Introduction
From time to time I like to go to the coffee shop and visit with the people there. There have been some people whom I meet only at the coffee shop. When I see them there, they wear the same jacket and cap every time I see them. Therefore, that is the only way that I know them. Sometimes I have met these same people at other functions, like funerals, and I didn’t recognize them because they were not wearing their cap and they had a suit on instead of their same jacket. At times like that I am reminded that most people are not just one thing, they have many sides to them and relate in many different ways.
The same is true about God. In the last few messages, we have been encouraged that God is good and that God is faithful. The image of God as loving and “for us” is a wonderful image and entirely true, but that is not all we need to know about God.
Some of you have read the book, “The Shack.” I know that some of you did not like the book, but I thought it was a wonderful book which describes in an amazing way the joy and peace of an intimate, loving relationship with God. However, that book does not describe all there is to know about God. If that is all we know, we have not yet learned to know God in completeness. Psalm 99:9 presents another side of who God is when it says, “Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.
I. Encountering Holy God
On several occasions in Scripture people encountered God in His holiness. Two of those passages are Exodus 19:1-20:21 and Isaiah 6. What do we learn about the holiness of God from these passages?
A. Israel At Sinai
In the third month after the people of Israel had left Egypt, Moses led them to the desert of Sinai. Moses went up the mountain and when he met with God, God indicated that he wanted to meet with the people of Israel and speak to them. Moses went back down the mountain and told the people and they agreed to this meeting. Moses returned up the mountain and spoke to God about the way in which this meeting would take place.
When you have guests over, there are always arrangements to make. You make arrangements about when they are going to come, you probably clean the house, and you put in place all the details necessary for the meeting. As you can imagine there were certainly details necessary when Israel was going to meet the God of the universe. It is in preparing for the details of the meeting that we begin to get an understanding of what it means that God is holy. We read in 19:10 that the people were to go home wash their clothes and live in a readiness to meet God. The restriction for them not to have sexual relations does not imply that this was an evil thing, but emphasizes the importance of a meeting with God. They were to be consecrated, which is a way of saying they were to be totally clean and focused and ready to meet God.
Another aspect of the meeting was that they could not touch the mountain, but had to be a safe distance from God. If anyone touched the mountain, he would be put to death. Therefore we read that Moses put a “fence” around the mountain and carefully instructed the people about this limitation.
So all the preparations were made to meet God and in those preparations the people got the idea that they were not just meeting a friend, but that there was something special and powerful and holy about the One they were going to meet.
When the meeting took place, there was another opportunity to see the holiness of God. We read about what happened on the day when they met God beginning in Exodus 19:16. There was thunder and lightening and a thick cloud covering the mountain. The people heard a loud trumpet blast. In verse 18 we read that “Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.”
The encounter with God was filled with mystery and power and the people were in awe of Holy God. One commentator says, “The repeated enforcement of the command not to touch the mountain, and the special extension of it even to the priests, were intended to awaken in the people a consciousness of … the unapproachable holiness of Jehovah.” ( K&D)
B. Isaiah
Another occasion on which a human being had an encounter with God occurred in Isaiah 6:1-8 when Isaiah had His vision of God. In Isaiah’s vision, God was seated on a throne, “high and exalted.” God was not on the couch inviting Isaiah to sit beside Him, but was described as above and on a throne. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like that “the train of his robe filled the temple.”
The living creatures which accompanied God were also amazing, but the focus is not on them. Even they communicate that there is something very special and unusual going on here. They have six wings and decorum requires that they cover their faces and their feet with those wings.
Just as the vision of God, which all of Israel had at Sinai, included a vision of power and veiled glory; in this vision we also read that “…the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.” (Isaiah 6:4)
The pinnacle of the communication of the holiness of God came when the Seraphs cried out to each other, not once, not twice, but three times, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.”
C. God Is Holy
What do these encounters mean? What do they tell us about God? What does it mean that God is Holy?
1. Separated
One of the ways of understanding holiness is by its definition which, speaks of the wholly otherness, the separation of God from everything else. God is not common. In each encounter with God the presence of God was veiled in cloud and smoke to emphasize that God is wholly other and cannot be fully known.
John Piper writes, “What then is his holiness? Listen to three texts. 1 Samuel 2:2, "There is none holy like the Lord, there is none besides thee." Isaiah 40:25, "To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One." Hosea 11:9, "I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst." In the end God is holy in that he is God and not man. He is incomparable. His holiness is his utterly unique divine essence.” Piper
I also like what A.W. Tozer says: “God’s holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable.”
2. Absence Of Evil
One of the ways in which this is true is that God is absolutely and completely separated from all that is evil. We see this particularly in the encounter of Israel at Sinai, who when they met with God had to be consecrated.
One fall I helped a farmer burn his flax straw. It was a dry day and we went along and lit the piles of straw which had been gathered together with a harrow. Those of you who have ever seen flax straw burn know that it was a job that did not last very long. As soon as the fire started, it quickly consumed all of the straw. Evil of any kind in the presence of God is like flax straw in the presence of fire. Because God is holy, it simply does not exist in His presence.
Because of this, numerous passages in the Bible tell us that there will not be any evil in heaven. Matthew 13:41 says, “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Revelation 21:27 says, “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful…”
This is a good thing because God’s holiness not only demands that evil be destroyed because of the very nature of who God is but because of that trait, we know that evil, which destroys God’s creation must be destroyed so it will not continue to do its destructive work.
3. Majestic Glory
In each of the stories we get a little view of the majestic glory of God. In each story the curtain of heaven is pulled back a little bit and we get just a glimpse of something that is simply beyond anything we have ever seen.
One of the pictures included in the vision which Isaiah had is the image of the “train of his robe filling the temple.” I like what John Piper says about that. “You have seen pictures of brides whose dresses are gathered around them covering the steps and the platform. What would the meaning be if the train filled the aisles and covered the seats and the choir loft, woven all of one piece? That God's robe fills the entire heavenly temple means that he is a God of incomparable splendor.”
The encounters with God at Mount Sinai and also of Isaiah describe this majestic glory of God. He is high, exalted, glorious, wonderful. His presence is awe inspiring. We so glibly use the word “awesome,” but these pictures give us a look at what is really awesome.
4. Awesome Power
A while ago, Amos told me that when he went with his boys to Brainerd, MN to watch the NHRA drag races the power of those cars is so great that you can physically feel it when they take off. Being in the presence of such power and feeling it has an effect on you. In each of these stories of the presence of God we also read about the thunder, lightening and shaking of the earth. The holiness of God is also revealed in the awesome power of God’s presence.
God is loving and He is faithful and He is interested in us and does want to know us as friends and does take the initiative to meet with us and invite us into His presence. But when we come into the presence of God, we also need to remember the other aspect of who God is, that He is holy. He is separated from all that is in complete perfection and beauty. He has nothing to do with evil and it cannot even be in His presence. He is majestic in His being and all power is present with Him. In all these ways we get a glimpse of something that is utterly beyond us and which we can barely understand from our perspective on earth. We begin to understand that God is Holy.
II. Responding To Holy God
How do we respond to Holy God? Both of these stories give us an idea of what such encounters mean and how we live in them.
A. Obedience Arising From Reverence
I have heard some teachers describe their strategy for classroom discipline by advising that a teacher should never smile until Christmas. By the strategy of putting on a stern face, they hope to scare the students into listening to them so that they will all have a good classroom experience. Is that what God is doing in these encounters?
In some ways it is. When Israel met God at Sinai, they had this powerful encounter with God and when God spoke to them, He gave them the ten commandments, in Exodus 20:1-17, expecting that they would obey them. The people trembled as they listened and afterwards spoke to Moses in great fear. They said in Exodus 20:19, “do not have God speak to us or we will die.” The effect worked and Moses told them in Exodus 20:20, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” God wanted them to be afraid so that they would not sin.
But it was more than just a strategy to make them obey Him. God really is like this. God really is holy and majestic and powerful. God wasn’t just trying to put “the fear of God” into them. God is to be feared because He is holy and sin really can’t exist in His presence.
But it wasn’t just that God was trying to show them His fearful side so that they would be scared of Him. God knows that if we sin, we are engaged in a process of destruction. When we as parents put the fear of traffic into our children so that they won’t run into the street, we do it for their own good so that they won’t hurt themselves. That is what God was doing. God knows that when we sin, we will hurt ourselves and He doesn’t want us to do that.
But even that is not the whole of the purpose of why God showed Israel His holiness. God is not interested in showing His holiness and power simply so that His power is displayed. God’s holiness is a part of God’s intent to establish a relationship with His people. The whole encounter begins with God pointing out to Moses and Israel, in Exodus 19:4, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” Therefore, we see that God took the initiative to establish a relationship with His people. As Christians we know that not only has God taken the initiative to establish a relationship with Himself, but He has also made a way for that relationship. When it was impossible for us to obey Him, God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us. God has revealed His holiness to us so that we know the God with whom we have to do. God has made His holiness known so that we know the immense grace which He has extended in order to establish a relationship. God has demonstrated His Holiness so that we know the holy God who has made Himself known to us and so that we know how to relate to Him.
God is Holy! How do we relate to a holy God?
We relate to a holy God with gratitude that He has forgiven our sins. Until we understand His holiness, we do not really know how great His forgiveness and grace are.
We relate to a Holy God with reverence and it prompts us to live in obedience because we know the God with whom we relate. Until we understand the holiness of God, we do not really have the motivation to live in obedience. Psalm 24:3 asks, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” I Peter 1:15, 16 gives the answer, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
The New Bible Dictionary says, “God’s holiness does not make him unapproachable (Is. 57:15). On the contrary, he is a seeking God, whose holiness is expressed in his saving activity (Is. 40–55). At the same time, any approach to God can only be made under the provisions which God has himself established.”
B. Willingness Arising From Forgiveness
Isaiah’s encounter with God also involved a response. When Isaiah saw God in all His splendor and majesty and holiness, his immediate response was “Woe is me.” He didn’t wonder about it or stop to think if he was properly dressed for the occasion. There was an immediate and deep horror at his own unholiness. He put himself and his people side by side with God and immediately knew that he was ruined. There was no chance for Him in the presence of Holy God. This response, was the same as that of Israel at Sinai and an appropriate response.
But once again we see the grace of God in dealing with sin. We read in Isaiah 6:6 that one of the Seraphs took a live coal from the altar and touched the lips of Isaiah. Why lips? Why not heart or mind? This text is about Isaiah speaking a message from God to the people and there was no way that the lips of Isaiah were clean enough to speak God’s message unless God cleansed them. And cleanse them he did. The assurance was “your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
But the story does not end there. After this Isaiah overheard a conversation in heaven asking, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
Having seen the holiness of God and having been cleansed by God, Isaiah was prepared to respond and did respond immediately, “Here am I. Send me!”
Responding to God’s holiness means that we are willing to serve Him because we have seen His holiness and have experienced the grace of forgiveness from His hand.
Conclusion
It is wonderful to experience the grace of God and the Bible gives us great evidence of the compassion and loving kindness of God. These are great things, but until we experience the holiness of God, we do not really have a full appreciation of how great these things are.
God is holy!
Therefore we are called to worship Him properly with reverence and awe.
God is holy!
Therefore we are called to fall before Him in our sinfulness and seek Him for the forgiveness which He has freely offered.
God is holy!
Therefore we must obey Him and in recognizing His holiness, we are empowered and moved to obey Him.
God is holy!
Therefore, having encountered His holiness and having experienced His forgiveness, we are moved to serve Him and respond to the call He has on our life.
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