Passionate for God's Holiness - Part 1

The aim of one day is to be a gathering and an awakening of a generation passionate for God's renown. That was true three years ago, and it's true today, only the words have changed a little bit today. You read in the material that you receive, you hear on the CDs, the words are words like sacred and holy and his, and so I'm going to change it just slightly and say that the aim of our one day is the gathering and the awakening of a generation passionate for the holiness of God.

If this generation were to become passionate for the holiness of God, then all the campuses in America, and I don't just mean southern campuses, I mean campuses in Oregon and Washington and Idaho, campuses in Maine and New Hampshire and Connecticut and Massachusetts, all the campuses of America and all the peoples, and I don't just mean the peoples to whom we have access, I mean the peoples in China and North Korea, in Vietnam, the peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan, the peoples in Algeria and Tunisia, I mean all the peoples in the world will say in response to what God does here today and beyond today, they will say there is none holy like the Lord, there is no rock like our God. Twenty years ago, I decided to make an experiment on a Sunday morning. I decided that I would preach from Isaiah 6, you're very familiar with that great text, and I would not make any practical application at all.

I just wanted to see what would happen to a few hundred people if they just saw, as best as I could paint it, the holiness of God lifted up without any application to their lives whatsoever. So, I simply read the text. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon a throne, and His train, the train of His robe, filled the temple, and above Him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, and with two they covered their face, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew, and one cried to the other, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.

And at that voice, the threshold of the temple shook, and the house was filled with smoke. And all I did was point to the throne, and I said, probably, let's do it here in sermon, there would be one leg of the throne back over on that side of the hill, and another leg on that side of the hill, and another leg way over there as far as you can see, and another leg over there, and it would be about 800 feet high, and Jesus Christ and God Almighty would be sitting upon that throne, and these seraphim are not these little cherubs that you see in Peter Paul Ruben's paintings, little fat Cupid-like dolls, these seraphim, if they stretch forth their wings, disappear into the clouds that way, and that way, and the reason I know that is because it says when one of them spoke, the whole foundation of heaven, which is not easy to shake, the whole foundation of heaven shook. And so the scene that you have is supposed to silence us, frighten us, humble us, terrify us, expose us, lay us bare, and all I did was talk about that scene, and I didn't say anything about your daily life, your marriage, children.

We're supposed to be moved. Well, it's strange what moves people today. Last December, I did what almost all of you did, and I went and watched the two towers, second in the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings, and I was stunned by the sequence of events with big, great, triumphant walking trees and boulders being lobbed out of the castle and smashing the Sauron hordes to pieces and Legolas skateboarding down the castle, shooting his bow as he went, and the great, perfect, white horse arrival charging into the hordes of Saruman.

I loved it. It was my anniversary, number 34. And we went out to dinner afterwards, and I said to Noelle, you know what I like about that movie most? It made me admire and tremble at Jesus Christ more.

And she said, why is that? I said, because as I sat there watching, I thought, now, even if these events were true, they took place on Earth or Middle Earth, and Earth is a small planet in a solar system about 7 billion miles across, and the solar system is just a small little system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is about 600,000 trillion miles across, and the galaxy that we live in is a modest, relatively large-sized galaxy in a universe that probably has about 100 million such galaxies in it, and Jesus Christ put this in place with the flick of his little finger. So next time you sit in a theater and you're amazed, do some translation. Let your heart tremble at what is really big, what is really amazing.

Jesus Christ in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. He flung it out with the flick of His little finger.

If you're going to be amazed at cinematography, look around or get a telescope. Now, I finished my sermon. Not a word of application.

Little did I know that in the audience that day was a couple, a husband and a wife, who just that week had heard that their daughters had been sexually molested for the last three years by trusted relatives. They were now all under medical care. He was now under arrest.

There were venereal warts. It was the most horrible thing of their lives. And they sat there under the preaching of no application and Isaiah 6 and the holiness of God, just the holiness of God.