Understanding the Holiness of God

 

I’ve been doing a Bible study on the attributes of God and this week we looked at one that may be as misunderstood as any other attribute. As Christians it must be our goal to study God’s Word with an extreme passion for knowing God. This task is in one way an impossible goal to fully attain, for God Himself says this in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Yet, because the Christian faith is about a restored relationship with God, through Jesus, we need to know God to love God. 

Though God’s ways are higher than ours, we can still learn of who He is through His Word, in which God Himself has revealed all we need to know about Him in order to love Him and have a relationship with Him. We must open our Bibles and we must seek the greatest possible understanding. When Jesus ascended back to sit at the Father’s side, He sent us the Holy Spirit, who lives in each believer. The Holy Spirit is our teacher and according to John 14:26, “he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” God has provided us with all we need.

So, what does it mean that God is holy? When we think of that word, we often picture it to mean perfect in the sense of never sinning. Certainly, that is true of God, He is without sin, as was Jesus when He walked the earth as a man. But the word means more than just that. 

The Hebrew word used to describe God as holy is qadosh and the meaning of that word speaks of something that is separate. R.C. Sproul defines this as “primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems totally foreign to us.” That description lines up with Isaiah 55:8-9, quoted above. Every single aspect of God is above anything we can do or even think of. God’s love? It is a love that is so much greater than ours. No one loves like God. God’s justice? Well, all one has to do is look at man’s justice system and we can see that it is a far cry from true justice. But God’s justice is perfect in every way. Try and compare God’s creative efforts with man’s. God speaks things into existence. Man cannot touch that. 

The truth is this, God is so far above us in every single aspect, that we really don’t have words to describe it. This is why He deserves our worship. God is above all things. Way above. The only word that I can think of that helps me grasp this truth is the word infinite. God is an infinite being and man and all of man’s world is finite. We keep looking at God and questioning things. We ask questions about why suffering and get frustrated because we can’t find answers that satisfy our minds. The truth is this; God is Holy, capital H. His ways are so much higher above ours that we simply cannot try and apply our finite understanding to an infinite God. 

This is why the Christian life is to be a life of faith. God tells us that in His Word. 2 Corinthians 5:7 reminds us that “we walk by faith, not by sight.” Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” So, we must seek Him and seek Him by faith. 

But we must seek the God who is above all things, who is transcendentally separate from everything we know. And we must worship Him in a way we have never done so. We must worship Him for who He is. 

God is holy. God is holy, holy, holy. And I cannot even find words to explain this. I sat down this morning to try. I wanted to share with all of you reading this, the power of the truth of God’s holiness. I see now I cannot. I am inadequate for such a task. But please, please use this as an opportunity to seek to know as much as you possibly can about who God is and what it means that He is holy. 

Take time today to just sit in awe of our God. Look out at the snow and the sun. Find some birds. Look at the people around you. Look in a mirror. God created all this by merely speaking it into creation. It defies logic. It defies science. It is simply transcendent. 

Then open your Bible and read of Him. Read the miracles. The stories of deliverance. Look at how many times Israel failed Him. But even in those failings, God keeps loving them through it all. His mercies are new every day. His love for us is a holy love.

My worship of God never succeeds to the place it ought to be. But I must worship the infinite God with everything this finite body and mind has. One day I will fall before Him in pure worship, devoid of this sinful body, and all of the stuff I thought was important will be left behind. I will see His glory. 

God is Holy. Let us worship Him in spirit and truth.

Return to the Lord

 Come, let us return to the LORD;

for he has torn us, that he may heal us;

he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us;

on the third day he will raise us up,

that we may live before him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;

his going out is sure as the dawn;

he will come to us as the showers,

as the spring rains that water the earth.” 

Hosea 6:1-3 

The answer is clear in scripture as to what we must do. We must return to the Lord. 

This is how we must respond to Covid. Return to the Lord. To the violence. We must return to the Lord. To the division. To the oppression and to the injustices of the world. Return to the Lord.

Revival starts within our own heart. 

God has made the path clear and easy to see. We don't need a better president, we don't need more riots and protests or any of the other things we keep doing in our society. We need to return to the Lord.

These words are from the OT but they are just as relevant to us today. God does not change.

Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

Let us press on to know the LORD.

How Big Is Your God?

The God of the Bible is an amazing god. From the beginnings of Genesis 1, until the end of Revelation, we find story after story of God doing things that our science and our logic would call impossible.

Listen to opening of scripture. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Science has yet to offer an explanation for the creation of the world that proves this statement to be untrue. Even more amazing is how the Bible says He did it. 

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. - Genesis 1:6-7

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. - Genesis 1:9 

And on and on it was so. God said, and it came to be. Even man was created because God created him. 

Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. - Genesis 2:7

As the history of the world is recorded in scripture, we see God doing things that defy nature. He floods the earth, saving only a handful of people and animals to repopulate the earth in a restart of unbelievable magnitude. 

He chooses one man to be the start of a group of people to be His chosen ones and from whom the world will be saved from its sin. He does this by promising a child to a woman well past the age of childbearing. This feat was so impossible that the woman laughed when God said it.

The LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” - Genesis 18:10-14 

Scripture is replete with examples of God doing impossible things by human standards. He parts the Red Sea so that only His people can pass through while their enemies are destroyed as they seek to follow them. God puts men into positions of authority and removes them as He sees fit. He makes a donkey speak. The miracles of scripture go on and on. And they don’t cease in the New Testament. 

We see Jesus born to a virgin. We see men raised from the dead and people healed, sometimes by merely touching the cloak of Christ. We see that Jesus controls the weather. He can stop a storm merely by commanding it to stop. We find Jesus not only resurrected from the dead, but we see Him ascend back into heaven. 

We find the Apostles given the power over sickness and death. An earthquake open jails for the apostles and angels show up to break prison chains.

I could go on and on. The Bible is filled with the stories and the miracles of God. 

Many of us have experienced miraculous events in our own lives. As Christians, we say we believe that God sent Jesus to earth to save us from our sins and that we are saved by faith alone to receive eternal life. We tell others that we believe this, and we use scripture to show why we believe this.

But in the day to day struggles of our own life on earth, we worry and fret and far too often live this life without joy and in fear. 

Why?

Because we simply don’t really believe God is big enough, strong enough, or willing enough to help us. We reduce God to a small god and in doing that, we make ourselves or others our god.

If what we say we believe, is really what we believe, then our God is big enough, strong enough, and gracious enough, to not only save us from our sins, but He is big enough to bring us through every single trial or storm we face. 

The fact is we need to believe what scripture teaches. God is sovereign. We must understand what that word means. It means He is over all things. Everything. Nothing moves on this earth, unless God has ordained it and allowed it.

The problem we have is that our finite minds cannot understand the how or the why of God’s movement. Scripture answers that question for us. 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. - Ecclesiastes 3:11 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:8-9 

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. - Psalms 145:3 

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! - Romans 11:33 

We must stop reducing God to our level and instead begin to worship a God who is so much more than we can even imagine. We must believe what He says about Himself. 

“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” - Jeremiah 32:27 

Nothing is too hard for God. Nothing. We must believe that. Then we must trust that all things are under His control. It all comes down to what may be my favorite verse.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28

How big is your God? I can promise you this; He is big enough. I pray we would all begin to live with that God as the one we truly trust in for all things. But we must also understand this life isn’t about us, it’s about God’s will and purpose. That’s the key to being able to rest in faith, knowing that God’s purposes aren’t ours. We don’t pray to change God’s mind; we pray to change ours. 

So today, look at the God you say you believe in. How big is He?