The Holiness of God

The attribute of God we will be looking at today is his holiness and will be reading from Exo 20.

It was right after God showed up on Mt Sinai that He gave Moses the 10 commandments.

Exo 20:1-17

Then God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,
6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.

8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. 13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

We can see three points in this passage:

●       God is holy

●       Our relationship with God is holy

●       God calls us to live wholly for Him

1.    God is Holy

We know that God is love, He is merciful, gracious, and compassionate, yet He is also completely separate and distinct from His creation (transcendent). He is holy (Isaiah 6.1-4). God’s holiness means that He is absolutely pure and good and unstained by the evil in this world. (Lev 11.44-45; Josh 24.19; Ps 99.3,5,9; Isa. 40.25; Hab 1.12).

God’s character is Holy which means that He does not conform to a standard. He is the standard.
He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because He is holy, all His attributes are holy. God is holy and He has made holiness the moral condition necessary to the health of His universe.

The way God acts is holy. God created human beings in His very image, His first concern is our holiness or wholeness. Whatever comes between God and his creation, whatever brings harm will be judged and is under His eternal displeasure. God is a jealous God, and in order to keep His creation pure, God must and will eventually destroy whatever would defile, denigrate or destroy it.

Tozer’s describes  Jesus’s return to the earth which is going to judge sin and evil and save the world from its moral collapse. It will be done with perfect anger because He hates iniquity, sin and evil.
The holiness of God, His wrath and jealousy and the health of His creation are inseparable.

Yet God’s love for this world is Holy and that is why He sent His Son, "the holy, righteous One," (Acts 3:14) to take the penalty of our sin on Himself. It was so we could have eternal life, so that we could be made whole again in our relationship with God.

2.  Our relationship with God is holy

In the OT, what made the temple holy was the presence of the living God. This is the significance of the commandments God gave His people: The first and second commandment (V..3-5).

God didn’t want anything between Him and his people. 1 Cor 6:19 says your body is the temple of the living God, His Spirit lives in you.  We are not holy because sin has tainted us. But when Jesus comes into our lives, He takes us out of the kingdom of darkness. His presence in our lives makes us holy.

Letting anything obscure your relationship with God as a child of God, if anything in your life becomes more important than Him, then your relationship with Him will be unhealthy and unstable and all of your other relationships will suffer because you are grieving His Holy Spirit, His presence in you.

Let’s look at another significant relationship that the Bible talks a lot - marriage. Marriage is designed by God to be a sacred union between one man and one woman.

Good communication, having deep trust established, placing a high value on your spouse and expressing that value in tangible ways. In other words, it is maintaining intimacy mentally, emotionally, and physically that leads to good sex in marriage and good sex in marriage creates intimacy.

Marriage is the closest earthly relationship we can have, and it is hard work, however, the most consequential relationship in our lives, the one relationship that affects all others - it is our relationship with God.

God designed us for intimacy. Intimacy with Him first - the One who designed us in His own image, the only One who can save us and deliver us in all our troubles, the only One who can fill our hearts with unconditional love and fulfill the deepest needs of our souls.

When we don’t give God first place in our lives, it means something else has captured our hearts and imaginations and become more important to us or bigger than God. This means that idolatry is ultimately the reason for all wrongdoing.

That’s why the apostle Peter wrote, “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,” (1 Pet 3:15). Sanctify Christ as Lord means to put Him in a category by Himself—the highest place and the greatest value.

God wants to have first place in our lives. Prov 4:23 God says, “give me your heart” He wants all of us.  When He speaks to you, He wants your undivided attention.

3.  God calls us to live wholly for Him

The most important relationship we will ever have is with a holy God. That is why He wants our relationship with Him to be holy, set apart, above every other relationship.

Living wholly for Him is summed up in I Cor 6:19-20: You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. We desire that the Lord would use our lives for His glory.

In Exo 20:8-10, living wholly for God means setting aside a day specifically for God, it is His day - the Sabbath. The writer of Hebrews says, “don't neglect that day as is the habit of some” (Hebr 10:25). It’s a day of rest where we nurture our bodies and our soul because this nurturing of our bodies and our souls brings health to every aspect of our being, spiritually and physically.

Because God is Holy, He hates whatever comes between Him and you, whatever degrades and destroys the purity of His creation (Eph 5:25-27). He is jealous for His bride and wants first place in His church over any other relationship.

Now that Christ saved us and set us apart for Himself, God calls us to set ourselves and all that we do apart for Him more and more, our lives are to be Holy. This is called the process of sanctification. Sanctification is an ongoing process of growth to keep ourselves whole, balanced and healthy.

The fiery trials reveal the impurities in our lives and are sent to expose and remove these impurities, so we become more like Christ each day. We just have to cooperate with the Lord in humility when He seeks to deliver us from the things that hold us hostage to ourselves, to others, to the world, and to the devil. Holiness is freedom. But it takes spiritual discipline to maintain our relationship with God and to grow in holiness.

When we are mentally and spiritually whole then we are truly happy. It is God’s will that we be Holy, true holiness brings real happiness.