Broken God: The Holiness of God | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Awakening.

Great to be with you.

Robbie, thank you for leading us in worship this morning.

Absolutely powerful.

Yeah, you can woo for that.

We're in a series called Broken God.

And we said this last week.

As we look at the world around us and see the brokenness, it's easy to think if there is a God, he must be broken as well.

And here's what we said could it be?

That it's not that God is broken, but our view of God is broken.

And at the root, we said this last week, at the root of humanity's problems is a broken view of who God is.

In fact, A.W.

Tozer said it this way: what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

He'd later on and say that we tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.

And so, what comes into your mind when you think about God?

What is the picture?

Who is God is the fundamental, preeminent question before us.

Here's what we said last week as we were wrestling with this.

We said fundamentally that God is not like us.

He's self-existent, self-sufficient, he's eternal, he's infinite, incomprehensible, and yet at the same time, you have been made in the likeness, in the Imago Dei of God.

And a broken view of God, when we have a distorted view of Him, it's at the root of all of humanity's problems, of all of our relational problems.

And so over the next several weeks, we're gonna be looking and discovering just a clearer picture of who God is.

We're gonna be looking at uh different attributes of God.

Today we're gonna talk about the holiness of God.

Next week, we're gonna talk about the goodness of God, and the following week, we'll talk about the wisdom of God.

Now, I want to, before we dive into the conversation today, just explain what an attribute is.

What is the attribute of God?

How does that differ?

How is God like us?

Because we tend to begin to, when we're trying to think about God, we start to use creature terms because those are the only terms we have, and yet He is the creator, and so our language is constrained.

And so let me just define for you by A.

W.

Tozer yet again what an attribute is.

An attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of himself.

He does not possess them as qualities, they are how God is as he reveals himself to his creatures.

Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be.

See, we can think of them separately, but we cannot separate them.

All of God's acts are consistent with all of his attributes.

Whether it's love or justice, it's one in the same of who he is.

There is no conflict among the divine attributes of God.

And so today we're gonna talk about the holiness of God.

Why don't you go ahead and turn to your neighbors, say the holiness of God?

And I just got you situated.

Uh, and so I might as well have you stand on back up.

Why don't you stand up with me as we're talking about the holiness of God?

We're gonna be in Isaiah chapter six today.

It's one of my all-time favorite passages.

Uh, if you've been around awakening, you've heard it probably more than once.

Uh, this is the very first passage I preached at 19 years of age.

Uh and here's I want us to stand in the honor of the reading of God's word.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him were seraphim, 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're 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 the threshold shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

Woe to me, I cried, I'm ruined, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

Then one of the seraphim 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 is touched your lips.

Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

And I said, Here am I.

Send me.

Amen.

You may have a seat.

Heavenly Father, we ask right now, as we begin to talk about something that we can't fully express.

You being infinite, we can't fully fathom.

That you would speak to us and reveal yourself to us.

That we'd know more fully of who you are.

And in that we'd experience more of who you are for us and those around us and become more like your son Jesus.

Amen.

The holiness of God.

As we're talking about and unpacking the holiness of God, I want you to wrestle with this question.

How do we encounter God his way?

How do we encounter God his way the way he longs for you to encounter him?

I don't know if you've thought about that.

I know you walked in today and you got to see Robbie up here and praise God for Robbie and leading us in worship.

And it's like, man, when it for some of you, man, when it's acoustic.

Oh, that just blesses my heart, right?

I just encounter God, and then you're like, as I'm a drummer, so I'm like, when the drums, when we have drums, oh, that's how I encounter God.

But how do you encounter God his way?

Uh, you know, next to my bedside table, uh, I have a little bit of, you know, two charging uh things for my Apple Watch and then for my phone, right?

And many of you have this.

And so I have the Apple Watch and the phone, and the other day I plug in my phone to charge overnight, and I get up the next morning, and you've had this experience, right?

And it didn't charge.

Right?

You had this experience?

Yeah.

It's the worst.

It's not the worst, but it feels like the worst.

Right?

Like, are you kidding me?

I plugged it in, I remembered, I plugged it in, I did the right thing, and now it's not charged, and now I got a full day, and I'm not exactly sure if my phone's gonna make it through the day.

And here's what happened this end was not plugged in.

Like I did the right thing, it was plugged in, but it wasn't plugged in.

You know what I mean?

Like it was plugged in, but it wasn't.

It looked like it was all set to charge, but because this one piece wasn't into the wall, then it wasn't connected to the source, and as a result, it would not charge the phone, even though on the outside and everything that looked like it, it looked like I'm charging my phone all night long.

Now, here's the thing for us I think this is where we end up in church, in our relationship with God.

Like we show up on Sunday and okay, I'm gonna worship, or I'm a part of a small group, and externally we have these things that all look like the right things, but is there power missing in your relationship with God?

Is like when we sing the holy, holy, and and like you begin to read how people encounter God, as is there a sense of like, man, there's something missing.

I'm just not quite connected to the source.

I have I have some of the right things.

And I believe as we talk about the holiness of God, it's gonna help you and help us, not only in our worship gatherings, but in your personal life, connect to the source that is God.

Well, the holiness of God, what how do we encounter him?

The very first thing we have to do is we have to look up and recognize we approach a holy God.

Isaiah shows up into the temple.

King Uzziah, who was a king for about 40 years, he was an incredible king.

Isaiah is a prophet in the royal court.

This would have been economic, political instability.

This would have been personal grief for him.

And where does he go in the midst of that?

He goes to the temple in uncertainty and he has this encounter with God.

He shows up to the temple and it says, I saw the Lord high and exalted.

And he has this picture of the king of the universe and these angels, these seraphim, they're like crazy creatures, right?

Six-winged.

They're calling out one to another, holy, holy, holy.

To encounter God his way, we first have to recognize we approach a holy God.

Well, what does it mean that God is holy?

Well, the word literally means to be set apart, unique, holy other, a cut above.

We get that with items.

We have certain items that are set apart.

Uh, underneath my dresser, I everything's about my room today, I guess, um where I keep my shoes.

And I got a brand new pair of curries for Christmas.

And I, because I tore my Achilles, I've yet to be able to play basketball uh, you know, in with our team people after church, but those curries are set aside for that court and they'll only be played on a wood floor.

They are holy.

We get to me, maybe not to you.

We get that idea, set apart, unique.

The word holy also carries the idea of purity or moral excellence.

When it comes to God, what this means is God is completely set apart, wholly other from his creation.

What we said last week, God is not like us, he is holy.

There is nothing and no one like him, he's distinctly unique.

God's holiness refers to his majesty and moral purity, encompasses and defines all that is pure, whole, righteous, and healthy in the universe.

Like his holiness is all that is healthy in the universe.

When things are in alignment with his holiness, it means you're healthy.

You're whole.

I love this picture.

When Isaiah saw God, he sees and approaches a holy God.

Notice the few things that he saw.

He first saw what?

God high and exalted.

It means that he was the focal point, he's the center of the universe, he's above all else preeminent.

Let me like help try to help us get this, because this is hard for us.

Like, this is God.

Think about this.

We're sitting here at San Jose, planet Earth.

Planet Earth is approximately 93 million miles away from the sun.

The sun is approximately one of a hundred billion other stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The Milky Way galaxy, it if we were to traverse it, it would take about a hundred uh million light years to cross it.

A light year is the speed of light is you're traveling at 186,000 miles per second.

That's pretty fast.

You'd have to travel a hundred million miles at 186,000 miles per second just to traverse the Milky Way galaxy.

And the Milky Way galaxy is one of a hundred to two hundred billion other galaxies in the universe, and our galaxy isn't really all that big.

And God spoke, and all of that came into existence, and that he is high and exalted and above all of it, the center of the universe.

And then Isaiah sees that he's seated on a throne.

God is in control, he is sovereign king of the universe.

And every time we see God in scripture on uh in the kingly picture, he is seated.

You know, the only place we don't see him seated is when he welcomes a martyred one home.

He's seated because he's in control.

He's not thrown off here and there by what's happening in the world around us.

Why?

Because he's all powerful, he's the creator, he's sovereign.

And the train of his robe, think about that picture.

Isaiah walks in, he sees this train.

Now, a train in the ancient day uh represented the extent of power that a king had.

And the train of his robe filled the attempt, the temple.

What Isaiah's seeing is you know what?

Uzziah died, and he was a powerful and he's a good king, but here's what you need to know: I am the king, and my power extends forever infinitely.

I am all powerful, even in the midst of the uncertainty.

And then you have these seraphim.

You're like, what in the world are these?

These are angels.

Seem to be charged at ministering in the presence of God, guarding his holiness, crying out one to another, holy, holy, holy.

You know the attribute of God's holiness is the only this one is the only one that's repeated three times in scriptures.

We just sang the song where it said, holy, holy, holy.

That comes from Revelation chapter four.

And and what the author's telling us, anytime it's repeated, something's repeated three times.

This is the way in Hebrew you use superlatives.

It's like good, better, best.

He's holy, he's holy, he's holy.

All of his attributes are holy.

His love is a holy love, his justice is a holy justice, his righteousness, his faithfulness.

Literally, there is none and no one like him.

Set apart in brilliant perfection and righteousness completely other.

Holiness is not something he does.

Holiness is who he is.

How do we encounter God his way?

We first have to look up.

We gotta see God for who he is.

We recognize we approach a holy God.

See, I think one of the reasons we're not like connected in is we don't look up enough to see the God that we're worshiping.

Or when we do, I think I think it goes something like this.

So I remember when my kids were little and we went to the zoo.

What's the first animal you want to see when you go to the zoo?

The lion, yes, thank you.

All of you else were wrong.

Um The Lion! By the way, um, my nickname as a kid was Ryan, the lion.

I I love lions.

I remember one time we were at the zoo, and there was, you know, the lion cage, and there was the glass wall, and there was just a lion lounging right next to the wall, and one of my kids just starts tapping the glass, like trying to get this lion to do something, you know, just come on, move, roar, show me something.

I think that's how it kind of is with God, is like we show up and we tap Him, come on, God, do something, move, work.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to South Africa with um for my friend's 50th birthday, he's South African, and uh his sister-in-law lives right on the edge of Kruger National Park.

And so we went into Kruger National Park.

I gotta tell you, just the idea that there's a lion out there made me not want to get out of the car, period.

Like, not even seeing the lion, just the idea that there's lions out there and tigers and bears, oh my! That just the whole idea of it.

Because there's a radically different way that you encounter a lion in the wild, isn't it true?

You're like, Ryan, we've never done that before.

I've literally not right because if you came across a lion in the wild, you wouldn't be poking it, you wouldn't be going, hey, roar for me.

I would I would love for you to do a trick.

Why don't you chase that antelope?

That would be fun.

Right?

You come across a lion in the wild, you're in his territory, under his domain, and you're responding to his movement, not the other way around.

And so you begin to go, okay, I do and move, however you want me to.

See, I think when we worship God, it's far more like a lion in the wild that we're looking up and seeing a God who is massive and holy and righteous and pure.

There is none like him.

And we have such a casualness and a flippancy when we worship, don't we?

Instead of going, when we just sang, and we just sang the words holy, holy, holy.

Like there should be a sense of awestruck wonder in our hearts.

I think one of the missing ingredients when we worship is we're like, hey, I wanna I want you to meet me.

I want you to do a little trick, I'm just gonna tap on the glass.

And there is no other.

And so our response that we look up and recognize we approach a holy God, the lion in the wild is reverence, is the only proper response before holy god.

Reverence.

You know, I love by the way the picture of the lion, and you know, Aslan is the Christ figure in the Narnia, and Lucy asks the beaver about Aslan and says, Is he safe?

No, but he's good.

And we have this incredible God, and he is deeply and profoundly good, but he is the all-powerful one where reverence is the only proper response.

Every person who encounters God in scripture immediately gets low before him.

Well, what does it mean to respond in reverence?

Reverence is an overwhelming sense of awe, respect, wonder, and honor originating from the interior of a person that is expressed through a person's physical posture in the presence of the one who's majestic in holiness.

Like it's this overwhelming sense of awe that we look up and begin to get an accurate view of.

God instead of just bringing him down onto our terms.

And what we do is then we look in, and we our first response is reverence.

You know, my buddy, umce went up to um half dome.

He climbed half dome.

That stresses me out.

I don't think I'll do it.

Um, heights, you know.

Um, but he did half dome, and he's telling me, he's like, Ryan, as I got to the top and I was getting to the edge, instinctively what I did as I got closer and closer to this view is I just got lower and lower.

Because as I got, I really wanted this beautiful view, but there's no way that I wasn't gonna get all the way down and he got all the way down on his belly to look over the edge.

Because why?

He had reverence for the view and he had reverence for the drop.

And he knew in the presence of that view he had to get low as he got closer.

And for us, friends, as we worship and as we come into the holiness of God, reverence is the only proper response.

As we get lower and lower in his presence, you will encounter him more deeply.

And I love Isaiah's response.

Did you notice his response?

He sees this incredible picture of God, and his first response is woe.

Now, in the Hebrew, that's not like woe, um, like woe, man.

Not not the way we use it.

It literally means I'm as good as dead.

That was that was like whoa.

Like you ever said that and it was a close call?

Whoa! I thought I was a goner.

Woe is me.

For my eyes have seen the King Almighty.

And his response is then to confess who he is.

You know, I like how A.W.

Tozer said it.

He said, until we have seen ourselves as God sees us, we're not likely to be much disturbed over conditions around us, as long as they do not get so far out of hand as to threaten our comfortable way of life.

We've learned to live with unholiness and come to look upon it as a natural and expected thing.

See, what happens when we get into the holiness of God, when we begin to get into his presence, God's holiness begins to act like an x-ray on our soul.

It begins to reveal the broken and the painful, the sin, the things that are creating unhealth in your life and those around you.

It acts as this x-ray machine.

What we typically do is we look around at everybody else, see what everybody's doing, and say, cool, I'm pretty good, or compare, I'm actually doing better.

When we get before a holy God, it's all of a sudden like exposing us.

You know, um, a number of years ago, uh my son took a terrible bike accident.

He was flying down this hill, um, he collided with another bike, he flipped two, three times in the air and just slammed down.

He was like knocked out for a little bit, crying.

I mean, it just was awful.

We get to the uh ER, I mean, his shoulder, he's just in such pain the whole drive.

And I remember the guy standing in front of us as we're, you know, he's finally kind of calmed down, Miles is.

And the guy standing in front of us, like, what are you in for?

And I was like, I think he broke his collarbone.

And he goes, Oh, you know, I used to coach little league.

Why do guy us guys we think we know everything?

You know, it's like, no, I I I took a first aid class once.

Um, and and he goes and he like, hey, can you do this with your arm?

He does some of these sort of things.

He's like, you're fine.

Um, this is the x-ray of Miles's.

Um I don't know if you see that, but those are supposed to be connected.

See, a lot of the time, friends, we're just talking to one another, and what we're saying is, you're fine.

You're fine.

Don't worry about it.

And yet, when we get into the holiness of God, it acts like an x-ray machine and it shows the broken parts, and what it's meant to do is to design in such a way to bring healing, to diagnose you so that you can be restored.

And we have we're walking around limping and broken.

And when we get into his uh into his holiness, we begin to see ourselves as we truly are.

And Isaiah does this, he simply confesses.

He's like, you know what?

My lips, my words, the things that I said they've hurt people.

And actually, I come from a people that just don't say good things and they're breaking things around me.

See, the response is a reverence that leads to a repentance, a confession.

Confession, Dallas Willard said, is to own up to a condition of the soul.

It's to recognize and realize, you know what, there actually is something broken.

I'm not gonna take the guy in front of me at the ER's word for it.

I'm actually going to stand in the holiness of God and realize that actually in his holiness, it's actually health itself and life.

And it's revealing where the brokenness is in me.

Confession simply means to agree with God.

Like I agreed with the doctor in the x-ray, not the man in the front of us at the ER.

Love, 1 John 1.9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Where will we stand in the holiness of God, allow it to impact our lives and reveal the areas, then it's not like sit in shame.

It's not sit under a weight of guilt.

It's not like, hey, you've been such a bad person.

That's from the enemy.

There is a conviction of the Spirit that's specific that this is a broken area, and you confess it, and Jesus forgives it right away.

And that's for many today.

You've been walking around with so much guilt and so much baggage, and we're gonna take communion at the end of the sermon, and where it's this you're gonna confess, and you're gonna go, God, the way I've been treating my spouse, God, the words that I've been saying, God, the things that I've been putting into my mind.

You know what?

That relationship at work, I confess it right now, and he's faithful and just, and he forgives it like the great physician.

He mends you back together.

Convession positions you to experience the grace of God in your life.

I love that picture of the seraphim, these angels, these heavenly beings, says one of them flew to the altar.

The altar was the place where the substitute sacrifices were made for the sins of people.

He takes a coal from that altar and he touches Isaiah's lip.

By the way, sometimes part of the process as we confess and as we get things right with other people is painful.

There's like that searing.

He said, I'm not gonna leave you in that state.

See, this has touched your lips.

Your guilt is taken away, your sin is atoned for.

That's why he came.

Jackie Hill Perry, in a great book on the holiness of God, called Holier Than Thou, writes, the cross reveals God's holiness and how the sinless son was judged on our behalf of sinful people so that when God justifies the guilty, he does so without compromising his righteousness.

How do we encounter God his way?

We first look up and recognize we come before a holy God, completely other.

Look in.

And reverence is the only proper response as we see God for who he is, then we begin to see ourselves as we truly are.

And honestly, most of the time that's where we end.

And scripturally, that's not where God leaves people anytime they encounter him.

Because every time someone encounters God, there is this looking up, there is this looking in.

You can track it through the Old Testament, through the New Testament, and then there's always this looking out.

In the presence of a holy God, we actually receive a holy calling.

I mean, think about this picture.

Isaiah shows up in the temple.

He has this encounter with God that causes him.

He gets low, he cries out, Whoa is me! I'm a man of unclean lips.

He thinks he's gonna die.

He experiences the grace and the forgiveness of God in that moment.

And then God in this moment says, Whom shall I send?

And who will go for us?

And Isaiah, who just experienced not only the presence of God, but his grace poured out.

He says, Here am I.

Here am I.

Send me.

The picture that always goes through my head, and this is an old one, every time I see it, because even in the text here, and I I apologize, um, but like, do you remember Shrek?

Yeah.

And Donkey.

And Shrek's about to go on his big adventure, and he needs somebody to go with him.

Does anybody want to go?

I can't do the Shrek accent, but and Donkey's just like jumping up.

Yeah.

I almost feel like after this moment, after all that experience, like he moved from this trepidation to like this jumping up, like, send me.

Use me.

Absolutely.

Are you kidding me?

That I just met you and I didn't die, but I received grace and forgiveness?

You met with me?

Send me.

Jackie Hill Perry again says, if God is holy, then he can't sin.

If God can't sin, then he can't sin against me.

If he can't sin against me, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is?

Yeah, drop the mic right there, Jackie Hill Perry.

And the reason that we don't say, Here am I, sin be me, is we don't trust that God's will and plan and call in our life is good, and we think we have a better plan for our life.

Next week we're going to talk about the goodness of God.

But his holiness, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is?

And we're like, no, I'm afraid he's gonna send me to Africa, Ryan.

I'm afraid that if I actually follow Jesus, he'll make me miserable.

Well, what is God up to in the world?

2 Corinthians chapter 5, we actually sat with as a staff as we led up to Easter.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

And if you remember the three by five challenge, which I hope you're still doing, we as a team sat in this passage of what is God up to?

It's what he's always been up to.

2 Corinthians 5, 17.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.

The old is gone, the new is here.

All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people's sins against them.

What is God up to?

He's actively reconciling the world to himself through Jesus Christ's finished work on the cross.

And so, what is God inviting you into?

And he's committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, though God were making his appeal through us, like you're his representatives.

He's chosen you to make his appeal to reconcile and bring wholeness and restoration to a hurting and broken world.

Be reconciled to God is Paul's uh calling on the Corinthian church.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the very righteousness of God.

Look out.

In the presence of a holy God, we receive a holy calling.

And many of you have been doing that with the three by five challenge as you begin to look at your neighbors, begin to look at your coworkers and your friends, and you realize God has given you the ministry of reconciliation.

We talked last week that God is self-sufficient, he does not need you.

It's a humbling thought.

He needs you in no way.

And yet, what's incredible is he chose to use you and me, and he delights in it.

When my kids were little, um we'd do different projects around the house, and when we started awakening um, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have any office space.

Some incredible people in our church, uh, while we're gone on a trip, they actually helped turn my garage into an office.

So I came back, it was what a treat.

I mean, it was amazing.

I just was so cool.

They spent time and they hung a light and uh I finally had a place to work.

Uh and one of the things I love is whiteboards.

Anybody else love a good whiteboard?

Absolutely.

Um man, I loved a whiteboard.

It's a little too weird.

I know.

Okay.

And and so one of the we didn't have a whiteboard in there, and I was like, we didn't have any money.

I'm like, I'll make my own whiteboard.

There's whiteboard paint, right?

And so I went to Home Depot, got one of those big uh sheets of plywood, and got whiteboard paint, and I grabbed my daughter Ella.

I'm like, let's do this project together.

And so we're out there and she's painting, and I'm painting, and then eventually we hang it up.

It was so fun.

Now, here's the thing I did not need Ella's help.

I was just fine doing it on my own.

And yet, that memory of doing it with her so precious to me.

See, God doesn't need our help, but he delights it.

That like we just get to come alongside our heavenly father and work with him and just show up, and he's going, like, hey, come on, I I have I have things for you to do.

I I want to invite you into the work that I'm doing.

And you have a heavenly father that says, I love you getting to be a part of what I'm doing, and you just get to join him and join him, and we get to join him.

Would you, would you, when you encounter the Holy One, look up.

See him for who he is.

As we close in worship and we're going to partake in communion, would you look in?

Would you take time before we before you partake in the elements to look in?

Is there anything in you that you go, I need to confess?

And then would you look out to see the world that God loves, that God came for, that God died for.

And you get in joy to join your heavenly father in the work that he's doing.

It actually not only is amazing for you, it delights his heart too.

We're gonna partake in communion together, and I want you to just take time to go through that progression, look up, look in, and then look out.

And at whatever time you're ready to partake in the elements, you can come forward.

This is his body broken for us, his blood poured out, that we have life.

And would you just go ahead and, you know, you can come down and maybe just go around the aisle so we don't get kind of like a backlog there?

That would be great, Heavenly Father.

Thank you.

Thank you for revealing yourself.

Thank you for showing us who you are.

Forgive us for when we bring you down into our world, when we think thoughts that are less of you.

Would you help us to see you as high and exalted and holy?

And the Holy One has invited us in.

And you call us your sons, the daughters.

Thank you.

Thank you for your Christ.

Thank you for your love.

Jesus' name.com slash card.