For those of you who dont get it...that's a sock with a hole in it. it's a holey sock. Holey. As in it has an opening in it, but it sounds a lot like the word "Holy," which is how we describe the living God. It's a pun. I made a punny on my first sermon.
I am by no means qualified to talk on the topic of holiness. I stand here as a sinful man. I can give a message on holiness and anyone of you would be right in calling me a hypocrit after im done. This is not modesty, just the plain, ugly, and honest truth. I am arrogant, selfish, lustful, and quick to anger. As preacher once said, "I am not obsessed with holiness because I am holy. I love the holiness of God because it is my only hope. Without his mercy and holiness there would be no restraint to my wickedness." I was given carte blanche by uncle joe to pick any topic i wanted and i choose this one because it is so important to our lives and I think is utterly essential to our understanding of the Apostle's Creed which we've been studying. I want us to get a true glimpse at this God that we believe in. So please pray with me as I ask for God's help to try and communicate the words He wants said.
[prayer]
let me make this clear: this sermon is not simply edward telling you to stop sinning and be more like Jesus. That WILL happen, but it isn't my primary goal. My initial impulse is to give you all a definition of the word "holy" in order to give you a solid framework to hang this sermon on - that's the structured way to do it and I tend to like structure. I decided not to do that though, at least not yet. i want to take holiness in all its angles before coming, hopefully, to some form of conclusion as to what holiness should mean to us and what it means to pursue it. I think most of us have a general grasp of the word "holy." we imagine holiness to be bright lights and clouds in the heavens (we really do, i google imaged it).
I think the word "Holy" has two aspects to it. On the one hand, it has EVERYTHING to do with what you're doing on the computer in the middle of the night, it has to do with the grudges you hold. It has to do with how you deal with pride. Sin and holiness certainly encompasses all of these things. I think moralistic purity is probably the definition most people tack onto God when they think of the word "Holy." But I would argue that this understanding of holiness is insufficient by itself. If we observe holiness in light of moralistic purity alone, God repeatedly breaks His own commandment, "thou shalt not kill." We get nervous when nonbelievers point at stories like the judgement fire poured upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and we cringed at how the earth opened up and swallowed unbelievers. Really, we dont even have to look in scriptures for examples, God has killed every human being since the dawn of time (with exception of two, enoch and elijah). It's called death, it symbolizes everything we hate and fear, and its something we'll all go through with. Yet despite being the author of death, God remains (to use john piper's words) "impeccably holy!" It's not about moralistic purity, at least in the sense that we understand it, its about something higher.
The other, and i think the primary, meaning of the word "Holy," or "Kadesh" in Hebrew, is transcendence and separation. It's the "otherness" of God that is most glorifying. In the vision described in Isaiah 6, we find the seraphims declaring "Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty!" I'm told that the Hebrew language uses repetition as the mode of emphasis, to say something 3 times is like typing in CAP LOCK, size 30 font, bolded, italicized and underlined. It was not enough to say "Holy" or "Holy Holy," they take it up to the third degree - no other attribute of God is praised in this way, not His wisdom and not His power. Only His uniqueness and separation, His absolute VALUE, that human language tries its best to sum up with the word "Holy."
I think the natural human response to God's holiness, as I just defined it, is fear. Ever heard of the term xenophobia? It's the fear of strangers or the unknown. I think if we were to truly encounter God in all his glorious holiness, we'd be struck w/ the worst case of xenophobia imaginable. Consider the disciples's reaction when jesus calmed the storm (Read Mark 4:35). You would think they were afraid of the storm, but we see that their fears became even greater upon witnessing Jesus calming the waves and winds. The disciple's response was based on their fear of the holy. It was not Christ's moralistic purity but His alien'ness that look lustfully at scared the bejesus out of them. Their reaction was not "oooooh...jesus u're sooo holy, u never tell a lie...ooooo." It was more like "JESUS CHRIST, WHAT ARE YOU MAN?!" ...Profanity was intended. we often sneer at how spiritually blind the disciples are. oh we'll usually say that we're no better but a part of us always think we would've done better if we were in their shoes. But really...even if their fearful response was born out of sinful, human nature, they at least saw jesus for who he was. I wonder if we could even lay that claim upon our own perception of christ. Do we even SEE the real Christ. the Holy One of Isra El. Or do we look to the Holy Father as a genie and pout when things fail to go the way we want, do we shake our fist at Him in the midst of tragedy. The only sane response upon a true encounter with holiness is fear and trembling, and this you'll find throughout scripture. There is an aversion built into the heart of sinful man against anything holy precisely because it is so foreign and alien to us. In the words of R.C. Sproul "As long as our gaze is fixed on the horizontal plane of this earth, we have no problem with ourselves. But if we lift our gaze to heaven and contemplate what God is, we will be broken. Security and smugness is annihilated."
Because if holiness defines God's otherness from us, sin defines OUR otherness from Him. Let's face it, our natural selves don't want a Holy God. We want an unholy god that is humanly predictable and does what we expect/want of Him. one that embodies what WE envision as good. We want to create a "safe" god to accommodate our unholy ways, a god we can RELATE to. An idol. God's Holiness means that He IS morally pure, which is exactly why He can not act the way unholy humans expect Him to - can't operate by the same rules - He needs to be separate/above creation. The two aspects of Holiness are interconnected. I really want us to get this, how he is so different from us precisely because of His moral perfection, and our depravity. His holiness means that his moral purity is so far above ours that we don't even understand it and it becomes alien and foreign to us.
(everything he does for the good of those who love him; maxi good)
Holiness won't always appear the way we think it should, that's not God's fault, it's ours. One question nonbelievers often ask to trip up christians is "how could a good, loving and all powerful God permit human suffering? either He wants to help but cant, in which case he's not all powerful; or he could help but doesn't want to and is therefore not good." I think the answer to that lies in the fact that He is Holy. In His holiness, His unique and uncompromising nature of moral perfection, God aims at maximizing Good at the end of all things, even if it means suffering in this lifetime. If there is one way in which God is limited, it is that He can't NOT be God, He can not do anything that would lead to less Good than is possible at the end of time - His Holy nature will not permit Him that. Holiness is the only way I can explain how a Good and all powerful God exists in a suffering world. (present suffering not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us) In other words, God is being Holy when you face rejection, persecution, slander, ridicule, loneliness, depression, and exhaustion; when the worst imaginable thing happens to you, He is being Holy. God was being Holy when he allowed the Haiti earthquake, or withholds rain from famine stricken countries, or choose not to answer prayers of cancer patients....... I learnt earlier this week that three of the villages i recently served in Uganda was hit by a mudslide that killed hundreds of people. Children who took refuge in schools, buried alive; patients who took refuge in hospitals, buried alive; christians who took refuge in churches, buried alive. EVERYTHING destroyed, the economy of the entire district devastated - leaving the already impoverished survivors in even greater poverty... God was being HOLY when he permitted ALL of this because SOMEHOW, in ways we can't begin to imagine, it will all add up to greater Good in the end. Hold ONTO that fact so that when disaster hits your life you have a ROCK to hold onto and won't curse the Holy One of Israel. In the face of suffering believers are given three choices, to shut our eyes and pretend it did not happen, to renounce God's Goodness, or to believe in faith, that He is being Holy in bringing this to pass. I'll push it even further and go on to say that God would be UNholy if he averted/interfered with events such that there would ULTIMATELY be less Good in the end, even if in the short run it would mean Haiti averted, or cancer cured, or......young lives saved. Do you see how uncomfortable that makes us feel? Do you SEE how uncomfortable that makes us feel? This claim I'm making...that God would be unholy and unworthy of our worship if He were to answer some of our best intentioned prayers... We're so accustomed to thinking about "holiness" from a humanity centered perspective... It's not, holiness was, is, and always will be GOD centered. Holiness doesn't come cheaply, not for us, and especially NOT for God. Holiness meant having to allow Haiti, or cancer or bududa, it means allowing children He desperately LOVES to suffer. Holiness meant turning His back on the Son as He was crucified, the most horrific of tragedies to happen in human history, deicide! Never. take. the word. "Holy." lightly. Im not playing word games here with this concept of "Holiness" - to give you all this cool new definition or outlook on this sunday school term. I want us to see this Holy God, to truly SEE Him, and to be utterly amazed at this...being that we gave our lives to and who gave His live for us in order to overcome this separation defined by His very Holy nature and our sinfulness.
Which brings us to the Cross, the ultimate expression of God's love and holiness. I spent all this time to tell you how different, alien and inaccessible God is to us. Now, if uncle joseph and ben will allow me 5 more minutes, I want to spend what little time I have left to tell you how he MADE himself accessible. Jesus made it possible for us to come to the Father (noone comes to the father except through me). To make US holy, a mark of separation from this world, and in doing so glorify the Father and the Son. That was the whole point of the Cross, it's not about us and our salvation, but about God and His glorification. I promised uncle joseph that I would talk about how we should stop sinning and to pursue holiness. so, here it is: everyone ready? you should stop sinning and pursue holiness. hahaha...really, what else is there to say? Is the Holiness of our God not enough? let me leave you a verse to hang this on, (hebrews 12:1-2) Notice it doesn't just say throw off sin, but EVERYTHING that entangles, even morally neutral things. You all know what im talking about. All the idols that we set up in our lives: sports, families, grades, careers, relationships. Everything that is not brought before the cross in submission to the Father's will. Holiness is more than moral purity and more than a list of rules we follow. If you were to ask 10 people what they thought it means to "pursue holiness" you'd get 10 different answers (i know, i tried), but most of their definitions point towards this concept of imitating Christ. Be like jesus, WWJD, 10 steps to being more like jesus - books and cds for sale in the foyer after the service. But what do we really mean when we say we want to be more like Jesus? Are we to imitate his humility in serving others (philippians tells us to do this), or perhaps we need to imitate his unconditional love (1 corinthians tells us to do this too), scripture is FULL of commands that would have us emulate characteristics of Christ and we come to believe this to be all it takes to be Holy. if we could just figure out which traits we're supposed to copy...how very very pharisaic of us. Are we to imitate the traits of Jesus or are we to imitate the very THING that defined his "Otherness," his unswerving dedication, allegiance, and SUBMISSION to the will of the Holy Father when he prays "not my will but your will be done." Holiness, for us, begins with submission. Humility, love, all of that will naturally follow, but they are meaningless, completely unattainable, and dangerously fakeable characteristics for us until we learn to pursue a holiness born of submission.
[prayer]
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