One man described his observations of the concept of holiness like this: “There is a simple yet profound word which occurs nine hundred times in the Bible. You see it first in Genesis, as we are told how God created heaven and earth. You see it last in the closing chapter of Revelation where we are told about God’s creation of a new heaven and a new earth. But except for a few grand old hymns of the faith, you do not see this word much today … This word is “Holy.” We get our words “saint,” “sanctify,” and “sanctification” from the same root words. All these terms carry the idea of being “set apart.…” Just as all the colors of the spectrum come together to form the pure white light which illuminates our world, so all the attributes of God come together into His holiness. [1]
This attribute of God, His being holy is important for us to understand. Why? Because of God’s commandment in Leviticus and repeated in NT letter of 1 Peter:
1 Peter 1:14–16 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”
Herein is our problem today: D.A Carson wrote in his book, “For the Love of God,” the following, “People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.[2]
In our “Read through the Bible” program, if you got nothing else out of the book of Leviticus, get this, we cannot approach a Holy God on our own terms, we cannot approach God just because we want to. We do God no favors by just showing up at church and putting a $10 bill in the offering. God cannot be bought. We must approach a most holy God in humbleness, confessing our sins and in an attitude of repentance. That’s just for starters.
Isaiah found himself in the throne room of God. Let’s read his account of what took place.
Isaiah 6:1–7
Philadelphia pastor James Montgomery Boice once spoke to a discipleship group on the attributes of God. He began by asking them to list God’s qualities in order of importance. They put love first, followed by wisdom, power, mercy, omniscience, and truth. At the end of the list they put holiness. “That did surprise me,” Boice later wrote, “because the Bible refers to God’s holiness more than any other attribute.” The Bible doesn’t generally refer to God as Loving, Loving, Loving! Or Wise, Wise, Wise! Or Omniscient, Omniscient, Omniscient! But over and over we read the cry of the angels, Holy, Holy, Holy! [3]
This is where Isaiah stood in today’s passage:
Isaiah 6:1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
We do not know how Isaiah saw God. In a vision? In person? Isaiah, from a royal family, was probably a high court official. Putting things into perspective, King Uzziah (also known as King Azaraiah in 2 Kings) was a good King, reigned 52 years, had good prosperity. But he was prideful - After all he was king and doing good things, he thought he would top it off by burning some incense himself to God, a job for only the priest.
2 Chronicles 26:16 But when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful to the LORD his God, for he entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense.
The priest demanded he leave but the king refused
2 Chronicles 26:19 But Uzziah, with a censer in his hand for burning incense, was enraged; and while he was enraged with the priests, the leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests in the house of the LORD, beside the altar of incense.
He was a leper till the day he died.
In Leviticus, the sons of Aaron, Aron being the first priest and his son being priests after him, were struck dead because they chose to do things their own way.
Leviticus 10:1–2 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.
They wanted to come to God on their terms and in their own way, not God’s way. God further said:
Leviticus 10:3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the LORD spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.’ ” So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.
The holiness of God is not a trifle thing and must be taken seriously. Now Isaiah found himself in the throne room of Almighty God. The Lord was sitting there on His throne, high and lifted up above every everything else. What else did Isaiah see?
Isaiah 6:2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
This is the only place in Scripture where we find the term Seraphim – perhaps they were similar to the cherubim God left guarding the garden and God had them modeled and put in the temple and on the Ark of the Covenant, covering the mercy seat.
Isaiah 6:3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”
Holy, Holy, Holy, three times indicated the supremeness or the complete holiness of God. The fulness of the holiness of God. This is very similar to what the Apostle John saw as recorded in the book of Revelation. Perhaps the four living Creatures he saw were also Seraphim (meaning “fiery ones”).
Revelation 4:8 And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.”
Only God is holy, holy, holy. The whole earth is full of His glory! Everyone has seen God’s glory. Think on that. We read last week from Romans 1:18-20 where God has revealed Himself to all.
Numbers 14:21 but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the LORD.
In numerous place the Psalms speaks of the earth being filled with His glory. When you see the wonders of His creation – a sunset – a sunrise, a star filled night sky, or the terror of a mighty thunderstorm, you have seen God’s glory.
So what does Holy mean?
It is the chief attribute of God and a quality to be developed in his people. “Holiness” and the adjective “holy” occur more than 900 times in the Bible. The primary OT word for holiness means “to cut” or “to separate.” Fundamentally, holiness is a cutting off or separation from what is unclean, and consecration to what is pure. In the OT God’s holiness denotes that the Lord is separate from all that is evil and defiled. His holy character is the standard of absolute moral perfection [4]
Leviticus 19:2 “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
This is the theme verse for the whole book of Leviticus. We, as God’s people, are to be holy.
Isaiah 6:4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
The place shook and smoke filled the room. I’m sure the whole scene was terribly frightening. Not unlike what was experienced by the Children of Israel at Mt Sinai:
Exodus 19:18 Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.
Isaiah knew the scriptures, he knew what would happen someone entered God presence unworthily
Isaiah 6:5 Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
When Isaiah beheld the glory and holiness of God – his sinfulness stood out in stark contrast. "Woe is me – I am undone" (NKJV) This the same reaction that John had when he encountered Jesus in Heaven:
Revelation 1:17a When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.
Peter , who tends be start off slow but catches on, When he first met Jesus, (he already knew Jesus as a rabbi). when he realized just who Jesus is:
Luke 5:8 But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
Isaiah knew of his own sinfulness (and he was a good guy!) We cannot encounter a most Holy God without seeing the sinfulness of ourselves, I don’t care how good you think you might be. Are we aware of our sins? You cannot encounter a Holy God and stand and say I am without sin. For all have sinned ... (Romans 3:23).
1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
As Isaiah confessed his sins, he was also well aware of the sins of his people. “And I live among a people of unclean lips” When we look at our people, we do not have to go beyond the doors of the church. Remember, all of Israel was called to be a holy people.
Deuteronomy 7:6 For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
We are God’s people in the church. And yet we are all sinful people. Do we tolerate sin in our mist? Do we bicker and fight among ourselves? The church is said to be the only place where we shoot our wounded.
But look at Isaiah. He sees God’s holiness. He sees his sins. He confesses his sins with sorrow and tears. He confesses the sins of His people. Then in verse 6-7 we see that his sins are forgiven.
Isaiah 6:6–7 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”
We know what verse 8 talks about – God ask who will go for us and Isaiah stand up and says “Here am I send me.” Long before that happened, Isaiah encountered the holy God
and said “Woe is me” He was cleansed before he could do anything for God.
Isaiah approached God in humility. He offered no sacrifices, he made no promises (like to be a missionary, that comes later). He did not try to clean up his act. All Isaiah did was to confess his sin with the realization that he had no power within himself to change his situation before God. He threw himself on God’s mercy and God made him presentable. Only when God made him presentable was Isaiah of any use to Him.
We are here in the presence of Holy God. The Lord God Almighty. Some will approach Holy God wrongly. In pride, King Uzziah was struck with leprosy. Aaron's sons approached on their own terms and were struck dead. Isaiah approached humbly, confessing his sins, And he was cleansed , forgiven and was made whole, and became a tool that God used in a mighty way.
We come, in the presence of the Holy, we have no power in ourselves to change our sinful situation. We must confessed our shortcomings, with repentance, laid it all out before God. And leave the rest up to Him and His mercy. So what do we do when we find ourselves in the presence of Holy God?
[1] Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 374.
[2] Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof, 1001 Illustrations That Connect (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 131. D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Crossway, 1999)
[3] Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 373.
[4] Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 984.
