God Is Holy
God Is...

Transcript

Good morning, church. It's great seeing all of you here this morning. We're concluding our series today entitled, “God is…” And we've been going through the attributes of God for these past eight weeks. And today we'll be talking about the holiness of God.

But before we dig in, I want us to pray for our country. Yesterday, our country had a tough day, didn't it? Our nation. And, you know, we've been praying for revival in our city. And I pray we would have not only revival in our city, but in our nation.

And the Bible teaches us, Jesus teaches us, to pray for his kingdom to come. As I pray this morning, I pray first of all for us as a church, regardless of what side of the aisle you are, in terms of how you vote. I pray that we would all wave the banner of Jesus, that we would all recognize that there's a right way and a wrong way to communicate your views. And so I pray for our church, don't you, that we would be very careful during this season the way we communicate.

And just looking at this, seeing the loss of life by the spectator that was killed, the former president being wounded, all of this is just a terrible travesty. And we pray for the violence to stop in our nation. And only the Lord can do that. Lord Jesus, we do pray for our country right now. We pray for healing for former President Trump.

We pray for the family that lost a loved one and for those that were injured. In addition to that, Lord, we pray for our people, that we would be one nation united under God, that we would see revival in our land. Lord, it seems impossible at times, especially on days like yesterday. But, Lord, we know that you teach us to pray for your kingdom to come, your will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven. So that's how we pray right now.

Lord, let it start in us, in the way that we love. Put aside violent thinking and violent communication, Lord, but instead preaching and teaching the peace of the gospel to one another and to this world. Lord, we love you and we thank you in Jesus’ name, amen. I think it's important that we remember to pray for our country at all times, but especially days like we have had this weekend. Well, we're looking at the attributes of God today.

We'll be talking about the holiness of God. And the theme verse for this series is found in John, chapter 17, where Jesus is speaking. He says, John 17:3 (ESV) “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So he says, here's the key to life. Here's true life, and that is to know God.

And so that's what we've been doing. We've been studying the attributes of God, that we might know God better. And in this series, we've looked at God's love, his might, his mercy, his fatherhood, his unchanging nature, his faithfulness, his goodness. And now today, we will consider God's holiness, for God is holy. Now, that word, “holy,” can cause us some difficulty.

Why is it important to consider God's holiness? Indeed, the word holy can often be taken negatively. Someone calls you a “holy Joe,” they don't usually mean that as a compliment. If they say, you know, “you're holier than thou,” they're basically saying, you think you're a “goody two shoes,” that you're better than other people.

They might be calling you a hypocrite, even saying, you think you're holy, but you're not holy. And so we often hear that word in the context of something negative, don't we? And even when we consider it towards God, it's a little off putting. We're like, I'm not really sure what that word means. I think it means no sin or something.

And we kind of get stuck on, what does this word mean? Well, that's why we're talking about it today, because we want to dig in on this idea. And it's especially true because both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we see God commanding us in this way. He says in Lev.11:44, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
But before we can even unpack the idea of us being holy, we have to get our minds around it.

We must get a grasp on what it means that God is holy. Puritan pastor, Thomas Watson, said this of God being holy. He said, “Holiness is the most sparkling jewel of his crown; it is the name by which God is known.”

R. L. Dabney wrote, “Holiness is to be regarded not as a distinct attribute but as the result of all God’s moral perfection together.”

In other words, his holiness is kind of like the crown of all of his attributes, because it describes the high, supreme and majestic - all of his attributes together. This is holiness. So how important is it? How important does the Bible consider it for us to know and give recognition to God's holiness? Well, consider this, that in the Old Testament, which was originally written in Hebrew, the way that the Hebrew writers would tell us that a word was to be taken very seriously was to double it, to say it twice.

So it intensified the meaning. We don't have to go long in the Hebrew Testament, the Old Testament. Just to Genesis, chapter two. And we read this. It's the Lord speaking.

He says to Adam, Genesis 2:17, “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge, you shall surely die.”
You shall surely die. Now, interestingly, in the Hebrew, it doesn't say, “surely.” It says, “die die.” We translate it because it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to say “die die” because we don't speak Hebrew. But the way they would intensify “surely die, really die, actually die” is they'd say it twice.

You know this because in the New Testament, Jesus would have been speaking in Hebrew or in Aramaic. And so how did he begin? Almost for all of his parables and teachings he would begin with, “Truly, truly, I say unto you,” which in the Hebrew, he was beginning with the double amen. Did you know that what we translate as “truly, truly” was actually in the Hebrew, “amen, amen.”

It's the double amen. And so he was basically saying, what I'm about to say to you, I'm amening it twice before I start. It's so true. It's doubly true. Are you still with me?

If God, in his word, wanted to tell us he wanted to intensify the meaning of something, he would double it. But in my study of the scriptures, only one word can be found that he triples it. And as it describes God and Isaiah. Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.” And John in Revelation 4:8, when he has a vision of seeing the Lord, both of them hear the voice of the angelic host.

They hear the people saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” It's the only place in scripture that I can think of a triple emphasis, that he's holy, holy, holy. That's how important it is for us to get a grasp on what we mean when we say “God” in Psalm 99. The psalmist writes this psalm to believers so that they know how to worship a holy God. And he calls them to praise God for his holiness.

And I believe today that we can learn to praise God for being holy. And as we look at the text, we'll see three ways that we can do this. Let's dig in. We're in Psalm 99.

We'll be reading all nine verses. Psalm 99 (ESV) 1 The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim;

let the earth quake! 2 The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. 3 Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he!

4 The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. 5 Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool!

Holy is he! 6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the LORD, and he answered them. 7 In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them;

they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them. 8 O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. 9 Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!

This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three ways we can praise God for his holiness. Here's the first:

1. By recognizing His great majesty.

By recognizing his great majesty. If you'll notice, these nine verses are really kind of broken up into three stanzas. Verses one through three are at stanza four and five, and then six through nine. And if you'll notice, each of these begins with making a case for God's holiness and then concludes with a statement calling us to praise God for his holiness. So we see at the conclusion of the first stanza, 3 “Let them praise your great and awesome name! let them praise your great and awesome name.

Holy is he!” That's verse three. Then at the conclusion of the second stanza,5 “Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he!”

And then in verse nine, again, “... for the LORD our God is holy!”

And so he makes a case for God's holiness. And then he calls us to cry out and praise God for his holiness. What's his first case? What's the first case that the psalmist makes to believers?

He says that
God is king. God reigns. He's holy God. And he's high and lifted up. He's majestic.

He's a high and holy king. He uses the word, “LORD,” throughout, all caps, all four letters. Which refers to the covenantal name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. It's the Hebrew word, “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” which means “I am.”

And so he uses this name for God throughout. He says, “Jehovah, God reigns.” And then he says, “let the people tremble.” I think it was Dr. Spurgeon who said, ‘The Quakers got that part right. We should quake.

We should tremble because the Lord is high and mighty. He's holy.’ When we think of the word, “holy.” We tend to think of it as being sinless or something like that.

We tend to think, Well, that person's holy. We're thinking of them as being good. I think that's kind of how we use it. But that's not primarily what the word means in the Bible. That's a secondary meaning.

It is part of the meaning, but that's not the primary meaning of the word holy. The primary meaning of the word holy means separate apartheid, not of this world. High, majestic above all things. So to say that God is holy is to say, he's not like us. He's not like this world.

He's the creator and we're the creation. He's God and I'm not. He's the holy other. This is what it means to say that he is great in his majesty. And so the psalmist says, ‘He reigns,

so the peoples of the world should tremble.’ He reigns and he sits on his throne above the cherubim. Now, he has an idea in mind; the psalmist is thinking probably of the tabernacle where you go into the Holy of Holies. There's the Ark of the Covenant, which was also in the Bible called the “Mercy Seat.”

It's emblematic of the throne of God. Upon the lid of the ark were two golden cherubim with their wings touching in the middle. He's probably here in verse one thinking of that, that he knows that the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat of God that's in the Holy of Holies, is only a picture of the real one that's in heaven, and that God sits upon his holy throne. And so he's given us this picture of the Cherubim and the angelic host and that sits here, actually in the ESV. It says he sits enthroned upon the Cherubim.

Maybe a better picture here, reading the Hebrew, is above the cherubim. It's not like he's sitting on them, but he sits above them. He's higher than them and so he sits above them. And since that's the case, since he's the ruler of the universe, let the earth quake, so let the peoples tremble. Let the earth quake, so that both the creature and the creation are amazed and in awe of how high and majestic and holy God is.

The word literally has the idea of “being sacred, set apart.” God's holiness is what separates him from all other beings. It's what makes him separate and distinct from everything else. His holiness is more than just his perfection or his sinless purity. It's the essence of his otherness, his transcendence.

He's not a man, but we are made in his image, but we are not him. He is alone. He stands outside of creation. He's above all things. He is high and mighty and majestic.

After God brought Moses and the Israelites across the dry land of the Red Sea, you remember the story where he parted the Red Sea and he brought him across? And then he closed the waters and judged Pharaoh's army and wiped them out so they couldn't pursue. As soon as they got on the other side and they had seen this wonderful work that God had done,

Moses and the people broke into song, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and they wrote it down. Here's one of the verses. Exodus, chapter 15. They were talking of the Lord. They said, Exodus 15:11 (ESV) “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

When they were using the word, “holy,” here, they weren't primarily talking about moral or sinless aspects. They were talking about his greatness. Who else could have done that? Who else could have parted the Red Sea like that?

When they were talking about God's holiness, they were talking about how he's higher, how he's superior, how he's different, decidedly different from anything in this creation. The prophet Samuel said that God is in his own category. So we're in a category of humanity. And there's a lot of us under our category. But there's this category called, “God”

and he stands alone. Right there. That's him. He's in the category of one. And here's what Samuel says.

1 Samuel 2:2 (ESV) “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.”

So when we say, when we get at this, when we say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” the first response for us to really understand this is to say, “He's God. There's no one like him.

He's higher than all.” And then we begin to see ourselves in comparison. We can't help it. We do this all the time with each other. But when we see ourselves in comparison to him, it causes a certain response.

Look what happens when Isaiah has a vision of the Lord. It's in Isaiah, chapter six. He says, Isaiah 6:1-5 (ESV) 1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim.

Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Isaiah's response ought to be our response, encountering a holy God. Woe is me, I am undone.

There is no one like him to have that response. This is the response of Isaiah. When he beheld God's great majestic holiness and he recognized the Lord, he fell out. He cried out, “Woe is me. I am

lost.”
I think this is the first response; encountering a holy God. Our hearts should tremble. We should be amazed. And as we reflect on ourselves in comparison to him, we should say, ‘You are great, you are mighty, I am lowly, I am as nothing compared to you.

Woe is me.’

This is the pathway to knowing God is to have a right consideration of his holiness. It primarily means there's no one else like him. He's in a category all his own. Here's the second way that we can give God praise for his holiness. The first being to recognize his majestic holiness, that he's high and lifted up.

The second is:

2. By understanding His moral perfection.

We already kind of knew this one. This is what we normally think of holiness, but it is important as well. And so we see this in verses four and five. The first case he made in verses one and two was for God's holiness as being high and majestic, and that it deserves praise, which he calls for in verse three.

And then in the second stanza, in verse four, he says, 4 “The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.”

So you see these words, justice and righteousness. Now he's talking about God's holiness and the aspect of it being his moral perfection, that he's sinless.

Not only is he just, but the psalmist here says that he loves justice with all of his might. It's kind of a strange reading, the way the ESV puts it, “The King in his might loves justice…” but the idea clearly seems to be that he loves justice with all of his might, with all of his power and passion. He loves justice. Now, the truth is we as believers, we love justice too, right?

We do. We love justice, especially when God's judging someone else.

We love mercy when he's judging us, right? But he loves justice and he does it without favoritism. He does it with equity. He loves justice, the king, in his might. In his might he's able to carry out justice.

And it says in verse four that he's executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Now, what he means, he's not talking about Jacob, the individual. He's talking about Israel, plural, because Jacob's name was changed to Israel. So he's saying, ‘God, we see the way you've been just and how you've brought righteousness to your people of God in Israel.’ So he's making the case for God's holy moral perfection here.

And then he says in verse five, 5 “Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he!” What should we do when we see God's holiness? We should lift him up. We should exalt him. That's what the word, “exalt,” means. It means to “lift someone up.”

You exalt him, you should exalt him and you should worship. So you lift him up and you fall yourself down.

Worship him where? At his footstool. Now how are you going to get down there? You lift him up and you get down. You get low.

Get low? That's what he says. You know how you respond to God's holiness? You lift him up and you get low. That's how you do it.

That's what it means to really worship him for his holiness, to understand who he is. He's distinctly different in his moral perfection. He is sinless. It says in the book of James, chapter one, that he is not tempted, he does not tempt, nor is he tempted by sin. There's no shadow of turning in him.

It says in the book of James that there's no shadow in him. He's pure light. He's pure perfection. He is morally perfect.

And even the words he speaks are morally perfect. And so we call this book. What? What do we call this book? The Holy Bible.

Well, this particular one has a calfskin cover. You pay extra for that. It used to have my name right here, but I've worn it off from carrying it, I guess. How many of you have a worn out Bible?

Does anybody have a worn out Bible? I've got a shelf of them. I have a couple of the earlier ones. I have duct tape and everything on them because I carried them on mission trips to Uganda and places like that. I can't throw them away.

So they're on a shelf and sometimes I get them down and look because they have notes in them. I have one Bible that my mother gave me that has notes in it from her. I think she thought her Bible was also her diary. And she had a Bible with big old margins. I can find a place where she wrote the day my son Stephen was born.

And it says, “Lord, Gary and Robin had a little baby boy. They named him Stephen Andrew. And then she put the date, “9/14/82. Lord, I pray he comes to Jesus at a young age.” That's a valuable bible to me because

not only is it my Lord, my holy God's word, but it's also got my mother’s words. She came to Jesus and his holiness was given to her as a gift, imputed to her because of Jesus. And so she's writing her words. That's a holy book. To me, holy means special and set apart. Not for vulgar or common use.

It's a holy book. Paul says in the book of Romans, Romans 7:12 (ESV) “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”

We call it the Holy Bible for that reason. It's not to be stepped on and certainly not supposed to be a coaster on your coffee table.

Is your Bible collecting dust at your house? Or is it getting worn out from use? We're a generation that has more bibles and more translations than any generation who's ever lived. But the Bible is holy. It's a holy book.

There's a sermon in here called the Sermon on the Mount. It's in the holy book. It's in Matthew 5:7. It's one of the hardest sermons to swallow because Jesus takes the holy law of God and then takes it from your head to your heart.

He takes it from your action to your attitude. He tells you stuff like this, he says, Matthew 5:21-22(NIV)
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” So if you call your brother “dummy,” have you ever done that?

If you call your brother “stupid” or “ignorant.” I see some of the young people now elbowing their parents, you told me that I couldn't say that. Well, it's in the Bible that you're not supposed to say that, by the way. It says you've committed murder in your heart. Jesus said, “You've heard it said, thou shalt not commit murder.

But I tell you, if you call your brother “Raca,” you've committed murder in your heart. Then, he says, “You've heard it said, thou shall not commit adultery. But I say, if you've looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart.” All of the Pharisees and all of the law keepers are sitting there thinking, I've kept the Ten Commandments.

I'm a good person. I'm a holy person. And Jesus starts tearing it down; ‘No, you're not. No, you're not. No, you're not.

No, you're not.’ And then Jesus concludes with this in chapter five. He says, in Matthew 5:48 (ESV) “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

He takes that Levitical statement that says, in Leviticus 11:44, “You must be holy, because I, the Lord, am holy.” And he gives it a little bit more emphasis and he says, “You must be perfect.”

What are we going to do with this? Can you be perfect? I can't. I can't. He's God and I'm not.

So. Not only is he higher than me, so high and transcendent that I'll never be able to reach him. Unless he comes to me, I can't reach him. But now there's this gulf that sinful humanity's on this side, and there's this gulf that separates me from God, in distance from. Because he's holy, he's without sin, and I'm sinful.

So not only can I not reach him in height, but I can't reach him. I need a bridge. I need someone to come down that could take me up. I need someone that would build a bridge that could get me across. I'm undone.

Woe is me. He's holy and I'm not. This is the second realization we have. The book of James 1:23 says that the word of God's like a mirror.

And so we look at the holiness of God and we can't help but see ourselves, and we say, ‘Woe is me. I can't look.’ And so some people turn away and they say, ‘I'm going to pretend like I didn't see that.’ Or some people say, ‘You know what? I'm not going to compare myself to God.

I'm going to compare myself to you people. And when I do that, you know what? I feel like I'm better than you.’ Now, some of y'all looked over there, but I was pointing to an empty seat. You wondered, ‘Who's he talking about?’

I’m not going to tell you. I'm going to just point to that empty seat. But that's what some of us do. We think that God is going to grade on a curve. We have been making some bad grades and some of y'all have been making F’s.

I feel like there's room for me above you. I'm better than some of you. That's not the way it works. God's holding us is so far removed from us, and he doesn't grade us according to each other because the Bible says that even our righteousness is as filthy rags before the Lord. So there's this great gulf that separates us.

There's this great distance. We're all far from God unless God does something heroic to rescue us. This is what it means to understand that God is holy. And so he says he's righteous, he's good, he's morally perfect. Therefore, you should praise the Lord.

It says in verse five, “Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he!” And now we're in the final stanza. I'm glad we've got six through nine. I'm glad it doesn't stop at verse five, because here's the final way that we worship the Lord and praise the Lord for his holiness.

3. By calling on His revealed forgiveness.

It's by calling on his revealed forgiveness. He's done something about that great gap between us and him. He's done something about that need for a bridge across the chasm of separation. We're in the final stanza, and he spends verses six through eight making his case for God's holiness.

And then in verse nine, he calls us to praise the Lord for his holiness. He begins in verse six by naming three fellas, Moses, Aaron and Samuel. Seems a little bit random because they're from different time periods. Moses and Aaron are brothers, but Samuel is centuries later. What do they have in common?

All three are noted intercessors. All three have a priestly role. All three stand in the gap between God and sinful man. And they are foreshadowing of the perfect priest, Jesus. They're all noted intercessors.

God gave the law through Moses, so he gave his word through Moses. God raised up Aaron to be the “go between” as the high priest who would represent their sins before God so they could have forgiveness. God raised up Samuel so he could anoint David king, so that in the line of David would come the perfect priest, Jesus. These are three noted intercessors.

And when they called upon his name in verse six, it says that the Lord answered. The word, “answered,” is in there twice. Here's God. He's distant. He's holy.

But when you call upon his name and recognize his holiness, he answers. In verse seven, it says that he spoke from the pillar of cloud. This is an old testament reference of the people when they lived in the wilderness, that God, whenever they built the tabernacle and whenever God during the daytime would appear to them, he would appear as a pillar of cloud. And he would appear over top of the mercy seat. And I told you all what was earlier. The ark of the covenant, the pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

And the people would camp wherever the pillar stopped. And so the people, for 40 years, if the pillar moved out from the tabernacle, they would all break camp and follow it because that was the presence of God. And it would stop and they would know that it was time to camp out.

That's where they were supposed to be. That's what he's talking about right here with the pillar of cloud. He spoke to them, and they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them. That's where we got the word of God. He says it came from.

He heard them and he answered them. And not only that, did he answer them in verse eight, “O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.”

He answered them by being a forgiving God,forgiving them for their sins, but also correcting them, being an avenger for their wrongdoing. Because he's a father, he will discipline his people. Therefore, since he does this, since he's a forgiving God, since he's the God who answers prayer, let's exalt him.

Verse 9, “Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!”

He says, “and worship at his holy mountain.” What's that? What's the holy mountain? That's Jerusalem. That's Mount Zion.

Come up to the temple and worship him. And when you get up there, remember, he's holy. And so all three stanzas end with a call to say he's “Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” And that's what we see here in psalm 99. I've got some passages I want to read to you quickly.

And I want you to get your seatbelts on. I want you to hang with me. I had people in the lobby after the first service had a lot of questions. Apparently, I went too fast right here and slung some of them off their seats. Okay?

So hang with me. I want to talk to you first about how Jesus is the fulfillment of these three intercessors of Moses, Aaron, and Samuel, that he's the high priest. He's the holy high priest. Hebrews 7:22-27 (ESV) 22 “This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. 23 The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office,

(In other words, Moses died, Aaron died, Samuel died. All the priests died. They were just human. They were only shadows of foreshadows of the one to come. Verse 24, speaks of Jesus.)

24 but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. 25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. 26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. 27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered himself up.

He's the perfect holy high priest. Jesus is the fulfillment. He is our forgiveness. He is our holiness. And only faith in Jesus can make us holy so that we are made holy.

The christian word for that is to be “sanctified.” To be the word, “saint,” comes from the same word. To be made into a saint, to be made holy. We can't do it ourselves. He's too far away.

And the bridge, the chasm, is too distant. We needed someone, and that's Jesus. In John, chapter eight, Jesus said to the Pharisees that were disputing with him and said, ‘You don't understand.’ He says, ‘I'm from above, you're from below. I'm from above, and you're of this world.

And that's why you don't understand me.’ They didn't understand that he was the holy one. But those who do are made holy. It says this in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NLT) 9 “Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God?

Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, 10 or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. 11 Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed;

you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

He's the high and holy intercessor that came down to us and makes it possible for us to go and be with the Father and makes us holy. So that we have a bridge going across the gulf that separates us from a holy God, that gulf is removed by the bridge called Jesus. I want to tell you a little story from the book of Haggai.

It's a little book, just two chapters long. God gives Haggai, the prophet, a test question for the priests. He wants to teach them something about holiness and unholiness. And so the priests, they've got the book of the law, so they should be able to pass the test. He says, Haggai 2:11-13 (ESV) 11 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: 12 ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’”

The priests answered and said, “No.” 13 Then Haggai said, “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?” The priests answered and said, “It does become unclean.”

So that means what? Here's the first point I want to make: There's no such thing as secondary holiness. In order to have holiness in your life, you have to first come into contact with the holy one. So, children, if your parents are believers.

That doesn't make you a believer. That doesn't make you right with God just because you're under their holy roof, their protection. That's a wonderful thing to be in a holy house, a house that's been set apart so that your mom and dad have said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That does give you a great heritage, a great legacy. But one day you'll stand all by yourself before a holy God and he will ask you about you.

He won't ask you about them. There's no such thing as secondary holiness you have to come into. And then he asks part of the question, ‘Now what about this? If you are holy and you come into contact with something unclean, and your robe has been holy, it's been made holy by the sacrifice. But if you come into contact with something unclean, what happens?

You become unclean.’ That's what the law says. Because unholiness is catching. You can have secondary and tertiary and on and on because unholiness is catching. That's Haggai, chapter two.

Now, Gary, why in the world are you telling us this story? Stay with me. This is where I lost some people at first service. But you are smarter, I can tell and you got your seatbelts on.

You're hanging with me. Two stories. They're both in the book of Matthew. One's in chapter eight, one's in chapter nine. In chapter nine,

Jesus is walking through a crowd. There's people everywhere. And a woman who had been sick for twelve years with bleeding and couldn't stop the blood. She'd paid all of her money to physicians. They couldn't heal her.

And for a Jewish woman, this was a horrific thing. It meant she couldn't go to the temple. She wasn't even supposed to be in public. She certainly wasn't supposed to touch anyone, because what do we know from the book of Haggai that uncleanness is transferable. And so then if she touches somebody, then now they're unclean according to the Levitical law.

And you certainly don't want to go touching a rabbi. But what does she do? By faith, she's tried everything. She gets down on her knees before a holy Jesus, and she touches the hem of his garment and his power, his holiness, is imputed to her. And she's healed like that because he's the holy one.

And his holiness, when she touched him, “boom,” she was healed because he's different. He's the holy one. Her uncleanness did not transfer to him, but his holiness was imputed to her. If you want to get holy, you need to come into contact with Jesus.

Now here's the other story from Matthew eight. These two stories are kind of back to back. In the book of Matthew, there's a story about Jesus walking along and this leper comes up. Now a leper is a horrific thing to see. Their skin is really dying and there's a stench about them because there's death upon them.

They might be starting to lose fingers in the extremities like the nose and the ears. And so they would wear clothes , to try to cover up all the terrible nature of leprosy. They died a piece at a time. Horrific disease. They were supposed to carry a bell so that no one would come near them.

And so here comes a leper. He falls at the Lord's feet and he says, “Lord, if you are willing, you can heal me.” And Jesus said, “I am willing.” Now, if I were in Jesus' shoes at that point, I think I'd back up a few steps and say, ‘You're healed. ’ I'd get at least six feet away, right?

That's not what Jesus does. So you read in Matthew, chapter eight that he touched the leper and he healed him. He touched him and he healed him. He didn't have to touch him.

He touched him and he healed him. The holy one who came down from heaven, he touched him and his leprosy was gone. Why? Because he came into contact with the holy one of God. So the distance was brought down.

The gulf was bridged. This is our Jesus. And so that Simon Peter declares this, he says, John 6:68-69 (ESV) 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

You want to be in contact with the Holy God. You want to be able to truly worship the Holy God. It begins by saying, ‘Woe is me.

You're so great and I'm so little. I'm so lost.’ And then it continues with an awareness, you're so sinless and I'm so sinful. So we confess and we repent. That's how it begins, isn't it?

It begins with an awareness of our sin and we admit it. That's what confession means. Admit that you're a sinner. And then it goes beyond that. You've given to me Jesus, that priest, that sacrifice, that lamb of God, that holy one.

And so I receive him now as my lord and savior. You know, we told the story earlier about Isaiah in chapter six, how he saw a vision of the Lord. And we said that when he saw the Lord and he heard the angelic host saying, “holy, holy, holy, he says, woe is me, for I am undone and I'm a man of unclean lips. And I come from a people of unclean lips.” That's where we stopped.

But that's not where it stops in the story. Because then what happens is one of those seraphim takes a tong and he takes hold of a fiery coal from the sacrifice. And he flies up to old Isaiah and he places it on his lips and he says, ‘Behold, your sins have been purged. Your lips have been made clean.’ And the minute that happens, he can hear the Lord.

He hadn't been hearing the Lord up until then. He'd heard the angelic host, but he hadn't heard the Lord. And he heard the Lord say, “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

I pray that over our Uganda team that they are today saying, ‘Here am I, Lord, send me.’ Because we now represent the holy one of God and we are to be his holy ones in this world, in the “Imago Dei,” the image of God. And so that's what God is doing. He's making for himself a people who are like Jesus. Oh, he's high and holy.

He's sinless, he's perfect. But he's given us Jesus to come and live inside of us so that we're able to say, ‘Not only am I right with God, he's making me holy. But not only that I represent God. Lord, here am I. Send me.’

We can exalt the Lord and we can worship him. We can say, ‘He touched me. Oh, he touched me and all the joy that floods my soul. Amen.’

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word. Thank you that you're holy, holy, holy. If you're here this morning, listening right now, whether you're in the next room, you're watching online, you're in this room, right in your seat right now, would you say along with Isaiah, ‘Woe is me, I'm lost.’ Would you admit that?

’Woe is me. I'm a sinner. I admit it. And I need a savior. Lord, I cry out to you right now.

Woe is me, I'm lost. I want you to save me, Lord Jesus, I believe in you today. I believe you died on the cross for me. You died for my sins. You were raised from the grave and that you live today.

I believe that. Come and live in me, holy Jesus. Come and forgive me of my sins and make me the person you want me to be. I trust in you right now.’ If you're praying that prayer, believing, he'll save you and make you a child of God, he'll begin to work in your life.

Others are here and you're a Christ follower. You've given your life to Jesus, but you admit right now that you've taken on a lot of the world. You haven't been living as he asked to be holy, as he is holy. There are parts of your life right now that you would repent of and say, ‘Lord, I wouldn't want you to see this in my life. I wouldn't want you to hear me say this or do this.

And so, Lord, forgive me afresh, give me a fresh cleansing. Touch me afresh, that I might live a holy life for you.’ In Jesus name, Amen.