No Shoes Around the Fire?
The Holiness of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewTheme: Encountering a Holy God is Transformational Purpose: To understand the goodness of God's Holiness as a step towards approaching God. Gospel: Jesus' holiness cleanses us to be present with a Holy God. Mission: Trust that in God's Holiness there is both purity and love.
Notes
Transcript
One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up.
“This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”
When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied.
“Do not come any closer,” the Lord warned. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.
I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord told him, “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering.
So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live.
Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them.
Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”
But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?”
God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”
But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?”
God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.”
Introduction: Haley running through the fire pit.
- Fire pit. We love it. On cold nights, you want to get really close to the fire
- Sometimes I am cooking a hot dog, and my stick is too short.
Odd, Moses is told to take his Shoes off by the Fire, “Holy Ground.”
16 - People Fear Holiness.
16 - People Fear Holiness.
We see Moses averting his face.
People going to worship because the Church will fall down. What is this a fear of? God's Holiness
Why does Holiness bring fear and how does the ground become Holy?
Let’s define it.
17 - What is Holiness?
17 - What is Holiness?
The Holiness of God is God's uniqueness and otherness
The fact that God is creator, everything else is created.
The creator and giver of life - Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, the one who was and is and is to come (His name here I am what I am, I am what I will be.) ...because you have created all things and because of your will they existed and were created.
So outside of time, space, matter
God lives in his own realm
His Character being incorruptable.
His Name, I AM....
“Holiness endangers the sinner because the holiness of the Lord is not a passive attribute but an active force, embracing all that conforms to it (Ps. 24:3–4) and destroying all that offends (1 Sam. 6:19–20). The trepidation humans feel before the Lord is not, therefore, the trembling of the lowly before the Almighty or the created before the Creator, but the fear of sinners endangered by holiness (Isa. 6:3–5). The biblical symbol of this perilous force of holiness is fire, and it pervades the book of Exodus” (Motyer, The Message of Exodus, 52–53).
18 - https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/holiness/
19 - Things besides God are called Holy when they are consecrated (set apart) for God the divine.
- Holy Ground
- Here Moses is becoming Holy and then the people of Israel as they are being set apart for God's Mission to be His Inherited people on earth, and his presence will dwell with them.
He has to take off his shoes, yet the bush does not burn up, Why? Bush is consecrated and life is being sustained by the Holiness of God.
And this requires a transformation.
20 - Encountering a Holy God is Transformational.
20 - Encountering a Holy God is Transformational.
Holiness in the Gospel Story
In the Beginning Heaven and Earth were together, In the Garden humans and everything were Holy - consecrated to God and able to be fully in God's presence. It was like that bush, on fire, but not just not being burned up, but the fire was fueling life.
When Humans rebelled - they took themselves out of the presence of the Holy God, sin and its result death and disorder was the result. Everything opposed to the Holiness of God.
The Angel of the Lord comes to Abraham to tell him in essance, I am going to start with you and your family by setting you apart/ie making your family and descendents Holy as the beginning of his plan to restore heaven and earth - In other words to root out all that and clean out all that is UnHoly, so that all in the restored creation is Holy and with a Holy God fully present.
The one in the burning bush is the Angel of Yahweh - Jesus? Look up the theme of Angel of the Lord.
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”
So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
God can not be corrupted, and yet God wants us near him.
Jesus becomes the way we are made Holy. He transforms us.
21 - Invitation/Challenge Diagram
Grace/Truth
22 - The idea of refining Gold
When we consider the holiness of God, we learn that God doesn’t need us, but that he wants us. God calling Moses through the burning bush is a wonderful way of understanding how we gain access to the living God. It is not by any merit or decision of our own, but through the self-existence of God who invites, accepts, and enables us to stand in his presence.
Conclusion: