The Meaning of Holiness

Hello, it's nice to be with you tonight. Pastor Nelson and I are part of the Saint Pastors Fellowship here in Brisbane area. I've only ever met him once, actually. So I guess there's a lot of trust on his part. I have somebody in to preach, but I'm glad to be here.

I live over in Browns Plains. So it's about 50 minutes north to the west of here in Logan City. And I grew up up near Cairns. My parents are from America. And so I went back to the United States when I was 19.

to do some seminary work, and I was there in seminary for a long time. And then came back about three years and a bit ago, almost four years ago. And the church gathered together in Browns Plains in about a year and a half ago. So lots of good things happening there, people are growing. And we meet in the morning, not the afternoons.

It gives me an opportunity to get down here in the afternoon. But thank you for introducing yourself to me already. It's been great to get to know you just a little bit already. You can turn to Psalm 99 if you would tonight. And we might just look up to the Lord in prayer for his grace as we look into his word this evening.

Lord God, you are the great and holy God of the other world, the world above. You are the God who reigns over this world. You're the God who is enthroned above the cherubim. And I pray that this evening we would, with Isaiah, catch a glimpse of your holiness and that it would have its transforming effect upon us. Lord, I pray that you would humble us before you as the great God of the heavens and I pray that when we bow before you that you would fulfill your promise to descend to dwell in the low place with those who are of a humble and contrite spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to raise up the spirit of the contrite and we ask this for Christ's sake in his name.

Amen. There's probably no Hebrew word that is so difficult to define as the word kadosh, and yet it's one of the primary qualities ascribed to God in the scripture, and we see it here in Psalm 99. Verse three, let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he. We see it again in verse five.

Exalt the Lord our God. Worship at his footstool. Holy is he. And we see it finally a third time in verse nine. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain for the Lord our God is holy.

This is what Isaiah saw of God when he had his vision in the temple. The seraphim cried to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The word holy or holiness occurs 1,396 times in the English Standard Version. And I recently looked at every single one of those references.

I'm preaching through a series, Church in Brown's Plains, Cornerstone Baptist Church, by the way, preaching through a series on the nature of God called Your God is Too Small. And if you want to know God and you want to conceive of Him as He actually is, you must understand holiness. If you want to make it to heaven, you must strive for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12, 14. And the Bible makes two primary statements about holiness.

The first is it tells us that God is holy. I've read passages that say that. The second thing it tells us is that because God is holy, we must be holy as God in heaven is holy. And that's something that God spoke to his old covenant people. Leviticus 11 verse 44, for I am the Lord, your God, consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am holy.

It's something that he speaks to his new covenant people as well, 1 Peter 1, verses 15 and 16, but as he who called you is holy, so also be holy in all your conduct since it is written you shall be holy for I am holy. God is holy, we must be holy, what is holiness? And the first thing I think that we see in Scripture is perhaps a bit of a misconception, though we're not far off base, when we tend to think of holiness as sinlessness. Holiness is not sinlessness, at least not that I can find in Scripture. I want you to listen to several Scripture passages.

I haven't turned to some, but there's so many of them that I've tried to weave together here that you probably want to keep up with all of them. So listen to a couple. Genesis chapter 2 and verse 3, there is a day that is holy. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Does that mean that the day was in some way a sinless day, whereas the day Monday in some way had sinned?

Is that what we mean when we say that the day was holy? Exodus 20 verse 11 says the same thing. The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Clothing in Scripture can be holy. Exodus 28 verse 2, you shall make holy garments for Aaron.

Does God mean that the garments that they must make for Aaron must be garments that had never yet sinned? Obviously, holiness is something different to sinlessness. Oils can be holy. Exodus 30 verse 25, it shall be a holy anointing oil. Is this some special blend of oil that has nothing to do with sin or moral defilement?

Is it a sinless oil? Does this mean then that there are varieties of oil that had indeed sinned and they must not be used? As you read through the scripture, this list continues to grow. A plate of gold can be holy. A gift, a crown, an altar, incense, a grain offering, bread, a location upon the earth.

A name can be holy, the ground can be holy, water can be holy, a loaf of bread, an incense censer, a goat can be holy, a festival, a tent site, a bronze ball, a box made of wood, food, a city, a mountain, wages can be holy, a stone, a bell, and meat. All of these can be holy. So is the crown, the holy crown, is it a sinless crown? Or the Sabbath day that is holy? Or the pot that is said to be holy?

Holiness is not, first of all, sinlessness. So what is it? The best word that I can find in English to approximate the word holy, as the Hebrews would have used it, is the word unlikeness. Listen to these scripture passages. Genesis chapter two, verse three, God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God did something different than he did on all the other days.

He rested on the seventh day. It was that day of the week on which God made a distinction. It was a different sort of day. It was unlike all the other days. And God calls us then to cease our labor on this day, this holy day.

Exodus chapter 30 verse 32, the oil shall not be poured upon the body of any ordinary person, as oil in general would have been. You shall make no other like this oil in composition. It is holy and it shall be holy to you. The holy anointing oil was not like any other sort of oil. It was holy.

There is no other oil like it, God says. In Exodus 30 verse 37, the incense that you shall make, according to its composition, you shall not make it for yourselves. It is to be holy for the Lord, not for you. There is to be a distinction. This is the Lord's holy anointing oil.

The incense made for the tabernacle was to be distinct. They were not allowed to copy its recipe. It was a special blend. No one could duplicate it. In that, it was holy.

So what is holiness? Well, it is uniqueness or distinctiveness. It is unlikeness. Something can be said to be holy when it is in a category all by itself. The Hebrews used the word kardosh, which appears in our Bible as holy anytime they wanted to talk about something that had nothing else like it.

And so holiness then relies upon categories. You cannot have holiness if there are not distinct categories. Here's a very weak example of holiness. If you have a pool of objects, and none of them differ from any of the other objects in significant ways, you cannot create categories of those objects. For example, think of a bag with 500 five-cent pieces in it.

You pull the first one out, and you see the five on the back, and you decide, okay, I'll put that one on the table here. And you pull the next one out, and it's got the same five, and so it goes in the same pile, and you go through the entire 500 of them, and they all belong in the same category. No coin ever ends up in a different category down to the very last one. But imagine you repeat the exercise, but the last coin that you pull out has a two dollars written on the back. That one belongs in a different category.

It's a gold coin. Its value is different. It is unlike all the rest. Holiness then depends upon categories and it highlights distinctions, distinctiveness, uniqueness. In our world today, we value diversity, and we value uniformity.

We don't want to stick out and be the different one, but we also don't want to be exactly the same as everyone else, and holiness is neither one of those. Holiness is not diversity, and holiness is not uniformity. Holiness is not all the coins being five cents. Holiness is not all the coins being different. Holiness is when there is one coin that is different from all the rest.

It's in a category all on its own because it is unlike the rest. So when the Bible says that God is holy, what does that mean? What are the categories then? What pile does God belong in? Is the line of categories drawn along the lines of noses and no noses?

In what way is God unlike everything else? And there's a number of answers to that question that you could find in the scripture. God is unlike everything else in that everything else is made and God is not made, he is unmade, he is eternal. Everything else is finite, meaning it began at some point and will expire at some point, but not God, he is infinite, he is holy in that way. Every word that we wish to use to define other words We use other words that are pretty close to it in order to define it.

A dictionary defines words with more words. How helpful is that? But what if there were a word that was so strange and different that no other words could be used to define it? How would you define that word? What if there were a being that was so different to every other being that you couldn't describe his difference in any way that was exactly meaningful to the rest of us who all live in the same category?

We speak of angels and we speak of angels as how they are like or unlike us. Angels are a bit like us, they just have wings too, right? So we're comparing them to ourselves to try to understand what an angel is. But how would you define God then? He is not like us in any way.

The best we can do is to say he is other. He is not like us. He's in a category all by himself. And you can see this actually in some of the words that we use to describe God. We say God is infinite.

We know what it means to be finite, that's us. We can describe finitude, it's what we are. Finite is like us. How then do you describe infinite? Not finite, other than us.

That's what God is. If you think about that too long, we'll see smoke coming out of your ears. We cannot in our minds comprehend this God. We know what it means to be changeable. That's a category that we all live in.

What does it mean to be unchangeable? Well, it means that God doesn't change. It means that he doesn't, but what does it mean about him? And that's a huge divide between us and him. We know what it means to be powerful, but what does it mean to be all-powerful?

Can you define the boundaries of that so that we can get our minds around this all-powerfulness? How far will the all of the all-powerfulness go? Can we comprehend this God? What about omnipresence? Can you describe the limits of that?

God is everywhere present at every point of space with all that he is in his being. It's not that God's power is here, but if you wanted God's mercy, you'd have to get on a jet to go to the other side of the universe. No, God is present at every point with all that he is at that point. Now, that's not true of us. How then do we describe God?

And the answer is he is other than us, he is holy. And God tells us a great many things in the scriptures about himself, and yet we must understand what God said to Moses in Deuteronomy chapter three, verse 24. Oh Lord God, you have only begun to show to your servants your greatness and your mighty hand. For what God is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? 2 Samuel 7, verse 22.

Therefore you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, for there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. In the end, God is like nothing else. He is holy. Now, I know what you're thinking, yes, but we were made in the image of God, right? So we are like God and God is like us.

We are like God. That is a true statement. We are like God in certain ways. But God is not like us. The likeness only goes one direction.

Listen to these two passages of scripture, Genesis 1, 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. So there's the one direction the likeness flows from God to us. Man is made to be like God. 2 Samuel 7, verse 24, therefore you are great, O Lord God, there is none like you, there is no God besides you.

So we were made like God, but God is like nothing else. No one is like God. Jeremiah 10, verse 6, there is none like you, O Lord, you are great, and your name is great in might. So how do we understand this likeness to God, but not like God? And I think the best way to understand this is by what Psalm 50 verse 21 says.

These things you have done, God says, you have gone your wicked way. These things you have done. And I kept silent. And you thought I was like you. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

You thought God's a bit like us. And God says, that's not the way it works. I am not like you, you are in some ways like I am. I made you like me in certain limited ways, and while it may be true for you to say that you are like me, it is not true to say that I am like you. In other words, man's likeness to God is a likeness that goes only one way.

For example, God is love. And we can love like God does. but we cannot say that God loves like we do. If you say that God loves like we do, his love is so unlike our love that it would grossly misrepresent God to say he is like us in his love. God is not like us, we are like God in certain ways, but that likeness is truly a one-way street.

And so there is a sense in which holiness is the essence of all that God is. What is God? Well, let's say that God is love, and we have passages of scripture that say that God is love. The Bible says that he is love, but if you use a human being as the benchmark to define love and then say God is like that, you show that you know nothing about God. God is not loving like us.

When we say he is loving, what do we mean? And the answer is that we mean that he is loving like no other being is loving. He manifests love in a way that is very unlike us. In other words, it's not that there's a sliding scale of love and God's at the far end and we're somewhere along. The scale, make that scale as long as you want, make God as far away from us on the scale as you like, and you will still have the wrong idea.

Holiness doesn't mean that God's just at the far end of the scale to us. Holiness means God has his own scale and we're not anywhere on it. He's the only one on that scale and the ends of that scale in either direction are in dimensions that no human being has ever entered. Who is like you, oh Lord, among the gods? There is none like our God.

He is holy. That means he exists in perfect unlikeness to everything that is. And ultimately the best way to define God's holiness then I think is that we can't. Since no human being is holy like God, how can we define what holiness is? It's a category that we don't partake of in ourselves.

No human being knows in himself what it means to be holy. God is holy, and the only thing that we can say is that this God is not like us. He is in a different category. And this, I think, is one thing that God must mean when he answers Moses' question in Exodus 3. Moses says, who should I tell them sent me?

And God instructs Moses, tell the people and Pharaoh that the one who sent you is, I am who I am. Who are you, Lord? I am who I am. God is saying, if you want to know who I am, the only definition I can give you is myself. I am who I am.

There is nothing else that I could compare myself to or that you could use to describe me to Pharaoh. You cannot liken me to anything else. I am who I am. Holiness then I think is, the best English word might be something like unlikeness or distinction, distinctiveness. And thus in everything that God is, he is unlike us.

He is holy in his wisdom. He's in a category all by himself in his administration of justice. He is unique in his power. He is unlike anything or anyone else in his love. God is not like us.

He occupies a world. all His own. And to help us grasp what it means that God is holy, I think God has actually set up a picture for us in the very shape of this world. Turn to Job chapter 15, and we turn to a few more passages of Scripture now. Job chapter 15, and we'll be looking at verses 14 through 16.

15 verse 14, what is man that he can be pure? 15, 14. Or he who is born of a woman that he can be righteous. Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight, how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water. Now, this is Hebrew poetry, and Hebrew poetry works very differently to English poetry.

In English poetry, we try to match rhymes and sounds. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. We match the sounds to create poetry. Hebrews did not match sounds, they matched ideas. And Hebrew poetry works by putting two lines together that essentially mean the same thing.

And that's the main thing, I'm sorry, the main thing that I want you to see here is what verse 15 says. By the way, you can see an example of that in verse 14. What is man that he can be pure? The one who is born of woman that he can be righteous. You can see two lines that mean essentially the same thing.

So verse 15, the main thing I want you to see here is this. God does not trust his holy ones and the heavens are not pure in his sight. In some way, we're supposed to read those together. as though they are saying similar things. And I think what Eliphaz, he's the speaker here, I think what he's saying is this.

God's holy ones are those beings who inhabit the heavens above. The holy ones, the angelic hosts. And those beings who inhabit the heavens above are in a separate category to men who exist upon the earth, which is what we see in verses 14 and 16. focus upon men. Man dwells in his impurity upon the earth.

In contrast, there are the holy ones who dwell above in a different world in the heavens. And holiness is a word that relies upon categories and boundaries. We've seen that. And in the beginning, when God drew the boundary line between heaven and earth, I think he was creating a picture for us of what holiness is. There is the earth in which we all live.

We're all part of this one down here. This is the category we are all in. But there are beings who dwell in another world. They dwell in the heavens above. They are above, they are separate too.

They are distinct from this earth. They inhabit another category and that is pictured by the fact that they inhabit another realm or another world. The heavens, not the earth. God is the chief being of this realm. He inhabits the highest of the heavens.

He is the one who is above all and beyond all. He occupies another world, another space, another realm. He is the God of another world. He is holy in that regard. And that means that holiness is pictured in this created world as a difference in space.

What space I inhabit or I occupy. Not primarily and first of all as a difference of morality. Did I sin or did I not sin? Holiness is not that God doesn't do what we do. Holiness is that He lives in a different world than we live in.

Listen to these passages that make the same point. Isaiah chapter 57 verse 15. You probably know this one, thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, that's a whole different world to ours, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place. 2 Chronicles 30 verse 27, then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people and their voice was heard and their prayer came up to his holy habitation in the heavens.

His habitation is holy because it's totally distinct from this one down here. It's an entirely different world. Psalm 113, verses 4 and 5, the Lord is high above all the nations. We're all down here. The Lord is high above the nations.

His glory is above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high? So God lives in the heavens, that is, He is not of this world. He lives in a different world to us, a world we can never enter in our unholiness. He is the God of another world, the God of the highest heavens.

And that's what the tabernacle pictured in the Old Testament, right? The holy place was a holy place. God dwells in a holy place where no other human being can enter. It was a distinct world, that holy place. It was not common space.

God dwells in another world, a world beyond the curtain, a world that is not our world. A world that is above and beyond, and that is why the tabernacle curtains were to be made of blue. If you've ever thought about this, they were to be made of blue, I think, as a picture of the sky itself. A barrier that no human being could penetrate. We can't fly to that other world.

Our rocket ships don't go high enough. It's a world that no human being can enter, a world where a holy God dwells. And so by the very structure, I think, of this physical world, God has created for us a picture of holiness. And when God tells us then that he is holy, I think that he means that he is the God of the other world. The idea that God dwells in another world helps us, I think then, to understand the New Testament in some very helpful ways.

And I've been told that there might be a need here for a couple of weeks. And so I've got three sermons on God's holiness. If we end up needing three, we can go beyond that if we need to. But next week, we will look a bit more at what it means for us to be holy as God himself is holy. But this week, let's conclude by considering that God's holiness means that we must not create categories of human beings.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter four. You know that the book of 1 Corinthians has a good bit to say about the Corinthian church and the holiness of God. You let your mind run, you can find that idea quite a number of times in 1 Corinthians, that they are saints, called to be saints in chapter one, verses one through three. First Corinthians chapter four, how then do we act as saints? Well, none of you, chapter four verse six, none of you should be puffed up in favor of one against another.

For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? In chapter one, we find that the Corinthian believers had created categories in their church. Remember them, I'm of Paul, some claim to follow Apollos, others Peter, and then there was the super spiritual band, the ones who followed Christ.

And I'm sure they gave themselves an extra pat on the back for being like that, and Paul says they're being puffed up. They're creating categories, and that's called pride, why? Because of what Paul says here in chapter four, verse seven, who makes you to differ? Can you put yourself in a different category? If you followed Peter, does that mean you belong in a different category?

Human power does not make us to differ. Human accomplishment and human strength, not your power and not Peter's prestige. Is there any difference? I'm sorry, if there is any difference amongst men, God is the one who makes a man to differ. And so creating these categories and separating ourselves out into different categories and higher and lower ranks in the Christian church is ungodliness.

Forcing our way upward above others is called pride. And pride is a direct defiance of God's one category for us all, and that is sinner. Listen to Romans 3. There aren't categories. There are none righteous, not even one.

There's none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. There is none righteous, not even one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So do you get the idea? There's one category and we're all in it. We don't differ. We're not unlike every, we are more like each other in every way. And we are different.

God says we are all in the same category together. And you can go and read the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector this week in Luke 18. And you will see there that Christ is clear that when we look down on others, when we treat others with contempt, when we push them down to exalt ourselves, we create categories and put ourselves in a different category. And Jesus calls that in that parable pride. God, I thank you that I am not like Just as you are not like, O God, I am not like, and I thank you for that.

I belong in a different category. I am unlike this tax collector. How different to the tax collector who prays, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. God takes our pride seriously because it is our way of threatening his holiness. He takes our category creation and our contempt of others as an offense against His holy name.

God is the one who is unlike all the rest, not you and me. God is the holy one, not you. And rightly responding to His holiness, that is His unlikeness. The way that we respond rightly to that is to take our place alongside all the rest of the sinners in this world and confess that what God says about us is indeed true. Rather than sticking ourselves forward or posturing ourselves so that we are better than most or putting on a false front of piety and pretending that we have no sin, we walk in the light by confessing our sin.

By humbling ourselves. by proclaiming that God alone is the being who is holy. God alone is the one who differs. And when we do this, what is God's gracious response to those who humble themselves and take their place as God has said that they are before him as sinners? How does a most high and holy God respond to sinners who humble themselves?

who erase all the category boundaries and take their place down at the bottom alongside all the rest of sinful, hell-deserving humanity. How does God respond? 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 spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly. to revive the heart of the contrite. Psalm 138, verse six, for though the Lord is high, he has regard for the lowly.

First Peter 5.5, you who are younger, be subject to the elders and clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud and gives his grace to the humble. James 4, verse 6, he gives more grace, therefore it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And Luke 18, verse 14, the conclusion of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. God will be the only one in the high category.

If you ascend into that category, you will be like Lucifer, put down. But the one who humbles himself, will be exalted. God tells us about his holiness to press us down, to make us realize that we don't differ like he does. He dwells in another world and we all inhabit this one, this world of sinners. Your pride, that instinct within you to put yourself up, to puff yourself up, to act like you belong in a higher category than all the rest, is an insult against the holiness of God.

It's why God says he dwells with the humble. And we respond then to God's holiness by humbling ourselves before him. By taking our place in the all when God says none are righteous. We take our place to the glory of the high and holy God and God responds by raising us up. This is why we can be holy as God is holy.

because He raises us up in Christ Jesus to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The gospel is that God came down to dwell with the lowly to raise them up. He has rent the heavens. He has come down to us. The Son has come.

He has humbled Himself. He has taken upon human flesh. He has entered our category. He has lived in our world. And in this, He is himself most holy because we don't associate with the lowly, but he is unlike us.

He dwells with the lowly. And in order that his holiness should shine forth with no rivals, God puts down those who try to climb higher, but he comes down to stand beside the one who humbles himself. He revives, he lifts him up, he sets him in his presence in the heavenlies. This is the grace of a holy God to unholy sinners like us. And we respond to God's work with humility and faith.

And so we can get off our high horses, we can come down, particularly at the Lord's Supper now, we can come down here with all the rest of us We can give glory to God, the God of the heavens who dwells on high, the one who alone is holy. We can do it by getting down low in Christ. He is our only hope that we should be received before this God and in Christ alone we shall be exalted. Lord God, I pray that you would help us now at the Lord's Supper to humble ourselves before him to see that all of our righteousness is in Jesus. There's no works of our hands that make us to differ.

There is no lawfulness or morality that makes us to climb higher, to deserve a greater station. Brother Lord, it is all in Christ. And I pray that we may take our place before him in you today, before you in him today. and that in Christ we may find every reason to find ourselves accepted before your throne. And we ask this in Christ's name for his sake.