R.C. Sproul on the Ubiquity of God's Glory in Creation

Transcript

In Isaiah chapter six, when he was having his vision of the occasion of his call to be a prophet, we recall the song of the angels in the presence of God in which they sang, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God of hosts." But what else did the song contain? "For the whole earth is full of His glory." So do you see the antithesis, do you see the collision between the radical secularism of people like Jean Paul Sartre and the teaching of the Scripture? The teaching of the Scriptures is not that the holy and the sacred are in some hidden realm, some esoteric sphere, where only the most brilliant, elite thinkers can penetrate to find a slight glimpse of the holy.

On the contrary, the whole earth is filled with the glory of God. So why then do we have this sense of the profane? Well Calvin answered that question this way, he said, "the whole of creation is a glorious theatre, screaming as it where, manifesting so clearly the holiness of God; but we are blind to it." But that blindness is a willful blindness. We are like human beings walking in this glorious theatre wearing blindfolds, blindfolds that we have put on our own eyes lest we see the holy and the sacred. Because, there is nothing more terrifying to sinful creatures than to be exposed to the holy.

And that's what we see here in this story. Moses sees the bush that is burning and is not consumed, and we are told in the narrative that he turns aside to look at it. And as he turns aside looking in the direction of that bush, he is not satisfied to observe it from a distance; he begins to walk towards the bush. He begins to approach it, and as he is approaching it suddenly the voice comes out of the bush, calling to him by name saying, "Moses, Moses, stop right there! Don't come any closer, don't draw near. Instead, take your shoes off, take the sandals from off your feet, because the ground whereon you are standing is holy ground."