Holiness and Joy
One of the things I most admire about the late R. C. Sproul was his rare mixture of transcendent awareness and relational magnanimity. He was a man clobbered by the holiness of God — a repeated emphasis throughout his five-decades-long teaching ministry — which meant he knew how to be stopped before the weightiness of God. And he knew how to laugh.
His keen insights into the holiness of God, and how the topic is so often forgotten in our day, did not make him dour. To cement the point, consider where Dr. Sproul sets the stakes in his classic, The Holiness of God,
How we understand the person and character of God the Father affects every aspect of our lives. It affects far more than what we normally call the “religious” aspects of our lives. If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is the Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. That means that no part of my life must be outside of His lordship. His holy character has something to say about economics, politics, athletics, romance—everything with which we are involved. God is inescapable. There is no place we can hide from Him. Not only does He penetrate every aspect of our lives, but He penetrates it in His majestic holiness. Therefore we must seek to understand what the holy is. We dare not seek to avoid it. There can be no worship, no spiritual growth, no true obedience without it. … (13-14)
He also knew how to tell a joke.
In fact, as austere as we might imagine someone who places such a high value on our understanding of holiness, consider that Dr. Sproul was friends with Vince Furnier, the lead singer of Alice Cooper. He also was once acknowledged with thanks in the liner notes of a Van Halen album. When he passed away in 2017, biographer Stephen Nichols says that Sproul left a “gaping hole” in the circle of American Evangelical leaders and in the group of “heathens,” as he called them, with whom he played golf and ate lunch. Here is a man who knew how to tremble before God and befriend sinners. It’s remarkable.
And I’m especially interested in this for a couple reasons.
First, we are preaching through Leviticus this fall, which will bring us into closer contact with God’s holiness perhaps more than any other book in the Bible. And on the other side of this series, after such a focus on God’s holiness, what effect do we expect it to have on us? To be more serious? More stern? solemn? stringent?
Maybe. If that is what we need, God let it be.
But what if it makes us happier? What if staring into the unfathomable reality of God’s holiness gives us joy? And makes us more eager evangelists?
Second, this Sunday I’m preaching Psalm 58, and at the close of the sermon, quoting verses 10–11, I will tell you that one day we are going to rejoice in the display of God’s vengeance. We’re going to be so comfortable with the sight of God’s righteous wrath that we’re going to bathe our feet in the blood of the wicked. And I will say it soberly, as such things ought to be said. But I will also be happy deep down, I hope, because deeper than God’s wrath, and nearer to his essence, is his joy.
The holiness of the joy of God. Should we just talk about that for the next 50 years?
