Transcript

Good evening. If you would, go and open up your Bibles tonight to Isaiah chapter six. That's where we're going to be at for pretty much almost the entire lesson tonight. Oh, and thank you for the, all the songs he chose definitely applied to what we're going to be talking about tonight. I love that song, Holy, Holy, Holy.

It really takes me back to college When, in my Spanish class, we used to sing that song, and I didn't know any of the words I was singing, except for Santo, Santo, Santo. It's helpful that they all, you know, appeared in the same order, back to back, so. But in regards to holiness, that's what we're going to be talking about tonight.

If a lot of you know, maybe you don't I'm finishing up some school right now, got about another year left in the master's program, staying Old Testament. And so in the last year, what I'm going to be doing is doing a lot of study in the book of Isaiah. And I've been doing some studying the last couple weeks and been wanting to, I was actually preparing to talk about some in Genesis and I was just drawing some blanks.

I just came across something I was reading something about this title that, that God is is the scribe to God in the book of Isaiah. The, the title or the epithet, the Holy One of Israel, appears 31 times in the entire Old Testament. And 25 of those, nearly 80 percent of the occurrences, actually appear in the book of Isaiah.

So this name, the Holy One of Israel, is a really meaningful name for the prophet Isaiah. It's something that we're going to return to at the end of our study tonight. And I want to kind of talk about it because I think it encapsulates what I'm going to be trying to communicate tonight about God's holiness.

Before we talk about the name, the Holy One of Israel, let's talk about what does it mean to be holy. And I think you can get a lot of probably different definitions from people you talk to in church or growing up maybe whether here or somewhere else you have probably a different experience.

But for me, the, the phrase that I most often heard when it came to what does it mean to be holy was this definition, to be set apart. And this is a great definition, I think. This is a really good way to kind of explain what it means for a Christian or for a person who is one of the people of God what it means for them to be holy.

But the problem with this definition is it doesn't really define holiness in relation to God. What does it mean for God himself to be holy? And there's a quote I want to share with you really quick from a book that I was reading this week that kind of gave me the bones to flesh out this sermon from a gentleman named Andrew Abernathy.

And this is what he says in regards to that kind of definition of to be set apart. He says, the problem with this definition is that it can leave God out of the equation. I can set a basketball apart from other basketballs, but it does not make it holy. It can't be. You can isolate yourself from the entire world, but this does not make you or anyone else holy.

I could describe a student as set apart, but this does not mean that he or she is holy. Then this is what he says. Holiness belongs exclusively to God as it expresses. God's distinctiveness from all that is not God. Anything other than God that is said to be holy is so because it's holiness stems from being associated with God.

And so, tonight, what we're going to do is we're going to use Isaiah 6 to kind of talk about what it means, or talk about different aspects of God's holiness and His nature. And what I want to kind of draw out in these four things, they're going to be kind of grouped together, the first two together, the last two together is I think God's holiness, as we should expect in being a complex God, is that it's paradoxical in nature in a lot of ways.

It's something on the one hand that's totally distinct, it's other, there is nothing comparable to God in any way. And yet at the same time God shares His holiness with humans and He calls all people as He did Israel in Leviticus 19 verse 2, to be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. And so, let's use Isaiah 6 right now, if you'll go and turn there, and let's demonstrate a couple things about God's holiness, and then we'll point it back towards the Holy One of Israel, as Isaiah talks about.

So if you would, turn over to Isaiah 6, and let's get started reading there in verse 1. We're gonna read down to verse 5, we'll make some observations, and then we'll finish. With verses 6 through 8 in a little while. In verse 1 it says, 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. The foundation of threshold shook in the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke.

And I said, woe is me for, I'm a, I'm lost for I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes who've seen the king, the Lord of hosts. So let's look at the first. points on drought in regards to God's holiness in these first few verses. The first one is God's holiness.

Oops, sorry there. God's holiness is transcendent. And I know I'm trying to explain what it means to be holy and you're probably like, okay, well, what does transcendent mean? Think about it maybe in terms of being unbounded, unlimited. It can't be confined to any box you try to put it in. It is totally without boundaries.

And so we start here in Isaiah chapter six, we give this historical marker about the death of King Uzziah. And this is super cool. I think this is so interesting because on the one hand, you get this reference and you might be thinking, okay, well, this is just necessary for a prophet to kind of demonstrate, okay, here's when I got this vision for maybe future purposes to kind of confirm what he's heard.

But if you look a little bit closer, I think this isn't just mere historical reporting. Instead, King Uzziah's earthly mortal kingship is being compared with the heavenly kingship of God. And the end of King Uzziah's reign comes face to face with the transcendence or the endless nature of the reign of our Lord.

And so Isaiah, from here, Isaiah sees this great vision, he's present within the holy of holies. in the temple and all the things he sees in verse one that God is high and lifted up. Presumably from what we know about the construction of Solomon's temple, which would have been the temple this time we know that there's about a 30 by 30 square foot place a box almost, you could call it.

And there's these two 15 by 15 giant cherubim with their wings spread out. And imagine God seated over these great statues with his feet resting on the ark of the covenant that we know. is referred to over and over again in the Old Testament as God's footstool. And he's, he's so large that we see that only the hem of his robe or the, the kind of, the edge of his robe is, is filling the temple.

And so the temple itself cannot even contain God. And this leads the, the seraphim to conclude and say the whole earth is full of God's glory. And then God's voice is so powerful that it literally shakes the foundations of the temple and the temple fills with smoke. And in the Old Testament, kingship is interrelated to glory.

God says in Isaiah 43 verse 15, He says, I am the Lord, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. And Psalm 24 is another good example as well that shows the connection not only between kingship and glory, but also God's kingship. in his holiness. And we don't have time to read it, but that's a great one for you to read and maybe meditate on your own time with the connection between God's holy place and his throne being related in, in the holy of holies there.

But the fact that God's reign and his glory extends beyond the realm of the temple to the ends of the earth is part of what makes him holy, holy, holy. There's no other king that has ever been like the Holy One of Israel. And while Uzziah's reign, and every other king in every nation that's ever been, has ended, God's heavenly reign continues on, uninhibited and limitless.

God's holiness is transcendent. And His reign and His rule is unmatched. So, there's our first point. We want to key on transcendence. And in relation to this, I think also that God's holiness is dangerous. God's holiness is so unique and powerful that it presents a danger to those in His presence who are misaligned with Him.

Look back at what Isaiah says in verse 5. He says, It was me, for I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of unclean people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. I think if you want to think about it this way, I think this is helpful. God's holiness is almost like electricity, right?

You ever seen guys what are they called, the guys that work on the the power lines, the linemen? There we go. That makes, yeah, pretty good name there for that job. Yeah, so they go out there and you know, you always see them, they've got the big heavy gloves on and everything. They've got protective gear, eyewear and things like that.

They're approaching electricity with a level of respect. They know the power that it holds and so they take care, they take precautions in order to engage with this electricity because of its great power. And so, depending on a person's state, whether ritually or ethically impure for some reason, If they come into God's presence they could be destroyed if they're misaligned with Him.

And so being in God's presence, if you're like Isaiah or the Seraphim here, there's kind of two responses to when you come in before God. And for the Seraphim, their response is to worship God as we saw. But even these powerful beings who are in God's presence have to take care that they don't they don't expose themselves.

They cover their faces, but they don't see God's face, because no man can see God's face and live. And then they also cover their feet, which this is probably a euphemism for their private areas, which I know sounds really weird, but that's a really common thing in the Old Testament. And if you think about the Levitical priests, they had to wear special underwear in order to not expose themselves going upstairs.

I can't give you an answer why that is, but I know for, at least as the Old Testament says, you know, if you expose yourself, your nakedness in the presence of God is a dangerous thing. It's something you want to avoid. And so that could be a possibility of what's going on here. So the idea really with that weird kind of side side, aside there is to really say that even these holy beings are really careful in how they approach God, even in their presence, because they don't want to be destroyed themselves.

But then on the other hand, while we have the worshiping the seraphim Isaiah comes before the Lord, and he's totally in dread, and he confesses the sinfulness of himself and his people. And Isaiah knows immediately when he sees that he's in the presence of God that he is in great danger. And so, clearly, he's misaligned with God.

And so there's two kind of options maybe we could think about. How is he misaligned with God? One, it could be, as we see in verse 7, in just a minute we'll talk about this. His guilt and sin are present because they need to be atoned for. But elsewhere, if you want to turn to Isaiah 29, Verse 13, in Isaiah 29 verse 13, there's another reference to lips and the mouth of the people.

And this is usually parallel to kind of, or this is this is parallel to shallow commitment to God and to vain worship. And so, Isaiah 29 verse 13, I think in conjunction with the first point of Isaiah's sin and guilt it says, And the Lord said, Because his people draw near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.

And so I think it could be either one of these or a combination of kind of both options. But Isaiah, regardless of his situation, faces immediate danger before God, which really foreshadows Israel's own judgment that was going to be coming from God once Isaiah is commissioned in the following verses.

Because Israel and Judah themselves had really taken God's name in vain. They had paraded themselves around as being God's people, and yet they were they were engaging in idolatry. They were engaging in injustice and prideful arrogance. And so their hearts were not aligning with God, and they were in danger of judgment, and ultimately, as we know, it led to exile.

And so chapter 1 verse 4 talks about them forsaking and despising the Holy One of Israel, and it says that they are utterly estranged. Their sin caused a danger to them, like for Isaiah, in the presence of God, being destroyed. For the people of Israel, it was them being utterly estranged from God. Amen.

Amen. And then a verse we've all probably heard before in Isaiah 59 verse 2 says, But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. So Isaiah and Israel themselves were meant to be God's holy and chosen people, but instead they delighted in doing evil rather than good.

And so since their hearts were misaligned with God's holy character, They endured serious danger of God's holiness in the exile and, and really a lot of danger before they would eventually be restored. So at this point, we've got our two of our four kind of characteristics of God's holiness. God's holiness is transcendent and it's, it's dangerous.

I think if you stopped right here, You kind of look at God's holiness and you think, man, okay, it's very alienating. I can't really relate to it. And then on the other hand, it's really threatening. I don't want to be anywhere around that. I mean, I don't want to go touch a big old if a hurricane comes and it knocks all the power poles down, I don't want to go touch that electric thing, or the electric line.

I am, I've really got to work on my knowledge of electrical. If, is there anybody with electrical experience, come talk to me afterwards, please. Well, at this point I think we see God's holiness as alienating and threatening. It's something we want to avoid. But this isn't where Isaiah's vision ends. So let's keep reading and go to Isaiah 6, actually through verse 8 there.

It says, Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with his tongs from the altar. Let's And he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, and your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I sin, and who will go for us?

Then I said, Here am I, sin me. And he said, go and say to this people, I think what we find out here from Isaiah's commission is not only God's holiness transcendent or dangerous, but it's also forgiving as well in the Holy One of Israel. He doesn't show himself. To Isaiah in order to kind of beat him into the dust, or to demean him in any way, or even really to like, you know, be like a playground bully, rub his head in the sand and be like, eat dirt!

Yeah, I'm the holy God, Isaiah, take that! You know, that's not, that's not what he's trying to do. But while God's holiness presented a danger to him, God also offers him the solution to that danger. And that's where we have the seraphim coming with this hot coal from the altar, touching Isaiah's lips. And since God is the Holy One of Israel, He alone has the power and the authority to forgive sins.

And this is the conclusion in the New Testament. If you want to turn to Mark chapter 2 Mark chapter 2, where the story one of my favorite stories on Jesus healings, when the paralytic is being let down through the ceiling by his friends, and Jesus sees the friends laying them down, they've they're bringing them down, and he says, and when Jesus saw their faith, in verse 5, He said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven.

Now, some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts. Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And then of course, we know in the story, Jesus shows he does have the power and the authority to forgive sins because he also does what only God can do and he tells the paralytic man that he can arise and walk.

But as the holy, holy God, God grants Isaiah freedom from being lost in his presence. Amen. Amen. And thus God shows that His holiness by His forgiveness, God shows us His holiness by His forgiveness leads to Isaiah's transformation into His prophet. And that leads us to our last point, that God's holiness is transformative.

And as a result of God's forgiveness, Isaiah is now able to fulfill his calling to be a mouthpiece to God for his people. And it was only God's holy and gracious character that Isaiah was even able to stand up and say holy, or here I am, send me. And Isaiah's transformation was probably a really painful thing if you think about it.

If you read a little bit closely, I know it says that the seraphim grabs the coal from the altar with his hand, but it later kind of specifies he does so with the tongs. And think about, the seraphim, their name, it actually comes from a Hebrew verb that means to, to burn. So you could kind of call them the burning ones.

And a lot of the ancient iconography kind of shows them with sort of this kind of flames and things like that. So they're related to flames and heat, and yet they can't even pick up this coal because it's so hot. And they go and touch Isaiah on the lips with this hot coal. Think about how hot and how painful that would have been, that Isaiah's skin had to be burned off of him.

And even Isaiah's own transformation really foreshadows the judgment and the pain that was going to have to come in order for Israel to have to be restored in the coming verses. If you look in verse 13 after the message of judgment, it says in Isaiah's commission in verse 13, And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again.

Like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled, the holy seed is its stump. And Judah and Israel were going to have to face some serious trial by fire, if you want to call it. Something that's going to be really painful. They're going to have to be judged through Assyria, through Babylon.

They're going to end up being exiled before they could ultimately be restored so that God could make them into that holy seed of a nation that He intended them to be. And before we conclude and get to talking about the Holy One of Israel, turn over to 2 Peter verses 1, 3 through 4. 2 Peter 1, 3 through 4.

This, this passage doesn't explicitly talk about God's holiness, but it talks about His desire to share His divine nature with us, His glory, and His excellence. And it talks about the transformation that, that this experience is supposed to bring for us as, as Christians. Now, I love this passage in verse verse 3 of chapter 1 in 2 Peter.

It says, His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

So even for us as Christians, as Isaiah and as the people of Israel experience, we get to share in this transformation through the holiness and the forgiveness that God offers to us. So, let's bring it all home and let's kind of put all the pieces together. We talked about these four different attributes of God's holiness.

God's holiness is His alone, as we sang earlier. It is transcendent, it is dangerous, although God at the same time desires to share His holiness with humans through His forgiveness. And through its transformation. And so I think a lot of times, maybe you're sitting here looking at these and as we talked about, they may be kind of, you might look at them as being diametrically opposed.

Or they're kind of, they contradict one another. How do these two fit together? And so, I think a lot of times when we think about God's holiness, it kind of pushes people to either extremes, unfortunately, instead of the true reality of God's holiness and where He is. And so, on the one hand, maybe you're tempted or somebody you know or you've met before has been tempted to emphasize God's transcendence or the danger that's present with His holiness.

Your response or this person's response may be, you know, I'm totally afraid or I've got to be totally afraid of God. I've got to shake in my boots because I'm afraid God's going to strike me down at all if I step out of line. But then, this mindset kind of struggles to kind of know, Am I in Christ? Am I out of Christ?

When am I really truly saved? And then this person's trust, I think, really rests in their own personal holiness rather than the God who their holiness stems from. Since they believe that their holiness is only their responsibility and not God's, and so they live in constant fear because they're not able to model perfect obedience.

Or maybe equally as bad, at the ultimate extreme, you know, it results in maybe a blind self assurance or self righteousness because you think somehow you've obtained holiness by your own efforts. But then, look at the other end of the spectrum. On the other end, sometimes maybe we have the tendency to emphasize God's forgiveness or His transformation.

And maybe we neglect the former. And this response may be one that creates a false dichotomy between faith and between works, as if there's something that don't go hand in hand. Or maybe it's something that a mindset that downplays, downplays the need to follow God's commands. And this mindset maybe fails to realize that the work that God has called them to do is really instrumental in their sanctification and that they have a personal responsibility in maintaining their holiness.

And this person trusts it rests ultimately in God's holiness apart from any personal holiness. And since they believe that their holiness is only God's responsibility and not theirs, they live in false assurance because They don't feel that they have a need to pursue personal holiness at all. And then, equally as bad, if you look at the ultimate extreme, maybe they think they're incapable of doing any good at all, or any type of holiness without God directly acting upon them, unless God forces them to do holiness by His sovereignty.

But I think when we read Isaiah chapter 6, what helps us kind of avoid the extremes and stay in close to reality It shows us that all of these things are kind of held in tension together with one another. And this is really hard, because I don't know if you're like me, but I do not like tension and things.

I like clear, defined rules, and it's this or it's not. And some of these things, like we've been saying, kind of, they're hard for me to wrap my head around. But I think in reality, each and every one of these things really complete one another more than anything. God's transcendent holiness is made known ultimately by his transformation, as I've tried to show.

I don't know where the laser thing is, but as you can kind of see, transcendence to transformation is what I'm trying to show with this complicated looking graph. But God's transcendent holiness, something that's, that feels unrelatable or unknowable, is now made known by God transforming us into His likeness.

But then likewise, His danger that is presented because of the nature of His holiness, and the fear of us being misaligned with Him, is alleviated because He gives us atonement and He gives us forgiveness of sin. And so when we talk about the tension that we have to kind of wrestle with, with these aspects of God's holiness.

I think we need to wrestle with the fact that God's holiness is both alienating and also inviting. And we've got to fear God, but we've also got to draw near to Him as well. And we've also got to trust that our holiness stems from God, but we know that we must partner with Him in cultivating it within ourselves as well.

And so, as we start our lesson with the Holy One of Israel, what I want to kind of draw out to you tonight. Is, this is, I think, encapsulates what I'm trying to communicate, that the tension that's present in Isaiah 6 and the way that it communicates God's holiness is present even in this, this divine name, the Holy One of Israel.

Because when God's called by His name, both His, those senses of His holiness, His otherness and His nearness are brought together, I think, in a really profound way. God is the Holy One. He's the one who the seraphim exclaimed is holy, holy, holy. There's none like him and he must be honored and greatly feared.

And in some ways, God is distinct, he's unrelatable, and at times he's really threatening to us. However, the remainder of the name of Israel shows us that God it reminds us of God's covenantal relationship and identification with the people of Israel. He wants to know and he wants to relate to his people and to his creation.

And so Israel, as Exodus chapter 19 verse 6 says, they were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And even though God is transcendent, He's called us through the promises made to Israel, to Abraham, as we've been talking about in our Genesis class, fulfilled ultimately in Christ to likewise be, as 1 Peter 2, 9 says, to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.

So, tonight, this afternoon, I hope through Isaiah 6 and through this name, the Holy One of Israel, I hope that you've come to encounter, maybe in a small way our Holy God, the Holy One of Israel. And as a result of this experience of, of reading and learning more about who God is, when we experience God's holiness in the manner that Isaiah does, that holiness demands something from you.

Amen. And yet, knowing and experiencing God's holiness is not something that you can do on your own. And thankfully, Christ's sacrifice and His blood offers us atonement for our sins, and it remakes us into His holy people. All we have to do is humbly obey His call. And ultimately what we're trying to do is we're pursuing a holy life together because we're all, I think, pursuing this Holy God, the Holy One of Israel.

So tonight, if you have any need, whether it be falling short of the holiness that God has called you to be, or you want, you desire to be a part of this Holy Covenant community that God has sanctified through the blood of His Son, Jesus, then come now as we stand and as we sing.