The Holiness of God

The Heart of Worship  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  46:38
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Recognizing that God is immutable, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient is indeed significant. However, these attributes alone provide only a glimpse of what God expects from us. So, what compels us to worship beyond His unchanging, all-powerful, and infinitely knowing presence?

God’s holiness Compels Us to Worship

Among all His attributes, holiness uniquely describes Him and serves as a summation of His other qualities.
When we see even a small glimpse of God’s holiness, we will bow in worship.
R. C. Sproul
The word holiness refers to His separateness, His otherness, the fact that He is unlike any other being.
His Holiness represents His complete and infinite perfection.
The Holiness of God Chapter 3: The Fearful Mystery

The primary meaning of holy is “separate.” It comes from an ancient word that means “to cut,” or “to separate.” To translate this basic meaning into contemporary language would be to use the phrase “a cut apart.” Perhaps even more accurate would be the phrase “a cut above something.”

It indicates His complete and infinite perfection. Holiness is the attribute of God that binds all the others together.
Revelation 4:8 NKJV
The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”
When the angels exalt God, they don’t say, “Eternal, Eternal, Eternal,”; they don’t say, “Faithful, Faithful, Faithful,”; “Wise, Wise, Wise”; or “Mighty, Mighty, Mighty.” They say, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty”. His holiness is the crown of all that He is.
Exodus 15:11 asks,
Exodus 15:11 NKJV
“Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders?
The answer to that question is of course “No one”
So, by what standard does God gain His holiness? No standard outside Himself sets up His holiness.

The LORD is the standard of absolute holiness

God does not conform to a holy standard, He is that standard. He is the one that sets the bar. He never does anything wrong, He never makes a misjudgment. There are no levels to His holiness, His is simply holy, flawless, without error or sin, fully righteous in all His ways, utterly and absolutely, infinitely Holy.
That means to even be in His presence, one must be holy.
Hebrews 12:14 clearly states that no one can stand in God’s presence apart from holiness.
Hebrews 12:14 NKJV
Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:
And so here lies the problem, because you see for us that means God’s standard of holiness is absolute perfection. And you and I are not perfect in comparison to the holy standard of God’s character.
We are judged by Gods holiness. The bad news is that we don't measure up to God’s holy standard. We have to be made perfect, consecrated, set apart, that is holy before we can come into the presence of God.
1 Peter 1:16 NKJV
because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
Jesus said the same thing in Matt5.48
Matthew 5:48 NKJV
Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
This is why the message of the Gospel of Christ is such good news. Because it is God’s holiness that must be imputed to the whosoever’s of the world.
Romans 10:13 NKJV
For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Sinfulness has corrupted every aspect of our hearts, mind and wills. We cannot be perfect through our own power of thought or even the will power of man, we are deeply imperfect, corrupted with evil desires, evil motives, evil thoughts and evil deeds.
Listen to how Charles Spurgeon put it....
Such is the state of every human heart till God the Holy Spirit visits it. So far as spiritual things are concerned, the human heart is in a state of chaos and disorder. There is no thought of faith, of love, of hope, of obedience. It is spiritually a confused mass of dead sinfulness, in which everything is misplaced. It is void or utterly empty.
Charles Spurgeon
But God’s plan of salvation solves that whole dilemma in a remarkable way. God’s own perfect righteousness and holiness is imputed, that is, put to the account of, every sinner who believes in Jesus Christ.
Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and therefore God thinks of it as belonging to us.
Wayne Grudem
2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
We are so unable to save ourselves from our unrighteousness that God had to be the one and only to redeem us from our fallen state.
So, God in His infinite wisdom, knowledge and foresight made the only way for man to be justified from their sinful nature.
So God imputed His own perfect righteousness to those who repent of their self-righteous deeds and sinful ways by trusting Christ as Lord and Savior.
Notice how Paul puts it...
Philippians 3:8–9 NKJV
Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;
Paul puts it another way in Romans
Romans 5:1–2 NKJV
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Having already justified us and clothed us in a garment of perfect righteousness (not one of our own making, but Christ’s righteousness imputed to us), God is now conforming us to greater and greater Christ-likeness, thus making us fit for heaven. When we die, or when Christ returns, that process will be instantly completed in our glorification.
1 John 3:2 NKJV
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
That is why we speak of God’s holiness as one of His communicable attributes—one of the perfections of God that His creatures can to some degree share and participate in.
God conforms us to the perfection of His own holy standard. He instantly gives us a righteous standing, and then over time He makes us perfectly holy. That is a fair summary of what God does for us in salvation.
When an individual experiences the imputation of God’s holiness into their life it produces awe and wonder, so much so that it prompts that individual to exercise true authentic worship.

A worshiping life must affirm the utter holiness of God

In fact, an acknowledgement and understanding of God’s holiness is essential to true worship.
Psalm 96:2–6 NKJV
Sing to the Lord, bless His name; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
Psalm 96:9 NKJV
Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth.
The word “tremble” implies fear. The holiness of God manifest fear from the worshipper.
to fear (reverence) — verb. to regard with feelings of respect and reverence; consider hallowed or exalted or be in awe of.
When you find yourself in the presence of holy, a great fear of reverence or dread will sweep across your entire being. The Bible illustrates this beautifully with the the disciples on the sea of Galilee on a dark stormy night.
Mark 4:35 NKJV
On the same day, when evening had come, He said to them, “Let us cross over to the other side.”
Mark 4:36 NKJV
Now when they had left the multitude, they took Him along in the boat as He was. And other little boats were also with Him.
Mark 4:37 NKJV
And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling.
The thing that every Galilean fisherman feared the most, a great windstorm happened.
It was perhaps here that the sailor’s prayer was first uttered: “O Lord, your sea is so great, and my boat is so small.”
The next verse tells us what Jesus was doing...
Mark 4:38 NKJV
But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
While everyone was in a dreadful panic Jesus was in a peaceful sleep.
Now when the disciples awoke Jesus, they had no idea what Jesus would do. They were like most people, when people are in danger, they are immediately look to their leader. It is the job of the leader to know what the next step is, even if there is no possible next step.
Mark 4:39–40 NKJV
Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”
Jesus controlled the fierce forces of nature by the sound of His voice. The wind heard the voice of its Creator. The sea recognized the command of its Lord. Instantly the wind ceased.
Notice the reaction of the disciples. All went calm and it says that “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him!”
Mark 4:41 NKJV
And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!”
The Holiness of God (Chapter 4: The Trauma of Holiness)
We see something very interesting here, the fact that the storm and raging sea frightened the disciples is not surprising. But once the danger passed and the sea was calm, it would seem that their fear would vanish as suddenly as the storm. It didn’t happen that way. Now that the sea was calm, the fear of the disciples increased.
The storm had made them afraid. Jesus’ commanding the storm to stop made them more afraid. In the power of Christ they just met something more frightening than they had ever met in nature. They were in the presence of the holy.
It is one thing to fall victim to a flood, tornado, hurricanes natural disasters even health scares such as cancer and other life threatening disease, but it is all another thing(as Heb.10:31 says) to fall into the hands of the living God.
Hebrews 10:31 NKJV
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The Holiness of God Chapter 4: The Trauma of Holiness

The words that the disciples spoke after Jesus calmed the sea are very revealing. They cried out, “Who is this?” The King James Version expresses the question like this: “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” The question was “What manner of man is this?” They were asking a question of kind. They were looking for a category to put Jesus in

The disciples could find no category adequate to capture the person of Jesus
The disciples had never met a man like this. He was one of a kind, a complete foreigner. They had met all different kinds of men before—tall men, short men, fat men, skinny men, smart men, and stupid men. They had met Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, Samaritans, and fellow Jews. But they had never met a holy man, a man who could speak to wind and waves and have them obey Him.
Jesus was different. He possessed an awesome otherness. He was the supreme mysterious stranger. He made people uncomfortable.
Luke records an account in Luke 5:1-7 where Jesus is teaching near the village of Gennesaret and Jesus climbs into Simon Peters boat.
Luke 5:1–7 NKJV
So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.
How do you think Peter reacted to this? How would you have reacted?
Luke 5:8 NKJV
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”
The Holiness of God (Chapter 4: The Trauma of Holiness)
At that moment Peter realized that he was in the presence of the Holy Incarnate. He was desperately uncomfortable. His initial response was one of worship. He fell to his knees before Christ. Instead of saying something like, “Lord, I adore you, I magnify you,” he said, “Please go away. Please leave. I can’t stand it. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O LORD!”
Sinful people are not comfortable in the presence of the holy.
All Peter could see was his own sinfulness when confronted with the power and presence of our holy God.
The true worshiper comes in that spirit. He is broken over his sinfulness. A true worshiping life is a life of remorse that leads to repentance; it is a life that sees sin and confesses continually.
Where are you today spiritually with the holiness of God? Are you living a life of confession, repentance, and turning from your sin so that your worship is that which fully pleases God?
Worship that is pleasing to God must cost the offerer something.
Mark F. Rooker
Do you know what that something is?
Romans 12:1 ESV
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
We must return to the biblical teaching of God’s utter and awesome holiness in order to be filled with the gratitude and humility that characterizes true worship.
Lets Pray:
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