In David you have done what is just and right. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool. He is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel was among those who called on his name. They called on the Lord and he answered them. He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud. They kept his statues and decrees. He gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them. You were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds.
Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy. Some would call the holiness of God the attribute of attribute. And yet perhaps in this holy century it is in some circles the forgotten attribute of God. Did you know, however, that God is more often called holy in the Bible than he is called almighty? That's because his holiness is the fullest expression of himself.
When God wants to underscore a promise or an oath which he gives, he does it by swearing according to his holiness, not his almightiness by which he brings the task of promise, not his faithfulness by which he keeps it, but his holiness because holiness so fully expresses his person. In Psalm 89 and 35, for example, God says, Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. Then in Amos 4, too, the Lord hath sworn by his holiness.
When God wants to call upon one of his attributes, which fully expresses his person he calls upon, his holiness, to have an understanding of God and his proper, it is important for us to balance his love, mercy, and grace, which are so wonderful. With this sobering truth of his holiness, as we approach this attribute this evening, I do so with reference because I feel unworthy to talk about his holiness. As we talk about it, it almost seems as though we do it in justice.
No words can frame the thoughts that we need tonight as we think about the holiness of God. I pray that God the Holy Spirit will help us to not only understand the facts but the sense in our hearts what his holiness is all about. It is important for us to define something about holiness. What do we mean by this term? Holiness is a general term to indicate sanctity or separation from all that is sinful.
The root idea behind holy or holiness is separation from that which is impure or morally imperfect. It refers, as Dr. Unger says, to moral wholeness. So when we talk about the holiness of God, what we are talking about is his entire freedom from moral evil and his absolute moral perfection. There are several things we need to say about God's holiness. First of all, it is fundamental to him. It is one attribute by which God wants his people to know him.
I think we see this suggested at least in Exodus 19, if I may take you there for a moment. We come to that dreadful scene really before Mount Sinai when God deals with his people Israel. This is the time when he is actually married to them, to the covenants of the law. They are to set themselves apart, to consecrate themselves, even to the point of abstaining from marital relations and to the point of washing their clothes.
In Genesis 16, on the morning of the third day, that was the appointed day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Can you imagine that scene? Mount Sinai was covered with smoke. Now Mount Sinai is no ski slope. It is no little hill.
Actually Sinai is a range of mountains and this is one of the peaks on Sinai. And it says the whole mountain was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. I can't just try to picture that in your mind. This mountain that seems to be engulfed with fire and smoke builds up until it seems it will consume all of the mountains. It says the smoke builds up from it like smoke from a furnace. The whole mountain trembled violently and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.
This is the scene as God prepares to speak to his people. Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him, The Lord is sending you to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. Moses was a man of great faith and courage, wasn't he? And Moses went up and the Lord said to him, Go down and warn the people so that they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish.
Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves or the Lord will break out against them. Moses said to the Lord, The people cannot come up from Mount Sinai because you yourself warned us. Put limits around the mountain and set me apart as holy. The Lord is right, go down and bring Aaron up with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord or he will break out against them.
God put on quite a display as he establishes this renewed relationship with Israel. They've now been redeemed out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover Lamb. God with his mighty power has whet them through the waters of the sea. They've now come to the foot of this mountain and God deals with them and the first thing he does when he presses upon them is holiness.
He tells them to consecrate themselves, to wash their clothes and not to set foot beyond the certain boundary that he had set at the foot of the mountain. He says if they dare to come any further, if they try to get a glimpse of what's going on here in the mountain, I will kill them. You see, God wanted his people to know that he's a holy God. That's why he says that God's holiness is fundamental to him. As there's any one attribute by which he wants us to know him, it is in his holiness.
Now, the second thing I would say about God's holiness as we talk about identification is that God's holiness is essential. That is, it cannot be separated from God. There is nothing else in all the universe that is holy apart from God, including angels or men. Although there are holy angels and we are called saints or holy people, but we are holy because of our relationship to God, not because of what we are. Only God is holy in himself. There is none other as holy as he is in that same sense.
In 1 Samuel 2, 2, there is none holy as the Lord. Revelation 15, 4, thou alone are holy. Holiness is peculiar to God. Any holiness that his creatures have is imparted to them. God alone is holy and is essential to his being. And finally, God's holiness is immutable. In other words, it's unchanging. God is eternally holy. He is not more or less holy today than he was in Moses' day. His holiness has not increased nor diminished from before the creation of the world. His holiness is unchanging.
It is the same, always. Laman Strauss says this in his book on the first person. Holiness is that natural and essential attribute of God, whereby he is absolutely and essentially perfect and righteous. He is necessarily holy because he is holiness in the highest degree. He is infinitely and eternally holy. And in this, he is unique, different from all creatures, men and angels. God's holiness is not an acquired perfection. It is essentially God himself.
As he was God from eternity, so he was holy from eternity. Therefore, he is as necessarily holy as he is necessarily God. He cannot be God and not be holy. His nature could not subsist without holiness. Now, God's holiness includes several elements. These are sort of sub-gods that we include with holiness. They flow out of his holiness, although sometimes we speak of them as separate attributes of God. Nonetheless, they belong with his holiness. One of them is purity.
We speak about the purity of God. That is an aspect of his holiness. In 1 John 1.5, it says, God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Darkness there refers to moral darkness, or his moral imperfection or blemish. None at all in God. No darkness, absolute light. It means he is free from all defilement. He is pure in essence. That is why when any creature comes into his presence, he is immediately aware of sin.
I believe the closer one walks with God, the more sensitive he becomes to his own sinfulness. When a person gets to the point of sensing that he has need of cleansing, it means he is walking closer to God. The further we get away from God, the more we see ourselves as passable, as okay. But as we draw nearer to God, and he draws nearer to us, there is inevitably this sense of unworthiness, this searching that goes on in the heart and the mind, this trying not to go after purity.
We have an example of that in Isaiah 6. Do you know the passage, don't you? King Uzziah died in that same year, a year of great turmoil in Israel, or Judah. Isaiah saw the Lord, and he was seated on the throne, high and exalted. And if the train of his robe kills the temple, what a majestic figure that is. He sees the Lord, sees upon a throne, and the robe that he wears has a train that goes down the steps from the throne and then all the way out through the temple.
And above him were seraphs, each with six wings. Someone asked me recently, do angels have wings? Well, yes and no. How's that for a good answer? Yes in the sense that there are some angelic creatures that do have wings. But technically no, because angels, as we see them revealed in the Bible, when they appear, appear apparently as human beings, or they can't appear that way. But here is a creature called a seraph, which has six wings. Not just two, but two.
The seraph covered his face with two, he covered his face, and with two he flies. And said that there were two of them, and they were calling one to the other. And this is what they said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. And what was Isaiah's response? It was that he was brought into the presence of the Holy God, this pure one in whom there is no moral blemish. He cries out, woe to me!
I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. You see, as he comes into the presence of God, and he witnesses the holiness of God, the thing that he immediately senses is his own sinfulness and unworthiness to be there. That's God's purity. And then when we think of God's holiness, we also think of his righteousness. Jeremiah the prophet, chapter 12, verse 1, says,
You are always righteous, O Lord. What that means is that God is always right in everything that he does. He cannot condone evil. God is always right, and therefore our sin has an intense and immediate effect upon him. That's why it says in Ephesians 4.30, And grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby you are sealed under the day of redemption. I'm glad that he says that, that we're sealed under the day of redemption.
A mark of ownership is upon us until that day that we are redeemed at the rapture, and caught away to be with the Lord. But he says that even though we are sealed with the Spirit of God, it's possible for us to grieve him. It doesn't say grieve him away, but it says it's possible for us to grieve him. You mean God has emotions? Well, God has emotions in a far more keen sense than you or me. He has perfect emotion. When you and I sin, it's not only disgraceful to us, it is grieving to God.
It hurts God. The Holy Spirit within us groans because of that. Because he is righteous, he is holy. And then there's God's justice, which is also a part of his holiness. Zephaniah writes about this. Did you know that there was a book in the Bible named Zephaniah? Turn to it if you will. Now go to Matthew and just back up, and you'll get there. You'll come to Zechariah. Don't be fooled. It's not the same man. Zephaniah is a couple of books back from that.
Zephaniah was a great prophet of God who cried out for the Lord against Judah, the southern kingdom. He was the great-great-grandson of King Hezekiah. He was a member of the royal family and a prophet of God. Zephaniah says this in the third chapter of his book as we divide it. And here he speaks to the city of Jerusalem. And he warns Jerusalem that because of her wickedness and her sin against the Lord, God is going to judge her.
And that judgment came just perhaps started just 15 years or so after his prophecy. It was the coming of Babylon upon that nation. But he says in chapter 3 verse 1, Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled! She obeys no one, she accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord, she does not draw near to her God. This is Jerusalem now, the Jews. Her officials are roaring lions, her rulers are evening wolves who leave nothing for the morning.
The leaders who should have brought them to God were like beasts. Her prophets are arrogant, they are treacherous men. Her priests profane the sanctuary and do violence to the law. The Lord within her is righteous. He does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice, and every new day he does not fail, yet the unrighteous know no shame. And because Israel refused God's hand of discipline, God brought that nation, the Southern Kingdom of Judah, technically into bondage to Babylon.
God's justice was fulfilled in his people. His justice is what holiness demands upon sin, is punishment upon sin. That's justice. Richard DeHaan, in his book, I think, The Living God, says, God has established moral laws based upon his holy nature, and has provided just penalties for the infraction of these laws. It is absolutely necessary that the prescribed penalty be carried out, God's integrity at stake.
He cannot declare a law, decree a penalty, and then refrain from administering the threatened punishment from then sin. God would be untrue to himself, and in a real sense, become a partner in sin, if he were to let it go uncounted. And so in his justice, he will not allow sin to go unpunished, and we talked about that some while this morning. Now let's think about the manifestation of God's holiness. We'll talk a little bit about what it is.
I'm going to suggest four ways in which God has manifested his holiness. This is not a complete list. It's only meant to be suggested to you. But God, first of all, manifested his holiness in his creation. Now sin has affected it today, but originally God's creation was absolutely holy. In Genesis 1, as God created it, he said it was good. Why do you call it good? Because it was perfect. Not that everything was designed just right, it was, but it was without moral blemish.
There was no sin in all of it. It was good in the fullest sense of that term. In Psalm 145, verse 17, the Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works. Even Satan, Lucifer, was created holy. In Ezekiel 28, in that passage that seems to refer to his fall, it says about him, you were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created until iniquity was found in you. In his creation, God manifested his holiness. Secondly, God manifested his holiness in his commandments.
In Romans chapter 7, Paul speaks to this point. We'll not take time to read the link because we'll be there in a few months on Sunday morning. He speaks about the law and its impact. He says, the law reveals our sin. Then he asks the question, is the law therefore sinful because it shows our sin? It's not forbid, he says. He goes on to say, the law is holy and his commandments are holy. And so God has revealed his holiness in his commandments. The laws of God are a revelation of his holiness.
Even the ceremonial laws of ancient Israel were designed to impress upon that people his holiness in an opportunity for a holy life. You go back to the book of Leviticus and the book of Exodus, and you read there about the washings of the priests and the way they were preparing themselves for their service. The way that people were to bring their offerings. You read about the leaven and the fact that leaven was not to be a part of most of their offerings.
You read about the feast of unleavened bread when they were to sweep all the lemon out of their houses. They did not allow a grain of lemon in there during those days they observed that feast right after Passover. What did all that mean? That was all ceremonial. We don't do that today. That was a part of Israel. But all of those ceremonies, those rituals, were intended to impress upon the people God's holiness
that he could not have sinned in his presence. And so in all of his commandments, whether it was moral law or ceremonial law, God intended to convey his holiness. Right is right and wrong is wrong because of God's holiness. An act is either in harmony with God's holiness or it violates his holiness. Thirdly, God reveals and manifests his holiness in his curse upon sin. God says, the soul that sins shall die. Man finds his little pleasures in sin, but God does never find pleasure in sin.
In Psalm 5 verse 4, For you are not a God that has pleasure in wickedness or evil. God does not find the least bit of pleasure in sin. In fact, in the next verse in Psalm 5, it says that God hates workers of iniquity. Now it's true that God loves the world, but God hates the workers of iniquity. That's the other side of the coin. He not only hates their sin, he hates the workers of iniquity. He hates sinners in one sense.
Not because of the sinner himself, but because of the sin that is his. God hates iniquity. Again, I quote Lehmann Strauss, Unlike man, God is impartial in his hatred and judgment of sin. We are prone to minimize the sins of our own children, of those nearest and dearest to us, while we discuss freely with indignation the sins of others. But it is not so with God.
He will put to death a Nadab and an Abahyu, punish a David, pursue a Jonah, prevent a Moses from entering Canaan, or pronounce an anathema upon a Peter, and from Jesus, call him Satan. A man will never loathe cancer so much, until that dreaded, filthy disease causes the loss of his own eyes, arms, or legs, or else the life of one of his own precious loved ones. But God's hatred for sin is necessarily universal and perpetual.
The fountain of holiness can never issue forth the slightest approval of sin at any time or place, or in any person. And that brings us to the fourth manifestation of God's holiness, and that's in the cross, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true that the cross reveals in a way that is beyond description the love of God. But it is equally true that the cross reveals the holiness of God. For there we see the penalty which the holiness of God demands because of sin.
A penalty paid by a substitute, an innocent, holy one, who died in the place of sinners, you and me. It is difficult for us to grasp that transaction of the cross, but we have a prophecy in the Psalms that says something about this. Jesus quoted from the Psalms a number of times, and in the cross he quoted Psalm 22, where David wrote, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then in verse 3 he gives the answer, Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One of Israel.
Why was it that God turned his back on the Son as he hung up on the cross? It was because the Son had become sin for us, and God in his holiness had no choice but to turn away from the Son. I want to quote a man by the name of Charnoff, you've heard me quote him before. This is one of his statements about the holiness of God as it relates to the cross. I remind you he wrote for another century, so he's a little wordy, but if you listen you get so much from him.
Not all the vials of judgment that have or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner's conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious demons, nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such a demonstration of God's hatred of sin as the wrath of God let loose upon his Son. Never did divine holiness appear more beautiful and lovely than at the time our Savior's countenance was most marred in the midst of his dying groans.
This he himself acknowledges in Psalm 22, when God had turned his smiling face from him and thrust his sharp knife into his heart, which forced that terrible cry from him, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He adores this perfection, thou art holy. Think of it, as Jesus Christ became sin for us, and as he cried out in anguish upon the cross at the loss of fellowship with the Father, he nonetheless responded in worship by crying out, thou art holy.
Let's think in closing about some application regarding this blessed doctrine of the holiness of God. My first remark is more of an observation, I guess, than an application. It is this that man makes his gods the opposite of the god of the Bible, given that the gods of man-made religions are not holy gods, but they are gods that in some respect, or to some degree, incorporate the weaknesses, or the sins even, of man himself. Why is that? Because man wants to approve himself in his sinfulness.
He wants a god that will more or less have him on the back, and will not condemn him. That is why man's gods are so different than the god of the Bible. God says, you thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself, Psalm 50, verse 21. When man creates a god, he creates a god like himself, so that his conscience will not be pricked for his sin. But the god of the Bible is a holy god.
Man views God as a lenient, rather generous grandfather image, who overlooks our minor infractions and the insignificant indiscretions of youth, as some would put it. But the Bible states that God is angry with the wicked every day. There is no peace, says God to the wicked. Now my second point is more of an application and an observation, and it is this, that sin cannot go unpunished. The soul that sins will die.
The Lord Jesus Christ himself says to those who are unrepentant and lost, depart from me ye cursed, in everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. No sin will go unpunished because of the justice of God. As we said this morning, God's wrath is being stored up as if we were in a treasure house, so that when a sinner comes to that horrible and terrible day of his judgment before God, he will receive all that he has saved up of God's wrath.
He will receive in full the punishment for his sin. Thank God that your sins and mine, that is those of us who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, were judged at the cross, so that we no longer have to face our sins. We will never have to stand before God and there be confronted with any sin that we have ever committed or thought or said. Our sins have all been forgiven, past, present, and future, by the grace of God. We will give answer for the works of our lives, the good deeds of our lives.
Our faithfulness will be measured and tested. We will be rewarded at the judgment seat of Christ, but not one sin that we have committed can be brought forth at that time because our sins are under the blood of Christ. That is why we can say, as Romans 8.1 says and as Wesley's hymn says that we sang earlier, there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, that is the saved. A third point I would make is that God wants us to be holy people.
1 Peter 1 is a familiar passage, I am sure, to many of you, where it speaks about God's holiness. 1 Peter 1 verse 13. He says, Therefore prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled, 2 Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 3 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 4 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. 5 For it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.
6 Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, 7 live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. God wants you and me to live a separate life. That is what holiness is. It is a life of separation from sin. It does not mean that we are to separate ourselves from unsaved people because we cannot do that and live in this world. We live around it. We work around it. We want by God's grace to build friendships with us so we can take a living into Christ.
But we are not to partake of the lifestyle of this world. We are not to, as he says here, conform to the evil desires that we had when we lived in ignorance. That is, before we were saved. This is a day when so many Christians seem to feel that they need to conform to the age in which we live in order to be relevant. God has not called us to be relevant. God has called us to be holy.
I would invite you to turn to Ephesians 3 as we look at a couple of other verses that deal with this same thought. In Ephesians 5, verse 3, he says, But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking which are out of place. This is a day in which there are so many double meanings to words.
There are people who say things and they just twist a little bit to give it a dirty meaning. You can see that in the late night talk shows, as well as in the media. We see it around where we work. Some of us have done it. That's what he's talking about here when he speaks about foolish talk, or coarse joking. Improper kinds of things.
There are some Christians who think that they need, in order to be transparent to a degree that God does not intend, to talk about every aspect of their life and to be fully open even about their sexual life, for example. Some of the books that are written by so-called Christian authors, which are available these days, that deal with this area really can have an embarrassment, I think, to the evangelical world because they are so blatant.
I am not in favor of returning to the Victorian era in that sense. There needs to be honesty. When we talk about holy things, we need to talk cautiously and carefully, and not be coarse and not be obscene. These things have no place with God's people. In verse 5 he says, For of this you can be sure, no immoral, impure, or greedy person, such a man as an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore, do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.
God has called us to live holy lives as his people, and we ought never to underestimate or undervalue the importance that God places upon a separated life. Finally, by way of application, I would say to you that the holiness of God demands that our approach to him be a reverent one. Psalm 89 verse 7, God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all those who are about him.
Psalm 99 verse 5, which we read, Exalt the Lord our God in worship at his footstool, for he is holy. When Moses met God for the first time on Mount Sinai, before he fell on his face, and before a conversation took place between God and Moses, what did God tell Moses to do? Do you remember? That's right. Take off your shoes, because the ground that you stand on is holy. Was the dirt holy? Well, it was because the presence of God was there, you see.
When we approach God, it must be with a reverent attitude, remembering his holiness. When we come to church, we must meet together for a holy convocation. We must come together reverently. Now, it's not that this building itself is in some sense holy, but it is in another sense. Because God is here. As we come together, God is here, and therefore our meeting together is to be one of holiness. When we come before God in our prayer lives, we are to remember God's holiness and be reverent.
We have an example in the Old Testament of a man who was thoughtless and careless about this matter, and who paid for it with his life. I think of Uzzah. Do you remember him? They were transporting the ark in a method which God had not prescribed, by the way. It was improper the way they were doing it. But the ox were pulling the ark on a cart, and at one point they stumbled and the cart shook. And this man, Uzzah, reached up to steady that ark of God, and God immediately struck him dead.
Why was that? It says that David was angry with God about that. But you see, what happened was, Uzzah, who was fully aware that no one was to touch the ark, nonetheless did it in a moment of carelessness and thoughtlessness. You see, when we come before God, it must be with thought and with care and with reverence. Dr. Arthur Pink says, the more our hearts are awed by his ineffable holiness, the more acceptable will be our approach to him.
God has called us out from the world to be his people. He has called us saints, and we are that in our position. Sometimes we don't live like saints, but God has called us to be saints. We are saints. And our need, dear people, is to be holy people. I'd like for us to close by singing a hymn that puts this into words. It's number 422, and what it says is, take time to be holy.
We can't rush along with the world to be caught up in the fast pace of living, a pace that is thoughtless and careless, and still be holy people. It takes time with God. It takes quietness with the Lord. And what this song says by William Longstaff is that we need to take time to be holy and to speak oft with the Lord. Let's stand and sing it together, number 422.