Holy and Awesome

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch, and we're thankful to be jumping into God's Word with you again today. Okay, what do you think is God's most appealing attribute? Most people are attracted to His love and kindness, and they gravitate to verses that describe Him as our Father and our Shepherd. But today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. reminds us that God is so much more than just loving and kind, and if we really want to know Him, we have to know as much as possible about Him.

We can't just pick and choose the high points. As always, if you miss any of our programs or if you're in search of our featured monthly resource, you can find it all online at jdgreer.com. But right now, let's join Pastor J.D. for this challenging message he titled Holy and Awesome. For most people, God is a mystery. There are a number of people who aren't quite sure He exists or if He does, how you could know that He exists. There are other people who, you know, they would say, yeah, I believe that He exists.

I know it can't be that nothing times nobody equals everything. So I believe that God exists, but I don't really know how you would know Him or relate to Him like a person. That confuses me when you speak, when you talk that way. There are even more of you perhaps listening to me who you believe in God. You know how to say I have a relationship with God. But for many years, I just felt no warmth of affection, of emotions for God.

There's a number of you that would, if you were honest, would be in that category. All these issues are addressed in Scripture through coming to know the name of God. Exodus 34 is the place that we are working from.

So if you have a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out and begin to open it to Exodus 34. That's where God declares His name to Moses. This weekend, I want to talk about the holiness of God's name. You're going to see the concept of holiness woven all through this passage. Holiness is the most commonly used descriptive word about God by Moses.

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Holy is the word that runs through all those books. In fact, it's used 124 times to describe God in just Exodus and Leviticus. Holiness is one of those words that most Americans find bland and unattractive. If you ask them what holiness means, they're going to think of some kind of bright white colorless light, or they think it means, you know, weirdly religious. So that if you say, you know, so-and-so is so holy, that's usually not a compliment. But holiness just means perfection. In English, the word comes from the word whole, like wholeness. And so when you're saying holiness, you're saying something is complete, it is holistic in its goodness, it is the essence of goodness.

It is something that I want to show you today that you yearn for, whether or not you've ever known what to call it. For example, we want holiness in our relationships. Nobody wants a spouse who is unfaithful. Nobody wants a boyfriend who lies. Nobody wants a friend who exploits them. We want holiness in our business dealings.

Nobody wants to deal with a contractor who shows up late, does inferior work, and overcharges us. You may not have known what to call that, but what you're yearning for is holiness. Let me show you. Exodus 34.

Real quick, let me just, as you're turning there, tell you that I always use multiple sources when I prepare messages. But for these concepts this weekend, I feel particularly indebted to Tim Keller. Tim Keller, as many of you know, if you've been here, serves as somewhat of a theological mentor for me.

My Yoda, he is. Chapter 33, we'll get to 34 in a second, but when Moses begins this encounter by saying, God, let me see your glory. Let me see your glory. And here's how God responds. Chapter 33 verse 19 says this. And God said, I will make all my, here we go, goodness.

There's your key word. I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. Verse 20.

But, God said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. Is it not ironic that when God makes all his goodness pass before Moses that his goodness is so good that Moses cannot actually look into his goodness without that goodness killing him? So God then tells Moses to take the 10 commandments, which are the moral expression of God's goodness, that God is a God who is truthful, he's just, he's pure, he's compassionate, and God says, I want you to hold these 10 commandments, which represent the moral expression of that, I want you to hold them in your hands, and God takes Moses and he puts him inside of a mountain, the cleft of a rock, and he covers him up with his hand, and then he passes by him, and then it says this, chapter 34 verse 5, then the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. You're seeing again the concepts of holiness here. You saw goodness in the other verse. Descended here means that God is high and lifted up and he's coming down.

In the cloud, the cloud is mysterious, even though God is coming close, he's still hidden, the cloud covers him, you still can't really see his shape. These are all the concepts of God's holiness that you see there in that chapter. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to leave Exodus, and I want you to go to another place in the Bible, so if you've got your Bible, leave Exodus 34, we're going to go to Isaiah 6 for the rest of the week, where we're going to get an even more in-depth look at God's holiness, so flip over to Isaiah, but you can follow along there with me. Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1.

Isaiah 6, verse 1, here we go. In the year that King Uzziah died, let's stop here and talk about who King Uzziah was. King Uzziah was one of Israel, Judah's most beloved kings, and everything was awesome right up until the very end, when Uzziah got a little cocky and he thought he no longer needed the priest to offer sacrifices for him, he was so awesome he could just do it himself, and so he goes into the temple and he's going to offer incense to God, in the clear violation, by the way, of what God had very clearly said, so the priest come running in and look at Uzziah and say, Uzziah, you can't do that, and Uzziah turns to them and basically is saying, you shut up, I'm the king, and I will do what I want because I'm awesome, and as he's pointing at the priest, threatening them, it says that leprosy broke out in his forehead and then inch by inch just covered his entire body until there was not a spot of him that was not covered in leprosy. He ran out of the temple and a couple of months later he died. That left Israel, you can imagine, in political turmoil. It's like the bottom has fallen out.

Their beloved leader that they've depended on now for half a century who has led them and kept the nation stable has just fallen, he has fallen morally, and he has died, and everybody's looking into the future saying, what in the world is going to happen now where in utter dismay the foundations of the nation have been shaken? In that very year, Isaiah says, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne. In other words, Uzziah just fell off his throne, but God's still on his. I saw him high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. In Hebrew that literally means the burning ones. Each of the seraphim, angels, had six wings.

With two of the wings he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. The angels, the burning ones. You know, in Scripture, whenever a human being sees an angel, it's not the little overweight cupid-looking thing that we like to put on our Hallmark cards where it's like a chubby three-year-old that has a toy bow and arrow. Whenever in Scripture a human being sees an angel, the first thing the angel always says is, fear not, don't die, you don't have to die.

It looks like you're about to die, but you're not going to die. When these angels, these angels that would scare us so badly if we saw them that we would feel like we were going to die, when these angels are before the throne of God, they have six wings, and with two-thirds of them they are covering parts of their body in worship, and with one-third they are flying. God is probably not trying to give us a mathematical formula there, but I think it raises a very interesting point, and that is that everything that we do as believers ought to arise from and be bathed in worship because the primary thing that God gave us as his followers is to sit in adoration and worship of him, not to work for him. Work arises out of worship. Okay? Keep going here.

Let's see, where are we? Verse three, and one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The Hebrew language uses repetition to express superlative. So, for example, in Scripture when it wants to say a deep pit, in Hebrew what it literally says is a pit pit. Or if you want to say pure gold, you say gold, gold.

That means like real gold. This is the only instance in Scripture where a superlative requires a threefold repetition. In other words, it's the only time you got something repeated three times, and it's telling you that God is pure and undefiled holiness. Holiness is his most defining characteristic. Notice the angels do not say power, power, power.

They don't even say love, love, love. They say holy, holy, holy. Now, what does the word holy mean?

What does it mean? Literally in Hebrew, the word kadosh means set apart. Set apart, different, distinct. In these encounters, both Moses' and Isaiah's, we see God set apart in at least two ways. Number one, we see that God is set apart by his awesomeness.

He's set apart by his awesomeness. He is high and lifted up. He dwells in clouded mystery.

There is smoke. He's covered. He has to descend. Theologians call this the otherness of God. You see, often we want to reduce God to being just a slightly bigger, slightly stronger, slightly more intelligent version of us. You can see that in how we demand that God give us, for example, explanation for his actions. If you don't explain this to me and if I can't see this and this doesn't make sense, then I'm just gonna be mad at you and I'm gonna tell you that you don't exist and I'm gonna rebel against you, as if we could bring God down and put him on trial as if he were one of us. But God is not just one of us, just a slob like one of us for you children of the 90s.

And at the end of the day, we are not in a position to judge him. That's kind of the whole point of the book of Job. Now, ironically, you and I know the reason that Job is suffering. It's told to us in chapters one and two. There's this cosmic theater going on and God is proving something to the angels through the life of Job.

But what's interesting is that when God finally comes down to answer Job, here's what he says, chapter 38, verse 25. Job, the lightning bolts report to me, which of the lightning bolts report to you? In fact, Job, why don't we get together and discuss the problems you have with me running my universe.

We'll get together for coffee. And I'll tell you what, why don't you bring your universe that you've created and I'll bring my universe that I've created and then we'll compare notes and we'll just see who's doing a better job. Oh, you don't have a universe?

Okay, then maybe you're not in a position to judge me about mine. That's essentially what he tells him in the book of Job. God says, you wanna put me on trial?

Let's take a look at the expanse of your knowledge for a second. Now, listen, I am not telling you there is never a place for you to question God. The Psalms are filled with people doing just that. But God's point in Job is that we are not supposed to ask God questions. We can't ask him questions, but we're not to do so in a way that supposes we can bring God down to our level as if God had the answer to our bar of justice as if we could see or know enough to bring God into judgment. The way Isaiah would say it in Isaiah is this, Isaiah 55, my thoughts, God says, they're not even your thoughts. It's not that I just got a better version of your thoughts. It's that your thoughts and my thoughts don't really even compare. My ways are not your ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts and your thoughts. We know now even more than Isaiah would have known when he wrote that, how high the heavens are above the earth.

Billions of light years is how high that distance is. And if the distance between God's wisdom and my wisdom is the distance between his power and my power, then it makes sense that there's a lot of things that I may not immediately be able to grasp yet because God is not on my level and we are not peers. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer and a message titled Holy and Awesome. We'll be right back with more teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about our brand new featured resource we're making available beginning today.

Ever feel like the heroes in your life or even yourself are more broken than you expected? That's kind of the theme of the Book of Judges, which we'll be studying a bit later this month here on the program. Well, we have a brand new featured resource to help you unpack the truth of this book of the Bible, which is chock full of complicated ups and downs. It's an eight-part Bible study that walks you through key passages from the Book of Judges, helping you read, examine, apply, and pray through each one. And whether you use it alone in your personal quiet time or with your small group, this is a great resource you don't want to miss. Last month we spent our study time in the New Testament, and this month we'll head back to this important book, learning as much as we can about the God we love.

Give us a call today at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com to reserve this study now. You can even follow along later this month when our teaching arrives there. But for now, let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. You see, the classic objection that people have to Christianity, it's probably the number one, is what we call the problem of evil. And the problem of evil, it's basically built on two premises.

It goes like this. If God is all powerful, then God could stop evil and suffering. If God is all loving, then he would want to stop evil and suffering, but evil and suffering still happen. Therefore, God must not be all powerful or all loving, and a God who is not all powerful or all loving would not be the Christian God. Therefore, God does not exist. That's the explanation of the problem of evil. But I've explained to you before that that problem is missing a premise, and that premise is this, that if God is all powerful, and he is, and if God is all loving, which he is, then it would also follow that God is all wise. And if God is all wise, and his wisdom exceeds my wisdom to the extent that his power exceeds my power, then it makes sense that there might be a lot of things that my small mind are not immediately be able to grasp at least at the present moment. Does that make sense?

Think about how much higher God's power is than yours. I had an illustration of this yesterday at the gym where I work out. It's called Iron Tribe. They have these little, what they call rowing machines. And you get on there and row for two minutes, and you feel like you're going to die. And so there's a little way you can track what you're doing, and you can do watts, like how many watts you're producing. And so I'm in like a two-minute rhythm.

And so two minutes, and that's all I got. I check and I see, and I've averaged about 240 watts for that time. And I think 240 watts, that's enough to power four light bulbs. I can power four light bulbs, and then I feel like I am going to pass out.

If I really push myself, I can get to 300, 320 for about 30 seconds, and then I feel like I'm going to die. And that's five light bulbs. That's how much electricity I can produce. The sun, our sun generates enough energy in one second, one second to supply all US energy needs for 13 billion years. And God just spoke the sun into existence. He's like, let there be light. There's light.

I work my heart out for two minutes, and I can light four light bulbs. God just has a throw-aside comment, and he creates one star out of millions of stars that produces enough energy to light our earth, our planet for 13 billion years. Here's my question. If God's wisdom exceeds mine to the extent that his electrical generating power exceeds mine, then am I really in a place to hold God to account?

He says, Job, I can't explain it to you right now, but I want you to sit and watch, and I want you to think about the extent of my power. Again, please understand, I'm not saying there's no place for you to ask questions. I'm not saying that God's purposes have no rhyme or reason or that we will never grasp them. I'm just saying that we should approach the question with the knowledge that God is holy, that God is awesome, that he is glorious. We should not be surprised that some of his purposes remain hidden from us, at least temporarily.

And just because we cannot see a good reason for something bad doesn't mean that there is not a reason why God is allowing certain things to happen. God is holy. He is beyond the beyond.

He is above the above. And I know that can be difficult for many of us because we really want to shrink God down to our size so that we can predict him, so we can compartmentalize him, so we can control him, right? But that is not a God that is worthy of worship.

It's like Evelyn Underhill, the British political writer of the early 20th century, used to say, if God were small enough to be understood, he would not be big enough to be worshiped. So God has set apart his awesomeness. Number two, God has set apart in his moral perfections. He set apart in his moral perfections. God is pure goodness with no mixture of bad at all. He is without injustice, without deceit, without capriciousness, pettiness, or impurity.

As I told you, these are all things that we value in people, but they're going to find their ultimate expression in God. God's goodness is so good. It's so good that it cannot tolerate a lack of goodness or it cannot tolerate evil.

Habakkuk 1.13, you are of such pure eyes, Habakkuk, that you can't even see evil. I've compared it before with you to somebody handing you a nice big glass of iced tea. And as you're drinking this glass of iced tea, they say, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, it's mixed with about 2% human urine. You don't say, oh, well, 98% good.

That's a pretty good, you know, that's like an A rate. No, you don't do that. You would spit it out. Why?

Because that amount of impurity would just make the whole thing nauseous to you. God is so good that injustice and impurity and dishonesty cannot be tolerated in his character because he's pure goodness. Then go back to Isaiah. At the sight of God's holiness, watch this, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke, the temple. And I said, Isaiah said, woe is me, for I am lost.

I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have now seen the king, the Lord of hosts. God's holiness is terrifying.

It's terrifying. The angels have to cover their faces when they're in the presence of God. The temple, the pillars of the temple, which aren't even people, they're shaking with fear. Isaiah, the prophet of God, the man with the message, God's appointed messenger for that generation, Isaiah falls on his face and he says, I'm lost. I'm ruined, I'm undone. When Job, whom God called righteous, when Job finally saw God, he says, I'd heard about you with my ears and I believed in you, but now I see you and I abhor myself. I hate myself when I repent and dust and ashes.

I'll give you one other interesting place. You see this in the New Testament, so you see it's not just an Old Testament thing. And Jesus in Mark 4, one of the best stories from Jesus's life, they're out on the ocean and Jesus is asleep in the boat and this hurricane rises up and the disciples who are experienced fishermen think they're going to die, right? And in a rather humorous exchange, they finally wake Jesus up who is evidently sound asleep and they're like, what's wrong with you?

We're about to die. And Jesus stands up and he's kind of wiping sleep out of his eyes and he's like, what are you guys whining about? And then it's kind of holds up his hand. He's like, cut it out. And the whole thing just goes immediately placid, right? I mean, it's almost like he turned off a car alarm.

Whose geo storm is this? He just stands up and turns it off. Here's what's interesting about the story. It says that after Jesus did that, the disciples were, get this, greatly afraid. During the hurricane, when they thought they were going to die, they were only afraid. After Jesus calmed the storm, they were greatly afraid.

In other words, they were more terrified by the rescue than they were by the storm. That's God's holiness. They are seeing the extent of his power and it is terrifying to them. Why is God's holiness terrifying to us?

Give you a handful of reasons. First, just to be in the presence of greatness is terrifying. Just to be in the presence of greatness is terrifying. Have you ever really been in the presence of greatness?

Let me bring it down to a human level so we can start there and I'll work back up to God. Have you ever been in the presence of human greatness? When I was a teenager, like every other kid in North Carolina, every other boy, my hero was Michael Jordan. So one of my life's ambition was I want to meet Michael Jordan. When I was 14 years old, there was a golf tournament in Winston-Salem where Michael Jordan was a charity tournament.

He was going to come play. So me and my best friend went and the whole day all we were trying to do is find where Michael Jordan was. At the very end of the day, I'm just standing on this little like, you know, road in the golf course and I see this purple Porsche 924 Carrera and I was a devotee so I knew that was Michael Jordan's car. And I see it coming down the road and I turned around to my friend who was getting food and I was like, that's Michael Jordan! So he runs over and a bunch of people run over and I'm here at the front of the line and Michael Jordan's rolling up and he rolls down his window because he's looking for somebody and my friend, my best friend, takes me and shoves me in my head into Michael Jordan's car up to my waist. We're right there just eye to eye and Jordan, you know, he's just uber cool. He's got his hand in his car. He turns over, he looks at me, he cuts his eyes like this and he says, get out of my car. And I pulled back and I turned around, I promise you, and I looked at that crowd and I went, he talked to me!

He talked to me! Michael Jordan has spoken to me. Now, for me, Michael Jordan, just to be in his presence is a mixture of fascination and fright. Right? Because that's what it always means to be in the presence of greatness. You're fascinated, you're simultaneously attracted and repelled at the same time.

Right? Rudolf Otto, the German philosopher, said that's how you know when you're worshiping. Whenever you're filled with a sense of fascination and fright at the same time. The fear of the Lord isn't a bad thing. It means you understand His power and His glory. You're listening to Summit Life and a message titled Holy and Awesome from Pastor J.D.

Greer. Each month we send a featured resource to all of our gospel partners and monthly financial supporters, thanking them for their support and encouraging them in their walk with God. This month we've designed an eight-part Bible study based on our next teaching series called Broken Saviors, and it's an in-depth expansion on the timeless teaching and warnings found in the Book of Judges. The Israelites' temptations in those days were much like our own. So often we're tempted to shift our focus away from our Heavenly Father and onto lesser things that we think will satisfy us.

The Israelites were continually disappointed when they pursued earthly things, and maybe you feel that way too. But as you work through each session, whether by yourself or with a group, you'll see that the central message of Judges is that only Jesus can satisfy our every need. We'll be glad to send you this study to express our gratitude for your financial support. So give today and join our mission to bring the gospel into center focus.

Donate by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgreer.com, and we'll immediately send you this digital Bible study that you can share. While you're on the website, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor JD's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox.

It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life, and it's completely free to subscribe. Sign up when you go to jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to listen tomorrow when we'll continue learning more about the holiness of our awesome, powerful God. That's Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.