The Love of A Holy God

Intro:

Isaiah 30:9-11 “They are a rebellious people, deceptive children, children who do not want to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, Do not prophesy the truth to us. Tell us flattering things. Prophesy illusions. Get out of the way! Leave the pathway. Rid us of the Holy One of Israel.”

Can’t you see the similarity between the world of the Old Testament Israelites and the world we live in today? We find ourselves in a world that hates the Holy One of Israel, the Holy One of the Scriptures. Church, our God is holy.

We live in a day and age were people would rather live according to their own evil desires. We know this to be true. We can see it all around us. For those of us that are Christians, we can feel this tension in our bones, between what we know God wants to see happening in the world and what we actually see happening around us.

Better yet, we can feel this very tension in our own lives. We find ourselves longing to please God with the way that we live, and at times, failing to live how we know we should. Far too often we can all say that’s the case. We see and feel the problem of sin in us and all around us.

The great teacher R.C. Sproul has a beautiful depiction of the holiness of God.

“The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath, or justice, justice, justice. It does say that He is holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of His glory.”

Many church’s that are meeting today will turn a blind eye to this Holy God. Substituting instead a god of their own image. A god that is much more interested in love love love than holy holy holiness. This morning, I hope to present you with the greatest truth’s that God has revealed to us about Himself. He is a Holy God, but He is a Holy God that loves us.

It is my goal that in seeing these truth’s today, it will raise a level of awe in our hearts that the only sufficient response would be too fully surrender of our lives to Him. That our hearts would overflow with worship to Him. Not, just today in church, but as we leave this building and go out into the world. I have very lofty goals for the Word of God this morning. But, I believe that God is able to powerfully work in us through it.

But, before we ever get to the Good News about God, we must first understand that, point number one, God’s holiness separates.

God’s Holiness Separates

I think its good to define words. What does the word holy mean? The word holy means set apart or separated.

So, if God is holy, what is he set apart from? From what is he separated? There are two aspects of holiness that are important to understanding the holiness of God.

By His nature, God is separated from everything that He has created. He is greater than everything. He is high above it all. The holiness of God is a way of saying that God is completely different than human beings.

There are multiple verses in the Bible that paint this picture of God.

Exodus 15:11 “Lord, who is like you among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders?”

1 Samuel 2:2 “There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides you! And there is no rock like our God.”

Psalm 86:8-10 “Lord, there is no one like you among the gods, and there are no works like yours. All the nations you have made will come and bow down before you, Lord, and will honor your name. For you are great and perform wonders; you alone are God.”

Psalm 99:1-3 “The Lord reigns! Let the peoples tremble. He is enthroned between the cherubim. Let the earth quake. The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted above all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awe-inspiring name. He is holy.”

Isaiah 40:25 ““To whom will you compare me, or who is my equal?” asks the Holy One.”

We have no one to compare God to. He is not just a bigger, more massive version of a human being in the sky. Many people in movies and tv shows imagine God as being some old man, wearing a robe, just chilling in heaven. This makes sense because it’s our natural inclination as sinful people to make God look and act exactly like we do. In reality, there is nothing we can compare God to. He is completely unique.

For example, there is no other being in creation that hasn’t been created. God is without beginning. We can’t look to anyone to see an example of a Trinity, someone walking around that is three persons in one being. God is all together high above us. He is mysterious. He’s in a league of His own. And we can’t fully comprehend His greatness and transcendence.

So, one aspect of holiness is that God is separated from, and high above his creation.

Another aspect of holiness is that God is separated from the sinfulness of His creation. When we think of holiness, this may be what we think of usually.

God has nothing to do with sinfulness. Think about what sin is after all, it’s any failure to obey God commands. God is the standard for moral perfection in and of himself. Everything he does is perfect, and He can’t lay his eyes on sinfulness.

Habakkuk 1:13 “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”

Psalm 24:3-4 “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not appealed to what is false, and who has not sworn deceitfully.”

No sinner could ever stand before God.

It only took one sin for Satan and his demons to be thrown from heaven.

It only took one sin for Adam and Eve to be thrown from a perfect relationship with God in the Garden of Eden.

God separates Himself from the unholy one’s, from the ones who have sinned against Him.

This leads us to our greatest problem. God is holy, and point number two, We are Not holy.

We Are Not Holy

Isaiah 6:1-5 “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim were standing above him; they each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies; his glory fills the whole earth. The foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of their voices, and the temple was filled with smoke. (5) Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies.

There is something about this text that is very easy for modern English readers to miss. When Jewish authors wanted to emphasize certain things in their writings, they would do it by repeating the word they wished to highlight. So, when the Bible calls God holy, holy, holy it is emphasizing the holiness of God to the greatest degree possible.

For a moment I want to take a look at the angels that we see in this text. Could we imagine for a moment beings of this magnitude? Six winged creatures with eyes that covered their bodies. How small would you feel? How in awe would you be?

However, we must think, that while these creatures were amazing, and awe inspiring, Isaiah could describe them in detail. Isaiah couldn’t even for a moment describe what he was seeing of God, except for the where he was seated and the majesty of His robe.

Isaiah was a prophet of God. He was not a man that we would consider to be a great sinner, right? If he was alive in our day, we would have deemed Him a righteous man. A man of God, doing the work of God. We would have held him in high esteem.

One moment in the presence of the holy, holy, holy One of Israel and Isaiah realized the state of his heart. He understood his depravity. He saw clearly the evil that was in him and all around him. He says, “Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies.”

We all fall in the same category. We are all on equal ground before God. He are all unholy before Him. We all cry out, we are ruined! We are men and women of unclean lips and we live among people with unclean lips.”

Jesus says in Matthew 12:34 “For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.”

Isaiah isn’t just speaking of unclean lips, he’s speaking of an unclean heart. He suffered from the same curse that we do as a consequence of the sinful decision of Adam and Eve.

Naturally, we are enslaved to sin.

Romans 3:10-18 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

On our own, we are helpless and hopelessly sick. There is no cure that this world offers for a heart that is actively rebelling against God. There’s no amount of looking inside yourself or meditation that would bridge the gap between the holy transcendent Creator of the universe and His hard-hearted unholy creatures.

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;”

We all fall short of the perfect standard of God.

Right after Isaiah sees God and realizes that he was unholy, he says:

Isaiah 6:5-7 “Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said: Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.”

God atoned for His sin. Notice that there was nothing that Isaiah did other than recognize His sinfulness.

It is only a work of God that could cleanse unclean lips. God made Isaiah right before Himself.

We need help too.

Praise God, point three is true. God’s love saves.

God’s Love Saves

God in His holiness, throughout all of time, had a perfect plan in place to redeem a people for Himself. God made a promise directly to the devil directly after he had successfully tempted Eve in the Garden. God told him in Genesis 3 that the coming Seed of the Woman would crush His head.

Here we see the unfolding of a plan that God already had in place to fix what the newly sinful Adam and Eve had done.

God would have been perfectly just to have killed Adam and Eve the moment they had sinned. He actually promised them that the day they ate of the forbidden fruit that they would die.

But, instead of ending their existence, God graciously clothed them and promised that the seed of the woman would come for them.

The Old Testament prophecies continue and we see God come to Abraham and his barren wife Sarah promising a line of descendants that would be uncountable as all the grains of sand. That Abraham would be the father of many nations.

All of these prophecies begin very vague, like a blurry picture. But slowly as God reveals His plan in time, the picture comes more and more in focus.

God, all along was sending His people help, he was sending a Savior. The Jews thought that this Messiah that God was sending was going to be a great man, who would come to power and put Israel back on the map, conquering all their enemies and bringing them into a state of peace with God and man.

But, the prophet Isaiah draws a bit of a different picture.

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.”

Immanuel literally means “God with us”

Surely, Isaiah didn’t mean that the holy God of the universe would come out from His place in heaven to earth right?

Well, he doubles down. Isaiah 9:6 “For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

So, the promise that God made to Adam and Eve thousands of years prior finally makes sense. The seed of the woman, would be God Himself, and he would crush the head of the serpent.

As the New Testament writers come on scene, they depict the man that Isaiah described. John shows us that Christ is the fulfilment of all the ancient prophecies.

John 1:1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.”

We find out that Jesus was on a mission, to seek and save the lost.

How does Jesus save?

As I have mentioned in point number two, we are unholy, and that is our greatest problem in this life. We are at odds with the Creator. Our God doesn’t look past our sins. He is just, he doesn’t overlook evil. He makes sure every sin is paid for.

The fully God, fully man, Jesus Christ. Lived a perfect life while he was on earth. He never sinned. He was perfectly holy.

1 Peter 2:22 “He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth;”

He was despised and reject and tempted in all the ways that we were, but yet He never, even for a minute turned His back on God. He never sinned.

But, He was lead like a spotless Lamb to the slaughter.

Jesus, became the Lamb of God for us.

He took on a gruesome death on a Roman Cross in our place. The Romans killed many people by way of crucifixion, but what took place in the death of Christ, was a substitution.

And as he breathed His final breath on the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” What do you think He meant by “it is finished?” The Romans killed many people by way of crucifixion, so he probably wasn’t simply saying this as a sign that His life was over. What He was saying is that the payment was made.

Jesus was paying the fine that sinners had before God. He was paying for our sins before God by taking them upon Himself. We are unholy and Jesus was completely pure and holy. Jesus had the ability to take all of the sinfulness and unholiness of His Bride, the church upon Himself, paying it all in a single moment.

Not, only did Jesus pay for our sins before God, he also made us righteous before God. He didn’t just pay for our sins and leave us with a blank slate. He gave us His righteousness, so that when God would look at us, He would see His perfect Son.

Romans 3:22 “The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

Wow, this is amazing grace. Why did we ever deserve this? There’s no reason that God should save us. It doesn’t make sense.

After Jesus died, He rose three days later. Displaying His power over sin and death. He then ascended into heaven where He is today, reigning in power.

So, what must we do to be saved?

Romans 10:9-11 “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame,”

When we put our faith and trust in Christ, we are saved and given the Holy Spirit. Point four, we are made Holy.

The Holy Spirit does amazing work in us. He sets us apart from our old sinful nature. He separates us from the world for God’s purposes. That is his main objective, to sanctify us, to make us holy.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 “For this is God’s will, your sanctification.”

We Are Made Holy

The Holy Spirit does amazing work in us. He sets us apart from our old sinful nature. He separates us from the world for God’s purposes. That is his main objective, to sanctify us, to make us holy.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 “For this is God’s will, your sanctification.”

What should we do now? We should obey the Spirit of God. We should obey the Word of God that the Spirit has provided us with.

Galatians 5:16-26 “I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

We may fall and struggle in our pursuit of holiness. But, as a Christian we must understand the reality of who we are now. We are holy. Christ has set us apart for Himself, while at the same time we struggle with unholiness. Christ has completed the work to make us holy, while at the same time the Holy Spirit has begun the work to make us holy as Christ is that will only be completed when we die.

So, there is this paradox we deal with where we are already holy, but not yet holy at the same time.

We must pursue Holiness. We must obey our Lord, not because we are going to earn holiness by doing so, but because we love God and long to obey Him because of who He is and what He has done for us in Christ.

Look what Isaiah did.

Isaiah 6:5-8 “Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said: Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord asking: Who will I send? Who will go for us? I said: Here I am. Send me.”

We don’t have the same calling as Isaiah, but what is God calling you to do?

There are many things God calls us to do. We know we are called to do these things because God’s Word clearly teaches us to do these things.

Spread the Good News that you have heard this morning, that the lost can be saved. Those that are in danger of the wrath of the holy God can be made holy before Him.

We are to be faithful members at our churches. We are to gather with the ones that God has set apart out of the world for Himself. We should sing together, and strive to know our holy God more.

We are to separate ourselves from the evil things of the world, repent of our sins, pursue the righteousness that we have seen, the Holy Spirit produces in us.

We should worship our holy God. (Isaac and Nancy) Holy holy holy.