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Things Unseen with Sinclair B. Ferguson

The Thrice-Holy One

Things Unseen with Sinclair B. Ferguson

Ligonier Ministries

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.91.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What do we mean when we talk about the holiness of God? Today, Sinclair Ferguson reflects on the characteristic of God that may be most difficult for us to understand and yet is so essential to knowing who He is.

Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/things-unseen-with-sinclair-ferguson/the-thrice-holy-one

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This week on Things Unseen, we've been trying to think together about God and about

0:12.0

his attributes, and we've been reminding ourselves really of what theologians sometimes

0:17.0

call the creator-creature distinction. He is God and we are not. I've always remembered

0:26.2

our principal classics master in high school telling us that when a Roman general was given a triumph

0:32.4

after a great victory and then rode into Rome with his troops and the booty from the victory and the

0:38.9

prisoners following behind, they always put a slave in the chariot beside him, who would say repeatedly

0:45.8

the two words, Hummel is, you're only a man. You'll maybe remember that Paul actually says

0:54.0

that to someone who was arguing back

0:56.3

with God because he couldn't understand what God was doing. Who do you think you are, O man? And when we

1:05.0

speak about the infinite greatness of God, the fact that he is far, far beyond us, far beyond our being, far beyond our understanding.

1:14.0

We have this tendency, I think, birthed in the Garden of Eden, to try to bring him down to our

1:20.1

size so that we can think of him basically as somebody, just like us, perhaps a little bit bigger, and we want to be that big.

1:30.3

But God isn't like that. He's the infinite one.

1:35.3

Incidentally, this is why Christian doctrine, Christian theology, and perhaps especially the doctrine of God is so very important.

1:45.1

Its beauty lies in this.

1:47.8

By instructing us about Him, it humbles us.

1:52.5

And in humbling us before God, it can then exalt us into His presence so that we develop

1:58.3

an increased sense of wonder that we can speak of Him, and

2:02.3

even speak to Him because we know Him.

2:06.5

Our sense of privilege depends on our sense of His greatness.

2:12.6

But what do we know about God?

2:14.6

Well, if you've had any exposure to Ligonier's ministry, you'll know that its purpose

...

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