Holy, holy, holy
Attributes of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 16 viewsGod's holiness is beautiful and dangerous.
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One of the things that took me a surprisingly long time to understand as a child is that mothers have supernatural powers of hearing and sight.
I just never figured out how Mom could hear the things I’d mutter or see the faces I’d make as I was walking away after I’d been scolded for something.
I’ll give you an example: When I was young, I used to hate cleaning up around the house. “Be quiet, Annette!”
But, of course, there were times when no amount of whining or procrastinating would get me out of it.
So upstairs to my bedroom I would go, and I’d put in the half-hearted effort that you’d expect from a child, and then I’d pick up a book and start reading or I’d begin playing with one of my toys.
And then that superpower would kick in, and Mom would call up to me: “Res, I don’t hear you cleaning!”
So I’d putter about for a few minutes and then drift back to my book.
And this time when she called up to me, I would be quite frustrated with the whole thing. After all, I was in the midst of something far more important than she had called me to do.
And I remember vividly that one Saturday, after having been so rudely interrupted from my own important business one too many times, that I muttered this: “Clean this; clean that. You’d think the PRESIDENT was coming or something.”
I don’t remember much that happened after I said that, but I can tell you that I had a new understanding of my mother’s superpowers and a new appreciation for the wisdom of knowing when to keep my mouth shut.
The truth is, though, that we approach life differently depending on whom we expect to share it with at any given time.
If the president is coming, and it doesn’t even matter WHICH president, then you’d better make sure the house is clean.
There’s a lesson here about holiness, and that’s our topic of discussion today as we continue our series on the attributes of God.
Because God is holy, we are called to approach life differently than if He were simply “the man upstairs” or any one of the other characterizations that have attempted to reduce Him to something common, something at our level.
But before we get into our Scripture passage this morning, I think we need to make sure we understand a little more about what “holy” means.
The short definition of the term that we use in church is “set apart.” The word comes from the Hebrew word “qidosh,” which seems to derive from a Hebrew root meaning “to cut” and came to mean “to be removed from common use” or “to be subject to special treatment.”
Hence, God is holy, in at least one sense, because He is to be subject to special treatment.
Let me give you an example that might shed some light on the matter.
Do any of you have a set of special china that you keep in a cupboard somewhere for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners?
Maybe it has been passed down to you from a grandmother or a great-grandmother. Perhaps you have that china stacked carefully in the cabinet with cloth in between so nothing will get chipped. Maybe you even handle it with special gloves if it’s old enough and special enough.
The grandchildren are not allowed to help set the table when you use these dishes, and you would never even think of putting them in the dishwasher.
On the special occasions when you use this china, you go all out. The table is set with your best silverware. You pull out the cloth napkins, because paper napkins — or, God forbid — paper towels, are completely inappropriate. Candles are lit, and maybe you have a special centerpiece in the middle of everything.
And even if you’re hosting first-time guests, everybody at the table just knows this china has great value to you, even if it would never fetch great bids on eBay.
Someday, you’ll pass this china along to another generation, and you can only hope that they will recognize just how special it is.
That’s a picture of holiness. That’s a picture of something that you’ve set apart from common use, something that demands special treatment. That’s something that you recognize — at least from a secular perspective — as holy.
Now, if we can imagine a family heirloom like a set of china as being worthy of such special treatment, how much more special is the very God who told Moses:
“Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
Now, let’s skip the first part of God’s command here for now and concentrate of the God’s description of Himself.
“I am holy.”
Among all the attributes of God that we’ll be studying, I chose holiness to start with, because I think it is the one that defines all of the others, at least all of His other moral attributes.
God is love, but His love isn’t like the love that we demonstrate. His love is perfect. It isn’t stained as ours can be by lust or by self-interest or by anger. His love is holy. It is entirely set apart from the love that the world understands.
God’s justice is perfect. It is not stained by bloodlust or a desire for revenge. It is not crippled by the potential for wrong judgment. It is never unfair or biased in its application. God’s justice is holy. It is entirely set apart from the justice that mankind applies.
The same thing is true of God’s grace, His mercy, His longsuffering or patience, His goodness, His lovingkindness and His truth.
God’s holiness makes all of these attributes to be perfected in Him.
Think of this aspect of God’s holiness as His moral perfection or purity.
God’s moral purity demands His separation from the profane and ceremonially unclean.
44 ‘For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. 45 ‘For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.’ ”
); Failure to do this is a cause for God’s anger ()
Note that there are two levels of holiness and ceremonial uncleanness present in this passage. First, God calls the people of Israel to consecrate themselves.
The Hebrew word here is “qidosh,” which you’ll recognize as the root from which we get our word “holy.”
So they were to set themselves apart from the common — to avoid making themselves unclean from any of the swarming things of the earth (in this case, the context meant that they should not eat swarming bugs, worms, caterpillars or even snakes and lizards).
They were to avoid those things so that they would not be defiled and so that they would not defile the God who moved in their presence.
Failure to do this is a cause for God’s anger, as we see in God’s charge against Israel through the prophet Ezekiel.
But his holiness also has another aspect.
26 “Her priests have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they hide their eyes from My sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.
See what God says here? The priests have failed to distinguish between the holy and the profane, and their failure to teach the distinction has caused the people to fail to keep the two things separate, which, in turn, has profaned God.
Think of that special china. If your foolish son uses one of the bowls to catch the oil that drips from under your car, the bowl would be defiled, and you surely would not put it back into the cabinet with all the others.
God is perfect in His moral purity, and He has the right to expect His people to be so, too.
No One Like Him Holiness
As the majestic God whose qualities know no boundary, God’s being is infinitely above his creatures. Moreover, as distinct from creation, he does not depend on anyone or anything to bring him into existence or to sustain him in being. And, of course, there is only one being with such majesty and perfection. He is the unique (unity) God.
Peter wrote about this.
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Listen, folks: We who follow Christ have living within us God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. We do not come here to meet God. He is with us continuously. In light of this understanding of holiness, that should give you something sobering to think about.
Do your actions — do your thoughts — defile the perfectly holy Holy Spirit within you?
But his holiness also has another aspect, too, and it might be even more humbling in that it pertains to the attributes He has that we cannot share. We can call this aspect of God’s holiness His majesty.
As the majestic God whose qualities know no boundary, God’s being is infinitely above that of His creatures. He is infinite, without limitations.
He is free from limitations
This is a property in and of itself, and it is also a way of describing God’s other attributes. He is infinitely holy; He is infinitely good; He is infinitely loving; He is infinitely just.
But He also exists without bounds and without limits.
This is a qualitative distinction, not a quantitative one. We do not say that God encompasses everything. That would make us pantheists, people who believe God is nature and that we can turn to everything to find Him.
We can, indeed, discover Him THROUGH nature, as He tells us in Scripture that He has been revealed through His very creation. But even mankind, made in His very image, is not God.
Instead, by saying that He is infinite in a qualitative sense, we mean that he is the greatest kind of being there is or could be.
This is a hard thing to understand, and that’s precisely because God’s infinite quality makes Him beyond our ability as finite creatures to comprehend Him fully.
God is also distinct from His creation. He exists in and of Himself. That describes what theologians call his aseity. This is what God described when He gave His name to Moses from the burning bush.
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
The Hebrew word translated as I AM here is Yahweh. It can mean “I am” or “I will be” or even “I cause to be.” The sense here is that God exists simply because He desires to exist. He has always done so and will always do so.
And, of course, there is only one being with such majesty and perfection. He is the unique (unity) God.
Books and books and books have been written about this covenant name, Yahweh, and what it meant to the Jews and what it meant to us. For our purposes here, understand that there is no more holy name for God than this one. It denotes much about Who God is.
Now, we’ve talked today about a concept of holiness as being subject to special treatment, about holiness as a defining aspect of God’s moral attributes and about how holiness relates to God’s non-moral attributes, like His infinity and His aseity.
58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”
Now, we’ve talked today about a concept of holiness as being subject to special treatment, about holiness as a defining aspect of God’s moral attributes and about how holiness relates to God’s non-moral attributes, like His infinity and His aseity.
Special dishes?
As we prepare to conclude our look at holiness today, I want you to turn to to see how all these characteristics of holiness come into play in an episode in which God’s people were being prepared to meet Him.
God had delivered the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and He desired to reveal His glory to them. He would do so at Mount Sinai, but they would have to prepare themselves to encounter His holiness there.
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Note here that God is calling Israel to be a nation set apart from all the others. They are to be different from the common nations of the earth. In fact, He is calling them to be a kingdom of priests that will make Him known to the rest of the world.
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The people have agreed to do all that the Lord commands. They have agreed to be set apart — to be subject to special treatment and to give God the special treatment that His holiness demands.
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Now God tells the people what they must do to consecrate themselves — to make themselves holy for Him.
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The warning here is that the people should consider even the place where God reveals His glory as holy. Think about when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. God told him to remove his sandals, because the ground where Moses was standing was holy. It was holy, because God’s presence was there.
Now, back at Mt. Sinai, even touching the border of the mountain would be an act of profanity for the Israelites. And then touching any person or animal that had touched the mountain would itself be an act of profanity.
God holiness is not something to take lightly. God’s holiness is beautiful and dangerous. The people would have to be restrained from the mountain because, even though it was dangerous, the beauty of His holiness would attract them.
Let me ask you something. Does the holiness of God in you attract others? Do they want to know what makes you so different? Is there a sense in which people want to understand what sets you apart from the world, but a danger of them being changed by it?
Friends, we who follow Jesus Christ have the very Spirit of God within us. We HAVE been set apart. We SHOULD be different from the world.
Knowing these things, then, why do we , as the Apostle Paul said, let sin reign in our mortal body so that we obey its lusts?
Why do we go on presenting the members of our bodies to sin as instruments of unrighteousness? Why do we defile the Holy Spirit in this way?
We are no longer slaves to sin; we are under grace, and we serve God in Jesus Christ.
Jesus died to set us free from sin, which had been our master. We are no longer under its authority. Now, having been given the character of Christ through baptism in the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation, we are under a new authority — grace.
Does that mean we should go on sinning? May it never be!
When we were under the authority of sin, we had no choice but to submit ourselves to it. That’s the doctrine of depravity; we were dead in sin, meaning we had no way to save ourselves from it.
But now we are slaves to righteousness, and we should act like it.
“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy,” says the Lord.
God Himself has come to live within the followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit lives within the person of each believer, and He moves within the body of the church.
Therefore, we should clean up.
We need to stop using that special china to collect the oil drippings from the car.
We need to recognize that this beautiful, dangerous holiness of God is defiled when we give sin a pass, when we present ourselves as instruments of unrighteousness, and when we fail to treat as holy the One who is infinitely, perfectly and completely holy.
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
Let us be imitators of God. Let us walk in love. Let us make our lives a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.