“Three Things” is a series I started this year on books I’ve read. Instead of doing a traditional book review, I’m recording three things that stood out to me. This could be a quote, a chapter, a disagreement, or an impactful paragraph.

Over the last few years, I’ve stepped out of my tribe and began reading books by authors with different opinions or from different denominations. Growing up with an Independent Baptist background, I was instructed to not read outside of the tribe. Ridiculous, I know. But now, (as in the last 10 years) I’m finding a plethora of books that I’ve never read that are incredible. Books that are becoming instant favorites. Books that I wish I had read years ago.

Back in April, I attended Together for the Gospel. One of the free books they gave to attendees was R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God. From the first page, I was hooked. I couldn’t put the book down. I had never read anything by R.C. Sproul, but that will change. “The Holiness of God” helped me see God for who He is and fall in love with his holiness.

Here are three things from R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God.

1. “We tend to have mixed feelings about the holy. There is a sense in which we are at the same time attracted to it and repulsed by it. Something draws us toward it, while at the same time we want to run away from it”. (pg. 41)
2. “To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.” (pg. 180)
3. One thing I love about the Bible is when you study something you’ve already spent time studying only to find something that blows your mind. This was the case when Sproul discusses Exodus 33:19-23 in Chapter 2. When Moses is on Mt. Sinai, God tells him “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live”. God goes on to tell Moses that he will protect Moses and as he passes by, Moses will see his back. Sproul says this, “When God told Moses he could see His back, the literal reading of the text can be translated ‘hindquarters’. God allowed Moses to see His hindquarters but never his face. When Moses returned from the mount, his face was shining. The people were terrified, and they shrank away from him in horror”

  Now notice this:

  “If people are terrified by the sight of the reflected glory of the back parts of God,       how can anyone stand to gaze directly into His holy face?”

Be sure and pick up a copy of The Holiness of God and read it for yourself.