In this sermon, the speaker reflects on a profound episode in the history of Ben Israel, emphasizing the transformative power of encountering the truth. He highlights the importance of being open and teachable, willing to confront the painful lessons and failures in our lives. The speaker then delves into the significance of Jesus as the Redeemer, emphasizing that his sacrifice on the cross reveals the irreconcilable nature of sin and the depth of God's holiness. The sermon concludes with a reminder that understanding the cost of sin and the value of holiness is essential for truly worshiping and honoring God.

The book by Andrew Murray on the Spirit of Christ, there is an actual article on the Spirit of Truth, in which he attempts to define what truth is. I'll just read you a few portions. The truth in shadow, in form and thought, was all that the Lord could give, and in that the religion of the Jews consisted. The truth of substance, the truth of a divine life, was what Jesus brought as the only begotten, full of grace and truth. He is himself the truth. Here's Andrew Murray reaching out into the realm, that's too deep for words, taking a shot at it as it were, that the Jews were in a certain dimension of category of truth, that is verbal, that is creedal, that is doctrinal, that can be articulated, can be believed. But what came with Jesus was a dimension beyond that. He himself was full of grace and truth. Isn't it interesting that those that were schooled in the lesser truth were incapable of perceiving and receiving the greater truth? You would have thought that the one would have been the entree to the other, but instead it proved to be an impediment, and they were threatened by the greater manifestation of truth than what they knew verbally and celebrated. Are you following me? It's a great irony, and maybe something of that phenomenon exists even with the church, that in the name of doctrine and creed we can become so fixated as to nullify entering a realm that is beyond doctrine, not that it's in conflict with doctrine, God is never in conflict with himself, but there are realms of understanding, as I've said, too deep for words. So he's feeling for something, Andrew Murray, that Jesus himself brought another dimension full of grace and truth. In fact, truth of the kind that he brings requires grace. I love the word ultimate, something of an ultimate dimension in the truth that Jesus himself is. And it jars what is human, and wants definition and clear categories. It takes a grace to appropriate the truth that Jesus is, because that truth, when it floods your soul, threatens everything else that's lesser or other. It reveals what is contrary to the truth. So I love the fact that he came full of grace and truth, that they are somehow inseparable, that truth is not just some kind of efficacious conformity to fact. Truth is a dimension. It's an ultimate dimension. It has everything to do with righteousness, with holiness. And because it's that, and because the world is at enmity and opposed to it, it requires a grace to obtain it, to love it. So, in promising the Holy Spirit to his disciples, the Lord speaks of him as the spirit of truth, the truth which he himself is, the truth and grace and life which he brought from heaven as a substantial spiritual reality to communicate to us. That truth has its existence in the spirit of God. He is the spirit, the inner life of that divine truth. And I'm waiting for that to settle in my spirit, to come in, permeate the inner man. Andrew Murray is feeling, sensing, intuiting, trying to express a dimension. Lest we think in some kind of sophomoric way that truth is some kind of immeasurable scientific issue of statements and measure. Truth is beyond. Truth is that, but beyond that, there are nuances. Praise God for the French language. How would we say this in English? Nuance. There are degrees of subtlety, of delicacy, of things that need to be apprehended, that go beyond mere facticity. You know what's wrong with us as Americans? We're all too American. We're all too, what's the word, brittle, clever, tinny. You can hear it somehow, yet in our voices, it yet betrays itself and lingers. But there's a dimension of truth beyond facticity. We're not to be contentious of what is factually true, but we ought to be disposed to intuit and to apprehend the dimensions that are beyond that. So that a look, a gesture, a tone of voice, even this morning I spoke about gait, posture. Paul was the thing in himself. He was, Jesus was the thing in himself. He's the very truth, and somehow it must be reflected in the way in which a man bears himself. The use of voice, so this inner life of that divine truth, that when we receive him, as much as we receive him and give up to him, he makes Christ and the life of God to be truth in us, divinely real. He gives it to be us, in us, of a truth. He enters the secret roots of our life, and plants the truth of God there as a seed, and dwells in it as divine life. God bless Andrew Murray. I think he was over his head. He's speaking like the fool, as indeed he must, but he's getting at something. This hidden, this dimension, because if we don't have it there, how do we love truth? It's got to be beyond the level of articulacy about what we can state or frame in words. The secret roots of our life, he plants the truth of God there as a seed, and dwells in it as the divine life. When in faith, and expectation, and surrender, the hidden life is cherished and nourished there, he quickens and strengthens it so that it grows stronger and spreads its branches through the whole being. And so, not from without, but from within, not in word, but in power, in life and truth, the Spirit reveals Christ and all he has for us. The Spirit brings with his incoming the truth into us, and then, having possessed us from within, guides us as we can bear it into all the truth. Now, there's an interesting statement. Once truth has had its entry in the root of our being as this indefinable reality that permeates and touches every category, because no category is exempt, it's something within us, it then guides us as we can bear it into all truth. Isn't that a precious statement? We Jews have a word for someone who's come of age we call a mensch. We say, this person, this man is a mensch, M-E-N-S-C-H. Same word in German, which I suppose can be crudely translated as a person. But when you meet a mensch, or you sense something, you want to stroke it. Lean alongside it and appreciate one who has come of age. That the voice, the way in which he speaks and conducts himself, and he is the thing of himself, is truth. Isn't that precious? Through and through. But you know, we'll not come to that except we consciously seek and desire that. God forbid we should be fixed at some lesser place where we're satisfied only with creedal truth, subscribing to correct doctrine, and we sound brittle and tinny because of it. So we must take on the whole dimension of truth beyond what is correct. Because to be merely correct is to be in error. We want to be brought into all the truth. So just one more, two statements. You need for this a lowly, listening, teachable spirit, is the mark of the presence of the spirit of truth. Are we open to the truth? Are we disposed? Are we teachable? Can we be instructive? Can we read and rightly understand our situations, our life situations, and see the hand of God in them, and receive the truth of our situation? Or are we in flight from the truth? Do we find excuses and self-justifications, and are unwilling to reckon on the tragic aspects of our life and upon our failures? Failed marriage, failed family, failed fellowships. So to love the truth is the willingness to be open, to be instructed, to receive lessons that are painful. I'm embarrassed often by a flash from the past. Did I do that? Did I say that? Did I conduct myself that way? I'm embarrassed even to think that I was once able and capable so to behave. And yet it was true, I'm responsible. I wish I could make amends, my God, for the embarrassing lapses. But I want to be instructed by it. I want to integrate the past into the present. I want to receive the benefit and the wisdom of those failings. When you have a spirit like that and a heart like that, you'll come into all truth. But if you're guarded and defensive, and want to protect your vanity and pride and not acknowledge that you erred, you'll miss it. And if you miss it there, you'll miss it presently, you'll miss it in the future. The love of the truth is a certain disposition, and willing to receive truth when it's painful before it's glorious. And when we do wait, let us remember that even then the spirit of truth does not at once or at first speak in thoughts that we can apprehend and express. These are but on the surface. To be true, they must be rooted deep. They must be hidden depths in themselves. He's a deep calling unto deep. Do you know the Lord at that depth? Do you know your own depth? Or are you living from the surface of your life? Because the deeps are painful as well as glorious areas, and they're guarded, and many don't even recognize their own deeps, and don't want to live from that place. But he's a deep calling unto deep. And to be true, they must be rooted deep. They must have hidden depths in themselves. Not to thought or feeling does he speak in the first place, but to the hidden man of the heart, the spirit of a man which is within him and is in most parts. It is only to faith that it is revealed what his teaching means and what is his guidance into the truth. So faith is more than just the categories of correct belief. Faith is a mode, a willingness, an openness to receive the truth into the inmost depths. See, do you like what Andrew Murray is saying? This is not the complete statement. It's a feeling for an area that few have ever sought to explore. But we need to. If we love the truth, we need to open to what truth is, to recognize it, to esteem it, to be it, and to recoil from anything that is dubious, questionable, appearing, giving an impression that is not true, that we are what we are. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the church could accept its members as they presently are, that no one needs to now put on some air, some show of spirituality, that whatever we presently are, whatever the fact is yet working, there it is, and that we can absorb and receive that in a brother or sister without being offended, and because we can receive it and address it and bring counsel and correction, that person will be helped from that place. That the church itself should abide in the truth and be willing to receive the truth of the church and its members in their present condition and not be offended thereby or create a phony environment or atmosphere in which some kind of an air or impression has to be made that is not true, in which we could say, here I am, by the grace of God, what I presently am by the grace of God, and to be received like that, and to be loved like that, cherished like that, and to know that that's not the final statement, but because we receive the believer in that condition, then there's prospect for change. It's an atmosphere of reality, and you know that's where the Lord is, that's where his grace is, that's where his redemptive action is, is where truth is, but if we try to meet him on the ground of what is false, he doesn't play that game. He'll not meet us on some fiction, some imagined ground, he meets us on the ground of truth. When we'll acknowledge what is true, however presently painful, there his grace is to attend to that condition. And so we're brought from faith to faith, grace to grace, glory to glory. So I would say when someone is sensitive and they're laboring with a grieved conscience, we have to be more sensitive than they, to know when to speak, when to ease off, to help them to find a recognition of the truth, by which then forgiveness can be received, and healing and restoration. So that's living in the truth, that's being to each other in the truth what we ought, and that we're not blunt, what's the word, officious men who are going to bring correction right now, that we operate in the truth, which is to say we know what to ease off, we know when to press, and we can be redemptive instruments to help people to the acknowledgement of truth, by which redemption and forgiveness and true release can be obtained. But we're not, what's the word, mechanical, we're not compelling, we're not heavy handed, that in the name of truth, that would be an untruth. Because truth is more than what is technical, truth is a mode of being, you know what I mean? So that we're not compelled, we don't feel ourselves as if we have betrayed God if we draw back and are silent for the moment. Because we're abiding in the truth. We have no reputation, we're not stricken that somehow we're under obligation. And so truth is a mode of being that one sometimes might require a relentless insistence of the kind that Hamlet brought to his mother Gertrude. Though she cried, Hamlet no more, he didn't stop. He pressed the issue right into her teeth. And that was probably the appropriate thing in the moment. But there are other moments in which it's not appropriate. So those that are guided by the truth will know when to be insistent and when to draw back. Because they are jealous for the love of the soul that's before them, the delicate thing that that soul represents, because we're all affected by it, being integral one with another in the body. Are we ready to move into the realm of what is holy? I think we're already in that realm. So I owe to Reggie this book, a 17th century classic, The Existence and Attributes of God, Stephen Charnock, in which there are wonderful chapters, not the least of which is the chapter on holiness, from which I want to quote on the holiness of God. Remarkable detail. So I'll just read here in their little portions and invite you to take it up and respond. In which he says, Divine holiness is the root of divine justice, and divine justice is the triumph of divine holiness. Both are expressed in scripture by the word of righteousness, which signifies the rectitude of the divine nature, and sometimes the vindictive stroke of his arm. The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, and as was observed before, when he is going about the dreadful work that ever was in the world, the overturning of the Jewish state, hardening the hearts of the unbelieving. Once dear to him, his holiness is the spring of all this, and is applauded by the seraphims. The angels celebrate God's judgment, his righteousness. They celebrate when Babylon is brought down in the judgments of God, because his righteousness is exalted in those judgments. And the issue of his righteousness is the issue of his holiness, that we ourselves are called to share in that holiness, and having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. For without holiness no man shall see God, and that he chastises his sons, so that by the attainment of holiness, we can see him and be in communion with him. You can only commune with God on the basis of what God is in himself. What is unholy cannot commune with what is holy. So that maybe the whole of our redemptive life, the whole of our struggle, the whole of the sanctifying work of God, is to bring us to a place of our holiness appropriate to the holiness of God, that we can abide with him eternally and have communion with him in his essential nature. So we need to welcome all of the sanctifying work of God now, that we might come to that state. And where do we see the insistence of the holiness of God for righteousness, uncompromisingly required? It's at the cost of the sacrifice of his son. Nothing reveals the attribute and the issue of God's holiness than what was required to expiate the sin that was the attack or the travesty against the holiness of God, the sin of mankind, which Jesus met by bearing it, but at the cost of becoming it, and that the father did not withhold the stroke, that the issue of his holiness was so imperative that the son was required to bear what was needed to expiate sin. The author says, Justice indeed gave the stroke, but holiness ordered it. God did not withhold the stroke. If he did, he would have flinched on his own holiness. Try to imagine what it would mean if God allowed his holiness to be compromised, or to be vacated, or to be made a lesser thing. The whole of reality, the whole of the world, the whole of the universe, the totality of life and future would, in one fell swoop, collapse. If he did not maintain the integrity and the issue of his holiness, everything would suffer irremediable loss. There has got to be a jealousy of God for his holiness, for our sake, and if that standard is removed, what then can help us? His holiness is buttressing the whole of creation, the whole of reality. It's the undergird. So he has got to be unbelievably jealous for it, and that jealousy was most profoundly demonstrated in the sacrifice of his son. The holiness of God appears in the manner of our restoration by the death of Christ. Not all the vials of judgments to have or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner's conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against rebellious devils, nor the groans of the damned preachers, for such a demonstration of God's hatred of sin, as the wrath of God let loose upon his son. No ultimate demonstration of the holiness of God than the wrath of God let loose upon his son. And the holiness of Jesus was that he was the candidate to bear it. For if he himself were not holy, he would not have been the appropriate offering. But that he was that offering was the statement of his own voluntary yielding to the necessity for the sacrifice for the Father's holiness. We have received the benefit as the atonement, but as I've said many times, the very first purpose in the giving of Jesus as sacrifice in his own holiness as the acceptable Lamb of God was in defense of the Father's holiness. The jealousy for the Father's holiness, the Father's name, the integrity of that holiness that was assaulted by sin is the first consideration of the Son and voluntarily made and given and the Father approved. And so painful a requirement that we can never begin to fathom what Jesus experienced when he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He had to be forsaken. The Father had to turn his face. A holy God could not even bear to look upon what his son had become as sin. And Jesus had to bear that moment which was an agonizing eternity who had never for a moment in his eternal relationship with the Father ever lived outside the actual experience communion with Father. But in that case now, he has to experience the absence. Why have you forsaken me? He doesn't say, Father, why have you? But God, why have you? So to miss that is to miss the greatest revelation of the holiness of God. We Jews have suffered for the rejection of the crucifixion of Jesus and have dismissed it as a non-event and have not understood what it represents and have in some cheap way looked upon it as some unfortunate character who has run afoul of the Roman authorities by threatening somehow the status quo in his presumption to be the King of Israel. They've missed the entire point. But more than that, they've missed God as God. For nothing more reveals God as God and the holiness of God than the issue of the sacrifice of the Son for the holiness of the Father. So how then do you speak about it having missed that? What then does the word holy become in your Jewish practice or your Christian practice but a hollow word or a term without a corresponding reality? The cross, the crucifixion, the death is the nub of the issue of the holiness of God. And if you don't see it there and apprehend it there there's no other substitute and no other place by which the reality can be communicated. So the writer speaks of the dignity of the redeemer's person which Jesus was in himself. One that had been from eternity had laid the foundations of the world had been the object of the divine delight. He that was God-blessed forever became a curse. He who is blessed by angels and by whom God blessed the world must be seized with horror. The Son of Eternity must lead to death. When did ever sin appear so irreconcilable to God? Where did God ever break out so furiously in his detestation of iniquity? The Father would have the most excellent person one next in order to himself and equal to him in all the glorious perfections of his nature die on a disgraceful cross and be exposed to the flames of divine wrath rather than that sin should live and his holiness remain forever disparaged by the violations of his law. Did you get that? What a statement. Shall I read it again? Let's take this in saints. This is a rare saint who has wrestled with the issues the ramifications of atonement. What does it mean? Because we have reduced it to a formula. We speak it blithely and blandly but this man has gone in and gets at the genius of what the cross means because if you miss what Jesus is in himself and what he represents as the Lamb of God as the only suitable atonement whose blood is acceptable in the Father's sight because the life of the flesh is in the blood and because the life then is holy, holy, holy exactly as is the Father's. It was a suitable expiation a suitable sacrifice to touch the issue of the holiness of God which had been beclouded and disparaged by sin. No blood of an animal could ever have sufficed there were only token things that required this life, this blood, this son and if we miss the son in his significance we miss the issue of the holiness because what he is in himself underscores and gives meaning and depth to the holiness of God that nothing less or other than the blood of a holy son would be the suitable provision to requite the holiness of God from the offense that had come upon it in the sins of mankind. So let me read this again. He speaks of the dignity of the redeemed person, Jesus one that had been from eternity, had laid the foundations of the world. This is not Johnny come lately, had been the object of the divine delight. He that was God blessed forever became a curse. He who is blessed by angels and by whom God blessed the world must be seized with horror. The son of eternity must bleed to death. When did sin ever appear so irreconcilable to God? In fact when did sin ever appear as sin more than at that occasion? How could we know sin and hate it and flee from it unless we understand and see what was required for its propitiation? If we don't understand that we lessen the issue of sin, we lose the issue of righteousness, we lose the issue of holiness, we lose all. The faith becomes a formula, mechanical. We have no message. So when did ever sin appear so irreconcilable to God? Where did God ever break out so furiously in his detestation of iniquity? The Father would have the most excellent person, the one next in order to himself, equal to him in all the glorious perfections of his nature, die on a disgraceful cross and be exposed to the flames of divine wrath rather than sin should live and his holiness remain forever disparaged by the violation of his law. Talk about anguish. Can you imagine even the, how shall I say it, the temptation for God the Father to ease this judgment upon his Son, whom the object of his dearest love, watching him bear the curse of sin and become it, this loathsome thing that merely contemplating this made Jesus to give drops of blood at the garden of Gethsemane. He was sweated, clots of blood contemplated, contemplating becoming this. What was it for the Father to watch his Son in the act and have every urgency to call it off and bring it to a quicker conclusion but the jealousy for his holiness was greater than the consideration for his Son and therefore the Son had to bear the full measure of the anguish of the cross to the last drop of blood in order to requite sin and expiate it in order to maintain the truth of God's holiness. What should that teach us? How much more than should we esteem that holiness and understand it as the heart of all reality that the Father was that insistent, that jealous, more than for his own Son. In the same way that the Father had to experience an infinitely greater measure, the pain of seeing his Son pay the price for the holiness of his name and not ease the requirement. He had to allow his Son to bear that grief and he bore that with him because in all of our afflictions he is afflicted. It's not God at some remove, at some distance looking on in some academic and impersonal way to the suffering of the Son. It's the Father sharing in the suffering with the Son and in that anguish but not allowing it to be cut short or to be less than what is required for the issue of holiness required the total expiation of that life to the last drop of blood unto death. So great is the issue of God's holiness so great is that holiness foundational to reality that if it were ever threatened or removed, as I say, there'd be a total collapse. Even now the world in ignorance of the holiness of God and going about to do its own thing is in such a woeful moral state that life itself is jeopardized. Incest, abortion death, murder, mayhem abuse of children, pornography you can go on with the list mankind has been ravaged because it's conducting itself in the absence of the fear of God and of the knowledge of God as holy. And once that's removed, anything goes. Man expresses his depraved nature in so vile and vicious a way that there are not institutions enough to control it. We don't have prisons enough. They're bursting at the seams Imagine if it were removed once and for all I would not want to contemplate a world in which the holiness of God is no longer a factor. However ignored it is now, at least it is foundationally there to be recognized revived and brought into the consciousness of men but were it absent altogether or nullified the world would be more pitiful than we could describe. And even now its violence and ugliness increases. So God is jealous for his glory, for his honor for his holiness. The strong cries uttered by Jesus could not cause him to cut off the least fringe of this royal garment apart with the thread of the robe of his holiness woven with it. The torrent of wrath has opened upon him and the father's heart beats not in the least notice of tenderness to sin in the midst of the son's agonies. It almost sounds like the father is indifferent to the suffering of the son. But if we know anything about God, he's the antithesis of indifference. God is alive to feeling, to compassion, to mercy. That's what he is. And yet he's got to close himself to any consideration of that thing, of that, which would in any way mitigate or lessen what his son has got to bear. Because the issue of his holiness demands it. God seems to lay aside the bowels of a father and put on the garb of an irreconcilable enemy. And even to Israel he says I have become your enemy in the judgments that are yet to be poured out upon that nation. But that Jesus himself becomes the irreconcilable enemy upon which account our savior in the midst of his passion gives the title of God not a father when he cries out my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He seems to hang upon the cross like a disinherited son while he appeared in the garb and rank of a sinner. Then his head was loaded with curses when he stood under that sentence of cursed is everyone that hangs upon a tree. And looked as one forlorn and rejected by the divine purity and tenderness. God dealt not with him as if he had been one so near a relation to him. He left him not to the will only of the instruments of his death. He would have the chiefest blow himself of bruising him. He was bruised for our transgression. God has laid upon him the iniquity of all. God brought the stroke. The father did not only observe the judgment, he actually brought it. What is that for a holy God to perform that? How great is the issue of his holiness that it was required from his hand. Another could not perform it. In other judgments he lets out his wrath against his creatures. In this he lets out his own wrath as it were against himself, against his son who was as dear to him as himself. By punishing sin in his son his holiness sharpens his wrath against him who was his equal. And only a reputed sinner as if the affection to his own holiness surmounted his affection to his son. The affection of God, his devotion to his own holiness equaled or exceeded that to his own son. So, when we sing holy, holy, holy, do we know what we're singing? Do we understand how dear it is in God's own sight? How essential to his own nature in what he is in himself? And that nothing more is the measure of the esteem for his holiness than what he allowed to fall upon his son. The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all, it says in Isaiah 53. He didn't allow some impersonal agency to bring the death sentence. The Lord hath laid upon him. The Father himself brought the stroke upon his own son whom he loved beyond all describing and esteemed beyond all estimation but he himself brought the stroke. Why? How could he? Because he esteemed the issue of his holiness greater than the issue of his affection for his son. When you love righteousness like that, you're in the priestly place. And in fact the priesthood was not established until it was willing to put the sword on its side and go in and out of the camp and every man slay his neighbor, his brother, and his friend. God says this day you have been consecrated unto me as priests. Of course the word consecration means blood in your hands. But whose blood? Not the blood of a stranger which you might easily have brought in judgment for the sin of the golden calf but your father, your neighbor, your brother your flesh, that which is closest to you. When you'll be relentless for truth's sake and for righteousness sake and not spare judgment and be willing to be bloodied, as I often say, from fingertip to elbow, then are you in the conduct of a priest. But the place where we cop out is our own flesh our own son, our own children we can't bring ourselves to be relentless hard if it's an impersonal thing we're able, but when it touches our own flesh which is to say ourselves, then we balk and it's for that reason that God required of Abraham his Isaac. Much easier for Abraham to have made himself to sacrifice his Isaac was more dear than his own life and God knew exactly what to finger and what to call for and when Abraham raised his knife over his son and he was restrained by the angel of the Lord, God said, now by this I know that you fear God. Now when I see that you're willing to go this far and to bring the knife on your own flesh and blood I know that you fear God. So do we love truth? Do we love righteousness? Do we love judgment? Are we willing to be instruments in its execution? Speaking the truth in love not sparing unless we take up from the father himself with regard to his son and the priest that followed in that instance whose hands were bloodied will fall short of it and the church will be the loser and the world through the church. But there needs to be a heightened seriousness in the church about such issues because when do we judge? We can go through a whole lifetime as believers there's never been a single instance when we have ever had to bring a brother up and decide whether to submit his body to Satan for its destruction that his soul might be saved before the day of the Lord and as you may have heard from recordings or I don't know where it's anything we've written one of the outstanding episodes in the history of Ben Israel is the day in which we had to judge a brother in exactly that way he came up for trial he had been with us for months he was a painful backslidden believer with a history of offense in the church we took him in, patiently counseled sought to restore and finally after repeated offenses being corrected by one, corrected by two being brought before the entire body we had actually a court proceeding to decide whether in the authority that was ours we would give this brother over to the enemy for the destruction of his flesh that his soul might be saved I don't have a word to describe that three hour trial probably the most profound episode in the history of Ben Israel where as I often say, I heard housewives speak with such profundity such depth, such careful statements from which once having seen and spoken that, they would never again come back to where they were before once you are brought into considerations of this ultimate kind where an eternal issue is being propounded in judgment by a body, you don't go back again to where you were before you've come to something transcendent that affects all your future and the final decision was indeed, that his body was given over and a great relief as if we had righteous judgment came upon that body and the next morning, in our prayer time which we then had in what was Mom Broga's trailer at the head of the camp road we watched this guy walking, leaving the property and as we watched him walk out great rejoicing and liberty broke out in the fellowship for the judging of righteous judgment this is very rare in the experience of the church so we're not faced with issues of judgment and of righteousness and look the other way or it becomes a non-issue where we refuse to see where it's required and we suffer to the degree that we ignore the issues of judgment and righteousness which is the issue of holiness the father did not ignore, did not look away amazing how far God went with Moses is already a preview of how far he will go with his own son in the example that was cited God was ready to slay Moses in the very time when he's coming to fulfill his call for the failure to have circumcised his sons and enter them into covenant and then later on at the end of the career of Moses to forbid his entry into the land of promise because of one indiscretion and one lapse when he beat the rock rather than addressed it he suffered a judgment of an ultimate kind that God did not relinquish, release, required it so we see the severity of God and only because we see the severity do we understand the goodness so the God who is mercy is also relentless in his judgments and because he's holy, holy, holy Moses had not consecrated God in his act of hitting the rock he had given an impression to the nation contrary to God's own nature and that required a judgment of the severest kind where the great leader was not himself allowed to enter the land and lead the people into it unless our concept and sense of the holiness of God has its origin in the sacrifice of the son for holiness at the great cost to the father as well as to the son we will not have an appropriate sense of what holy means and it'll become something transfigured it'll become sentimental, we'll sing about it it'll have a euphoric aura but the reality of what is holy brings us back to the cross actual and a component in our being is there there is no issue that will come before us that will not be affected by it a new seriousness comes into the life a new regard for the faith, a new regard for the saints a new regard for God's glory everything is heightened once the component of holiness comes into the soul, is registered upon the soul is taken in, in true conviction it will affect every category of your being so the absence of holiness shows itself in a shallow experience oriented church that is looking for some kind of thrill or some kind of affirmation of itself the missing component is the holiness of God the great crisis is that instead of waiting for seeking and entering and appropriating the truth of the holiness of God we have made a simile a fiction we have created something out of our imagination by which we are exalted spiritually and then we give the appearance as if we're walking on eggshells and we're so ethereal, so lofty so that the end is worse than the beginning you would be better off being a craven carnal, out of the faith believer than to emulate or imitate the issue of holiness when it has not become actual and authentic in your life, and you're only exhibiting something of which you yourself are the author this is the greatest threat is to play at this, the temptation because we so desire to be seen and recognized as being in that realm that we ourselves can affect it as an act and it's unholy because it's false so to come into the actual thing is to jealously guard ourselves against such a prospect, and I'll tell you this there'll be a no man's land through which you must pass before you enter into this Canaan God will test you, there's not some direct entry now into the realm of what is holy, holy, holy but your desire and genuineness first requires that you pass through a no man's land in which you wonder whether you are even saved where the greatest doubts rise where the greatest struggle about your own soul and other issues it's a dying, it's a no man's land of painful confrontation, until there's entry into the land of Canaan no one less than Oswald Chambers passed through a dark night of the soul at the very time that he was being applauded and complimented for being eloquent and being spiritual, he himself knew he was in a place of spiritual unreality and he groaned, and he wrestled, and he agonized and it went on, I don't know for how many months until, through that pain, he was finally brought into the place of the thing that is actual this is not a cheapie so we mustn't think that there's a quick appropriation, lest we ourselves offer that, and are willing to pass through a no man's land in which you wonder, am I even saved such doubts about yourself, about your spirituality everything is brought up for review something of the kind that Paul experienced after the Damascus confrontation with the risen Lord, in which he lay for three days and nights, neither eating nor drinking and his whole life passed before him in review and he had to die through all of it and agonize