SPROUL: When we talk about God's holiness, we're tempted to think in terms of God's attributes.
His justice, His knowledge, His wisdom, His power,
et cetera. And invariably, the attribute of love is placed at the top of the list,
indicating that we should understand all of God's nature, all of His activity, in light of His love.
And that everything else about God has to be subsumed beneath the category of love.
However, and this may seem like the technical distinctions of the theologian that you may
find annoying, but I think if we examine the Scriptures, if there's any one attribute
that belongs at the apex, at the zenith, at the top of the list of God's attributes,
it is not the love of God. It is not the mercy of God. It is not the wisdom of God,
but it is the holiness of God. NICHOLS:
So many people have come to know R.C. Sproul: they’ve come to know him through his over
one hundred books that he’s written, or from his daily broadcast, “Renewing Your Mind,” it
goes back to 1994. But what I find fascinating is the foundation behind all of that teaching.
There was this decade of being a student, of pouring over God’s word.
And there was a whole decade of honing that craft and that skill as a teacher
and a communicator. And so to go back and revisit that foundation, and those roots,
is really crucial and gives us some great insight into the life that is to come.
R.C. grew up in Pittsburgh and just around the corner from his home was the Presbyterian church
that he went to all of his life. But the gospel wasn’t taught there. It was a liberal church and
did not stand for the truthfulness of God’s word. And so all those years that he was
faithful and going to church, he never heard the truth of the God of the Bible.
Early in his freshman year, he was converted. It was probably the most unlikely verse that someone
was ever converted on. It’s Ecclesiastes 11:3, “. . . if a tree falls in the woods, there it lies.”
And when Dr. Sproul saw that verse, he said, “That’s me. I am that dead
tree lying, rotting, on the ground.” And he knew instantly of his need for a Savior.
So as soon as he’s converted, the first thing he wants to do is get to know God. And he
gets to know God by reading the Bible. And he spoke about this so many times,
of the impact of that first time that he read through the Bible, especially the Old
Testament. And he came to this conclusion—or maybe this conclusion came to him—that this
is a God who plays for keeps. It was shortly after that, that he had what he calls his
second conversion. He was in his dorm room and he was restless and couldn’t get to sleep.
And he just felt compelled to get up out of his bed and out of his dorm and make his way to the
chapel on the campus of Westminster College. He made his way right up to the altar there of the
chapel. And he was overwhelmed by the holiness of God. He was gripped by the holiness of God. That
experience was transformative for Dr. Sproul. So, after college, of course, he went to seminary
and there’s where he met with Dr. John Gerstner. And after his time at Pittsburgh Seminary,
he went to Amsterdam and studied under Burkhour for his doctoral work. And then he actually
went back to his alma mater to teach for a year at Westminster College. Then he was pastoring
in Cincinnati, but all along that way, what was emerging was “R.C. Sproul, the teacher.”
One person, after hearing Dr. Sproul preach on Psalm 51 said to him, “How long did it
take you to prepare that sermon?” And Dr. Sproul said with a wink, “Five minutes,"
but then he added, “and thirty years.” And what he meant by that was behind that five minutes that he
spent thinking about that text were decades of study and decades of pouring over God’s Word.
A pivotal time in R.C.’s life came in 1970. He was giving some talks to a Young Life
conference and there in the audience was Dora Hillman. She was a widow of an industrialist
and a tycoon in Pittsburgh. And after one of the talks, she pulled him aside and she said,
“If you could do anything in life, what would it be?” And he told her to start a study center. Well
about a mile or two away from her property, a farm went up for sale and Dora bought it. And on this
formerly 52-acre farm, they opened the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Western Pennsylvania.
What R.C. wanted this place to be was a place of discipleship,
where Christians could come and not run from the hard questions,
but run into the hard questions, because R.C. knew that there were answers for these questions.
So as you were here at the Study Center, one of the things that you would definitely get would
be lectures. And you had folks who would just come in for a Bible study or just come in for
one of the most popular things they did here was the Gab Fest, which was just an open Q&A
with R.C. Sproul. They would sit at the table with the Sproul family, and if they had a question,
if they needed R.C.’s time, he would give it to them. R.C.’s life was just
in full view of these students to show them what a lived theology looks like.
Well, back in the early seventies, R.C. taught a series on the holiness of God here at the Study
Center. And that series was originally produced on cassette tapes and they were sent all over.
And then they did a video series and they actually did this in the Lecture House, of course,
this was the house where the Sprouls lived here on the campus of the Study Center. And
there was this brick fireplace, and it's flanked by these circular glass patterns. R.C.’s got his
very seventies look going, he’s got his aviator sunglasses. And it’s the first time the teaching
series is videotaped on the “Holiness of God.” SPROUL: What’s the reaction of Isaiah
in the presence of holiness?
Does he run out of the temple in excitement, run down to the town and say,
“Hey, everybody, you’ve got to come up to the temple and see what's happening,”
or does he look at this and he says, “Well, this is interesting. I’m going to have to
think about this, and come to some theological conclusions of what this is all about?” No.
The seraphim cries “Holy, holy, holy.” Isaiah cries, “Woe is me.” And he was on his face.
NICHOLS: Now, if we go back to this time in American culture, it was a time of cultural
upheaval. It was a time of cultural unrest. As the sixties were coming to a close, it was the decade
of protests. So, this was a time of a crisis, a true crisis in American culture. And it was a
crisis of authority. R.C. knew that was happening not only in culture, but also in the church.
And R.C. knew how important it was to have a view of the Bible, of its entire trustworthiness.
We speak of the doctrine of inerrancy, and as he looked across the denominations, and as he
looked across at many seminaries, he saw, there were so many people in those seminaries, in those
positions of leadership, that were not teaching an inerrant Bible. Well, all of that led to what
is probably Ligonier’s first big conference in the fall of 1973. R.C. gathered a handful of scholars
at Laurelville Retreat Center to present the topic of the full trustworthiness of the Bible.
That was the seed of what would become the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy,
the ICBI. And in the next year, the ICBI produced what is probably one of the most important
confessional statements of the twentieth century, The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
R.C. kept a lot of notebooks. And in one of those notebooks,
he was writing out an outline on inerrancy. And towards the end of this outline, R.C. writes,
“We need an evangelical summit. It might fail, but we must try.”
Well, in God’s kindness and in God’s providence, they didn’t fail. It was truly a success,
The Chicago Statement. It continues to be a success for the church.
David Wells once said that “God rests too casually on the shoulders of the American
church.” And that is exactly what R.C. Sproul was responding to. You know, he was asked one time,
“What is the one thing that you would teach if you could?” And he would say, “Well, theology.” Well,
“What is the one thing in theology that you would teach if you could only teach one thing?” And he
said, “Oh, that’s easy: doctrine of God.” “Well, if there’s only one thing you could teach
about the doctrine of God, what would it be?” “Well, that’s easy too: the holiness of God.”
And R.C. believed this was true, whether it’s in culture and those outside of the church, what is
the one thing they need to know? They need to know that God is holy. And it was true of those in the
church, they need to know that God is holy. SPROUL: Only one time in Scripture is an
attribute of God emphasized by this principle of repetition, not to the second degree, but raised
to the third degree. The seraphim do not sing that God is “Holy, holy.”
But the seraphim declare that God is “Holy, holy, holy.” The Bible doesn’t say that God is “love,
love, love,” or “mercy, mercy, mercy,” or “wise, wise, wise,” or “just, just,
just,” or “wrath, wrath, wrath.” But the Bible does say that God is “Holy, holy, holy.”
NICHOLS: I heard so many people say that when they listen to R.C. Sproul teach, they felt like he was
teaching directly to them, because he genuinely cared about people. He genuinely cared about you.
One of the phrases that he loved, this phrase that he learned early on,
and that is simply “Theology is doxology.” And I think in many ways, that gets at the true legacy
of Dr. Sproul. He wouldn’t want us talking about him. He wouldn’t want us talking about his
legacy. He doesn’t want people to know who R.C. Sproul is. He wanted people to know who God is.
Not the God of our making, but the God of the Bible. To know who God is, “theology,”
is to worship God, “doxology.” SPROUL: Let’s close this session then with prayer.
Forbid, oh Lord, that we should ever seek to ostracize
the Holy One of Israel from our midst, because He makes us uncomfortable.
Help us to be at peace with holiness. Not threatened, not fascinated,
but delighted to be in the presence of the Holy. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.