Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The mythological Greek gods and goddesses worshiped thousands of years ago were portrayed as better, more powerful versions of humanity. They could still be capricious and full of the same vices found in man. Not so with the God of the Bible. It's easy to see throughout the narrative of scripture that God is unlike us. He's holy, set apart, completely other.
God Himself is the very definition of what is good, beautiful, and right. His person invokes awe in those who observe it. In today's message from Isaiah 48, Pastor Rich lays out the holiness, the otherness of God, along with a challenge for us to consider. Do we view God as simply a larger, better version of ourselves?
Are we guilty of treating Him as common? May God enlighten our hearts to the beauty and greatness of Himself today. You're listening to part four of a message that was first preached on May 26, 2013 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem.
To hear the whole message and other messages from the Isaiah series, go to www.delightingrace.com. We must know God in the way that He is. Jonathan Edwards said, the theologian, not the politician, a true love of God must begin with a delight in His holiness. We must know God as He truly is. Not only is God holy other in His essence, in that He is not a part of the Creator, He's not a part of us, only bigger. He is also holy other in character, in character.
Three ways we're going to look there. God is holy other in character in that He is unfailingly good. He is unfailingly good. The God who says that I call the stars by name and they stand up is the God who Himself is the best thing for me. He is the definition of good. He is unfailingly good in that He is right and beneficial. Look with me at verses 17 and 18. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord your God who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
Oh, that you had heeded my commandments, then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. He is absolute good. He Himself in His person is what is right for me, is what is beneficial for me because He is a holy God. He is holy, He is unfailingly good also because He is free from weakness and imperfection. Everything He does is an outflow of His perfection and infinite strength. He is a holy God.
This next point is one that we could easily miss and I invite you to turn to verse 9 for this. But the point is this, He is a holy God. He is holy other in character because He is unfailingly good because He is in opposition to the profane. He opposes that which defiles and destroys.
Think about it. Would God be a good God? Would He be a holy God if He did not oppose what pollutes and destroys? He would not.
So He is good because He is holy and He is holy because He is good. And we could very easily miss that as we look at verse 9. For my name's sake I will not defer my anger or for my praise I will restrain it from you so that I do not cut you off. What could we miss there? Restraint my anger and cut you off.
What is that? In the holiness of God we find the necessary wrath of God because He in His essence opposes that which defiles and pollutes and makes inferior because He is a holy God. And God is saying I am restraining my anger from you. I am keeping my wrath back off of you for now.
But do you see that? When you look ahead to the cross of Jesus Christ and Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, holy God, cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Do you realize that the cross of Christ was the historic intersection of the wrath of God and the love of God? He is a holy God and He necessarily must oppose that which defiles and destroys. And even this weekend as we celebrate Memorial Day we are reminded of the price that must be paid to oppose evil.
And our freedoms and our liberties that we experience today are because of those who have given that ultimate price to oppose evil. His necessary wrath is an outflow of His holiness. In that sense also God is an awesome God. That word awesome, the word that's used in the King James is the word terrible. God is a terrible God.
What do you mean by that? That sounds funny today but He is a terrible God in that He invokes terror because He is a holy God. Consider, this is quoted from the King James Nehemiah 1.5, the great and terrible God.
Other translations use the word awesome. Nehemiah 4.14, remember the Lord, great and terrible. Nehemiah 9.32, our God, the great, the mighty and the terrible God. But then consider what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 11. He says, knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men.
Knowing that God is a holy God and that one day every individual, every individual, no exceptions will stand before the Creator Redeemer. Understanding that Paul says and the terror of the Lord we persuade men. You see God is a holy God because He is unfailingly good. There is never a time when God is not good and He is holy because He is unfailingly good.
There's another sense here though, it doesn't just end there. As we continue in verses 9 through 11, He is wholly other in character not only because He is unfailingly good but also because He is unfailingly faithful. He is unfailingly faithful.
And you might say, faithful to what Rich? Faithful to His character and purpose. Look what he says in verse 11, for my own sake, and he repeats it, for my own sake I will do it. For how should my name be profaned and I will not give my glory to another. He is faithful to His character and purpose. He is faithful, secondly, to His promises and covenants. He says, for my sake.
I remember building, helping some people build, building a church building up in Virginia, a gymnasium actually, and this man that I was working with, he was very helpful in teaching me some of the craft of construction. And sometimes I would have the tendency to look at something and eye it and say, yeah, it looks good. Don't try that. Okay. Because the eye is very deceiving. My perception, my understanding is limited.
What I need is a rule, I need a standard. I say, something looks good. I look at it and say, yep, that's pretty level. He says, go get the level, Rich. And he puts the level on there and it's like the bubble's over to the right. He says, Rich, tools never lie.
But it looked level to me. Tools never lie. God is faithful to His promises and His covenants. He does not lie. He is faithful to them. Verse 16, my promises have been clear. I have not spoken in secret. Verse 20, the Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob. You see, he's saying this for telling it.
It hasn't happened yet, but God has spoken it. Therefore, you know, God is a holy God because He is unfailingly faithful to His character and His purpose and to His promises and His covenants. And then finally, God is unfailingly faithful because He is gracious.
And that again is His character. He is gracious. What do you mean He is gracious? He is gracious to refine us to His holiness. He is gracious to refine us to His holiness. Look at it. He says in verse 10, behold, I have refined you.
I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. That is God acting in faithfulness to His holiness. He deferred His anger. He did not cut them off, though they justly deserved it, though we justly deserve it. God did not.
He was in the process of refining. Here's a very important point to bring this point of God's faithfulness to conclusion. God's honor by covenant was inseparably bound up with the existence of Israel. The ultimate manifestation of His holiness, this is key, the ultimate manifestation of God's holiness is the glorification of His people and the deliverance of the creation from the imperfections resulting from the curse. God is unfailingly faithful because He is gracious, meaning that even in His holiness, He doesn't just cut us off. He doesn't just turn His back on us.
He doesn't just walk away. He is gracious and He refines us in His holiness. Behold your God. Mark Galley makes a very, very key and important point here because many people struggle with this today, this whole idea of holiness.
And we can go so far with it that we can become very pharisaical. Mark Galley says this, the difference between Jesus' holiness ethic and that of the Pharisees is this, the Pharisees refuse to touch any unclean thing. Jesus aims to make the unclean holy. You see, He is unfailingly faithful, but that arises out of His holiness. That's what His holiness means. Because of His holiness, He is unfailingly good and unfailingly faithful to His character and His purpose. And so loved ones this morning, behold your God. Know Him in this way. Meditate on these truths that you indeed will know the God that is revealed in the Scriptures. May He rescue us from creating Him in our image. Would you stand with me, please? Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
