Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, June 26. God's holiness can feel overwhelming, like he's distant or out of reach. But the incredible truth is, we are invited to draw near. Let's discover how you can truly know our holy God. What is it about God that causes people to shun Him, avoid Him, detour around Him, distance themselves from Him, become angry with Him, hostile toward Him, and even hate God? How can somebody feel these things when we say that God is a God of love and goodness and mercy and kindness toward us? Where do all these negative attitudes come from?
Why do people feel that way? Well, I think there's one attribute about God that people don't usually think about. They don't want to think about.
They don't like thinking about it. And that is the holiness of God. And that's what I want to talk about in this message entitled, when we think in terms of our attitudes toward God and all the things that we could think, the wonderful privilege of knowing holy God. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Isaiah. And in the book of Isaiah, that's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, those big prophets there, for some of you who may be a new Christian, don't know whether it is in your Bible. And I want you to turn to the sixth chapter.
And while you're turning, I want to give you a little background of what's happening. King Uzziah was one of the best kings that Judah ever had. Came to the throne at the age of 16, reigned for 52 years, started out well, did a fantastic job, strengthened the city, built up their military, fortified their city, lots of expansion. Then he comes to the latter years of his life with all of his wealth and power and it becomes very prideful. One day he goes into the temple and he begins to assume the rights that God had only limited to the high priest and to the priest. And so when they try to stop him, he gets into this big rage. As he begins to shout and rage at them, leprosy breaks out on his head.
And so he ends his life in a very sad way. It is with that in mind that this sixth chapter of Isaiah takes place because Isaiah the prophet now has gone to the temple to express his remorse and his grief before God because of what's happened to King Uzziah. The scripture says, beginning in verse one, in the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with a train of his robe filling the temple. Seraphim, now Seraphim were what the Bible calls flaming angels.
The only time that they are mentioned in the Bible is in this particular book, in this particular chapter twice here. The Bible says they stood above him that is God, each having six wings, with two that cover their face, two that cover their feet, and two they flew. One called out to the other and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds tremble at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, Isaiah speaking, woe is me, from ruin, that is, this is it, life's over. Because I'm 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. Then one of these Seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hands which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And 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. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?
And who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I, send me. Now here is an experience of Isaiah the prophet in the temple worshiping and he gets a glimpse of God. That does not mean that he saw God face to face, for no man ever did or could and lived. But he got a glimpse of the glory of God and his reaction to this glimpse of the glory and the holiness of God brought him to a place of absolute awareness of his sinfulness, his unworthiness and fell upon himself confessing his sins and acknowledging that he was unworthy even to be in the presence of Almighty God. It is with that background that I want us to talk about this whole idea of the holiness of God.
The question I want us to think about here and that's simply this. What is it that we're talking about when we talk about the holiness of God? What is the holiness of God? What's holiness in the first place?
So I want you to listen carefully. The holiness of God has two aspects. First of all, it deals with God's moral purity, which means that God is absolutely perfectly sinless, that there is no evil, no evil motives, no evil actions. Nothing that God has ever done has been wrong. He does not think evil. He does not do evil. He hates everything that is evil. He despises everything that is sinful. He is against all sin, all evil and every type. He does not hate the sinner, but he hates what the sinner does.
He despises all types of sin because God knows the destructive power of sin in a person's life. And so therefore, we talk about God being holy. He is morally pure. There's not anything in him that is not absolutely pure to a degree to which you and I could possibly not understand. For example, in 1 John chapter 1, he says that in him that is in God, there is no darkness at all. So therefore, when the Bible uses that terminology, I want us to understand that when it comes to God, he is absolutely perfectly morally pure.
There is nothing about him that is tainted in any way. So because you and I come to a level of sinful nature, we can only perceive or conceive of holiness and purity to some degree. But God is absolutely, never has, never will, cannot, because his is very nature to be absolutely, totally pure above and beyond all sin under any condition at any time, eternity past or eternity future. So that is the moral aspect of God's holiness. Now, but the holiness of God involves more than just his moral purity. It involves separateness.
It involves separateness. That is that God is separated from. He has separated himself from all evil and all sin. And that God, we say, is transcendent, which means that he is lifted above and beyond. He is above and beyond this earth. He is above and beyond all human beings. He is the sovereign of this universe. His holiness, his purity, his righteousness is so above and beyond anything that we can possibly conceive of that he is separate from man because of his holiness. He cannot look upon it. He cannot tolerate it.
He cannot ignore it. That because of his holiness, God is just and must deal with disobedience and rebellion in any and every single form. And so the awesome emphasis all through the scripture. And those Old Testament saints understood that in over and over and over again, God demanded the recognition of his holiness and his punishment of his own people.
He would just wipe them out when they proved to be unholy. When they began to worship other gods, it was the one thing God says, I'm a jealous God. I'm the one who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. I'm the one who has blessed you with this land.
I'm the one who's provided your needs. You to worship me and me only. God Almighty, Jehovah God is the only person who has ever existed and who's always existed. He is the only person, listen, who deserves our worship and our praise and our honor because he is the only one who is absolutely, perfectly pure and holy and separate above everything that exists on the face of this earth. Therefore, when people use God's name today in profanity, they do not recognize, listen, now watch this.
Are you listening? Say Amen. The law of God has not changed. To use the name of Jehovah in a profane fashion, God has not changed his law when it comes to the fact that that is a sin God hates.
And yet people use his name in vain as if they were talking about somebody else or some other thing. There's some things that are holy. Now, how do people react to the holiness of God? Well, let's look at how did Isaiah respond? The scripture says that when he saw the Lord sitting upon the throne, what naturally was his response? Certainly reverence because he says, I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
He is looking upon the glory of Almighty God, the holiness of God. Certainly a sense of reverence and humility before him because he said, woe is me, I'm ruined. In other words, he was so awed by the holiness of God that he thought this is the end of my life.
I'm getting ready to die. A sense of reverence and humility. And what was he saying? He says, because I'm a man of unclean lips, the first thing he wanted to do was to confess his sinfulness and his unworthiness in the presence of the holiness of God. And then the scripture says, when the seraphim, when they came, flaming angels came to touch his tongue with the coal off the altar that sanctified him and purified him before he sent him out. His response was when God said, whom shall I send? He says, Lord, here am I, send me. That is in the recognition of the holiness of God, in recognition of the ownership of God, in recognition of how unworthy he was and the fact that God would even possibly use him. What was his immediate response? Here am I, send me. If you can use this vile vessel, send me. That was his response.
Now, but let's come up to today. How do people who are non-Christians, how do people who do not know Jesus Christ as their personal savior, how do people who do not know God, when it comes to the holiness of God, how do most of them think? Well, they think, don't crowd me, don't smother me, don't give me this God, don't give me this Jesus bit, don't throw the Bible in my face, don't cram religion down my throat. You know what the problem is? When a person is living in disobedience, holiness makes them very uncomfortable.
That is, I call it holy heat. They can't handle it. They can't handle it. You go to work tomorrow, the people you work around oftentimes, you start talking about Jesus, what do they start doing?
They start backing off. You know, what do they say? I don't discuss politics and religion which is a lie. Because I guarantee you they discuss politics. And they discuss religion when it's safe in their crowd when everybody agrees with them, get rid of that. So it's all a big lie.
But they're uncomfortable. Well, what about those who have become children of God? What about those who are saints but who have chosen to live in rebellion toward God? Who out of the will of God? Well, how do they respond?
Same way. When you get out of the will of God, the one thing you don't want to discuss is the holiness of God. When you're living in sin, the last kind of message you want to hear is a message about the holiness of God. Whether you're a saint or whether you're a rebel against God, that's the last thing you want to hear.
Why? Because it is holy heat. There's something about being confronted with the truth that we are repulsed by that. When sin on the inside of us is in control, when we have yielded ourselves to sin, when a person has given themselves over to their sinful nature and had chosen to live a diabolical life, listen, they're going to attack that which is holy, ridicule that which is holy, fight against that which is holy, and listen, demean in any possible way that which is holy.
You know what? All the attacks in the world will not make us less holy than we are. We're children of God.
It doesn't mean that we're perfect. We're saints who stumble, saints who are in the process of being enlisted. Not only have we been sanctified and made holy, we're in the process of God refining our holiness until the day He calls us home to be with Him. Now how does one who desires to live in the will of God, walk in the ways of God, be obedient to God, what kind of response do they have to the holiness of God?
Awed by His holiness, overwhelmed by His holiness, overcome by His holiness. It makes us want to get out on our face before God and acknowledge that we are unworthy to call His name, unworthy to receive His grace, unworthy, unworthy to name the name of Jehovah God and to call Him our God. We want to praise Him and worship Him. We want to gather together. We want to adore Him. We want to give to Him. We want His message spread around the world. We want God to have His way in our life. We want holiness to rule and reign in our life. We want to walk in obedience to Him. We want to be the kind of saints that those who are in need of Christ will see something in us that they will want who He is in our life. People respond to God in all kinds of ways.
I believe that my response to the holiness of God, the message of His holiness to my own heart, or if suddenly I sense I'm in the presence of God in His awesome holiness, my response to that is the best barometer I know to where you and I are in our relationship to Almighty God. Now with that in mind, I want to answer a big question. Big question.
And here's the question. How is it that holy God and sinful, wicked, vile man can ever get together when the holiness of God has separated us? There is only one way.
There's always only been one way. What bridges the gap between holy God and sinful man? Now my friend doesn't make any difference who you are, where you come from, what you believe, what your religious belief may be.
This is absolutely not my opinion. The biblical, eternal, unavoidable, irresistible, unchangeable truth of the living God. There is only one way that holy God and sinful man can ever come together.
And what is that? That is by the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the only thing that bridges the gap between sinful man and holy God. How does it happen?
Here's the way it happens. God in His justice requires judgment on sin. That means that every single one of us, if we had died and there had been no cross, we would have been separated from God eternally under the wrath of God, which is His intense hatred for sin for all eternity. And so what did God do?
Because His love for you and me was so great, He placed upon His Son everything that you and I deserve. The last thing you want is justice. You want grace. You want love.
You want mercy. And so Jesus Christ died as a substitute for your sins and mine. And now here's what God did. He said, now that my son has paid your sin debt in full and paid the full penalty, my son has felt and experienced my judgment, my condemnation, my justice and my wrath. I separated myself from him and let him pay the penalty in order that you and I will not have to.
And now that he has paid that penalty, here's the offer. If you are willing to acknowledge your sinfulness and that you're unworthy, unfit, helpless and hopeless before Almighty, Sovereign, Holy God, and you're willing to confess your sins before Almighty God and ask Him to forgive you, pardon you of your sin based on, not your conduct, your promises of better behavior, but based on the fact that Christ died for your sin, paid your sin debt in full, suffered His wrath, condemnation and judgment in your place, and you're willing to accept Him as your personal Savior in that moment, the moment you say, I'm asking you to forgive me of my sins and I'm trusting Jesus Christ as my Savior. I'm placing my faith in Him as my Savior. In that moment, God executes as the judge of life. He executes what? He executes His righteousness for you and me. He justifies us as the judge of all humanity. In that moment, He declares you and me no longer guilty.
In the moment He justifies us, this is what He does. He declares us no longer guilty. We are pardoned of all of our sin. We are freed from the penalty of sin. We instantly become a child of God. Our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
We are eternally and forever secure in the undying, unchangeable, unconditional, eternal love of Almighty Holy God. That's what the holiness of God's all about. And that's why there's a cross. That's why there's judgment.
That's why there's condemnation. That's why there's a hell. Does God want anybody to go to hell?
No. He says it's not my will that any person should perish. To go to hell, my friend, you have got to trample over the truth of the living, loving God to get there. Thank you for listening to Knowing Holy God. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
