Sermon Tone Analysis

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:

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.

); 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.