The Holiness of God

I had the privilege this week of hearing R.C. Sproul speak at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary while I was in Louisville for the Together for the Gospel conference. Sproul spoke on the Holiness of God. His talk was so good, but one thing stood out most to me. In 2 Samuel 6, the Israelites were transporting the Ark of the Covenant. . They had placed it on a cart pulled by oxen. At one point, the oxen stumble and the Ark was about to fall to the ground, so Uzzah reached out to stop it from falling. At that moment, the LORD’s anger burned on Uzzah for his irreverence, so He struck Uzzah down and he died.

In his talk, Sproul pointed out that the Lord struck Uzzah down because of two things. One, he broke the command from Numbers 4:15 that if anyone touched it who wasn’t supposed to, they would die. But secondly, Uzzah was arrogant to touch the Ark, even if trying to save it. The reason only certain people could touch it was because they had been set apart by God to do so. Uzzah was unclean (sinful), and therefore it was not right that he touched something that was so Holy. In Uzzah’s eyes, it was worse for the Ark to touch the ground than to touch him. But why is it wrong for the Ark to touch the ground. The ground is just there by God’s will, doing its thing in obedience to God. Although the ground (dirt, mud) is dirty to us as humans, it is beautiful in God’s eyes because it is His creation! To Uzzah, it was worse for it to be touched by the ground, but to God it is worse to be touched by sinful man.

As humans we think far too highly of ourselves. Uzzah did, and he paid the price for it. We also think too highly of ourselves, but for some reason God holds back his wrath. If I was Uzzah, I probably would have tried to be a hero as well.

I pray that God would teach me know see myself more accurately, so that I can fear the Him appropriately. I take too Gods grace for granted far too much, because I because I think I deserve it.

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I have so much more to share from this conference. Hopefully I will process it and get a chance to blog more.

I also just realized you can hear the message from Sproul here: http://www.sbts.edu/MP3/gheens/20060426sproul.mp3