Sanctification Sermon #1: What is Holiness? Do I need it? - 6/26/2022
Summarized Outline:
Scripture: Leviticus 19:1-2
Now the LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy."
Notes:
1. God says, "I am holy."
A. The meaning of "holy"
B. First: God's holiness means He is separate from us
C. Second: God's holiness means separate because He is superior to us
D. Third: God's holiness means He is different from us
E. Fourth: God's holiness means He has no evil in Himself
2. God sometimes declares certain places and objects "holy"
A. Moses and the burning bush
B. Other objects, places, and times
C. These things are not ethically holy
3. God sometimes sets certain people aside to be "holy"
A. Levites
B. Israelites
4. God not only declares Christian believers "holy"--He commands us to be holy
A. God's demand for holiness seems unattractive
B. God's demand for holiness seems scary
C. God's demand for holiness seems impossible
5. Three thoughts in response
A. Regarding holiness as unattractive
B. Regarding holiness as scary
C. Regarding holiness as impossible
Benediction:
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. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
Sermon Video:
Full Sermon Transcript: (Pastor Steve Estes)
If you happened to see the fireworks in Elverson last night, you may have heard a religious word. “Oh, that was glorious.”
There are some words that are religious words that we tend to use in everyday life. Someone gets pulled over by a cop, they’re just waiting for the ticket, he lets them go with a warning and the man goes home and says to his family, “oh, that cop was merciful.” A religious word used in an everyday context.
A coach threatens the players that are slacking off and arriving late to practice and he says “anyone who comes to practice late one more time this season is off the team.” And the players walk out onto the field and they said to each other, “boy he sure put the fear of God into us.” Religious language used in an everyday sentence.
A touchdown occurs in the final seconds, “oh, that was righteous” you say. Or a social person is at this party and that party and everywhere there’s action and someone says, “boy, she is omnipresent when it comes to social things.”
But there is one word that is a religious word that is rarely used outside of a context about speaking with God. It’s the word “holy.”
Holy
It tends to be used about God, and about things or places that relate to God, about things that are sacred. When people hear the word holy, I would say their reactions vary. For many people, they’re just a blank. Many people - they never think about holy things. Maybe they are secular, maybe they were not raised in a church and when they hear holy, they just have nothing to hang it on to.
We found this overseas when we’ve gone to the Czech Republic, that country that was raised under communism and therefore atheism, and many of the people just had no religious background at all. A word like holy is meaningless to them.
For many people when they hear the word holy, it’s just creepy. Stained glass windows with spooky looking apostles on them with the emaciated faces, you can see the bones through the flesh. They have a kind of a weird halo around and they’re making the peace sign and it just gives you the willies for many people. Or maybe they think of a boring sermon preached by a clergyman that goes on and on.
For some people, the word holy - I would say this is a minority though - it’s a delightful word. They think about maybe a delightful hush, a pleasant quietness, maybe they slip into a cathedral when they’re on vacation and they just sit to catch their breath a little bit during the lunch hour and gather their thoughts.
In the Old Testament, which is 2/3, 3/4 of the Bible, when it describes God, it uses the word holy to describe him more than all the other words put together.
Today’s text is from the Old Testament, the third book of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. It’s in chapter 19. The background is this:
God’s people, the Israelites have crossed through the Red Sea, they left Egypt, they have wandered in the desert for awhile, now they’re at the foot of Mount Sinai, where God will give them The Ten Commandments. And Moses is up with God on the mountain and here’s what God says. Leviticus 19:1-2.
Now the Lord said to Moses, speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy.”
Let’s first consider God saying that he is holy, and then asking his people to be holy.
The Old Testament word, the root of it, most people who study languages think that it comes from the word “to cut” and thus, to separate, and therefore maybe to set something apart from something else. That’s the idea behind it. So when God says “I the Lord your God am holy,” the first thing it means is that God is separate from us. He’s different, he’s separate from his creation.
Now this is not true of eastern religion. Many eastern religions have the idea that all of us are part of the great one. That you and nature and animals and things have more in common that you don’t. Everything is a great oneness. God says no, I am holy, that is, I am separate from my creation.
The second thing God means when he calls himself holy, cause holiness means that he is separate, because he is superior. He is not separate from us like this - side by side - he is separate from us like this - far above us. Even better yet, like this. A well known theologian developed a whole series of lectures just on this picture about the difference and the superiority and the otherness of God over us, where at the bottom circle of course represents us, and the top represents God.
And God’s holiness goes even further. He’s not merely separate from us. He’s not merely superior to us. He is also different from us. That is what he means when he says he is holy. He is other than we.
God is separate and is holy because he is infinitely superior to us. He is exhalted, he is lofty, he is high above us, not just in space, but in who he is in this superiority of his is true of everything about him. His love is vastly on a higher plane than ours. His understanding is infinitely greater than human understanding. His power is incomparably stronger than man’s power. In everything, he is so high above us, so separate from us, so holy that as one person has said, to say that God is holy is just another way of saying that he is God.
Just to give two examples, he had no beginning. We cannot even wrap our minds around that. He is not reliant on anything or anyone. He doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t need to breathe, he doesn’t need other people to entertain him, he’s independent.
Here’s how the Apostle Paul put it in Acts 17. The God who made the world and everything in it is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. And so when God gives his name to Moses, he says my name is simply, I am.
And if that sounds mysterious, it’s meant to sound mysterious. He’s just a totally different cut above everyone else.
This is how one theologian Wayne Grudem put it, he said “God’s being is something totally unique.” The difference between God’s being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle. It’s more than the difference between the ocean and a drop of rain. The difference between God and us is more than the difference between the universe and the room we’re sitting in.
God is qualitatively different from us. In summary then, God is in a category all his own. And so the Bible calls him in Isaiah “the high and lofty one whose name is holy.” And so Moses said in Exodus 15, “Who is like you, oh Lord, majestic in holiness?” And Isaiah says in Chapter 40 - well, God says in Isaiah 40, “to whom will you compare me says the holy one.” In fact, no less than 50 times in the Bible, God is called simply, “the holy one.” He is separate, he is superior, he is different from us, and there’s one more way that God is holy. God’s holiness means that he is the opposite of evil.
He is holy in his purity, in his righteousness, in his absolute sinlessness. Here’s how John put it in 1st John 1:5. “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” Here’s the way James put it in James 1:13. “God cannot be tempted by evil.” Well here’s the way Habakkuk put it in Habakkuk 1:13, speaking of God to God, he says “Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.”
Notice he doesn’t say that God is too pure just to commit evil, he says he’s too pure even to look at evil. It doesn’t mean that God is unable to see evil when it happens. It means he cannot see it without being repulsed. That he hates it, he can’t look at sin without being - we might say, sickened by it. That everything in him opposes any shred of evil when he sees it.
This is where his wrath comes from, this is where the judgment at the end of time comes from. God has never sinned. He’s never wanted to sin, he’s never thought about sinning. He has never entertained the idea, the possibility of sinning. The definition of sin is doing what God hates. And one particular sin, the sin of lying, the Book of Hebrews says “It is impossible for God to lie.” Sin is the opposite of who God is, for he is holy.
The Psalms said about God, “You are good, and what you do is good.” He’s the source, he’s the origin, he’s the embodiment, he’s the beginning of everything that is pure and right and virtuous. He is, we might say, ethically holy.
Now what does God’s holiness then have to do with us? With human beings? What does God’s holiness have to do with our world?
Well, it might help to think about this. The Bible declares that at times there are certain places and certain objects that God has declared to be holy. And by that, we mean there’s certain places, there’s certain objects that God has chosen to set apart for himself. You remember that the word holy comes from the word to cut, to separate, to set something apart. There are places and objects that have become holy when they’re associated with God.
So you may recall the story of Moses and the burning bush. If you’ve never read it, it goes like this: Moses was out in the desert before he ever went to pharaoh and told pharaoh to let God’s people go. And when he was out on the desert, he sees a bush burning. Now apparently it’s not totally uncommon in that desert heat but he sees the bush burning and the bush was not consumed - it kept on burning. So he goes over to see what is happening and as he does in the book of Exodus chapter 3, we read that God called to him from within that bush, and here’s what God said.
Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals for the place that you are standing is holy ground.
Notice then that here when God designates a place as holy, that place is to be treated with respect because it’s associated with God and God must be treated with respect. And so God told Moses to take his sandals off. Now for us in western culture, I don’t know, he may have told us if you’re wearing a hat, take your hat off. The idea is that in a lot of eastern cultures, sandals and shoes are for some reason particularly associated with disrespect.
Some of you may remember when younger President Bush was giving a press conference one time and somebody in the crowd worked his way up, took off his shoe and threw his shoe at the president. And we thought, what’s the big deal, he didn’t throw a hand grenade. Well, the big deal is though, for an eastern culture to throw a shoe at someone is one of the worst items of disrespect that you can show them.
So God told Moses to take his sandal off and show respect, the place was holy. And other objects and places are considered holy by God in the Bible. When God gets the Jewish people to setup a tabernacle in the desert to worship him and later when that tabernacle became a permanent temple, the furnishings were the same kind of thing. The furnishings in that tabernacle in that temple were considered holy.
So for instance, there was bread set out in the tabernacle to illustrate God is the bread of life. But you didn’t go in there and snack on that bread because this bread is set apart purely to be used by God. It’s holy.
And the one room in the tabernacle in the temple, the most holy place, the place where the Ark of the Covenant you may have seen in movies or what not was - almost nobody’s allowed to even go in it. There’s only one person in the world allowed to go into it - the High Priest of Israel. And when he goes into it, he can’t go into it anytime. He must go through elaborate rituals, he must wear certain clothing, and then he must go into it only on the one day of the year when God tells him to go into it and he must do his business in there that he’s told by God to do and then he leaves because that room is holy.
God called the sabbath day holy. You may remember in the Book of Genesis after he created the world, it says he rested on the seventh day. And in Genesis 2:3, it says “God blessed the seventh day, the sabbath, and he made it holy.”
Because that was the day that he rested on. Now, we’re not to get the idea that these things are ethically holy in some way. The stones of the temple had nothing right or wrong about them, the sand that Moses was standing near was not sinless sand. A sabbath day is not of itself righteous, the sun comes up, it goes down the same way it does every other day of the week. Rather, these things are holy in that they are set apart because associated with God by showing these things respect, a person shows God respect.
So in summary what we’ve been saying here, God is holy. He is. He is different from us, he is superior to us, he’s other than us, and he’s ethically holy, but he sometimes calls places and objects and times holy.
Now that might help us to understand a little bit about what God has to do with people when he deals with us in his holiness because God also calls certain people holy who were not necessarily ethically holy. They’re not necessarily more righteous than other people, and yet he sets them apart in some way.
So, for instance, in the Old Testament, God said that certain people in Israel, people from the tribe of Levi were to become priests. They were to be holy. And he means by that, that he is setting them apart, they’re not just to get regular jobs. They are to spend their time serving God.
They need to wear certain clothes, they need to obey certain rules other people don’t obey. They need to wash in a certain way before they do their jobs. It doesn’t mean that they always acted holy. There were some people who were set aside to be holy who failed to ethically act holy.
So for instance, you may recall in the Old Testament the story of the elderly godly man Samuel - very godly man. We read that he had two sons who were priests in Israel. But we also read that they were “wicked men who had no regard for the Lord.”
They were holy. But they were wicked. They were holy. But they were unholy at the same time. This is the beginning to help us understand what God has in mind when he talks about holiness among people. Now, all Old Testament Israel, every single person, the nation as a nation was set apart by God to be holy.
He says in Exodus 19:5-6, “you people will be for me a holy nation.” What he means there is, I have a certain purpose for you. I’m going to send a messiah through you guys, and then the messiah’s going to give salvation to people all over the world and I want you to be the preparatory race that does this. And yet, the Israelites didn’t always live in a holy manner. So, God has declared certain things, certain places, and at times certain people as holy and yet they can use those things or they can act in an unholy way.
You may recall when the Babylonians conquered the Jewish people and leveled Jerusalem and took them captive. Their prized possession was all the gold and furnishings and the goblets and the instruments from the temple of the Lord. And you may recall in the book of Daniel that the Babylonian emperor was having a drunken party and he ordered that all the goblets of gold from the temple in Jerusalem of Jehovah be brought in so they could get drunk on it and that is what caused God to make the handwriting on the wall and say you’re a dead man, your time is over.
Now we come to the scary part of holiness.
God declares that Christians are holy, and then he demands that our character match our status as holy.
God tells us that if you profess Jesus Christ the way that people profess belief in Jehovah in the Old Testament that you were set aside for him - you were his holy people. Christ has a holy church set apart for his purposes. Now God says to be holy. Our text not only says “I am holy,” our text says “you are to be holy because I am holy.”
Now, we can’t be holy in the sense of being superior to ourselves. We can’t be holy in the sense of being different from ourselves. We can’t be holy in the sense of being others from ourselves. But the way in which we can be holy is we can be holy - we are commanded to be holy in the sense of being pure and opposed to sin like God is.
Now this gets personal. God saying, “you must be holy.” When people at large hear this, and often when Christians hear it, they find it scary and sometimes we find it scary. It gets personal. To some people it seems scary. To some people, it just seems unattractive. And to other people, it just seems absolutely impossible.
Let’s take those three things.
Holiness being unattractive to some, scary to others, impossible to others.
God’s demand for holiness seems unattractive to many of us.
People picture when they talk about being holy, oh, it must mean you enter a monastery. It must mean you don’t turn the heater on in the winter. It must mean, I don’t know, you wear a hair shirt that makes you itch all the time. It must mean that you have to look at medieval art all the time, just of pictures of saints. It must mean that you must become a missionary - pardon me Mr. & Mrs. Iah, traipsing through the jungle, Bible in hand, and as - as one of our brothers said who is a missionary - and have an ugly wife. It must mean that you’re uptight all the time about things and people doing things they shouldn’t. It must mean that all the fun is drained from life.
I experience this sometimes when I go out in public. Maybe I’m, I don’t know, in a taxi cab or I’m in a plane or I meet somebody just standing in line somewhere and they just say “hi, my name’s Fred,” oh, “My name’s Steve,” “Oh yeah? I’m a carpenter, what do you do?” “I’m a pastor.” “Oh.” There’s just something unattractive about that and our basic conversation is over 9 times out of 10 - so I don’t say it by the way.
If you’re ever out in public with me, I just recommend you don’t introduce me as your pastor. Just recommend, “oh hi, this is my friend Steve” and maybe you’ll have a chance for at least 32 seconds to speak to the person at least, in some meaningful way.
Other people say or find, God’s demand for holiness is scary. Many of you will recognize the name C.S. Lewis. Lewis was a brilliant professor in the 20th century in England. And he talked about holiness in this manner. He said when you think about God as holy, think about this. If you were told “there’s a tiger in the next room” and you believed it, you would be scared. You would be scared he says because you would have a sense of danger. You’ve seen nature movies where you’ve seen lions rip up animals bigger than they, effortlessly.
Now he said though, suppose that you were told and you believed it, a ghost is in the next room. He said if you believed it, you would also feel fear. But it’s a different kind of fear. He said it wouldn’t be based on any knowledge because you’ve never seen any movies - well, Ghostbusters, but that’s a little bit trivial. You’ve never seen a movie of a ghost and what a ghost can do, can a ghost really do anything? Does a ghost tear people apart? I don’t think so, but yet you would feel fear. He said you would feel fear on the mere fact that it is a ghost. And he said that the fear, rather than being about something being dangerous, it’s the fear of something being just, uncanny.
He said you might call that kind of fear - you would have a certain dread. Now he says, if you were told and you believed it, a mighty spirit is here right now in this very room. If you believed it he said, you would be profoundly disturbed. You would also have a fear, but it would be a fear of wonder and of a shrinking back and of an absolute inadequacy to cope with it. You might feel the need to prostrate yourself. You might feel a terrifying awe.
Now God often has this affect.
I would say he always has this affect when he is directly encountered in a powerful way.
He has that affect from his holiness. From his being separate. From his being far infinitely superior. From his being other and different. And he has that affect because of his being opposed to evil.
And I see this in a very dim, small way at funerals. One of the privileges of being a pastor beside not needing to talk to people that you meet for the first time very long - one of the privileges is that you get to see a lot of funerals. You get to officiate a lot of funerals, you get to see people at the moment of death and in the days to follow. And it’s a great learning experience. It’s something I’ve observed at funerals many, many times.
Particularly now, let’s consider a funeral that’s not done in a church, but is done in a funeral home. They’ll have a viewing from this time to that time you may come and greet the family and view the person who is deceased in the coffin and then what will happen is now they will ask people to sit down and they will have a service. A service in honor of that person. And for generations, that service was a worship service. For people today many times it’s not totally a worship service but usually somebody reads Psalm 123, it’s from the Bible or somebody has a little card from the funeral home that has the life dates of the person and often has a picture of Jesus carrying a lamb on the front of say, like this.
And what I’ve observed many times are people that will come and they’ll love the person who died, love the family of the person who died, will gather around, will talk, will be there for the viewing, but as the service starts, they will very obviously drift outside and be in the parking lot during the service. And then after the service, when the coffin is carried by the pallbearers out to the hearse and they wind their way to the cemetery and they’re buried, they will join the funeral cortege and they will be there for the graveside.
Why is that? Why do they want to meet the family? Why do they want to greet and show respect for their friend, but why do they make their way to the door when it comes to the service?
It is this very thing I’ve proposed to you. There is a sense of religion, but it’s deeper than that. It’s a sense of God, but it’s not just a sense of God the nice one in heaven. It is the sense of the holy. There is some sense that there is someone or some there, who will be holy or someone mentioned who is holy or some thing about the room that will feel holy and it gives people the willies.
This is what God’s holiness tends to do.
And so people fear that holiness because it is unattractive or because it’s scary, and then for many folks that they are put off by God’s demand for holiness because God’s demand for holiness feels impossible.
You know this yourself, do you not? You and I can’t keep our own New Year’s resolutions, let alone keep the holy laws of God.
It doesn’t feel good to disappoint yourself, but it feels bad in your conscious when you have a deep sense that you have disappointed God, and even worse when it’s more than you’ve disappointed God - that your sins angered God.
And even worse when the Bible talks about God’s wrath against sin and a coming day of judgment against sin when we will all stand before the holy one of Israel.
This makes holiness not just unattractive, which it does seem absolutely impossible, it is a height I cannot obtain, it’s a standard I cannot meet, it’s a bunch of rules and laws thrown at me that I do not have the juice to make it happen. And therefore you feel defeated and discouraged and repulsed and all that.
And yet, the Bible says in Hebrews 12:14 without holiness - and here it means ethical holiness and impurity. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Because God has said, I am holy, I have set you apart. If you’re a Christian, if you are in the nation of Israel, I have set you apart as holy. You are to be holy.
What do we make of these three thoughts?
Well, a response, a brief response - just the briefest of responses to each of them.
Regarding holiness of God as seeming unattractive.
Have you ever met someone who used to be addicted to drugs and is now clean? What they often say is I have been clean for 627 days. A person who was an alcoholic. Have you ever known a person with an extremely bad temper who just about lost his family, maybe did lose his family from screaming and yelling and throwing things and finally learned to control his temper and to be calm? Ask any one of those people, would you ever want to go back? No, no, no, no. It is attractive that they have been rescued from these things.
Ask a criminal who was in and out of jail for all kinds of theft and other crimes and finally he turns his life around and he’s squeaky clean with the law, would he go back? No, I wouldn’t go back. That life is old, I don’t want to go back. There is something about holiness that is joyful to people who get a little taste of it, even if it’s just - like in these cases - just a mirror of holiness. There may not be any real holiness in these people I’m talking about but there may. But it is a small token of what real holiness is like. Holiness unattractive?
Listen to what the gospel Luke says about Jesus in Luke 10:21. It says Jesus is about to pray, and it says at that time, Jesus full of joy through the Holy Spirit prayed such and such.
Now when people think of prayer, they tend to think of misery. You’ve got to be on your knees maybe, and it’s uncomfortable because your knees hurt. Or you’ve got to bow your heads and you want to look around, or you’ve got to fold your hands and you don’t want to fold your hands. Or you’ve got to say something holy and you don’t know what to say.
But it’s just that Jesus was full of joy. And Jesus was the most holy person who ever lived on Earth. In fact, Jesus, that’s what he meant when he told the disciples, “I have food to eat that you don’t know anything about.” He means I have a joy in my holy walk with God my father that you can’t even comprehend.
And when Jesus in the last night that he was alive when he was in the upper room with the disciples at the last supper and he’s praying to God and they’re hearing, he says Lord, I’ve just spent several chapters of the word talking to these friends of mine preparing for when I die and go to heaven and leave them alone. And he says, I have said these things to them “so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” He’s talking about them becoming holy and having to some measure, the same joy that he has.
No true Christian would ever go back to his or her pre-Christian life, because however hard it may be, difficult it may be in many ways, however many struggles and failures if you ask them, would you prefer the old life, the immediate answer is no, no, no. And that’s why J.I. Packer said this - that happiness - I’m sorry - holiness is essentially a happy business. Holiness is attractive.
What do we say to the idea that holiness is scary?
Well, feeling one’s unholiness, feeling ones unworthiness, feeling one’s sinfulness in the presence of the holy is absolutely the best thing that could ever happen to anyone according to the Bible. It may feel like bad news, but according to the Bible, it’s good news. It’s the beginning of the good news. The holiest men in the Bible are recorded to have felt this scariness, this sense of their own sinfulness and unworthiness in the presence of God when he came close and his holiness splashed on them as it were.
For instance, we read about Peter when he was a very early disciple, maybe just becoming a disciple, he had fished all night, didn’t catch a thing. He comes up to shore, he’s still in the boat, Jesus says go out in the deep and cast your net. “I tried all night.” “Go.” “Yes, sir.” So he throws his net overboard, you know the story. The net immediately catches so many fish, as they pull it in, the boat begins to fill with water and they begin to sink. And Peter, we read, Luke 5:8, when Peter saw this miracle he fell at Jesus’s knees and said “go away from me Lord, I am a sinful man.”
This is his reaction to the holiness of God. And yet Peter became one of the 12 apostles. Not only one of the 12 apostles, he became the leader of the 12 apostles and he gladly gave his life for his faith at the end of it.
Or take Daniel, did Daniel ever experience a scariness, even a spookiness about the holiness of God? Oh, heavens yes. A number of times, just to take several, reading in Daniel, the book that he wrote, chapter 8, Daniel sees a vision. The specifics of the vision are unimportant here but they were about things to happen in the future that God gave him and he gave them through the angel Gabriel. Now then we read that the angel Gabriel approached Daniel to explain this to him.
Now get this now - this is not God himself coming toward Daniel. This is merely an angel from God coming toward Daniel and we read in Daniel 8:17, as he came near, I was terrified and fell prostrate.
The Bible presents Daniel as one of the holiest men in all its pages. He is only one of two I think that it records nothing wrong about him - and yet he was terrified, even in the presence of one of God’s angels.
In Daniel 10 it’s even worse. In Daniel 10 we read Daniel is with some other men, and then he sees a vision again. A vision about the future, and he says that the other men did not see the vision. Now, but here’s what he says in Daniel 10:7-8. Even though they did not see the vision, such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves.
Capture this. They are in a room or outside with him. He sees a vision. They see nothing. They hear nothing. But the very sense of God being present in that event absolutely overwhelmed them and they ran. Because they’re in the presence of God’s holiness.
To be in the presence of God’s holiness, you need not to see anything or even hear anything to be breathless.
And then Daniel who is left standing said in Daniel 10:16-17, I said to the one standing before me, that is to the heavenly visitor who gave him the vision, “I am overcome with anguish because of the vision my Lord, I am helpless. How can I, your servant talk to you my Lord, my strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.”
And yet three times in the book of Daniel, he is told by a heavenly visitor straight from Heaven, Daniel, in Heaven, you are highly esteemed. The man who wrote this book of the Bible, who was highly esteemed, yet knew what it was like to feel unworthy and overwhelmed at the sense of the presence of God.
And finally, there is the prophet Isaiah. In chapter 6 of Isaiah’s book, he sees a vision. The vision is remarkable, we don’t have time to go into it, but he gets a vision of God in the throne room in Heaven and it is overpowering. He sees angels of a kind, serifs, and they are singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty. And the whole threshold of the temple shakes, and it is - I cannot do justice, just the way Hollywood cannot do justice to try and recreate this scene.
And here’s what we read that Isaiah said, Isaiah 6:5. When I saw it, I said woe is me I cried, I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips.
Now get this, of all the prophets in the Old Testament, Isaiah is the most loved by almost everybody. And yet Isaiah said I’m ruined because in the presence of God like this, I see that my lips are so unclean.
This is what God himself said of himself in Daniel’s book. Daniel - I mean Isaiah’s book. Isaiah 57:15. This is what the high and lofty one says, he whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit and I will revive that person’s spirit.
In other words, Daniel is esteemed by the Lord. Isaiah is beloved by God’s people and wrote the favorite book and God promises Isaiah, when you are humble and contrite in my presence and sense your own unworthiness, I will live with you and revive you and take care of you.
Fear of the Lord in that sense of high respect and a sense of your own unworthiness, that is the only appropriate response to the holiness of God.
Here is how Psalm 85:9 puts it. Surely, God’s salvation is near to those who fear him. Well, they are the people that found God’s holiness scary and unattractive.
But what about if you feel the holiness of God to be absolutely impossible?
And looking at your week, you know it was impossible, you felt it.
I will tell you right now, imitating God is not possible. Salvation is not moral reform. It is not developing better habits. Salvation is not I make myself pray longer, I make myself read the Bible more. It is impossible but here is what God said to folks who realize that it’s impossible. And it comes from the New Testament from the Gospel of John 17.
Jesus Christ at the last supper with his 12, he tells them that he’s going to leave, he gets them ready for a difficult life of spreading his gospel when he will be gone and assume the spirit. And he prays in their presence out loud. And one of the things he prays is in John 17:18 to God the father, he says for their sake, speaking of the 12 disciples, I sanctify myself so that they may be sanctified.
The word sanctify and the word make holy are the same word in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. So let’s take the word sanctify away, and let’s use the word holy.
Jesus said God, for their sake, I make myself holy so that they may be holy. What does he mean he makes himself holy?
He means it in that first sense that we said, that the word holy comes from the word to cut, to separate, to set apart for a certain purpose. He says God - he had no sin, of course, to set himself away from. But I set myself away from my own desires. I set myself apart from a normal life.
Maybe Jesus would love to have been married. I didn’t have time for that. Maybe Jesus would have found it easier to have a quiet life as a carpenter rather than have heated debates with people that wanted to stone him all the time. But I set that aside. God, I set all my own desires and pleasures aside, I separate myself to you and your purposes so that I might make them holy.
And he’s talking of course about how he sets himself apart so he would go to the cross. And at the cross, their sins that would make them cower at the holiness of God would be placed on Jesus and now Jesus covered with their sins on the cross as it were cowers in the presence of the holiness of God and feels the divine wrath on him takes it from them onto himself, dies because of it, rises, goes to Heaven, receives from God the ability to give the Holy Spirit to his disciples and now because of his death, they have been made holy in the sense of forgiven. And because of his resurrection, they received his spirit and they are being made holy because of his Holy Spirit actually changing their character.
So when God says because I am holy, you be holy, what he did not say for another 1400 years after he said those words, what he did not say at the time but now we know in retrospect is, and I am going to die for you so that I might make you holy both on the record books and in your actual soul.
Brothers and sisters, it is impossible for you. But with God, all things are possible because Jesus Christ takes you, his holy ones and makes you actually his holy ones.
So salvation is all about the life of God coming to live in the soul of humans. It’s about as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:14, you participating in the divine nature where God’s Holy Spirit actually comes in you and changes your nature. It’s about as Paul said in 1st Corinthians 1:30, Jesus Christ becoming our righteousness, our redemption, and our holiness.
Would you bow your heads please for a moment? Could you pray about what you have heard.
hymn - “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!”
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee, who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Though the darkness hide thee, through the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty! All thy works shall praise they name in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Closing
Next week after the service, an elder and his wife will be in that corner. Anyone wanting prayer, please come up. Don’t come up to socialize. But anyone of any age, however long you’ve been here or if you’re a first time visitor, come and get prayer if you need it.
Please hear God’s benediction.
May God himself sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who calls you his faithful and he will do it. Amen.