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An Alien Environment
Today we explore the holiness of God and how it relates to us.
For many of us we approach holiness the way we approach a big, tangled ball of yarn.
We’d like to unravel it and get the knots out, but it’s a lot easier to simply cut it out and move on.
And the more we look at holiness the more it reveals our own messiness.
Maybe we are the ones who are tangled up in spots.
We know we’ve got some issues, but we strive to do our best and move on.
God is holy.
He’s perfect.
We’re not.
Praise Jesus for coming to save us so that we can still be called righteous.
Otherwise, holiness is alien to us.
I have a series of pictures to show you, and your job is to decide whether they come from scenes in a movie depicting an alien planet or whether they are actual photos from earth.
Try to guess which…You may be surprised to learn that all these pictures are actual, unaltered photos of places on earth.
Some of them look alien enough to make it into a sci-fi scene, but all are native to our world.
Holiness is something that may often feel foreign but is meant for you and me.
It is a quality God desires to describe us. A. W. Tozer writes about this holiness disconnect in his book, Knowledge of the Holy.
Until we have seen ourselves as God sees us, we are not likely to be much disturbed over conditions around us as long as they do not get so far out of hand as to threaten our comfortable way of live.
We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.[i]
To recover a right understanding of holiness, we need to get a better glimpse of our holy God.
There has been a bold, earnest cry that has been going on while we have been here this morning.
That cry is, “Holy, holy, holy!”
We may not be aware of this cry, but there are others who themselves cannot help but cry out ceaselessly this one attribute of God.
This cry did not start today but has been going on for millennia.
The Bible describes a scene that took place 2,700 years ago, where angels in God’s presence continually cried out God’s holiness.
Then in the book of Revelation there is a heavenly throne room where angelic creatures continue with this cry day and night.
The Bible says they are covered with eyes – it’s as though they were created for the sole purpose of taking in the enormity of God’s holiness.
We cannot experience an encounter with God without becoming awestruck at his holiness.
Have you ever had a moment when you had an overwhelming sense of God’s presence like this?
Turn to in your Bibles.
We will look today at an encounter this young prophet had with God.
It was during a time of uncertainty, because the great king, Uzziah, had died.
Our passage, , describes Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple, making clear that, although the king had died, God was still on the throne.
So what is God’s holiness?
Isaiah encountered God in all of his holiness, and it was a life-changing event.
It’s the same sort of change we can experience, too, and it has to do with connecting with the real God, whom Scripture calls the one, true God.
I like what Mark Buchanan wrote about this Isaiah passage in his book, The Holy Wild.
So what is God’s holiness?
Isaiah encountered God in all of his holiness, and it was a life-changing event.
It’s the same sort of change we can experience, too, and it has to do with connecting with the real God, whom Scripture calls the one, true God.
I like what Mark Buchanan wrote about this Isaiah passage in his book, The Holy Wild.
If all [God’s] attributes were distilled down to one, crystallized in a single word, what would that word be?
The angels know.
The seraphim, you would think, must have a vast repertoire of songs, songs that evoke and celebrate the manifold beauty of the Lord – His love, His power, His goodness, His mercy.
But of all the virtues they might worship, of all His excellencies they might extol, there is one thing they say, thrice repeated, back and forth, night and day, world without end: “Holy, holy, holy.”
God is holy.[ii]
[i] (Tozer, 1961, pp.
103-104)
[ii] (Buchanan, 2003, p. 145)
How should we understand God’s holiness?
God’s holiness is incomparable.
God’s holiness involves his incomparable power.
God’s holiness is so overwhelming that his specially designed angels spend their days proclaiming it.
In our scene you find God’s throne raised high, so that Isaiah probably had to crane his neck as he glimpsed upward.
The train of God’s robe filled the temple.
On June 2, 1953, Queen Elizabeth II attended her coronation ceremony wearing a robe with a train that was 21 feet long.
The length of the train indicates the power and authority of the sovereign.
The queen’s robe indicated her separateness from her people and the honor due uniquely to her.
The train of God’s robe wound to and fro in the cavernous space of the temple, filling it completely.
God’s holiness is bound up in his incomparable power.
God’s holiness involves his incomparable power.
God’s holiness involves his incomparable glory.
The seraphim shielded their eyes from looking at God, and they covered their feet out of reverence for his holiness.
Four of their six wings were used to deal with being in God’s holy presence.
Their voices proclaimed his holiness.
The threefold repetition made their proclamation in the highest superlative.
God is the holiest.
Their voices shook the temple as they thundered.
And they added the words, “the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Just like the temple is filled with God’s glorious robe, the earth, too is filled with God’s glory.
All of this flows from a God whose holiness has no equal.
God’s holiness involves incomparable glory.
God’s holiness involves his incomparable righteousness.
As we think of holiness, we often think of another aspect of it: righteousness.
Righteousness is good, right, without any flaw or sin.
We may even call it cleanness.
I did some research on cleanrooms – not cleanrooms as in you just cleaned your room, but in the sense of the industrial cleanrooms where experiments take place in carefully controlled environments.
Willis Whitfield is the person credited with pioneering the modern “cleanroom” concept in the middle of the 20th century.
He developed air filtration technology that scrubbed the air clean of impurities.
Today’s cleanrooms function with only 2.5 particles per cubic meter of air.
Compare that to the air around you now, which has 35 million particles per cubic meter!
I like an Intel ad that showed this cleanroom comparison.
All of this means that if you entered a true cleanroom, you’d be a contaminant.
For that reason people have to shower and put on full suits just to enter.
God’s holiness involves incomparable righteousness.
There is no stain of sin, not one speck of impurity to be found in the righteous presence of God.
Isaiah’s encounter with the sinless purity of a righteous God gave him a panic attack.
His response to the holiness of God was not, “Wow!” but “Woe.”
He said the ancient version of “Oy vey.” “Woe to me!
I am undone.”
God’s holiness made Isaiah aware of his own sinfulness.
In Isaiah’s case it was his unclean lips.
We don’t know if he swore like a sailor on shore leave or if he spoke crudely or rudely, but in the presence of God, his realization of sin overwhelmed him.
What sin would you become aware of in God’s presence?
What would make you say, “Woe is me”?
Would it be a lack of forgiveness?
Would it be what you’ve been watching on Netflix?
Or the images you’ve pulled up on your computer or phone?
Would it be dishonesty, anger, or pride?
Whatever that sin issue is that you’ve got, that thing that you’ve tucked away in your life becomes the most important issue when you encounter God in his holiness.
We will talk more about our response to God’s holiness in a bit.
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