What Does It
Mean to be Holy?
“Holy,
holy, holy Lord God Almighty! Early in
the morning our song shall rise to thee; holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!”
That is the first verse of the first hymn we sang this morning. In fact, that hymn is probably being sung by
countless other congregations this morning because it fits perfectly with Holy
Trinity Sunday. “Holy” is a common way of referring to our God, isn’t it? The holy
Father, the holy Lord, the Holy Spirit, the holy Trinity. But what does
it really mean to be holy? Perfect,
sinless, spotless, pure, untainted, unblemished, completely clean, pristine in
every respect… If someone is “holy” that
means that he makes no mistakes, no errors, no slip ups; he never forgets, he
never lets down, he never is wrong.
“Holy” means that there is not one fault, there is not one weakness, there
is not one thing out of place at any time in any way. “Holy” is 100% unchanging, unfading “good” to
the highest degree. God is certainly
“holy.” But now with that extended
definition in mind, listen to what our holy God demands of us: “Be holy because
I the LORD your God am holy.” That’s a
frightening thought, isn’t it? Because
it means that we are supposed to be like God, we are supposed to be someone we
cannot be.
I bring this up because the prophet Isaiah was faced with the same problem. While he was serving the people of Israel, he was given a special vision in which he saw the holy God himself. This is how Isaiah tells it, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘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.’”
Isaiah understood what the word “holy”
meant. “Woe to me!” he cried. “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.” He realized what the seraphs (a special class
of angels) were saying when they called out to each other: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. God was perfect; God was pure, God was
powerful; and there would be no way that this perfect, pure, and powerful God
would ever tolerate sin or the sinner.
And Isaiah was right.
The Holy God
Does Not Tolerate Sin
Isaiah
remembered how this God had demonstrated his hate for sin throughout
history. This was the God who struck
dead the High Priest’s two sons because they offered fire on the altar when
they were not supposed to. This was the
God who instantly killed a man who did nothing more than touch the ark of the
covenant when they were carrying it from one place to another. This was the God who did not allow man or
animal to even set foot on the mountain where he was talking to Moses - and if
they did, they would die. This was the
God who wiped out entire chunks of his own chosen people with various plagues,
poisonous snakes, and enemy attacks throughout the years simply because they
disobeyed him. Isaiah was well aware of
what this holy God could and would do to sinners. And Isaiah was scared out of his mind! He did not deserve to be in the presence of
such an overwhelming being. He did not even
belong in the same realm as the Almighty Lord!
And so as those special angels, the seraphs, were chanting, “Holy, holy,
holy,” Isaiah was trembling in fear because he knew he was not.
We don’t
see those kind of visions of our holy God anymore that Isaiah and the other
prophets saw. We don’t experience the
holy God himself descending in clouds and fire and smoke over his house of
worship as in the past. We don’t witness
the wrath of our holy God destroying hundreds of thousands of people in a single
day with the snap of his fingers as he did back then. But the fact still remains: God is holy. We are not.
And he hates that we are not.
“Hate” is a strong word, but it’s an accurate
word when it comes to the holy God’s attitude about sin. I wonder, thought, if we really realize the
gravity of our sins at times. The
faithful believers in the Old Testament like Isaiah probably did because they
were confronted with the visible power of their holy God all the time. But I think that we probably tend to pass our
sins off as something trivial and insignificant more often than not. Because we live in a society that ignores sin
altogether. And even when someone admits
that they might have done something wrong, their response is: “Well, nobody’s
perfect.” And you might have even said
that yourself a few times, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” Implying, of course, that it’s not really
that big of a deal, you can’t blame me too much for what happened because
everybody slips up every once in a while, so let’s forget it and move on; I’m
sure not going to lose any sleep over it!
That’s a
dangerous mindset. It’s a dangerous
habit. Because although our holy God
might not open up the earth and swallow you like he did during the time of
Moses; and although our holy God might not open up the sky and rain down fire
from heaven on you like he did with Sodom and Gomorrah; and although he might
not open up the woods and call bears to maul you like he did to a few dozen
children during the time of Elisha; our God still hates sin. And
he hates those who commit the sin as well.
This is what King David wrote about the Lord in Psalm 5: “You are not a God who takes pleasure in
evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell.
The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.” God hates
all who do wrong. He might allow
people to sin at times and he might not always stop sinful things from
happening, but he does not tolerate sin or sinners in his presence. Nor will he ever.
The Holy God
Loves to Make Holy
So there
is the prophet Isaiah standing in the presence of God himself. A God who has gone on record saying that he hates
sin. A God who hates sinners. A God about whom six magnificent angels are
singing: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty!” No wonder Isaiah was scared! He was sinful man in front of a God who does
not tolerate sin! What was going to
happen to him? What was this God going
to do? Isaiah tells us what happened
next, “Then one of the seraphs flew to
me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the
altar. With it he touched my mouth and
said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin
atoned for.’”
I’m not
sure this is what Isaiah expected!
Because there was no condemnation.
No demand. There was no command,
no directive. God did not say to Isaiah,
“Reform your life. Get rid of all of
those evils inside of you. Pray longer;
try harder; put some effort into being the person you are supposed to be and
then when you feel as if you have reached the level I expect you can come back
and stand in front of me.” No, the Lord
did not give Isaiah a list of “do-it-yourself” tasks. The Lord
did it himself. He took away Isaiah’s guilt.
He atoned for Isaiah’s
sins. In a very real way he made Isaiah
“holy” when Isaiah had come to him far from it.
And the way he did that in this vision was with a coal in a pair of
tongs from the altar.
At the
temple complex in Jerusalem that King Solomon built in Old Testament times, the
altar of sacrifice stood outside in the courtyard. It was 15 feet tall, 30 feet wide and 30 feet
long. It was a huge place of sacrifice
made out of wood and overlaid with bronze.
And Solomon built it that big because he planned on and actually did
offer many sacrifices on that altar throughout the years. In fact, for the entire nation of Israel,
every burnt offering, sin offering, guilt offering, fellowship offering, and
every other special offering for the various festivals was to be sacrificed to
the Lord on that altar. A lot of blood
was spilled there. A lot of animals were
burned there. A lot of sin was forgiven
there. It was a burning coal from this
altar that an angel in Isaiah’s vision took and touched to the lips of the
prophet. And so this is more than just
an indication of a cleansing or a ritual purification of some kind. This is a vivid picture of forgiveness. Because every single one of those sacrifices that
had been offered on the altar along with every single drop of blood that had
been sprinkled on the alar had always been pointing the people to Christ: the
ultimate Sacrifice, the one-time Offering that would take away the guilt of all
people of all time. “See, this has touched your lips;” the angel said to Isaiah. “Your
guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” That word “atone” means that the broken relationship
Isaiah had with his God was mended. He
was now “at one” with his Lord: “At-one-ment.”
And so Isaiah no longer had to fear the wrath of a holy God because he
had just been made holy through the sacrifice of the coming Christ.
That
doesn’t change our God’s tolerance of sin.
Our holy God still does not tolerate sin, but that also means he loves
to save. Because he is not a mean, vengeful,
domineering God; he is a loving, merciful, compassionate God. And because of that, he has already done
everything necessary to make those who were not holy to be holy in his
sight. And he did that by giving up his
own Son. Jesus experienced the wrath of
a holy God. Jesus underwent the
punishment of a sinner. Jesus suffered
as if he were not holy so that you would be seen as exactly that. Our holy God still hates sin and the sinner, but you are no longer a
sinner as far as he’s concerned. His Son
was the sinner - and his Son paid for it!
You have been made holy and so you are now allowed to enter the presence
of the majesty of the Lord Most High.
Loving a Holy
God
“Holy,
holy, holy Lord God Almighty! Early in
the morning our song shall rise to thee; holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!” You
didn’t sing that this morning in fear, did you?
No, you sang it with joy! We sing
this song with excitement and passion because we love our holy God. We love
our God because he is holy. He does
not frighten us with his power; he does not scare us with his glory; he does
not terrify us with his holiness.
Instead we praise him for it. We are
grateful for his holiness and hold that characteristic up as one of the
indispensable attributes of our Lord.
Because on account of his holiness, we know that he will always be
faithful to us. A holy God cannot lie to
you; he cannot trick you; he cannot let you down. If he promises something to you, as a holy
God he has to carry it out. He has no
choice: he must follow through. And he
has promised you a cleansing, a purification, a forgiveness. Your holy God has promised you that because
of a coal from the altar on your lips he has made you holy through faith in the
Word about his Son. And if your holy God
has promised you that, you know it to be true.
“Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” we sing with the seraphs. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is
perfect, sinless, spotless, pure, untainted, unblemished, completely clean, pristine
in every respect. Through faith in
Christ you have that exact same status before your Lord. You are perfect, sinless, spotless, pure,
untainted, unblemished, completely clean, pristine in every respect. Is that status well-earned? No.
Are you due that honor because of how hard you’ve tried? Not a chance.
But your holy God considers you to be holy anyway because he treated his
Son as if he were not in order to treat you as his Son. What a loving God we have. What a holy God we have! And we could have no other way.
Amen.
“You were washed,
you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and by the Spirit of our God.” - 1 Cor. 6:11
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