The Attributes of God

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Each week this fall we’re looking at another attribute of God, a different characteristic, a different aspect to his nature. As Christians, we can make sense of our lives by looking at how God has taught us his name and his attributes.

In other words, a Christian stands and says, “I don’t know the specific reasons for this marriage problem or the loss of my job or this difficult person in my life to love or this goal I have never reached. I don’t know the specific reasons for it, but I know the general, most basic purpose of it is that I know God better.” You go through the Bible and you see God does not just say, “I am Jehovah. I am the Lord.” He tells you various parts and various aspects about who he is.

When Abraham thinks he’s going to have to lose his son, Isaac, God appears and says, “I am Jehovah Jireh. I will always provide.” He appears to the children of Israel when they’re about to die of thirst, and he heals a polluted lake. He says, “I am Jehovah Rapha. I am the one who heals you.” He appears to the children of Israel when they’re about to fight against an overwhelming force, and he says, “I am Jehovah Nissi. I am your banner. I am your victory.”

As Christians, we look back on our lives and say, “In that period of time God was revealing himself to me, showing me another part of his name, helping me apprehend with richness another excellency, another attribute of his being.” You can look back through the attributes of God and make sense out of your life. You can look forward and face anything in front of you through the attributes of God, because real fullness of humanity is to know God for who he is and all the richness of what that is.

Through various trials and tribulations in your life, how has God shown Himself to you?

Today we’re looking at his holiness. I’m going to show you four things about holiness from this passage. All four things are critical for you to understand God’s holiness. To leave any one of them out, I’m afraid, would give you a truncated or a false view of it.

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

What does it mean that God is holy?

I’m going to show you what this text teaches, first of all, his holiness overwhelms us with his "otherness." That’s what it means to be holy. His holiness overwhelms us, then it strips us of deception, then it heals us with his grace, and then it supernaturalizes and renovates our character.

Holiness does four things: It awes us, strips us, heals us, and empowers us.

If you don’t understand all four of those things, you are not going to understand real holiness and what it means to say, “God is holy.

God's Holiness Awes Us

1 Sam 2:2, Heb. 12:14, Eze. 38:23

Holiness is that attribute of God by which He preserves the integrity of His own being. This means God never needs to be reminded to be good, loving, wise or wonderful. He doesn't labor to accomplish what most of us define as "being holy." Instead, because God's very nature is holy, He will never be less than what He is already.

God's holiness guarantees the changeless integrity of His own being. - Jack Hayford

The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive The Holy One; His Holiness

Some of you say, “I thought Christianity was about a God of love and he just helped you with your self-esteem by showing you how much he loves you.” Friends, you’ll never be able to get to his love unless you go through his holiness. If you go through his holiness, if you go to the altar, if you go to the temple and you see him you’ll come out changed. You’ll come out holy. Let’s pray.

God's very nature is holy, He will never be less than what He is already.

Remember, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you have broken the covenant.” Here Isaiah is putting the curse on himself: “Woe to me!” When Job saw God in the last part of Job 42, he says, “… now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself …” One of the more hilarious examples of the presence of the holy is in Mark 4 where Jesus is in the boat with his disciples. There is a storm that comes up, and they’re all afraid. He calms the storm, and they’re terrified, because the rescue is more terrifying to them than the peril from which they were rescued.

The storm isn’t anywhere near as terrifying as to realize you’re in the presence of God Almighty. They were terrified. They said, “Who is this?” I don’t know what Ludwig Feuerbach and Freud thought about Mark 4. Those are the guys who tried to explain religion. They said, “Religion grew up because when human beings were primitive we were scared of nature. We were scared of the storms, so we had to invent a God we could go to and get help from. We were afraid of impersonal nature, so we had to invent a God who would enable us to deal with the frightening world we lived in.”

Do you think most Christians understand the holiness of God?

How would a greater revelation of God's holiness change your life?

God's Holiness Strips Us

When Isaiah hears and sees and grasps the holiness of God, in the old King James Authorized Version he says, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Why is he talking about his lips? It’s kind of odd. He’s traumatized, yes. He doesn’t come in and see the Lord of hosts and go running out saying, “Hey! Come and look at this!” He doesn’t say, “Man, this is great!”

He says, “I am ruined. I am literally coming apart because my lips are unclean.” Why his lips? What about his ears? What about his feet? They’re uglier than your lips. Why the lips? Here is why: Isaiah is a prophet. Isaiah 6, is not his call to be a prophet. He’s already a prophet. Go back to Isaiah 1 through 5, and you’ll see he is already prophesying. What is a prophet? A preacher. What is a prophet? A pundit. A prophet is a public communicator, an oral communicator, a speaker.

To a prophet, your lips are what to a dancer your legs are, what to a pianist your fingers are, what to a pitcher your arm is. In other words, it’s your pride and joy. The holiness of God does not lead him to think about his sins. It leads him immediately to look at his strengths and find they are not strengths at all. This is not just one of the key principles of biblical religion. This is not just one of the things that sets off real Christians from moral and religious people. This is one of the keys to life.

The holiness of God does not simply lead Isaiah to repent of his sins. Plenty of people repent of their sins who really don’t understand the gospel. The holiness of God leads Isaiah to repent of his righteousness, his best deeds, his pride and joy, the thing he felt he does best. That explains why he feels like he’s coming apart. He’s talking psychologically. Do you know why he feels like he’s coming apart, why he’s ruined, why he’s undone? Because every human being has a glue that holds your personality together.

John Ploughman’s Pictures: More of His Talk Fools Set Stools for Wise Men to Stumble over

There are difficulties in everything except in eating pancakes, and nobody ought to be expected to untie all the knots in a net, or to make that straight which God has made crooked. He is the greatest fool of all who pretends to explain everything, and says he will not believe what he cannot understand. There are bones in the meat, but am I to go hungry till I can eat them? Must I never enjoy a cherry till I find one without a stone? John Ploughman is not of that mind. He is under no call to doubt, for he is not a doctor: when people try to puzzle him he tells them that those who made the lock had better make the key, and those who put the cow in the pound had better get her out. Then they get cross, and John only says—You need not be crusty, for you are none too much baked.

It is easy for us to relate God's holiness to our sin but how can God's holiness shed light on our perceived "goodness?"

God's Holiness Heals Us

The holiness of God makes grace real. This is the good news. Some of you are saying, “It’s about time.” The good news is you will never find grace and the love of God … something that shakes you to your roots, something that changes you, something that lifts you up and gives you power to spare … until you’ve been brought out of your self-righteousness. Look at what happens to Isaiah. Isaiah is coming apart. Isaiah says, “Woe is me! for I am undone …”

He’s like those people in the book of Revelation 6, who say on the last day to the mountains, “Fall on us,” and to the hills, “Cover us and hide us from the face of the One who sits upon the throne.” That’s how Isaiah felt, but out of the darkness, beyond all hope and reason, here comes a seraph with a coal from the altar. What is the altar? It’s the place where sins are atoned for. It’s the place where the blood is spilled. It’s the place where sins are paid for. You don’t think Isaiah, who was a professional preacher, didn’t know that’s what the altar was for?

Isaiah always knew the altar was for the sacrifice for sins. That was the place of atonement. That was the place of forgiveness. As the coal hits Isaiah's lips, it’s showing us for the first time the grace of God becomes more than a theory to him. It burns away his guilt like a cold iron burns you. Isaiah had a theoretical view of his sin, and it became practical. As a result, Isaiah had a theoretical view of the grace of God, but now and only now does it become something that energizes him and changes him.

Years ago, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave the illustration for this in one of his sermons I’ve never forgotten, and some of you have certainly heard it. He says if somebody comes to you and says, “I’ve paid one of your bills,” you have no idea how excited to be. It could be they’ve paid postage due, paid a couple of dollars so a package that had postage due could be received. On the other hand, maybe they paid $40,000 of your back IRS taxes. Until you know the actual amount of the debt, you don’t know how joyful to be. The size of the debt actually determines the magnitude of the joy.

In light of God's holiness, how can this cause us to be more thankful in our daily lives?

God's Holiness Empowers Us

The holiness of God renovates and changes us. What happens to Isaiah here? As soon as he’s cleansed, as soon as he’s gone through the holiness-grace dynamic and as soon as he’s seen the holiness and been stripped of his self-righteousness and now finally realizes what the grace of God really means, what has happened to him?

God says, “I have a job for a prophet. I need a prophet to go to a group of people who will never, ever listen to him. I need a prophet to go and spend the next 30 years preaching to people who will only despise and only ridicule him. I need a prophet who will go and take a job that will mean the rest of your life you’ll be perceived as a professional failure. Your life will continually be in danger. You’ll receive no support or affirmation of any sort. Do I have any applications?” Isaiah immediately jumps up and says, “Here am I. Send me.” Why?

Don’t you see the liberation? He is no longer afraid of being perceived as a failure. He’s already been perceived as a failure. He knows that God sees him as a failure, and God has received him and has accepted him. He’s not afraid of anything anymore. Do you know how liberated you would be if you understood the holiness of God and the grace of God like that? Do you know what that liberation is called in the Bible? It’s called personal holiness. The holiness of the human heart is a response to the holiness and the grace of God. When you have responded to that, you will, for example, be full of courage.

You’ll say, “Here is the Holy Father in whose presence even the angels burn and smoke, and they have to cover their faces, and yet he loves me. If that God is for me, what am I afraid of?” It brings courage. It brings peace. Do you know why God revealed himself to Isaiah? Because it was the year King Uzziah died. “What is so special about that?” King Uzziah had reigned for 52 years. Everybody was terrified. When you have a king for 52 years and he dies, everybody is terrified about the future. God reveals himself to Isaiah, who is scared about the future, and says, “I want to show you I’m the real King.”

I read an interesting, little article on how to deal with worry. I picked it up out of a popular magazine. It said what you do is put a rubber band around your wrist. When you start to worry, you pull the rubber band and snap it back. Then you say, “Worrying won’t help me at all.” Then relax every muscle in your body and picture yourself in some idyllic setting. (This was an expert on how to cope with life.) Snap the rubber band, tell yourself, “It’s no good to worry,” relax every muscle in your body, and then imagine yourself in an idyllic setting.

The Bible says you don’t need tricks. The Bible says you don’t need gimmicks. Many of you are living in the year King Uzziah died. Many of you are living in situations where something you always counted on has been ripped out from underneath you and you’re scared about your future. You don’t need a rubber band. You don’t need muscle relaxing. You don’t need visualization techniques.

You need a look at the face of the Holy God who says, “If I’m your King and, in spite of my holiness, I have received you through my grace, then you really can have courage. Then you can really have peace. Then you can really have purity.” Don’t you see what you need is God? You don’t need a technique. Don’t you see what you need is repentance before the holiness of God? Don’t you see there are no shortcuts to it?

Some of you say, “I thought Christianity was about a God of love and he just helped you with ycour self-esteem by showing you how much he loves you.”

You’ll never be able to get to his love unless you go through his holiness.

If you go through his holiness, if you go to the altar, if you go to the temple and you see Him you’ll come out changed. You’ll come out holy.

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