, Aaron, God was not gracious to Nadab and Abihu.

He was just. On this occasion, God was not merciful to Uzzah. He was just. And the one thing I warn you, please don't ever ask God for justice. You might get it. It would be the worst thing that could possibly be.

For you.