Behold No.5 The Holy one of Israel

Before the white supplement and coming on the overheads, holy, holy, Lord God almighty. I would like to read the Bible in Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1 to 13. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted.

The train of His rope filled the temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces.

With two they covered their feet. And with two they were flying, and they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory.

At the sound of their voices, the door closed, and flesh poured through. And the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried.

I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord almighty. And then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

With it he touched my mouth and said, See, it has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and you seem atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Who shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here am I, send me.

He said, Go and tell these people, Be ever hearing, but ever understanding. Be ever seeing, but ever perceiving. Make the heart of the people calloused.

Make the ear hear all, and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear their ears, understand with their hearts, and burn and be healed. Then I said, For how long, Lord? He answered, Until these lie ruined again, Without inhabitants, until the houses are left deserted, And the fields ruined and ravaged, Until the Lord has sent everyone far away, And the land is utterly forsaken, And though a tenth remains in the land, It will again be laid waste, As turbans and oak-leaf stumps, When they are cut down.

So shall it be that there will be stumps in the land. Join me, for this is what the High and Lofty One says, He who lives forever, whose name is Holy, I live in a high and holy place, But also with Him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, To revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Let's also go to Isaiah in chapter 49, And read the 7th verse, which was also set out, if you don't have a Bible with you, In Notes and News.

7, Isaiah 49, This is what the Lord says, The Redeemer and Holy One, Israel, To Him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, To the servant of rulers, Kings will see you and rise up, Princes will see and bow down, Because of the Lord who is faithful, The Holy One, Israel, who has chosen you. Now, we've been looking on Sunday morning at the names of God, And we've been very encouraged by the response people have made to this series. It's good to look at the names of those revealed in the Old Testament.

There's a lovely story told, thank God, for dear elderly folk, Dear elderly ladies, some of whom are the backbone of local churches. Of this, dear Saint, who at a prayer meeting was waxing eloquent, That the church was in financial need for its extension, And she was leading the movements in prayer, And she was saying, Lord, we know that you can provide every need, Because your word says you're Jehovah-Jireh. Well, I guess there's a fairly close correspondence between Jehovah-Jireh, And Jehovah-Jireh, And there is a real application of that term in Christian experience, For how God does provide for our needs.

He is El Shaddai, the Almighty God. He is the Lord of Creation. He is the Shepherd God.

But this morning, we won't look at Jehovah-Kwadosh, Or Jehovah-Kwadosh, The latter being the Hebrew term for holy. And very often, when you're in the Old Testament, As well as you get into the New Testament, You discover that holiness is a characteristic, Which is said to be part of the divineship. For example, in the Old Testament, God is called the Holy One, The Holy One of Israel.

Twenty-two times you read about His holy name, Nearly one hundred times in the New Testament, When reference is made to the third person of the Trinity, The reference is qualified with the adjective holy, The Holy Spirit. You cannot understand God, Unless you recognize that He is the Holy God. When our Lord Jesus is predicted in the Old Testament Scripture, As ultimately coming into the world, Again, that qualifying adjective holy is used.

The Holy One will not seek corruption. And when Mary is informed, That the Christ child will be born within her, He is referred to as that holy child. I have a great problem with Hinduism.

There is a philosophical aspect of Hinduism, Perhaps it's a little more acceptable, But Hinduism in its rawness, In its primitive fashion, Almost terrifies me. I've had some of my most frightening experiences, As far as the occult is concerned in Southeast Asia. Even now sometimes I see glimpses.

Those Hindu gods in my dreams, Kali, Shiva, The whole monopoly of gods from the Hindu pantheon. You go into a Hindu temple, And far from being impressed by the architecture, You're put off by the bestiality of frescoes, By what purports to be a revelation of Buddha. Do you know in the depth of your being that it is not? It is a prostitution of all that God stands for.

And my spirit rebels against Hinduism. It's more and more sophisticated version, The new age movement in the West. Turn the clock back.

Tear off the leaves from the candor. Go back not just a year, but just a century. Go to Old Testament times.

Think of the religion of the people who occupied, The land of Palestine, the promised land, Before the Hebrew repossessed it. And you'll discover that they were animists. They would offer their children worship to the gods.

Women would be used as prostitutes. Fertility rights, the occult magic, Crafts all part and parcel of, What was predating the land that God called holy. It came like a breath of fresh air when God from Sinai, Declared himself to be the holy God.

It came as a wind to blow away the cobwebs That had grown old people's minds As to who God really is. One of the greatest authorities, One of the great factors that causes The Old Testament to stand out as inherently truthful, Is the unique revelation of who God is, As was broadcasted to and by the Hebrews. You know that God is holy, But in those days it is not.

And the concept of the holiness of God Was almost mind-blowing. And this is what makes Judaism stand out, Stand out of every other world religion. This is the testimony that it contains To its own truthfulness.

It gives you a picture of God That you'll not find in any other Contemporary religions in the Old Testament, Or the so-called great world religions In contemporary times. I, God, am holy. It came like a breath of fresh air, And it should have acted as a corrective Against all the obnoxious practices Of animism and depraved religiosity.

So, we learn a subject this morning That actually should command at least Eight addresses. The fools that we are, We're going to try to compact it into one. The holiness of God.

Holiness, number one, Its pervasive nature. Its pervasive nature. I'm trying to write a thesis in these days.

And one of the things that I've come across Is that when Jonathan Edwards, The great American preacher, Was the greatest that they ever produced, Certainly the greatest religion they ever produced, When he preached, It was as if there was a felt Christ Who was present as a result of his proclamation. There are men and women who move around And know that they have touched by None other than God himself. There is the thumbprint of God upon them.

You feel the aura of God. God's attribute of holiness Is something that can be felt. It is pervasive in its sense.

Holiness infiltrates. It occupies. It commands.

Holiness is incapable of arbitration. It can't negotiate. If it did, it would be less.

But it actually is. Holiness can only exist in an atmosphere That's holy. It brings no rivals.

It can make no deals. It will not cede a square inch of territory. You say, what do you mean by that statement? All those are just words.

Let me illustrate my words. A man called Moses comes from the backwoods of Midian. He's a shepherd.

He's a runaway Hebrew. And in the depths, a bush starts to burn That's not consumed. And from within the bush, a voice is heard.

And Moses comes to realize That this is what theologians call a theophany. The appearance of God. And God says to Moses, Take off your shoes from your feet.

Because the ground is holy. You see what I mean? Holiness pervades. When holiness is released, it occupies.

One day, this world will be filled with the sense of the holiness of God. The earth is the Lord's of the fullness of God. The sin that Mars, planet Earth will not always be here, God will flush it all out.

Because this is his world. He is the holy God. And his presence is kept.

Alongside anything is less. The holy utensils used in the temple are holy utensils. The temple that is used for worship is the holy temple.

The Zion on which the temple is built is by the hill. Within the temple is a rectangular central building, known as the holy place. Cut in half so that it's a square, is the area where God will manifest himself annually to the holy priest.

And that is called the holy of holies. The throne of God is in heaven, and it is referred to as the holy throne. You see what I mean? Whenever God comes with power of his attributes, he claims where he is as his own.

The holy ground, the holy place, the holy temple are holy utensils. And God takes a bunch of wholesome people from Egypt and brings them back into the land that he gave to Abraham centuries ago. He says, you will be a holy people because I am a holy God.

There's something inexorable about the deep logic. Holiness has a pervasive nature. Number two.

Shamefulness. The human response to the holy of holies. Here's a difficult verse.

Hebrews chapter 10. One of the most difficult verses in the holy scripture. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 31.

I've never yet found in a promised box. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It's not a popular verse in modern theology.

It's dismissed by modern philosophy. Listen to Lloyd-Jones. We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as a natural and expected thing.

This God, who is holy, makes a person in his sense utterly uncomfortable. That's the second thing. Shamefulness, the human response to the holy.

Do you know phobia? That's the word, actually, that translates to the verse. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Sometimes we say, Lord, if only we would know.

If only you would show yourself to us. My predecessor used to say, when you ask for revival or worsened effect, most of you don't know what you're asking for. When you're asked to see the holiness of God, even if your name is Moses, you do not know what you're asking for.

Moses, you can tolerate the intensity of a purity, the like of which you have never known. Moses, no man can see God and live. You can stand in the cleft of a rock and you can perceive my back parts, but Moses, I would not inflict the whole theophany upon you.

But it's not Moses who is our example of shame. We could pick several from the Old and from the New Testament, but settle for one of the greatest, most dated prophets and preachers of Old Testament times. His name, Isaiah.

He had a difficult pitch in Jerusalem, in the sense he drew the short straw as far as studying at theological college was concerned. Who would want Jerusalem? I mean, they were a crowd of disobedient people. So Isaiah, the sort of Billy Graham of his day, swims up and down Jerusalem.

Woah. Woah. Woah.

Woah. Woah. Woah.

I should have been six there, but I lost count. I know that you can almost date your life by what you were doing when John Kennedy was assassinated. That's if you're reasonably as old as I am.

I remember what I was doing when King George VI died. A pivotal day in the life of Isaiah was when another monarch died. His name is Uzziah.

Verse one, chapter six. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. It was a vision.

It was audio. And it was visual. Visual above him were two seraphs with wings.

With two wings they covered their faces. With two they covered their feet. And two they were flying.

And so forth. Four wings were used to occupy them in worshipping the Lord. Two were used in service.

AWU toes are cut. Sometimes we make workers out of people before worshippers. We get the balance wrong.

Not just visual, also audio. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.

And as the power of God descends, it seems as though the text cannot contain what is happening. The voices call doorposts and thresholds to shake. The tunnel is filled with smoke.

Isaiah, who has been pointing his finger at other people, now turns back to himself and he says, Woe to me, I cried. I am ruined. For I am among unclean lips.

And I live among a people of bloody lips. Why, Isaiah, when you have the experience that Moses was requiring, do you act in such a fashion? And the answer is simply this. Isaiah cannot take the glimpse of holiness of God without feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

Job chapter 25, verse 5 has a remarkable text. In fact, it's almost outmatched by Job 15, verse 15. Let's take that one first.

Job 15, verse 15. If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less man who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water. Job 25, verse 5. If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man who is but an agate.

In other words, Job, you can put all the planets there. You can consider the stars. You can consider the sun and the moon.

And in the presence of God, these things fall. How much more inadequate is man as he stands before the Lord of hosts? That's basically Isaiah's dilemma. When holiness pervades the scene, the reaction of man is always shame.

Perhaps stumble upon the word impeccability. But you will know the word impeccable. Someone who is impeccably dressed does not have any disfigurement whatsoever.

Young man who walks down the aisle, bride who comes down the aisle, generally speaking, they're impeccable. She spent hours having her hair done, ensuring also the dress fitted properly. Maybe for the first time in his life, he wore tailors and he was wearing a tie.

Impeccable. The impeccability of God is this. There is imperfection.

Everything is in its right place, in its right order. And the problem is, when you are in his presence, and I am in his presence, we're aware we feel he's embarrassed because he is all that we're not. When holiness pervades the resultant emotion in the breast, it's shame.

Number three. The divine stoop. Holiness on display.

How do you see the incarnation? Divine holiness taking human form. If you've been in the ministry of our Lord Jesus, it has at least four characteristics, maybe five and more. There is fire.

There is light. There is power. There is caste.

Well, our God is a consuming fire. Did you ever think of our Lord Jesus as catching that aspect of the attributes of God after he and God are gone? Here is our Savior, the consuming fire. Well, the beginning of his ministry, he takes some whips, cords meant to a whip, and he lashes out at the money changers who've turned Jerusalem's ball into the stock market of the ancient world.

Now, he's only one man. He's only one whip, and one of them retaliates as he cleanses the temple. Why is this so? Because there is something about this man that is more than the meek and the gentle Jesus.

He is a consuming fire, and there will be times when people will balk at his presence. There will be times when the light of his holiness will cause people to cringe, especially the hypocrites. The children will crowd his presence.

The hypocrites will cower as a result because the man in their midst is God's own representative, a man who is holy, a man who has fire in his belly, in his character. I see Jesus as a flame. I see Jesus incandescent.

I see Jesus as a firework that cannot be put out. And his ministry has the marks of gentleness. It also has the marks of flame.

Part of holiness is his light. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. And he said, John, there was no darkness whatsoever.

He goes through this sinful world as a sunbeam goes through a hovel. And he picks up not one spot of dust. Which one of you convicts me of sin? Look at my life.

Consider me. Feel the contradiction. I come as light.

I piece one light. And my very living illustrates the light that I preach. Never a man spake like this man, said the ornery people, which was like a dagger in the hearts of the professionals.

And then the dagger was twisted as they said. For he speaks with authority and not like the scribes. The holy man who has fire and light coalescing within him.

The holy man who has power. So much power that it is recognized incredibly in areas where you would feel that it would naturally be denied. There were folk in those days as there are today, only that they were more recognized than they are today, who suffered from demonic influence.

Here is our Lord. He's back in his home pitch of Nazareth. He's preaching in the synagogue.

A man comes up. Look, chapter 4, verse 3. He's possessed by a demonic spirit. He cries at the top of his voice.

This is a synagogue, my friend. Ha! What do you want from us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you are the Holy One of God. He crosses the sea one day and he comes into the area of Gadara.

Two men possessed by demons, a legion of demons, travel their way towards him. The demons having a sort of love-hate relationship with Lord Jesus, maybe love of the comers. They're attracted like mosquitos, but they know that he but speaks a word and he will destroy them with his power.

And these demoniacs address our Lord Jesus Christ and speak words of truth. His power causes their unholiness to collapse before him. Here is the Garden of Gethsemane.

Many men, showing their idiocy, their foolishness, come along with their lanterns because it's dark. They make two arrests. Until when will they stand by? For there is a light that flashes from his eyes which makes the presence of the lanterns absurd.

He has passed each one of those men and to take them into an eternal Gehenna. For he has all power and all sorrow. Our Lord Jesus shows something of unholiness, not only with fire and light and power but also the cost factor that comes into his actions.

As he contemplates, however, he's still there in Gethsemane. Matthew 26-37 says that he's sorrowful and troubled. In him is the horror of substitutionary bearing.

The greater your holiness, the greater your sensitivity to sin. If you're a primitive man, you'll never be moved by the masterpieces that there are in the Tate Gallery. If your ears are not tuned to classical music, you will never be moved in the depths of your being to Beethoven, Mozart.

But if it is our Lord, his sensitivities to holiness are heightened to razor-edge dimension. And he peers into the future and he sees the leprosy and the soreness and the cancer of all sin. And he catapults himself forward as he anticipates the moment when death will descend upon him.

And as a result, he repels. His heart is sorrowful to death as has he, the holy one, who appreciates sin more than anyone else, and its awfulness. He anticipates the moment when that which he has not known will baptize his own soul.

Was it the nose, O Saviour, that hung thee to the tree? Nay, it was thine own undying love and grace beyond degree. Oh, help me understand, help me to take a good look at what it meant to thee. What was the next expression? Say it.

What it meant to thee, the holy one, to take away sin. The divine is still wholly on display. The fire, the light, the power, the dust, it's all there.

There are more aspects. You can work them out yourself. I don't have time.

Put all this into play when you consider the holiness of God. But then, finally and quickly, number four, the incredible laugh. Holiness for sharing.

Hebrews chapter 12. Let's go to a more comfortable verse in Hebrews for a moment. Hebrews chapter 12.

Verse 14 says, Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Now, if that's so, I'm not too sure this is a more comfortable verse, actually.

I backtrack on my conclusion to hastily withdraw. If that is so, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Then what hope is there for the likes of you and me? Because the best of us are only men at best or women at best and there is an adequacy.

But, you will find that in the tenth verse of that twelfth chapter is a much more optimistic comment. Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought that God disciplines us for our own good that we may share His holiness. That is the incredible laugh.

Zechariah will tell in a reference I've now no longer have time to go to. Luke 1 verse 75 That holiness is something that is dangled before men and women as a goal to attain. Martimo Jones says, Holiness is not a feeling.

Holiness is a life lived to the glory of God and to His eternal grace. Corinth will tell you 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 1 that we are to perfect holiness out of reverence to God. Do you know on one occasion three men met together to discuss which were the most important hymns in the history of English writing.

They considered it fit for some time and they reduced the song to five. One was Abide With Me by Light. The other was The Church's Foundation by Neal Stone.

The other was When I Surveyed the Wondrous Cross by Albert Watts. The other was All Thou Camest From Above by Charles Wesley. And then there was Thomas Binney's hymn Eternal Light, Eternal Light.

And as these men contemplated these hymns they came to the conclusion that actually the greatest hymn that was ever written in the history of the English church was Binney's hymn. How pure the soul must be when it is placed within thy searching sight. It shrinks not, but with calm and delight can live and look on thee.

The spirits that surround thy throne may bear the burning bliss, but that is surely theirs alone, for they have never, never owned a fallen world like this. Oh, how I, whose knit is fear, is dark, whose mind is dim, before the ineffable appear, and on my naked spirit bear thine uncreate beam. There is a way for mankind to that sublime abode.

An offering, a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit's energies, an advocate with God. These prepare a site of holiness above. The sun's reverence in the night may dwain the eternal light to the eternal love.

It's all there, you see. The pervasiveness of holiness, the shepherness of holiness, the offer of holiness to men and women through the only way that holiness can come to you and me, and that is by the spiritual blood of our Lord Jesus. And so entering into his life by his Holy Spirit, that we be partakers of the divine nature.

You say, say, how Lord, to be a holy man, and help me tidy up my life to be a holy woman. The Bible says, take time to be holy. I can endorse this because no one will feel immediately embarrassed.

Some of us are so careless in coming around the Lord's table. And it's basic to a degree of great unholiness that we come around that table frequently to remember his death. And yet some of us with very little excuse, though some have good ones, are unpleasant.

Help you in the light of holiness. The answer to this word, take into your soul, turn it over. Let it be the war cordial that the purest it could be.

Live, Bible. I'm in prayer before this God so that prayer takes more time than your football, than your golf, than your jogging, than your TV watching. Take time to be holy.

I have no truck that I'm supposed to turn Sunday into a miserable day. But I have even greater abuses against those who turn the Lord's day into an ordinary day. Christian people who can go back home and watch their televisions and see stuff which is incompatible with what the man in the pulpit is preaching to a congregation on a Sunday night.

That I rebel against in the name of God. Because I believe that that harms and hurts the feelings of our holy, thrice-blessed God. Holiness is a difficult thing for you to enter into.

Holiness demands from you childlike obedience to the things that you know you ought to be doing. A man can be as holy as A.W. Tozer, as a man wants to be, but there's the rub. Some of us don't really want to be as holy as we could be.

Because we think that happiness will come down from motherhood and holiness. Here's my final comment to you. The truly happy man, the truly happy woman, is the holy man.

The holy man. For thus saith the Lord God, Queen of its eternity, I dwell in the high and in the holy place. And with him that is of a lowly and a contrite heart.

The holy God resident in me.