The Concept of Holiness
Holiness • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Last week we started our discussion of Holiness with a passage from Hebrews 12:14 (Slide)
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
From that verse we talked about the
Importance of Holiness--Without Holiness no one will see the Lord
Implications of Holiness—The implications of Holiness is freedom from Sin and Soul normalcy
Insistence of Holiness—Make every effort—A strong word that means to go after it with zeal!
Today I want to go to the Old Testament. After establishing the importance of Holiness—which I believe we did last week—now we need to go to the Old Testament in order to get a proper foundation in which to build on.
I mentioned last week in talking about the importance of Holiness that the theme of holiness really permeates the entire Bible. Here is what I mean by that—the word Holy is found 586 times in the NIV Bible. That’s just the word holy. That does not include the variation of the word such as Holiness or Sanctify or Sanctification, consecrate or dedicate etc..
Genesis 2:3
Out of those 586 times, 391 of them are in the OT. You have to read all the way to the second chapter of Genesis before you encounter the word Holy for the first time. And—it’s just 3 verses into chapter 2. So it’s really right at the start of the Bible and It’s a verse you are all familiar with. (Slide)
Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Unfortunately, when we read this verse we get sidetracked. Our attention is somehow drawn to the idea that God rested. And we find that amusing. Was he tired? Did God wear Himself out by all that he had created? Of course not.
The word that is translated rest in this verse doesn’t mean sleep. There is a totally different word for that. God didn’t need sleep and it doesn’t mean he took a break. It means he was finished and therefore he didn’t do any more. (Slide)
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
The work that God had set out to do had been completed—therefore he didn’t do anymore work. God did not rest because he was weary, he rested because it was complete. There wasn’t anything else to do. Think of it as if God was an artist.
Those of us without any artistic ability watch the master artist paint their masterpiece and half way though it we begin to say to ourselves “he has to be almost finished because look how beautiful it is.” And then they blow our minds by doing something to the painting we never say coming in a million years.
And we say again—”this will be the final touches—because it can’t get any better than this” and again they do something to the painting that is absolutely incredible. And they keep doing that until they put the finishing touches on it and then the lay their paint brush down, take their painters apron off, walk over to a chair, sit down in the chair, cross their legs, fold their arms. Why? Because the master painter has painted his master piece and there is nothing more do here. So he sets down. No tinker around with it. He is the master and he knows when its finished and its finished.
That is the idea of the rest here.
Or—for you ice sundae fans—you have 4 scoops of your favorite ice cream in a bowl, then you add your mint chocolate chips, then a little bit of your favorite nuts-for me it would be cashews, then some crumpled up Oreo cookies on top of that, followed by some M&M’s
On top of the M&M’s goes the hot fudge and on top of the fudge goes the whip cream and on top of the whip cream goes the sprinkles and on top of the sprinkles goes the cherry. And everybody knows that when the cherry is placed on top—it’s done—and you walk away from the sundae bar because the worlds best sundae is complete. Go sit down because there is noting else to do. Except eat it.
That’s the idea here. God was finished and so there was a ceasing of creating because the master piece was finished.
NOW—That’s the idea of the rest—I just want to clear that up for you—that’s the idea of the rest—not weary—just done.
But the idea of rest here is NOT the main subject of this verse. The main subject of this verse is that God blessed the 7th day and made it holy. The emphasis in Gen 2:3 is not on the rest God took, but on the blessing and the making holy, the time immediately following His 6 creative days.
So, again the NIV says that “God blessed the 7th day and made it holy.
Both the KJV and the NKJV says that “God Blessed the 7th day and sanctified it”
The word translated “Holy” in the NIV and “sanctified” in the NKJV is a verb— a verb of course is an action word—so something is happening— What is happening—well, the word means to “set apart”. And that’s probably the meaning that most of you are familiar with. If I was to go around the room and ask you to tell me what it means to sanctify most of you—I think—would say--”To Set Apart.
The term that means to be set apart is used widely in Scripture and refers to both people as well as objects. For example in Ex 29:21 part of 4-5 chapter conversation that God is having with Moses God tells Moses he is to:(Slide)
And take some blood from the altar and some of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and their garments. Then he and his sons and their garments will be consecrated.
The word “consecrate" in this verse is the same word that is translated “holy” in NIV and “sanctified” in the NKJV (Gen 2:3)
(Slide)In Exodus 30:26-29 this is the same word that is used of the Tabernacle, the ark, the table of showbread, the altar of burnt offering, and all the smaller accessories and utensils used in Israel’s worship were anointed with a special anointing oil so they became “holy”.
Then use it to anoint the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant law, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand. You shall consecrate them so they will be most holy, and whatever touches them will be holy.
So that’s Holy as a verb. It means to set apart or remove from common use. To set apart for special treatment. Now set that aside for a moment—no pun intended—and we’ll come back to it in a little bit.
2. Exodus 3:5
So the first place we see the word holy is in Genesis 2.The second verse in the Old Testament where we encounter the word Holy is in Exodus 3:5. This time the word is not a verb but rather a noun. (you didn’t know you were going to get a grammar lesson this morning did you?) A noun is a word that is used to identify people, places or things.
(Slide) This is the word that is used in Neh 11:1 where Nehemiah tells us that the people went to live in Jerusalem, the holy city. And what is being identified here is holy ground.
Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem. The rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten of them to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns.
(Slide) You will recognize this as the story of Moses and the burning bush.
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
(Slide)God says to Moses this is holy ground. Now, verse 1 of chapter 3 lets us know that Moses had led his father-in-law’s sheep to the “far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb—the mountain of God.”
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
One of the things we need to remember as we read this is that Horeb—the mountain of God—was not yet the mountain of God. Because all the things associated with Mt Sinai—the lighting and thunder—the cloud—the giving of the Law—all those things had not yet happened.
So when we read this and we see where God says this is Holy Ground and Moses in his narrating of the story calls the ground the Mountain of God—you can’t say “well that’s why the ground is Holy because all these things happened there.” Because they hadn’t happened yet. There has to be another reason why God would refer to this as holy ground.
It can’t be because of the beauty of the mountains. These are not the great Rocky mountains or the Grand Tetons. Where you have lush green grass in the low lands leading up to great snow capped mountains.
These are rocks that jut up 7500 feet out of the desert region of the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. In the summer months the temperature can reach 105° to 115° and with the exception of Spring, the vegetation is limited to thorny bushes. Not something the average person would look at and say “man—that’s holy ground.”
There had to be something else that made this holy ground—what was it? Well, the short answer is God was there. The presence of God made the ground holy.
(Slide) Verse 2 says the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from with in a bush.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
(Slide) But, when the angel identified himself in verse 6 here is the how he did it. I am the God of your father…at this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God
Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
God manifested himself as he often did in the form of Fire and the presence of a Holy God in the wasteland of the desert made that wasteland a holy place.
Transition
Transition
OK, what does this mean? What does this have to do with me in 2020 and what lessons can we learn from what we have talked about?
Both involved God
God was on the scene for both of these.
It was God who was acting or speaking—declaring the 7th as being holy—sanctified.
It was God’s presence in the wasteland that made the desert land sacred—holy.
So when talk about holy or holiness one of the things that we see is we have to start with God.
(Slide)
“There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
Who among the gods is like you, Lord? Who is like you— majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
Isaiah describes God this way in Isa 57: 15
he refers to him as the
“high and exalted One”
“who lives forever,”
“whose name is holy”
(Slide)
And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The only place in scripture where a quality or a characteristic or trait is stated 3 times. (Rev 4:8 where the same angels are singing the same song) Jesus—Verily, verily I say to you—or It’s true, It’s true.
(Slide) The songwriter got it right when he penned the words:
only thou art holy
there is none beside thee
perfect in pow'r, in love, and purity.
So, again, when we talk about holy or holiness we have to start with God. We cannot start with a worldly or human understanding of the word holy and then decide how it applies to God.
It is not our understanding of “holy” that helps us describe God. It is our understanding of God that fills out what we mean when we call something or someone Holy.
(Final Slide)
The 2nd thing we can see from this study is that when we talk about “holy” we are talking about a word that points to something beyond this world.
Humans for the most part are religious, and they recognize that there is something beyond this world that we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Jews, Muslims, Buddhist, and Hindus are all religious people, and all would agree that our physical world is not all there is to reality.
And when people point to this transcendent world—this “something beyond the world we live in” it doesn’t matter what language they speak they will use a word we can translate into English as Holy.
Muslims have an Arabic word that refers to Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem as a holy place. An African shaman might have a holy drum that he uses to contact the ancestor spirits and it would be unthinkable to use that drum to make music for an ordinary gathering.
No matter the religion, if people believe in something in the beyond— that is somehow connected to us they will describe that connection as holy.
But when you get into Christianity the word holy is more than a useful reminder of something that extends beyond our world.
Maybe this will help us understand what I mean. We stated earlier that the word “Holy” can be a verb that means “to set apart” But in reality that’s an inadequate or incomplete definition of what the word means
If you were to go over to N Lincoln here in town you would find a plot of ground that has indeed been “set apart”. This plot of ground is 120 yards long and 160 feet wide. It has 2 goal post one at each end of that 120-yard-long field. All of this is dedicated to or —set apart for football.
Everything that happens there revolves around football. You don’t play baseball there. You don’t play basketball there, you don’t roller skate there—school dances are not held there. Only football is played there.
The marching band might practice there but that’s because they are going to be entertaining the crowd during the half time show at —yep the football game.
It’s set apart for football, but you would never call it a holy field, would you? My dad had a chair that only he sat in—It was set apart for him, but we never referred to it as a holy chair.
To be holy then as scripture talks about holy, is more than to be set apart; it is to be set apart for God. To set a person, place or thing apart as holy is to recognize that the person, place or thing points us to something beyond the world we live in. It points us to God.
Those of us that remember and have fond memories of Nazarene Acres and might be tempted to refer to it as a holy or a sacred place would do so because it’s a place where we had an encounter with God who is holy.
When we talk about a person who is holy we do so because there is something about them that reminds us of God.
So, when you get into Christianity the word Holy is more than just a reminder of a world beyond our own. It is a reminder of a holy God who has come after us and in his coming after us has given us an invitation to participate in becoming like He is.
The old testament is filled with this. God is constantly reminding his people through their leaders to be holy as he is holy. I think sometimes when we read these verses in the Old Testament where God reminds the people—Be holy because I am holy—and we think—there He goes again—beating them over the head and sucking all the fun out of life.
This wasn’t God trying to suck all the fun out of life—this was God encouraging them to “Come on up to where I am”.
The new testament echoes and expands this thought. Giving us examples of people who set themselves apart to God to the extent that God’s Holy Spirit filled them to the point that they literally began to take on the characteristics of God’s holiness.
Stephen was so much like Jesus in his own death that he literally prayed the same prayers Jesus prayed—Lord, receive my Spirit and Lord, do not hold this sin against them. (Father forgive them for they know not what they do)
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
So, what do we do with what we have learned?
Well, if we can’t start with a human understanding of holy and apply that to God—If we have to start with God to determine what holiness is then we need to have a correct understanding of God. Preacher how do I get a correct understanding of God?
God has revealed himself to us in scripture so we need to study what scripture says about the nature and character and holiness of God.
God communicates to us through prayer—ask him to reveal himself to you in a new way and on a deeper level.
If to be Holy means more than just set apart—if it means more than just set apart from something but TO something and that something is not a thing but a person then we need to
Consider our ways.
Does what I do indicate that my life is really set apart for the glory of God?
Does the way I spend my time and money prove or support that claim?
Do I put God first? Or could I put more of an effort into serving God?
2. Again, God communicates to us through prayer—ask Him if He is
pleased with the way I spend my time and money and the effort I put
into serving him.