Names | Holy - Isaiah 6:1-6 | April 12

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Everybody hear me? A funny story. Several times in our marriage,

we never know which toothbrush is mine.

So Jenny and I have shared the same toothbrush unintentionally, I guess.

So thank you, Bree, for talking to the kids. It's good.

I just want to refresh us a little bit. Why are we talking about the names of

God? Why is this important?

There's this guy, Dr. Michael Reeves. He said that Christianity is not primarily

about lifestyle change.

It is about knowing God. And so that's where we begin.

And so that's why we're spending times talking about the names of God,

because the more we meditate on who God is, which is how he reveals himself,

the more we begin to understand not just him, but also who we are to be as well.

And of course, we're never going to be infinite and self-existent.

I mean, we will be in some sense, eternal, but not really because we had a beginning.

God never had a beginning, so we can't achieve that either. But we can reflect

His goodness, we can reflect His character, we can reflect His justice,

His love, and we can reflect His holiness, even though that is a big and heavy word.

And in some ways, I feel in equipped and ill prepared this morning to even talk

about the holiness of God.

It is such an important topic. And these names of God, they don't just provide

us descriptions of who God is,

but they are in themselves revelations of His character, of how He acts,

of how He interacts with us.

They are the things that show us who He is. And in seeing Him rightly,

we get to become who we were always meant to be.

So that's why we're spending time on the names of God. There's a lot of names

of God, so currently this is an indefinite length series.

But we're going to be talking today about holiness. And all of us are familiar with the Lord's Prayer.

There's this guy, R.C. Sproul, you've probably seen a book by him or heard of him or something.

He wrote a book, a very pivotal book about holiness that has impacted generations.

He also liked to talk a lot about holiness, as you might imagine.

Somebody who wrote a book about it might want to talk about it a lot.

But he's also a professor, and he would ask his seminary students this question,

because the Lord's Prayer, as we know it, Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, you will be done.

It is structured very nicely in just kind of three parts. This is how people...

Break it up to be able to understand it and study it a little more.

So we have our formal introduction, our formal address, you might call it.

You have the petitions or the askings, and then you have this kind of closing

part as well. And they all serve these different purposes.

But one thing that R.C. Sproul liked to ask his seminary students is what is the first petition?

What's the first request in his prayer?

And it's not a trick question. Like technically, the first question is when

the disciples came and asked Jesus how to teach him how to pray.

But it's in the prayer itself, what is the first petition?

And we think about it, right? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

I think most of us assume that that is the first part, the formal address.

But if God was saying within that address, that holy are you,

Lord, then that's how it would have been said.

It would have been said, holy is the Lord, if that was part of the formal address.

But instead, he says something different. And our translations don't really

do this justice, you could say. But it says something more along the lines of,

let your name be treated as holy.

Let your name be hallowed. It actually is a, it's a request.

It is the petition. God, make your name great among the nations.

It's something like Jesus is saying, the first thing I want you to pray for

when you get on your knees is that the name of God would be treated as sacred or holy.

Meaning that the first thing that Jesus tells us to pray for in our prayers,

instead of rushing ahead to all the stuff that's going on in our lives,

is that God would make his name holy.

That he would make his name holy to us, that he would make his name holy in

us, that he would make his name holy through us.

This is the very first thing that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray.

He teaches us to pray before provision, before forgiveness, before guidance,

before all of these things, holiness comes first.

Holiness is first. And it is, it is this petition that, that we are through

this instruction to kind of hinge our life upon that God,

that your name would be treated as great.

That your name would be treated as sacred. This is repeated all throughout the

scripture over and over again.

God, make your name holy. Holy is the name of the Lord God.

In Malachi 111, you don't get a lot of quotes from Malachi.

I don't know why, but it's a great verse. I implore you to commit it to memory.

It says something along the lines of God speaking to us.

And he says that, my name will be great among the nations. In every place that

a prayer is offered, that sacrifice is offered, that incense is burned,

my name will be great among the nations.

It is an inevitability that God's name is holy and it will be holy and he will make his name great.

And sometimes these names that we're talking about aren't really names a lot of times.

Even the name that is the name is still the words I am, right?

So it's even the name that is the name isn't really a name.

But a lot of times these are attributes, these are positions that are held.

But when we get to the word holiness, we can't just lump it in as another attribute.

It's something different.

A. A. Hodge said that the holiness of God is not one attribute among others.

It is a general term representing the conception of his consummate perfection in total glory.

It's just a fancy way of saying that holiness is the sum total of who God is

in His perfection and His total glory.

We tend to think of God first as loving, as just, as merciful, as powerful.

God, first and foremost, is holy. And it's not just one item on the list.

And scripture doesn't treat it that way either. But before we read Isaiah chapter

six, I just want to pray for us.

God, would you speak to us this morning?

The idea that you are holy is too great. It is too weighty. It's too important.

And I feel too unworthy to be even able to represent it properly.

It is such a high call that you would call us to be holy as you are holy.

That we despair and we tend to fear that we could never live up to that.

So, Lord, just come among us this morning with your presence.

Fill us with an understanding of your holiness, that we may view all things through it,

that we may view all of the names that you have identified yourself as through

the lens of your holiness, because it is not one attribute among many.

It is the character of God that gives definition to all other things.

It makes all other attributes of your character and your goodness that much

better to the nth degree.

So Lord, teach us this morning.

Amen. Let me read Isaiah chapter 6. Not the whole thing. Don't worry.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

This is just the first six verses.

It was in the year that King Uzziah died. I don't know if it was after he died

or before he died, but that I saw the Lord.

He was sitting on a lofty throne and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings.

I think this might be the only time that seraphim are mentioned in the Bible,

which is kind of cool. But if not, don't quote me on that.

With two wings, they covered their faces. With two, they covered their feet. And with two, they flew.

And they were calling out to each other, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heaven's armies.

The whole earth is filled with his glory.

Their voices shook the temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.

Then I said, it's all over. I am doomed for I am sinful man.

I have filthy lips and I live among a people with filthy lips.

Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of heaven's armies.

Then one of the Seraphim flew to me with a burning coal. He had taken from the

altar with a pair of tongs and he touched my lips with it and said,

see this coal has touched your lips.

Now your guilt is removed and your sin is forgiven.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. We see this repeated again,

especially in Revelation.

But there is no other name, no other attribute, no other character of God that

is repeated three times in the Bible to emphasize the extent and the truth of his character.

The Bible doesn't say God is love, love, love. It doesn't say that he's just,

just, just. It doesn't say that he's help, help, help. It doesn't even say that he's God, God, God.

No other place does it say this except, holy, holy, holy.

This is to the third degree, to the superlative. So this isn't necessarily that

the angels were literally crying out, holy, holy, holy.

But in the scriptures, when something is repeated, it is repeated to give emphasis.

We're familiar with this a lot with regard to like Ecclesiastes or Jesus saying,

truly, truly. Whenever something is repeated, it is emphasizing to the degree with which it is spoken.

And there is no other attribute or character or name of God,

which is repeated to this third degree.

It is as if scripture is screaming that God isn't just holy,

but that he's holy, holy, holy.

That he is holiness. So special is this that it is even given as the qualifier

for the third member of the Trinity himself. We call him the Holy Spirit.

We don't call him the loving spirit or the powerful spirit. We call him the Holy Spirit.

So holiness is not, in a sense, a part of God.

It is the word that gathers up all that God is.

His love is holy love. His justice is holy justice. His mercy is holy mercy.

It is the qualifier for all that God is.

In the Hebrew, the word is kadosh. In the Greek, it's hagios.

They mean the exact same thing.

As we kind of already hinted at with the kids, that the separateness,

the being set apart, yes, from that which is unclean.

So we tend to reduce or misunderstand the word holiness and just reduce it to

like purity or moral perfection, which is part of it, but it's a lot bigger than that.

It means transcendent purity. It means infinite worth.

It means utter uniqueness, incomparable beyond category.

He is utterly unique to the existence of all things.

Imagine, if you will, everything that you can possibly think of in the universe.

We just had that space shuttle go around the moon or something,

or at least get filmed in a Hollywood basement or something again. Warner Brothers.

Imagine all that we could possibly think of,

And it's not that God is beyond that. It is that he is nothing like that.

Anything that we can think of, God is incomparable to. He is in a category all by himself.

It's like this question. Maybe some of us have asked it before.

Particularly, you might get it from an atheist or someone who is questioning God.

They ask this question, who created God?

But at the center of that question is a misunderstanding of what it means that

God is holy, because God is foundationally, fundamentally different than everything

else. Everything else has a beginning.

God alone doesn't have a beginning. It is a false question that represents already

a misunderstanding of God.

Because God is not like anything else. Unlike God's created beings,

God is eternal, preeminent, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

He was and he is and he will be before all things.

He is ageless, timeless, faultless. He is beyond full human comprehension.

Indeed, our language lacks the superlative necessary to justly describe him.

He doesn't belong to the system. He made the system because he created it. He is nothing like it.

And in fact, we are created in his likeness, right?

The word that we kind of have to interject into this idea of holiness and separateness,

set apartness is the word transcendence.

And his holiness is not just different or other or separate.

It is transcendently so. So transcendent means literally to climb across.

So its definition means exceeding all limits is kind of what we can talk about it as.

So to transcend is to rise above something, to go above and beyond a certain limit.

And I've been thinking about this idea a lot lately, but in a different way.

I've been thinking about this idea of God existing past the edge in a sense.

Like almost rhetorically asking the question, if the edge exists,

but God has passed it, what's the edge even for?

I mean, this is all like really far out there, not really able to,

conceptualize it questioning, but that God is past the edge of reason,

past the edge of understanding, past the edge of our categories,

that He's not just different, but He is so far beyond. He is transcendent.

Not just in power, but in his very being. He is not like us,

only bigger. He's not like us, only better.

He's not like us, just a bit different.

He is not like us at all.

To be holy is to be other, to be different, and not just different for the sake

of being different, but he is different in a way that inspires all.

And whenever people encounter his holiness in the Bible.

The reaction is always the same. The reaction of people when they encounter

God's holiness, his otherness is that they don't relax. They don't get comfortable.

They don't finally feel at home.

They fall apart. They unravel.

They shrink back in fear. In Isaiah, we just read that when Isaiah sees his

vision of God in the temple, And he sees the Lord sitting on the throne,

lofty and exalted with all these weird looking creatures around him calling out, holy, holy, holy.

And the foundations of the temple are shaken in his presence.

What it says is that Isaiah cries out, woe is me. I am ruined. I am undone.

This is the only time that a prophet in the Bible pronounces woe upon himself

as he encounters a holy God.

He is acutely aware of his own sin, of his own difference.

I guess that's the main thing. I might say this later. I don't know.

But when we encounter God's otherness, we are more aware of how different we are.

In the New Testament, we see the same thing.

We see this all throughout the Bible, but even more specifically in these moments,

Peter, when he's with Jesus, he's hanging out. He's doing his thing.

Peter and Jesus go out on a boat. Jesus is teaching the people.

Jesus tells Peter, cast the nets, pulling the fish.

And Peter's like, we've been fishing all night, Jesus. We're not catching anything.

But he does it anyway. And it's so full, right? That James and John have to

go and help him drag the nets into shore.

And in that moment, for whatever reason, Peter encounters the holiness of God in Jesus.

And he immediately says, depart from me. I am sinful.

Because he caught fish, Peter encountered the holiness of God.

And his reaction was, I can't be here with you anymore.

An encounter with God always produces awe and dread that leads us to separation from sin.

And so holiness exposes us. It reveals our sin, our smallness,

our need. is exposes the dark, the hidden, the unclean.

Any vision that we see of God's holiness leads us to a sense of our own sin

that makes us sensitive to the unholiness of ourselves and the culture and the world around us.

Which is, if we're honest, why we don't always want that. We don't always want

the holiness of God because a lot of times we just want to prefer a manageable God that's familiar,

a God that is love, a God who is my friend.

Which, you know, what's wrong with that?

The Bible says that Jesus is the friend of sinners.

He's a God of love, a God who is my friend, to God who is Abba Father,

that he is a familiar, relatable God. But here's the problem.

When we begin to see God too familiar, I don't know that word.

When we get to become too familiar with God without balancing his holiness,

we begin to unintentionally in our own subconscious, us, we are unaware of it,

begin to shrink God to be like us because we want him to be relatable.

So therefore we cling to the attributes that make him more like us.

Greater, sure. More powerful, definitely, but not altogether unlike us,

just a better version of who we want to be.

And what we need to do is recover the fear of the Lord.

We need to recover the weight of his presence, the sorrow over sin,

but not fear in a way that drives us away from his presence,

like when people encounter him and his holiness in the Bible,

but a holy reverence that draws us in.

When the Bible talks about fear, do you know what that word fear means? Anybody?

It means fear. It's not a euphemism for something less than fear.

It is a word that means fear.

And there's no greater godly fear than the fear of God himself.

But again, not a fear that drives us away. Postures that says,

wow, you're nothing like me.

You are so much better.

It's not even comparable.

We can't relate to the kind of holiness that God is. It exposes everything,

the dark, the ugly imperfections in us.

So much so that our first inclination is to shrink away.

And that might be why so many of our modern worship songs cling to these other

ideas, his love, his grace, his patience, his forgiveness, because it's uncomfortable

to embrace his holiness.

We can't lose this idea though.

Because this is the mystery that the holiest place in the universe,

in the presence of God, is also the safest place for you.

In Christ, you are fully known. You are fully exposed and you are also fully loved.

You are naked and unafraid.

You are naked and unashamed before the Holy God.

Hebrews chapter five says something about that. You should read it.

The familiarity of God that we like to cling to, all of that only matters in light of his holiness.

And the secret is that we are invited into the presence of God,

that we are invited in to his holy presence.

So when we, when Moses encounters God in the burning bush, right?

And he approaches it out of curiosity, perhaps a little trepidation because

it's a weird, magnificent thing.

God speaks out of that bush and he says what? He says, Moses,

take off your sandals, or the place where you're standing is holy ground, right?

The ground was not holy before God showed up.

God is the one who made it holy. So God tells Moses, you're not coming any further.

I'm not gonna speak any further until you are fully aware that I am a holy God

and that everything around me becomes holy as I am holy.

And so Moses is then asked to demonstrate that understanding practically in

a way that as he approaches and takes off his sandals, God makes everything

he touches holy. We see that in Isaiah six with the coal.

Not the other way around. We don't become holy to match God,

but God's presence makes everything around him holy.

It's pretty cool, this idea of taking off your shoes.

There's a lot of speculation of what it means. Why take off your shoes? What does it matter?

Certainly his feet are going to already be dirty. And if not,

once he takes off the shoes, they're going to be dirty again as soon as he steps

on the ground. So why is Moses asked to take off his shoes?

So in that culture, and not just that culture, but in Egypt as well,

priests were known to not really wear shoes.

If you look at, I think, Leviticus and all those laws, and whenever it talks

about the priest's clothing, isn't it weird that shoes are never mentioned?

They even mention special underwear, but they never mention shoes.

Really, really. Holy underwear.

But it's not just that. Now, we also see in certain books of the Bible where

people would take off their shoes as a way of signifying an exchange of property.

There's this covenantal aspect of taking off shoes.

We see that with, what is it? Not Esther.

Ruth, thank you. So there's this idea that could be there, this idea of exchange

of property, that Moses, in becoming holy,

taking off his shoes, is stepping into this idea that he is set apart and belongs to God.

I think another really cool aspect of it, and again, we have no clarity on which,

if any of these it is, but in Jewish culture, you would take off your shoes when you get home.

And so Moses, wandering in the desert, fleeing from his life,

the life that he grew up in anew, raising his flocks and Midian,

is invited home as God calls him.

And as we are called into God's holiness, and God calls us to be holy as he

is holy, is that not exactly what he's saying?

Come and be in my presence and be transformed to be holy because everything

I touch is made holy and find your home in me.

As if God is saying, you are standing on ground that belongs to me.

And then Moses is in return saying, there is now nothing in between you and me.

I think that is an amazing, an amazing thought that, that we,

we could have things coming in the way of God and us.

And so we are invited into God's holiness to remove those things,

to remove those sandals, to remove what's getting in the way.

What is it that you need to take off? What's in the way? What needs to be laid down?

And what is it that he's asking you to put on? Because the reality of holiness,

as in much of this character,

this Christ likeness that has been given to us, as much as what sanctification

is in general, is that it is something that is already given to you.

The Bible says that you have been sanctified in Christ before it ever says,

therefore work out your sanctification. So we start with the position that we

are and become more like it.

So we are holy because God has made us holy.

We just got to figure out what that means sometimes.

God tells us to be holy as he is holy.

Does anybody know where that is in the Bible? It's in a lot of places,

but do you know where it kind of first shows up?

Be holy as I'm holy. It is in first Peter, which is actually the good one that

challenges us a bit more, but it shows up in Leviticus 11 first.

Does anybody have a Bible you want to open up to Leviticus 11?

This is the easiest command in the entire Bible to follow, although I have broken it.

41 to 45, Jake, can you read real loud?

And every creeping thing that creeps on the earth shall be an abomination and shall not be one.

You can stop there. don't

eat insects god says

and you will be holy as i'm holy so i think

i think we can all hopefully i've eaten crickets so yeah canaan one time when

he was a little kid we walked up and he had a fly in his mouth that he found

so we've broken that law but most of us probably haven't you might have eaten

snakes or something those are all included in that list this is like the easiest,

command to follow.

But of course, as Lars jumped ahead to the better call for us all,

Jesus says, be perfect as I am perfect, be holy as I am holy.

And of course, in 1 Peter, Jesus and the New Testament authors pick up this

idea of holiness and fill it full of the meaning that it was intended,

not just in Leviticus 11, but in the wealth of the Bible.

And it says in 1 Peter 1, as obedient children, be holy in all your behavior.

You shall be holy for I am holy.

So we start from the truth. We are holy because God is holy.

Everything he touches, he makes holy.

So this is a command, yes. It stems from God's holiness in itself.

It is also fulfilled in God's holiness as we are called to live different lives,

to be something other than the ordinary,

to be different in this world, to live our lives as if we live in the presence

of God, as if God has touched our lives and as if our lives are holy as a result of that.

We would align ourselves with the reality that already is that we are holy,

set apart and transcended for a purpose above that which we could ever hope for.

We belong to God and we are called to be different as a result,

to live a different life.

Isaiah is transformed in this encounter with God's holiness.

He's not destroyed by it. Jesus, who is holy, is not stained by the world that he touches.

In the opposite way, he makes everything that he touches brand new.

He heals all that he encounters.

He is not made unclean by the world, but he transforms it.

And at the end of the Bible, the Bible ends with this picture of all things being made new.

This idea that everything, every, and this kind of comes from Zechariah,

but it is repeated at the end of the Bible in Revelation.

Every cooking pot, every shovel, every ordinary thing has been transformed and

made new as a picture of this idea that God's holiness is going out throughout

the world and healing all things,

making all things new.

Today more than ever before,

although whenever we use that phrase, it's probably not as true as we think

it is, just as much today as we've always needed it, perhaps is more accurate.

We need holy marriages. We need holy families. We need holy houses and holy

hospitality and holy friends and holy vocations and holy cooking pots and.

God is making all things new and we are not waiting for that to happen.

We are experiencing that happening.

And the fact is, and this is where I really want us to sit this morning,

this idea of not becoming overly familiar with God in a such a way that causes

us to lose his holiness and to redefine him in a more earthly way than it should be happening.

Because if we lose God's holiness, then we lose his love and we lose his justice.

God's love is impressive, not because just that he is capable of loving,

but because he is a holy God who chooses to love us.

God's justice is so much better because of his holiness. It's so much more meaningful

that we deserve the punishment of our sin because God is holy.

And yet in his justice, in his grace, in his mercy, he pardons us by putting that upon himself.

That's impressive because of his holiness. That all that God is,

is good and great, but because he's holy, it is unbelievable.

So I don't know where to end. I don't know where to go.

I don't know how this continues.

Other than I just want to invite you all to stand.

I want to invite you, if you feel comfortable, and you're probably a bit younger

because you have the body that can handle it, to kneel.

I invite you, if you're standing or if you're kneeling, as we sing this next

song, regardless of what Christian tradition you might have grown up in or have

experienced, I invite you to just hold your hands up high.

And as we sing, and if you feel like you need to just listen and pray and stand, that's cool too.

But just embrace the holy otherness of our transcendent God who exceeds all

categories, who is not just like us,

but a bit better or like the perfect version of who we could be.

He is completely different. And it's because of that difference and that greatness.

That everything else about him is that much more impressive.

We praise you, God, the holy God who is holy, holy, holy, who has holy love

and holy mercy and holy grace, holy justice, holy compassion.

We praise and worship the God who does not fit into any of our categories.

The God who we couldn't possibly make. And we struggle to understand.

But thanks for giving us your word and your names. By which you have revealed to us your character.

That we might know you. and that we might draw near in familiarity all the while

keeping in mind just how holy and great you are.