April 16, 1981 (Maundy Thursday)
Bethlehem Baptist Church
John Piper, Pastor

 

MAUNDY THURSDAY MEDITATION

 

The Holiness of God

Everything begins with God. We don't understand the full significance of anything until we understand its relation to God. He was the one and only fact a trillion centuries before the universe or man existed. He is absolutely unique because he alone is infinite, unchanging, eternal. He is infinitely more important than any man or woman. His value is supreme. He is in a class by himself. And he is more worthy, 10,000 times more worthy, than any other class of beings.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth with a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge and showed him understanding? Behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales. . . . All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing! (Is. 40:12-17)

When we say that God is holy we mean that along with the immeasurableness of his greatness his character is unimpeachable. He cannot be charged with any wrong. He has an infinite love for what is infinitely valuable and an infinite hate for what opposes the infinitely valuable. His delight in praiseworthy things is unbounded, and his abhorrence of what is blameworthy is perfect. As Habakkuk 1:13 says: "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrong."

All the evil in the world is an offense against the holiness of God and is preparing this world for a cataclysm of divine vindication. The zeal of God burns for the holiness of his great name. Ezek. 36:22, 23:

"Say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God: 'It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations … and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.'"

God loves his holiness with infinite love and cherishes his purity. This is the starting point for understanding God and man and the world. If we don't start here everything goes askew. If we don't feel a sense of awe and fear and admiration for the infinite holiness of God which opposes evil with wrath and fury, then all of our other feelings and thoughts will be defective at best.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the Seraphim; each had six wings; with two he covered his face; and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts
the whole earth is full of his glory."

(Isaiah 6:1-3)

Our Sin

We live in a day when bad feelings are at epidemic proportions. By bad feelings I mean that grey cloud of blahs that hovers around us on many days. Sometimes it feels like guilt (for things done or left undone), sometimes like anxiety (about work, or finances, or marriage, or kids, or health, etc.), sometimes like depression, sometimes boredom, sometimes aimlessness. But often it's an unspecifiable mixture, a general crummy feeling, that tends to take away all motivation and zest and joy.

Many preachers and theologians and psychologists look at this situation and conclude: our generation does not need discussions of sin; we do not need to be told we are sinners; everyone already knows that. We need only words of affirmation and acceptance.

There is an element of truth here but also a grave misunderstanding. The truth is that we should adapt the emphases of our gospel message to the peculiar needs of the hearers. The misunderstanding is the assumption that the malaise of bad feelings today is the same as conviction of sin. There is a great difference between feeling a vague sense of guilt and anxiety and depression on the one hand, and feeling cut to the heart with regret for our sins. The main difference is this: the causes of bad feelings are as varied as are human personality and they may or may not involve a consciousness of God, but the cause of conviction for sin is the keen awareness that our sinful attitudes and actions have profaned the holiness of God. Genuine, life-changing conviction of sin emerges from a love for God's glorious holiness which we regret having besmirched with our sin.

When a person turns to Christ with the notion that his main problem was an unbearable cloud of bad feelings, his relation to Christ will be very shaky and shallow. His faith and love to Christ will probably be as vague and unspecified as was the thing that drove him to Christ.

I don't agree with the popular assessment of the need of our day. It's true that bad feelings are rampant. I have my share. It is not true that this means we shouldn't talk about sin. Very few of our bad feelings flow from our regret that we have profaned God's holiness. Search your own heart. Is that not true? In fact, I would go so far as to say that the tendency to substitute bad feelings for conviction of sin is a symptom of our man-centered age and is very foreign to the profoundly God-centered view in the Bible.

We need to talk about sin and to search our hearts because sin is a falling short of God's glory, not the discomfort of our crummy feelings. Sin is the profaning of God's holiness, not our emotional distress. Unless we say this, then all we talk about is the symptoms, not the disease. Unless God -- and the profaning of his holiness -- is at the center of our talk about sin, we will prepare no one for real conversion and provide very thin soil for faith to grow in.

Listen to how Amos describes the sins of Israel (2:6, 7):

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because they sell the righteous for silver,

and the needy for a pair of shoes-

they that trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,

and turn aside the way of the afflicted;

a man and his father go in to the same maiden,

so that my holy name is profaned;"

From this text, what should we say to persons who have a vague sense of guilt or bad feelings because they have "turned aside the way of the afflicted" or have been sexually promiscuous? My own conviction is not that we should start with the bad feelings and proceed from there to words of hope. I believe Scripture teaches we must show them that their feelings are symptoms of a much more serious condition: they have profaned the holy name of God and that is what makes their plight (our plight!) most fearful. The great need today is a radical and pervasive orientation on God and his holiness, not man and his feelings.

We are going to read together Psalm 51 as our corporate confession of sin in preparation for Communion. Notice that David said: "Against you, you only, have I sinned." What does he mean? I think he means, even though I killed a man and raped a woman, the really horrible and offensive thing is that I profaned the holiness of God. That's what broke his heart and should break ours.

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to thy steadfast love;
according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,

and done that which is evil in thy sight,

so that thou art justified in thy sentence

and blameless in thy judgment.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Fill me with joy and gladness;

let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.

Hide thy face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence,

and take not thy holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors thy ways,

and sinners will return to thee. (Psalm 51:1-13)

The Love of Jesus

Before I got up this morning I lay in bed reading my Greek New Testament: John's account of Jesus' arrest. And one sentence really impressed me. The soldiers and officers and priests and Pharisees came to get Jesus. Jesus asked them to let his disciples go. Peter at that point pulled out his sword and cut off the ear of Malchus the servant of the high priest. Jesus said to Peter: "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?"

Do you recall how Socrates died? He was forced to drink a cup of poison with his disciples around him. Jesus pictures his death now as a cup of poison or a cup of wrath. And the one handing him the cup is his Father.

For me this is a picture of the love of God--the team effort of love that purchased our redemption.

God the Father thought it up--like everything else. He devised a way both to maintain his holiness and to acquit us who had profaned it through sin. The love of God created the gospel to do what seemed impossible: the justification of the ungodly by a holy God.

If we see the holiness of God for what it is and our sin for what it is as a profaning of his holiness, then we see how immense the gulf is between him and us and how unthinkable our salvation is. Then when we see his Son stretched out in agony on the cross and laid down as a bridge for us to cross, we know what divine love is. "God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

But let me mention the converse of this truth to guard you against what I call "thin gospel" in our day. To the degree that the holiness of God is de-emphasized or diminished and to the degree that our sinfulness is de-emphasized or diminished, to that degree the cross of Christ and the love of God will diminish in our eyes so that we feel as ho-hum about them as about most everything else.

But notice that the love of God was a team effort of Father and Son: "shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?" The Son was obedient even unto death: "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18).

The great apostle Paul said once, "I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). And in another place (2 Cor. 5:14) he said, "The love of Christ controls us." He was mastered by the love of Jesus. With bonds of love his heart had been bound to Christ.

Conclusion

When we see the holiness of God for what it is and the sin of man for what it truly is as the profaning of that holiness, then we will not only begin to grasp but also be grasped by the "deep, deep love of Jesus." And we will be willing to suffer the loss of all things and count them as refuse for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. We will be "controlled by his love" and eager to know the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.