Embracing Divine Holiness: Fear, Vulnerability, and Grace

I spoke with a gentleman the other day who had delivered a message on a college campus, and in the midst of his address he was heckled by hostile students. He was talking about Christ, and in the midst of his speech, somebody hollered out, "Who cares?" And he went on to explain to me -- he said, "Whew!" he said, "the audience was hostile," and that more and more it seems that there's a growing hostility in our nation towards the Christian faith and a growing sense of militancy from pro-Christian and anti-Christian forces. [00:08:00]

I find exceedingly rare is someone who publicly will criticize the integrity of Jesus. I think, for example, of a comment that George Bernard-Shaw once made where he was being critical of Jesus. He was not a Christian, and Shaw said of Jesus when he criticized His behavior, he said, "There were times when Jesus did not behave as a Christian." I thought there was some irony in that -- that when George Bernard-Shaw wanted to criticize Jesus, he could think of no higher moral standard by which to criticize Him than the standard of Christ himself. [00:99:03]

The world is so complimentary about Jesus the question I am left with is why, if He was such a wonderful person and so loving and kind and compassionate, ministering to all kinds of sick people and outcasts and sort of a Mother Theresa of His own generation, and then some -- why was He killed? Not only was He executed, but the masses were clamoring for His blood. What was it about Jesus of Nazareth that enflamed people's passions either for Him or against Him? [00:183:00]

The disciples were seasoned fisherman. They had been out on that lake a thousand times, and one of these violent tempests break out in the middle of the night, and the waves are in gigantic proportions. The wind is howling, and at every second the boat is in imminent danger of capsizing and killing the fishermen. And all the while Jesus is sleeping in the boat. I hate people like that. I've seen them on airplanes. I've been on airplanes where the stewardesses were screaming in panic, where the plane was dropping a thousand feet at a time in violent turbulence, and the guy next to me is sound asleep. [00:338:70]

The disciples were afraid. Now there's nothing particularly fascinating about that, but I want to apply that to something. When I was teaching in the seminary in Philadelphia years ago, I taught a course on academic atheism, where the students were required to read the primary sources, the writings of the most articulate atheists of western history. I made the students read the objections of David Hume and of John Stuart Mill. I made the students read the works of Nietzsche and of Ludwig Feuerbach. [00:411:14]

Freud said the first step was the personalization of nature. Why? A very, very fascinating theory -- the idea is this: that there are all kinds of things out there, ladies and gentlemen, that threate my existence -- cancer, fire, flood, war, other people -- but I have learned as a human being how to survive, at least this far, the hostility of other people. When you come at me, and you're gritting your teeth, and you're angry, or you're reaching for a gun, I've learned how to deal with that. [00:585:54]

The disciples of Jesus terrified because of an encounter with the destructive forces of nature. Their lives are in jeopardy because of the tempest arising at sea, and the Bible says that they are frightened. And what do frightened people do in the midst of a crisis? They immediately go to their leader, and so they came to the back of the boat, and they shook Jesus awake, and they said, "Master, do something, or we perish!" What did He do? He looked around and appraised the situation, and then the Lord God Incarnate, the Creator of heaven and earth issued a verbal command, not to men but to the impersonal forces of nature. [00:806:60]

The response of the disciples when Jesus removes the clear and present threat of nature? Does it say they throw their souwesters in the air and rejoice and say, "Oh, we knew you would do it"? No. The text tells us that at that moment they became very much afraid -- that is, rather than having your fears assuaged and ameliorated, their fears now became intensified. The thing that Freud didn't understand is that, ladies gentlemen, there is something within the human heart that we fear more than any of the impersonal forces of nature, and that is the power and the presence of a person who is holy. [00:902:88]

The disciples saw Jesus, and they -- their computers went haywire, and they said, "Wait a minute. We don't have a category for this man. We've never encountered one who is so other, so different, so separate, so apart from normal humanity that He could command the sea, and the sea obeys." In other words, ladies and gentlemen, what terrified the disciples, ladies and gentlemen, was that suddenly they realized that they were in the presence of the holy, and their fear was increased. [00:1200:75]

The worst-kept secret in the whole world -- it's well-kept, but it's a horrible thing that it has been kept -- is that we are invited to come to the presence of a holy God. Sartre said in his writings that the last thing that he ever wanted to do was to be submitted to the unremitting gaze of a holy God, and yet David, after he was subjected to the scrutiny of God said to God, "Oh Lord, search me and know me." The secret the Christian carries around with him is the knowledge this is the one place where we can really be vulnerable, the one place where we can be comfortable, the one place where we can be naked without fear is in the presence of Christ. [00:1728:84]

There is a righteousness that God has provided for you in Christ that is not your own righteousness. It's an alien righteousness. It's a foreign righteousness. It is the righteousness of Christ that is freely offered to you if you will submit to the lordship of Christ. All that He has, and all that He has done becomes yours, and the worst storms of divine wrath that you could imagine are silenced forever, and God declares peace. [00:1865:62]

To be a Christian is to be forgiven. The essence of the Christian faith is grace. The essence of the Christian ethic is not arrogance but gratitude, and forgive us if you are an unbeliever if we have presented ourselves to you as self-righteous because I guarantee you that there's no Christian in this room who is righteous in and of themselves. [00:1920:76]