The Holiness of God

• there have been a few people in history who have had a unique experience
• it’s an experience that we all look forward to, but these select few have experienced it already
• it’s best summarized by a verse in the Old Testament, written about Moses
• (Exodus 33:11) The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.
• (Deuteronomy 34:10) Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.
• sometime in our lives, probably all of us have been or will be surprised by the majesty and power and holiness of God
• something, sooner or later, causes you to gasp and cry out, “What kind of God is this that I’ve been reading about and singing about all these years?”
• at different times, we’ve experienced the majesty and holiness of God, and it has caused us to shudder within ourselves
• but imagine for a minute actually meeting God
• in Genesis 32:30, Jacob marveled after wrestling with God, and exclaimed, “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
• Gideon just met the angel of the Lord, and the book of Judges says:
• (Judges 6:22) When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, “Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!”
• one time Moses asked,
• (Exodus 33:18) Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
• and God replied:
• (Exodus 33:20) But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
• God showed Moses just a portion of his glory, and yet when Moses came down from the mountain, he was unaware that his face shone because he had been with the Lord
• on every occasion in which people encountered the glory of God, there is a sense of mystery and awe
• words can’t explain the transformation that took place
• but on two occasions, human beings were able to witness angelic worship in heaven
• in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, we read very similar passages
• two men, Isaiah and John, both attended a heavenly worship service, and here is what they witnessed:
• (Isaiah 6:1) In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
• (Isaiah 6:2) Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.
• (Isaiah 6:3) And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
• (Isaiah 6:4) At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
• according to Revelation, this is the song that is repeated day and night, without end, in heaven: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”
• what we witness here is spectacular
• at different times, I’ve witnessed a performance of some sort that I was literally moved to action
• I remember clapping spontaneously, or crying, or even jumping out of my seat without any shame or self-consciousness
• my reaction was a spontaneous expression of my admiration and appreciation
• we witness a similar thing in these two passages: having seen the glory of God, the natural and spontaneous result is praise
• sooner or later, we realize that no “box” we’ve constructed for God can contain him
• no mystery can confound him
• no problem can defeat him
• no sin we’ve committed escapes his notice
• sooner or later, we bow our knees and cry out with a pure heart, “Holy, holy, holy…there is no one else like you!
• sooner or later, we will cry out with the seraphim, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
• or, with Moses:
• (Exodus 15:11) “Who among the gods is like you, O LORD? Who is like you– majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
• here, my friends, we’ve encountered God’s central attribute
• Tony Evans calls holiness the “centerpiece of God’s attributes”
• of all the things that God is, at the center of his being, God is holy
• God’s holiness is central to understanding who God is, and all that he does
• never in the Bible is God called “love, love, love,” or “eternal, eternal, eternal,” or “truth, truth, truth”
• but twice in the Bible, God is addressed emphatically by his central attribute: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts”
• on this aspect of his character, God has laid the most stress
• in fact, I think the entire Old Testament can be summed up in the concept of God’s holiness, and his desire that we be holy
• (Leviticus 11:45) I am the LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.
• again and again in the Old Testament, it is stressed that we must keep our place, and our distance, in the presence of a holy God
• you can’t know God unless you know his holiness
• everything God does is holy; all that he is is holy
• and our eternal song will be about his holiness
• the word “holy” has two distinct meanings
• the first, and the primary meaning, is “apartness” or “otherness”
• to be holy literally means to be separate
• when we say that God is holy, we’re recognizing that is profoundly different from all his creatures
• he has a transcendent majesty, a superiority, which merits our honor, reverence, and worship
• (Isaiah 57:15) For this is what the high and lofty One says– he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
• God dwells in a high and holy place, because he is the holy or separate one
• the Bible also speaks of holy places, people, and things, because they had been set apart by God for a special purpose
• when God comes in contact with the ordinary and the commonplace, his holiness makes the ordinary into the extraordinary, and the common into the uncommon
• a couple were invited to the White House for a meeting with the president
• within the dining room, a deep voice announced the president of the United States
• and in came the president, and his wife – at that time, the Bushes
• as they entered just a few feet away from this man, he thought to himself, “Here is an average-looking middle-aged couple, no different than hundreds that I see every week”
• in reflecting on his experience later, he commented, “Upon first glance it was their humanness, it was just their normalcy in appearance and countenance that struck me”
• now friends, when we meet God, because he is exalted and holy and we’re not, the first thing we’ll notice about him is his “otherliness”
• there is no one else like him!
• his uniqueness, his majesty and his holiness will knock the wind out of us and will force a reflex reaction from us … of falling to our knees and agreeing with the angelic hosts: “Holy, Holy, Holy, we have never beheld the likes of you! You are in a category all your own! You are majestic! We are common. You are holy! We are sinful. You are the Creator! We are the creatures. You are worthy!”
• the Bible says that not one of us will escape that day on our feet
• all of us will be knocked to our knees in worship and adoration of God who is so great
• when the Bible speaks of God being holy, it’s speaking of this “otherness” – that God is completely separate and unlike anything else
• but there’s another sense in which the word “holy” is used
• the Bible also talks about God’s holiness in the sense of his purity and righteousness
• God can do no wrong
• God is completely separated from sin and evil
• John writes:

(1 John 1:5) This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

• he is perfect in holiness
• James 1:13-14 says that God can’t sin, can’t be tempted to sin, and cannot tempt someone else to sin
• in this sense, God is holy, and we are not
• unlike with us, there is no evil mixed in with his goodness
• somebody once said, “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much evil in the best of us, that it’s hard to know what to think of us”
• with God, there’s no doubt
• he is holy; his actions are holy, and there is no evil mixed in with his goodness
• somebody has said that the concept of God’s holiness is the single best argument against the notion that human beings just made up the concept of God
• human beings might very well imagine a sort of deity who is loving, merciful, forgiving, and powerful
• but mistake-prone human beings would surely stop short of inventing an absolutely holy God who would hold them accountable to His own exacting standards of holiness
• can you imagine a “hole-y” golf instructor?
• one that could hit a hole in one every time and thoroughly expects you to do the same thing, holding you accountable if you miss?
• we would never invent a holy and righteous God who expects us to be holy, just as he is holy
• but God is intrinsically holy
• and when we see him in eternity, we’ll cry out on cue, without any prompting, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”
• in the time we have left, let me focus on some practical applications of God’s holiness that you might not have thought about recently
• and the first is this: we are very blessed to live in a universe that’s governed by a holy God!
• many of us can’t imagine what it’s like to live under harsh dictators who make life miserable for the citizens of a country, and govern, or even kill, at whim
• but there are some here this morning who know from personal experience what it’s like to live under oppression and poverty
• friends, when was the last time that any of us thanked God for his holy rule over this universe?
• when was the last time we fell to our knees and cried out, “Thank you, Lord; thank you for not using your lofty position of cosmic sovereignty to aggrandize or ingratiate yourself! Thank you for not abusing or ripping off the citizens of this world or imposing unfair expectations on them! Thank you for not favoring the powerful or making deals with the rich!”
• when was the last time we thanked him for his divine standards of righteousness, that he gave to us as an extension of his holiness?
• can you imagine living in a universe governed by an unholy God, writing unholy laws, taking bribes and not caring about righteousness on the planet?
• praise God for his holy rule over the universe!
• praise God that he is on the throne
• second, when last did you thank God for his laws, which have provided us with a measure of protection in this world?
• I came across this interesting thought in my research on this topic this past week
• I’m reading through Leviticus right now
• the key thought in the book of Leviticus is the holiness of God
• the word “holy” appears more times in Leviticus than in any other book of the Bible
• a natural consequence of God’s holiness, in Leviticus and elsewhere, are the laws he has given us which reflect his holiness
• as a reflection of his holiness, God says, “Don’t steal” – and my possessions enjoy some protection because of this aspect of God’s holiness
• God says, “Don’t murder,” and as a result of God’s standards of holiness, I haven’t been murdered yet
• I don’t know if you’ve thought of it before, but our moral code flows out of the holiness of God!
• there is a moral code, a sense of rightness, within each of us, and aren’t you glad that God set this moral code rather than Satan?
• maybe you haven’t thanked God for that lately!
• third, when was the last time you thanked God for his commitment to making you holy?
• (1 Peter 1:15) But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;
• (1 Peter 1:16) for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
• God is involved in a quest to make every believer more and more like Jesus
• it is our ultimate goal, that one day, when we appears, we will be like him
• God is committed to making you holy
• if you are a Christian, you are experiencing the 24-hour a day ministry of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying you
• your entire life, he is chipping away at your character
• one of his primary activities is to cleanse us from sin and “sanctify us” or make us more holy in actual conduct of life
• once you’ve become a child of God, you’re called a “saint,” because you are set apart already, and will continue to become more holy until the day you meet him
• Howard Hendricks wisely observed, “It is foolish to build a chicken coop on the foundation of a skyscraper”
• the Christian who fails to live a holy life is failing to utilize the foundation for his life that Christ has given him
• God is willing to cleanse us
• the holy God who created this world can give you a clean heart
• when was the last time you praised God for this?
• my prayer for you this morning is the same as that of the apostle Paul
• he wrote:
• (1 Thessalonians 5:23) May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• (1 Thessalonians 5:24) The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

Adapted in part from Our God is Awesome by Tony Evans