The God Who is Majestically Holy!

Exodus 15:11, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” 

Isaiah 6:3, “And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 

Isaiah 57:15, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” 

1 Peter 1:15-16, “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 

Rev. 15:3-4, “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.” 

What comes to mind when you hear the words holy or holiness? In reference to God, it is probably words like silent, somber, sober, scary, stolid sternness. In respect to persons, it is probably terms like separation, a sad, sickly, somber look, or someone whose life is typified by quitting this, not doing that, not going there, not wearing your hair long if you're a man or your dresses short if a woman; not to drink, cuss or chew, nor run with boys who do!

Steven Mosley writes, “Unfortunately most people see holiness as the absence of something. For centuries it has been defined in the negative. Medieval ascetics in search of the holy God flocked to the desert. These “holy men” cut them­selves off from life in general and human contact in par­ticular. The assumption appears to have been that when you remove everything tangible or pleasurable, what remains is holiness or God.

That assumption, in a modified form, persists. What’s holiness? The absence of all evil, we say. Not engaging in this, not indulging in that. Remaining untouched by a wicked world. Most of us believe, perhaps subconsciously, that the more you take away, the more sterile and eventless a life, the greater the poten­tial for holiness." NOT!

I. God's Holiness is Centered in the Virtue of His Being

Isaiah 6:3, “And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"

One of the difficulties in grasping what is meant when the Scriptures use the word “holy” is because it is used in different ways throughout the bible. At times it points toward purity, at other times it points toward being separate and at other times it points toward being transcendent. When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be ‘other,’ to be different in a special way.” All of which is to say that there is a mystery to holiness. It is so foreign to us that we cannot fully understand it. We can see glimpses of it, but we cannot wrap our minds around it.

R.C. Sproul defines God’s holiness as a combination of three things: it is God’s otherness, his beauty, and his purity. It’s the combination of those three ideas that communicate something of the holiness of God.

First of all, it is the “otherness of God”. It’s the idea here that God is transcendently different than we are. He is utterly and completely alien to what we are. He is in a class all by himself. The Hebrew word for holy is "qodesh", (ko'-desh). The primary meaning of holy is ‘Separateness and Brightness.’ It comes from an ancient word that meant, ‘to cut,’ or ‘to separate.’ Perhaps even more accurate would be the phrase ‘a cut above something.’ When we find a garment or another piece of merchandise that is outstanding, that has a superior excellence, we use the expression that it is “a cut above the rest.” He’s in a class all by himself.

You see it in our text in Ex. 15:11: “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

Of course, the implied answer is, “No one is like you,” and indeed, Scripture tells us this. “There is no one holy like the Lord,” Hannah says in 1 Samuel 2. No one is like God. God is completely and utterly different than we are. He is other. It’s the otherness of God. He is in a category by himself.

God’s holiness, his character, the quality of his character and the quality of his being, is so foreign to what we know that we can’t fully grasp it. It’s part of the incomprehensibility of God.

Holiness is his nature. God is holiness. And holiness is God. Holiness is not one of God's many attributes, like omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Holiness is the essence of all God's attributes.

John Gill wrote, "God only is essentially, originally, underivatively, perfectly, and immutably holy." The Puritan, Thomas Brooks, said, "Holiness in angels and saints is but a quality, but in God it is his essence...God's holiness and his nature are not two things. They are but one. God's holiness is his nature, and God's nature is his holiness."

Second, it is the “beauty of God” - Holiness is the luster, glory, and harmony of God's nature and attributes. It is "the beauty of the Lord" (Psa. 27:4, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”). What is wisdom and knowledge without holiness, but craft and cunning? What is power without holiness, but tyranny, oppression, and cruelty? The Lord our God is "glorious in holiness." Holiness is the glory of his Being and the beauty of his nature.

The New England theologian Jonathan Edwards said, “Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing. We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely.” You can see that Edwards is straining at the leash of language in reaching for words to try to describe this glorious aspect of God’s character, the beauty of God’s holiness.

He is majestically, gloriously Holy! Holiness is God's Glory in His private person; Glory is God's Holiness in its public presentation."

God is always greater than anything that can be said about Him. No language is worthy of Him. He is more sublime than all sublimity; loftier than all loftiness; profounder than all profundity; more splendid than all splendor; greater than all majesty; more merciful than all mercy; more just than all justice. The word holy is attributed to the Lord of Hosts, but it is more than an adjective which describes God, more than an attribute of God. It is an ecstatic ascription of glory to the Triune God.

Thirdly, the holiness of God is also his purity. It is his moral and ethical purity, his complete righteousness, his uprightness. The prophet Habakkuk says that “God is of purer eyes than to see evil, and he cannot look at wrong” (Hab. 1:13).

I think that when God’s holiness is used in Scripture that his purity is stressed more than any other aspect. Two main images used of God in Scripture is fire and light. Fire, the blazing, unquenchable fire of God’s holiness, that consumes everything that is evil, everything that is wrong. Then the light of God’s holiness, the brilliant, radiant glory that God is, and the light, the undiminished, unspotted character of God.

1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

God is light! That means everything that is good is in God, and there is no darkness at all in him, there is no evil in him. God is true, and he is truth, and there is no lie in him. He is love, and he is loving, and there is no impurity in him, no lust in him. God is perfect in wisdom, in goodness, in beauty, in power, in truthfulness, in faithfulness. Think any quality, any moral quality that you can conceive of—God has it to an exponential degree. He has it more than any other being in the universe has it. He embodies that goodness, that purity, and there is no impurity in him. This is the light of God’s holiness.

God's holiness is a holy love of that which is the brightest, the best, biggest, the purest, the most glorious, splendor filled, the most worthy, the most valuable being in the universe - HIMSELF!

Thomas Watson, “Holiness is the sparkling jewel in [God’s] crown, the name by which he is known. His power makes him mighty, his holiness makes him glorious.”

Once again, to quote Steven Mosley, "But God’s holiness is not the absence of anything. He is not a remainder after everything else is removed. God’s holiness is an incredibly dense core of justice and mercy held in a kind of radioactive tension, ever ready to explode on the world and transform life down to its roots, penetrating every nook and cranny. God is not a sterile empty set in the sky. He is bursting with passion and compassion - holiness."

II. God's Holiness is Celebrated in the Victory of the Cross

Revelation 5:9-10, “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” 

God’s holiness is manifested in His works. "The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works" (Ps. 145:17). God’s holiness is manifested in His law. That law forbids sin in all of its modifications: in its most refined as well as its grossest forms, the intent of the mind as well as the pollution of the body, the secret desire as well as the overt act. Therefore do we read, The law is holy, and "the commandment holy, and just, and good" (Rom. 7:12).

But the Supreme manifestation of God’s holiness is in Christ at the Cross. Wondrously, astonishingly, gloriously, and yet most solemnly does the death of Christ on the Cross display God’s infinite holiness and abhorrence of sin. Never did Divine holiness appear more precious, more priceless, more beautiful and lovely than at the time our Savior, bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place condemned he stood; never was a face so ravishingly beautiful than when the face of the Lamb of God, the Lord of Glory was most so marred in the midst of his agony on the cross that it didn't even look human.

John Flavel said, "So in love is Christ with holiness that he will buy it with his blood for us!"

In view of the centrality of God's holiness, everything about Him and us must be understood in terms of his holiness. Our sin is our defiance of God's holiness. God's anger (his reaction to our sin) is the reaction of his holiness. God's patience with us is the persistence of his holiness. And his love? God's love is his holiness refusing to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us. If God's holiness refuses to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us, where does it all come to expression? What is the outcome? It all comes to expression in the cross. And the cross, the outcome of it all, is the triumph of God's holiness.

The reason that the cross dominates all of scripture is that in the cross God's holy love absorbs his holy anger and his holy revulsion. In the cross the judgment of a Holy God is enacted and displayed.

God’s Holiness relates to his jealousy, wrath, and awful righteousness, he will not allow anyone to insult his holiness ultimately. Exodus 20:5 "… for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me". 2 Samuel 6:7, “And the anger of the LORD burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God.”

For the Redeemed Child of God, the Immediate, and Continuous Response to the Revelation and Encounter with the Gloriously Holy Person of God is Awe-filled Worship!

The order of the worship service, so to speak, is found in Ex. 14:31 and 15:1,20-21

1. Revelation of His Great Work – Ex. 14:31a, “Israel saw the great power (work -KJV) that the LORD used against the Egyptians,
2. Fear of Him - 14:31b, “so the people feared the LORD,” - "The experience of confronting the Holy is supremely threatening. The worshiper is drawn to the Holy, but at the same time he is terrified by it. The awe-inspiring, overpowering energy of the Holy threatens to destroy him."
3. Faith in Him - 14:31c, “and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.” 
4. Worship in Song and Dance - 15:1, “Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

1 Chron. 16:29, "Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness"). (Ps. 29:2)"Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness". (Ps. 96:9)."O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth"

Isaiah saw the Holy, Holy, Holy LORD in a vision and it so impacted him that he is called the "prophet of God's holiness." The book of Isaiah contains over one-third of the references "of holiness to God" in the Old Testament. The reference to God as the "Holy One of Israel" occurs 25 times in his book and only seven times in the rest of the OT!

III. God's Holiness is Conveyed to Stun and Stir us to Vibrant Living

1 Peter 2:9-10, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."

A. Holiness is Not Achieved by Us But Conceived in Us by a Miracle of Grace - We hear a lot of talk about practical holiness, about living holy lives, and of being holy. This is fine as long as you understand that holiness is not something you produce. It is something God gives. Not even faith in Christ produces holiness. Faith receives holiness. Faith embraces holiness. Faith loves holiness. And faith seeks holiness. But faith cannot produce holiness. Holiness is the work of God alone.

A.W. Pink stated: "That which his holiness demanded his grace has provided in Jesus Christ our Lord."

Because God is holy, He demands and provides Holiness. Being born again means having a deposit of holiness made not only to your legal status before God, but in your heart. Thus our desire to become in practice what we already are in position. "Be ye holy, for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16). We are not bidden to be omnipotent or omniscient as God is, but we are to be holy, and that "as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct," (1 Pet. 1:15).

In these marvelous descriptions of the people of God in 1 Pet 2:9, we can clearly see four aspects of what it means to live on the Gloriously Holy God:

1. God’s people are a Kingdom of Priestly people, so we live Worshipfully! - So worship and the offering of the sacrifice of our lives and our praise must be considered as a central aspect what it means to live on the Gloriously Holy God. Being believer priest gives us direct access to God's throne of grace and mercy. Holiness then is readily and regularly accessing the the life deposited within us.
2. God’s people are a Holy nation, so we live Reverently! - We live our lives in the fear of God, and in obedient faith - confident that all God promised to be for us in Jesus - He will be! We cultivate God's presence, knowing that He will live with those who bow to His greatness over them and depend upon His grace and goodness to them!

Isa. 57:15, "For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

3. God’s people are His own Treasure or Possession, So We Live with a Sense of Dignity and Destiny! - Holiness is related to our destiny. We learn that we combat sin in these vessels of clay more successfully by fanning the flames of the life of the Spirit within than we do by fighting the forces of sin.

Holiness is Abounding Life - Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter said, “Holiness is the life of the Holy Spirit transfused and interpenetrating every part of my moral and spiritual being, transforming diseased impulses and responses, impure desires and inclinations, unholy thoughts, motives and temper into fullness of moral health; so that hatred becomes love, impure desire becomes holy aspiration, selfishness becomes a Christ-like otherism, pride becomes humility.”

4. God’s people are Called to Him So that they might declare His Praises Publicly! - God desires to put His holiness, righteousness, and glory on display. How will he do it? Mat 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

Holiness is not a burden but a joy. The sanctified saint, the holy people of God, are like dancing children, turning barefoot somersaults on the beaches of the Red Sea and singing to the desert skies, "I will sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously! The horse and the rider are thrown into the sea.”

On the NT side of the cross, we sing:

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Holy, holy is He
Sing a new song to Him who sits on
Heaven's mercy seat!

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything and I will adore You!

Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder
At the mention of Your name
Jesus Your name is power, breath and living water
Such a marvelous mystery! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!