The Real God - The Holiness Of God, Part 1

Let me ask you a question. What comes into your mind when you hear the word old. What do you think of when you think God is holy is a candles and incense is unattainable perfection. Here's the deal. How can we be holy if we can even define stay with welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with children Living on the Edges of international discipleship ministry featuring the Bible to I Drew and Warren ship series, the real God talking about seven key characteristics that describe who God really is. The first two characteristics we dug into were God's goodness and his sovereignty the stomach to catch up anytime this program we shift to a look at God's holy ship only scratches the surface. But what he does share things a picture of God.

You may never thought about at the end of the program will join us in studio to talk about how to apply what were learning so be sure to stay with us for that. If you have a Bible open to the book of Hebrews chapter 12.

Here's chip I like to take you back to Exodus 19 and imagine if you literally were were filming and watching and and think I I'm always just something about me is always drawn to. When God does something the first time seems to me that it's very instructive after 400 years people don't have a clue of who God is.

How does he introduce himself.

But what does he want them to know about him first. Exodus 19 opens up and it says after two months, so they been in the wilderness for 60 days and God says to Moses, I want to introduce myself to my people that I have redeemed these will be my people, and it's that picture if you can just imagine you know, panning with your camera and seeing 2 million people. Maybe you're up high so you have a great view and 2 million people in this boundary and then seeing the smoke billow and then fire and then you know that's hard to keep a good picture because the ground is shaking because there's an earthquake, and you watch people fall on their face before God in this thundering voice. I guess I would ask you if you were doing a documentary and someone said this God has just introduced himself to his people. What's he like. I'm guessing it would not be something like oh he's the man upstairs.

He's my homeboy. We have embraced an evangelical Christianity and our desire to move away from dead ritual in our desire to know that Jesus is our friend and God doing being transcendent is eminent.

We have we have lost much in our tradition and I would say even in our music, a sense of the holiness of God. The purity of God. The righteousness of God. And when you see that he's holy. Here's what you get your not, you're not at all.

Your righteousness is like filthy rags and so is mine your motives, your thoughts, your best days were holy, set apart distinct different separate.

The word literally means a cut above he's in a category. The word holy as he is other, there's not a category for them when you come into the presence of a holy God you are undone and I don't see many Christians or many churches very often undone in the presence of God think some of the older traditions actually helped us grasp God's holiness. Unfortunately, he became a distant, cold God who we would reach him through significant rituals which was never the intent, but what you find out in church history is a pendulum swings this way that it swings this way, here's what I want to tell you need to swing back this way, we need we need to know that Jesus is my friend and that he loves me and he accepts me just as I am that he's tenderhearted and quick of sympathy. But the morality of the average Christian in the evangelical church would scream. I don't believe is holy.

I think I can do what I want when I want. And God basically will give me a pass because in the name of love, which now has sort of upped the matter what Scripture says all God is loving so this kind of relationship must be okay God is loving so this kind of morality is okay God is loving so I get a pass on everything because a loving God just wants me to be happy you know you know all the statistics are mucking to go through the all the areas of morality in America today that the average Christian and average unbeliever look exactly the same and that's he said were a kingdom of priests he said be separate. He said come out of the darkness, not weird, separate doesn't mean you dress funny doesn't mean that you have just habits to make you look weird. It doesn't mean that you're not involved in the culture, but separate from the inside out that were actually holy in. I remember praying and thought, word and deed against thy divine Majesty. It was just memorized. As I sat and knelt and stood as an altar boy. Unfortunately, the people who taught me to say that didn't know the Lord personally on a group in a very traditional church that didn't teach the Bible and are a priest on a sort of the good Samaritan trip went to Alaska in to preach the social gospel and bring electricity to the Eskimos, but some missionaries got there before he did and those Eskimos knew the Lord and those Eskimos led our priest to Christ. Our priests came back and a movement of God inside our particular denomination that was contrary to a lot of the form was birthed and people were coming to know the Lord I gone off to college. He trusted Christ and I came back in and what I would dream one days that we that we might grasp the greatness and the holiness of God and some of the richest traditions but not lose the intimacy of what it means to have Jesus as our friend.

You'll notice on the front of your notes. Toes are wood right we know nothing like the divine holiness is stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable me. There's a lot of funds in their natural man is blind to it and he feared God's power and admire his wisdom but his holiness, he cannot even imagine the first time we see this concept of holiness is right after the Red Sea is parted and there's a song that Moses sayings and this song will learn later, his son currently in heaven and notice the song is who is among who among the gods is like you owe Yahweh who is like you answer no one majestic and what's the first word holiness.

The word majestic is the idea of exponential multiplying in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders my best personal definition of holiness is it's both his majesty and moral purity. It's the absolute absence of evil. It encompasses what's pure holy, righteous, of the English root word for holiness has the idea of wholeness or soundness.

It encompasses the idea of health and so to be holy isn't just candles and a black robe and and singing. You know, special songs with a very low voice, with low lights. It's about the wholeness or the purity of the universe that brings life and brings health because as God is.

He wants us to become and so not obviously in his essence, but in our character that we would be holy like he's holy. How has God revealed his holiness in English when we want to talk about degrees we say someone is good, my soul, someone else is better and then we say someone else is best. Good better best in Hebrew, the way you talk about things you repeated. So, in Hebrew, the only one time God is called something holy, holy, holy. You see in Isaiah 6 you see in Revelation 4 you see in Revelation 5. The outstanding character of God is his otherness is complete purity, his unapproachable like he's holy, holy, holy.

When angelic beings that have never sinned are in his presence.

They cover their eyes. They cover their feet and they fly and they perpetually say holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was who is and who is to come. As I just want you to get this majestic picture and then I'm going to just highlight how it shows up in Scripture and I've given you the passages for your study. First, through supernatural encounters. Moses meets God. John meets God. Daniel meets God. Isaiah meets God. Here's all I want to say whenever you see someone meet God in Scripture there undone. I am there on their face there undone, and so the question I have to ask myself the news when is the last time you were in the presence of God and in just you were undone of the distance between what you know he's like and how you begin to see yourself.

Second, he reveals his holiness through places which you need to know is wherever God is it instantly becomes holy, it can be a Bush it's holy it can be just a tent you call a tabernacle in his presence comes it's holy it can be a temple that people build its holy wherever God's presence is it becomes holy third way he reveals his holiness is through the law. The first four commands are all about the distinctiveness the holiness of God have no other gods because there aren't any. And then no graven images don't reduce me.

Don't make a picture of me I don't have an idol. Don't in any way try and reduce me in some form.

My name is holy because it's my character. Don't misuse my name and I don't make the house in my name, the Sabbath, the he's cute.

There's this gift I've given to man supernaturally. When I got done I stopped to pause and for 24 hours. I want you to know I'm giving you a gift so that you will be separate. You'll be distinctively different.

You accomplish in six days what takes other people seven and you will rest and pause so that you'll know the last six days were my hand upon you and you will pause to remember this is God. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.

And then the next six commands on the second tablet, or about health and holiness in relationships.

No words of holiness that Isaiah would talk about the highway of holiness.

There is a path of holiness that you walk on, but the result is health and wholeness for you and for relationships. So if you want healthy whole relationships.

Honor your mom and dad don't lie. Don't steal. Don't commit adultery. Don't comment. Those are the parameters around holy relationships with one another for the health of God's universe and its people of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zachariah, I just put a few down prophets job was pretty simple. Stop worshiping idols. Name your profit. Here's a message stop worshiping idols because we all did. God is holy. He's distinct and so the prophets job was simple to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. They were always intervening. Will you understand God's available it's it's it's your sand that's what's happened is where you are. He wants to help.

That's what the prophets kept saying to the people who act like they didn't need him. That's a pretty harsh stuff to wrath and judgment. This may sound, but the holiness of God demands just like a great surgeon would see cancer that needs to be operated on. I'm telling you these doctors their heartless they really are. My wife had cancer that got in feel bad. He took a little sharp not. He's got a huge scar pulled out. That pulled out a bunch of lymph glands in feel bad about it. Why is it was killing her God when he sees that which is killing you. Killing a nation destroying what he has made. He brings his righteous wrath and judgment. Acts chapter 5.

Think about that. The very first sin in the church was what member was hiding money, but the heart of it was hypocrisy that was there money didn't have to do anything with it but member the goal was Barnabas and given a generous gift from the heart and a lot of people want isn't Barnabas wonderful and I think Ananias and Sophia said we want our cake and eat it too. We want people to think this about us, but we will be that generous has a lower unity was working to make up a story that you know we sold it for X amount and we gave it all. The fact the matter is you would put the other a CD over here, relatively speaking, and him and you think of this. It's the very first sin recorded in the New Testament. Why did Satan cause you to lie to the Holy Spirit.

Satan is filled your heart. What was the consequences died. You think that sent a message to the early church or you know I'm thing about becoming a Christian you are becoming like I don't know what authenticity was a pretty high value in the early church. You have to have it together but you better not take it. But what you see.

It's just God declares his holiness.

See Wheatley we are living in a day where we actually think that the commands of God are like. An optional kind of vending machine or salad bar.

You know, 10 Commandments, I'm good with 124, seven and nine. Can I get that to go really it's it's I quickly got we got a whole generation in evangelical churches with one of those little knives that well you know this one about sexual purity up and that's pretty Victorian on this one about greed. I mean, you know work now were not. And so what once it happens were enough people we look at one another and since were all quotes are sort of fudging and people that we respect what I really respect so-and-so and here they do this, or they do better and then pretty soon it's like a little cancer and disease in them than the culture of God's people were no longer distinct and what I can tell you is part of what God will do is to bring that velvet vice in first Corinthians 11 units in this is a new sum in the early church, the wealthy would come in and they would eat and they would marginalize the poor and they were disgracing the Lord's table and first 2011 says for this reason some of you are sick, judgment, and some of you are asleep at the technical term New Testament for a believer whose died. What if you are in a church where some people died because of their greed and lack of concern for other believers with the Lord's supper.

One of my behavior would change.

So where's the words that God today. I don't think is changed. I would suggest that we as Christians often blame the media, education, some political party when the salt gets on salty and when the light gets dim the culture just follows the shift in the culture is not can happen externally. It's can happen, like it always has inside out to be normal people like us that live holy lives and then we all have little networks of relationships and some of you have really big ones and and you'll just get bold and by the way pretty soon is not in a matter see Michael, be bold now they can whack you can become more and more unpopular, and by the way, what we know historically is probably good when they got rid of all the missionaries in China and they were persecuted they went from a few million to 100 hundred 20 million today in Greece, Germany with some very important relationships there what's happening among the refugees because of Isis. I'm telling you tens of thousands of people are coming to Christ. Christians were persecuted. This is historically always true.

Gato purifies church he's probably going to do that to some degree and may be too big to great America site we we need to get our chinstrap on and realize this is a spiritual NFL and we want to gain yards and people who want to gain yards realize when you come through and it's a good little hope you get hit by linebacker. We don't go what happened.

We quit thinking that somehow we are living in a culture that is positive toward our faith and our belief in our you have to learn to love people and be kind to people and respond to people because good is more powerful than evil as we lay out our convictions and let out a life that's radically different than probably ever before because the America that you live in now is not the America that was 5060 years ago but was very sympathetic that that shared the values your now intolerant narrow bigots because you believe Jesus is the answer and that there's absolute truth and there's absolute truth about life and about eternity and about morality. Another danger is championing that in a way where your hardheaded legalistic self-righteous saying that were better than other people. We've done that before. That didn't work, we need to do it the way Jesus did. We to live this amazing life before our world that's pure and righteous and take a strong stand and then have people who think that were the enemies be absolutely astounded. Why are we driving them to the doctor. Why are we loving people that outwardly hate us.

Why do we give good instead of evil because that is what turns the life around and that's how holiness brings health his son. Obviously the Lord Jesus the holy birth is pure, sinless life, we get the sneak preview of his holiness where the Transfiguration has unholy death, yet you understand that all mean this this is a great theological truths that print is 521 is that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and he said my God, my God, why have you forsaken me to understand what was happening for the first time and all eternity. God the father turned away from God the son, and there was a break in the fellowship in the singular God. But in the person of the father and the person the sun because in that moment of time, your sin and my sin and the sin of all people of all time was placed on Christ and he became our sin offering and he became sin on our behalf.

He carried the weight of it all and then the just of God. The just anger of God for all sin of all people was placed on Christ and he atoned he covered it of often long for an illustration to try and get my arms around holiness because it doesn't feel like it's this it's it's here and it's here and it's here. But how do you get your arms around at the best picture I was a young pastor in Texas and I lived in the Dallas area. And if you know between Dallas and Oklahoma Tornado Alley, Sunday. We had tornadoes all the time and we had a member hail would come down sometimes golf ball sometimes like baseball. I mean it was it was all my cars had little dents all over him or big Denson and we had just a very simple little like 1200 square square feet house in three small little bedrooms and no basement which is not good when tornadoes come in so they on the radio, they would tell you you know if you have that kind of house but we had a bathroom in the center of the house and I get my wife and I have three kids three kids that put him in the bathroom and then you get a mattress and then when all the starts happening and then you take the mattress and everyone gets in the bathtub and put the mattress over you and you pray like crazy that one it doesn't hit your house into if it does, that the house goes and you don't and it sounds funny now. It is terrifying then and something I would would happen as the winds would start just before they would start you know that you get more or you have the sirens note tornado warning you know and then you go out and you my I put my family in the bathroom but I wanted to see what was going on and and there be like this guy would turn this really funky color of pink and then this sort of weird gray and it would be like this stillness and be like Yuri terrifying but really kinda beautiful. And then the winds would come in so I remember you need see trees you know not mean the ones around like they were just completely bent over and often the hail would come down so it peaked in the bathroom you like this.

It was so beautiful there was something that would draw you because it was so amazing and so powerful and so terrifying and so beautiful at the same time and so you know I need to check and see if it's safe you know and I'll go out there to see the tree hail coming down like this and that's my best picture, the holiness of God. There's something so beautiful, so powerful, just like you know you know about the hurricane in the very center of the hurricane.

There's this absolute stillness and quiet. And there's something about the holiness of God that Jesus it scares you to death or such power, and yet there is beauty and I think it's it's that's what the men and women of old.

When they got a snapshot of God, and it changed. In fact, is through the people of God. I like you to open your Bibles and and I want to walk through a familiar passage, but I want you to see the pattern I'm sure most of you are familiar with Isaiah chapter 6, but Isaiah chapter 6 is the pattern of what happens to a man or a woman who gets a glimpse of the holiness of God.

As I read it I want you to begin thinking about three views want an upward view to is an inward view and three is an outward view and in the context I want to suggest that this is a deep deep crisis in Israel. And if you're a prophet in Israel and the world is falling apart and that the political situation is unstable. Does this sound familiar, and you're not sure what the future's going to be like. Does this sound familiar, and everyone's fearful and you have a moral responsibility as a spokesman for God to know what's going on. You go meet with God in the midst of a crisis and I'm gonna suggest that your personal crisis are the one that when your kids have might be the doorway where God leads you to get a glimpse of this wholeness listening to the first part of Chip's message holiness of God from his series, the real God will be back with his application, but before he is to give you a quick sketch of the series overall in the real God chip looks at seven key attributes of God's character and explains that none of them is ever diminished or overshadowed by the others which means that God is 100% love 100% just and 100% merciful kinda mindbending when you think about it that way and why it becomes a lifelong adventure to get to know him for who he really is a great way to learn how these attributes of God work together is to do this study with a small group of friends. So for a limited time.

The small group resources for the real God are discounted because we want to do everything we can to help you get a clear accurate view of God to place your order or get more information on the real God. Go to LivingontheEdge.org Special offers on the chipping roadmap or give us a call at 8883336003 that's AAA 33360030 Chip we know that really connecting with other believers doing life together is a part of being a follower of Jesus I mean Jesus started with a small group right so we know it's important, but what about that someone out there who says I don't have a group I don't know where to go. You know, I have no idea how to "would you say that person all day. What I know is a sometime were waiting for someone to call us over the group. We used to be in the stars. Here's what I can say to people you can start a group and with our resources. I will tell you, you can invite. You can start with just your family and just say hey two or three of us were going to order the small group material we can stream it right on our TV or you can call three or four friends, and they may be people there all around the country and you just say I've got a get reconnected from the heart. Here's a small group that were going to do on marriage or leadership or parenting or the real God. We have over 20 small group resources to meet the very specific needs of what people need to learn or what they're going through right now and you get together on zoom or way better in person and then you discuss them that you start the group. I will tell you, people are hurting and if you had the need.

So, your friends, you be the initiator just take the step and say hey let's get together let's do this series you will be shocked at how people respond. Don't wait. You need community so that other people you be the one to get it started. Dave, can you give him some pointers on exactly what to do.

Happy to think strip will help you get started.

We've temporarily discounted all of our small group resources. There are so many available on relationships, marriage, parenting doctrine, Christian living, doing a small group Bible study that meets the need will help you and everyone in your group. Take the next step, whatever that means to each of you included in each discounted workbook is a unique code to unlock the online videos get the workbooks use your codes and your set to take advantage of this limited time offer. Just go to LivingontheEdge.org or tap special offers on the chipping roadmap for more information. Give us a call, a AAA 333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003 will now here's chip. I don't know about you but to losers words haunt me. He said we know nothing like the divine holiness and as we walked through Isaiah's experience it profoundly. I mean profoundly convicts me left to myself I reduce God and I take this high in holy, and majestic God and and I making small and instead of comparing myself to his holiness. I tend to find other Christians that are little less holy than me and I compare myself to them, and yet when I gaze when I get those brief moments where I gaze into the absolute purity and the sinlessness in the power of a holy God. It crashes me about you what went through your mind when I described what the human heart is like what midcourse corrections might you need to make in light of the holiness and the purity of God, you know, maybe you're like me and maybe you need to repent about a low casual view of God that you don't mean to have that you just slipped into. Maybe you need to remember that though God is eager to be our friend that he is immortal, invisible, the only wise God that he dwells in unapproachable light and he and he alone is holy Almighty God, would you please forgive us today as you listen to our voice at this moment for reducing you for making you like us Lord we say that you are totally other impure, and we ask today that you would help us to see you accurately and then live appropriately. In Jesus name just before we close going to say thanks to those of you who are giving regularly to the ministry of Living on the Edge you're making a huge difference helping other Christians live like Christians if you're enjoying the benefits of Living on the Edge, but are get on the team would you do that today.

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Thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do for all of us here, this is Dave Drewry saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge