The Holiness of God

Well, hi, church. I'm very, very grateful to be with you. And I really, really mean that, more than you know, because 2021 for me, I faced some health challenges.

I didn't even know a week ago if I was going to be able to do this. And I know we're not to be surprised by trials. I know James says that, but I'll be honest, I've been a bit surprised it's 2021, but by God's grace, I'm here.

And I'm just very, very grateful. We're in a series in Luke called The End Step. And I love how our church has translated that series title in Spanish. As you know, we have a Spanish-speaking congregation, and we have translated it, given it a word that has two meanings. The first meaning is, of course, the word end step. The second meaning is the word footsteps or footprints. And I love that. I love that because it reminds me of the old poem, Footprints in the Sand. You all remember that? This is the poem where this person sees just one set of footprints in the sand and starts to question, God, God, I thought you were with me all along.

Where are you? Only to know later that the reason there's only one set of footprints in the sand is because God was carrying them. What a beautiful picture that God carries us. Listen, I know we're going through a lot together. I personally lost three close family members in the last nine months. I've battling with some health issues that I didn't see coming. Perhaps you are battling with some health issues as well.

Perhaps your income has plummeted in the last 12 months, whether you're a restaurant owner or maybe just a restaurant employee that has been out of the job. Or perhaps others are trying to disdain or scorn your name. But I want you to remember today that the Word of God says in Psalm 139 and 12 that not even darkness is dark to God. Not even darkness is dark to God. So I want you to throw yourselves in the arms of Jesus because He does carry you.

He will carry you. And I know life is hard. In fact, I was grabbing coffee earlier in the week and went to this coffee shop and the person fixing my coffee, as we say, on the other side of the counter asked me, so how's life going for you? And it kind of took me back because you go to these coffee shops and you only have superficial conversations. Hey, how you doing?

Talk about the weather, blah, blah, blah. Keep on going to work, right? But when she asked me, how's life going for you, it kind of took me back.

I'm like, it's kind of a loaded question to be honest. And it took me a second and I said, you know, I'll be honest, life is really hard right now, but God is good. God is always good.

So remember that He carries you. Real quick, before we look at our passage in Luke 4, usually when I preach, I give you a ton of Bible. Today, I'm going to lean on a definition that Pastor Mark Devereux uses for expositional preaching. He says you can preach a chapter out of the Bible expositionally. He says you can preach a verse out of that chapter expositionally. He says you can preach a phrase and a word out of that, you know, verse out of that chapter of the Bible expositionally. And I'm going to lean on that today because I really believe God is leading me to explain something in a verse in Luke. And I'm usually more animated or preachy if you would, but I'll do more explaining today, but I really believe God wants us to learn something.

I probably won't even need to use my handkerchief that I usually use. But Luke has a declaration about Jesus that is so powerful, so powerful. And so I want to do a little Bible trivia, and we've been in Luke for so long, I know many of you will probably guess this right, but there is something that someone says to Jesus in Luke, and I want you to try and guess who said it.

If you're at home, you can play along with us or in any of our other campuses. There's something that someone says to Jesus that is really powerful, and I want you to guess who said it. The statement is this. I know who you are, the Holy One of God. I know who you are, the Holy One of God. That is our text in Luke 4, verse 34. Remarkable and powerful statement. Who do you think said that? Take a guess. Maybe a disciple, maybe a Pharisee that really saw who Jesus was, maybe a Gentile that got saved.

No, neither one of those. The person that said that was a demon. Now for our kids in the audience and for our kids watching from home, I want you to know that yes, a demon is scary. A demon is a spiritual being that works against God, but we know God is stronger than a demon, so if you're with God, you don't have to be afraid at all. But it is remarkable, church, that in this story in Luke 4, in the text, it is this character in the story, the one that's stunned about Jesus' holiness, that even a demon highlights the holiness of God.

And that is her topic today, the holiness of God. Goes to say that even demons believe in Jesus and have great theology, but they want nothing to do with Jesus. It's like Pastor Clayton King was reminding us a couple of weeks ago, you can know a lot about Jesus. You can even believe in Jesus without actually wanting Jesus, without actually trusting him. And what the demon said was just dead on right.

I know who you are, Jesus, the Holy One of God. Now, demons are scary, but this demon saw something in Jesus that even made him scared and drove him out. And look, with these heavy matters, it's not that I want us to now live in fear or that I want us to take ourselves too seriously and that now we have to be so uptight we can't even laugh about ourselves anymore. I'm not saying that.

In fact, I'm not even talking about us. But isn't it ironic that the scariest guy in the story is the one spooked by the holiness of Christ? That's not just so that you know that your enemies are no match for Jesus. It is also for you to know that Christ is to be revered. And many times we forget that God is holy and to be revered. And we can't take him so lightly in our day-to-day walk with him. And that doesn't mean we can't have fun. God is also a God of joy and he loves to give us great gifts that we may enjoy, of course. But too many times we take God's holiness way too lightly.

So I'm not even thinking about it, let alone talk about it. Well, even a demon sure does. There is a gravity to the holiness of Christ that we forget. And it makes us forget the mighty hand of the undefeated warrior fighting for us.

But it also makes us make him too lightly. But if even demons take the holiness of Christ seriously, then so should we. And so as you turn to look for, think about the following.

And by the way, we're going to put this notes and this transcript up online as we do every week so that you can have the freedom to listen without the fear of missing anything. But as you think of this phrase about Jesus, the Holy One of God, and look for it, I want you to think of the following. There are certain things in life that have or that produce a dual reaction in us. There's certain things in life that produce a dual reaction in us.

This is very important. For example, the ocean. On one hand, you can be sitting in a beautiful beach in the calm waters of the Bahamas.

Wouldn't that be nice? With a Bible in your right hand and a nice wonderful fruity drink on your left hand. Come on, somebody.

And you're having the time of your life. By the way, Bahamas comes from the Taíno language, upper land. This is the ocean, upper land. And from the two Spanish words, bahamas, which means in English, of course, shallow or low ocean. So you're having a good old time in the shallow shores of Bahamas. However, the very same ocean just a few miles in can be this vast, deep, overwhelming, scary, huge body of water that produces respect and reverent fear. So the ocean has a dual effect on us.

One of peace and calmness and rest and one of reverent fear at its vastness and depth. Another example of something that causes a dual effect on us is a great magnificent landscape like the Niagara Falls. I went to the Niagara Falls a few years ago.

Wow. I went to the USA side. I mean, Latinos really don't go on the Canadian side. I mean, we can go on the Canadian side.

We just can't come back. But I'm just kidding. I get here, Latinos sending me hate emails. Most Latinos are legal.

I know I'm Latino. Just relax. But I did go to the Niagara Falls. And man, it's just breathtaking. I was looking at this fall from the top and it almost looks fake. You're like looking at it and you can't believe it. I was awestruck. I was speechless.

I was honestly speechless. By the way, that's proof that true satisfaction, unlike culture suggests, has nothing to do with self. No one is beholding a magnificent landscape and says, I am so amazing.

I truly am all that. Nobody does that. Quite the contrary. You're quiet. You're silent, beholding this beauty which is bigger than you and you feel completely satisfied. You're awestruck. Proof that you were made to behold God. Proof that when you behold God and His glory, you will be left awestruck and completely satisfied. But He's the one that made that very landscape.

Imagine how much more beautiful and amazing He is. But why did the Niagara Falls produce the dual effect on me? Well, I was fine looking at the falls from the top from a safe distance until my family decided we should go do that little boat tour down there. Now everything changed for me when that happened. Look, let me tell you, I know those little boat tours are safe because otherwise they wouldn't have the boat tours, right? But when that little boat got the closest it was going to get to the bottom of the falls and I looked up at this giant waterfall coming down that felt like it was going to swallow me, I had enough of the tour. Scared the living daylights out of me. So the falls produced both beauty and reverent fear.

Depends what angle you're looking at in front. Well church, so is the case with the holiness of God. Here in Luke 4, the least likely candidate to acknowledge the impressive holiness of God, a demon acknowledges it and is even driven out by it. God's holiness has a dual effect that we desperately need to see. I am convinced that if we took the holiness of God seriously, a lot of vertical sin towards God and a lot of horizontal sin towards each other would cease if we took the holiness of God seriously. We do not take sin seriously because we take the holiness of God lightly. Every hour of every day you and I either offend the holiness of God or honor it.

Now I know some TV preachers don't want to frighten people or scare people and so there is a tendency to leave out the whole character of God. Now it's not that I want to scare anyone today because scaring someone is not a great method for change. But the truth is that something beautiful like the ocean and the Niagara Falls, it is also simultaneously something terrifying. It is frightening to look up from the bottom of the falls. It is scary what you can find at the Mariana Trench in the ocean. You have to respect the ocean.

I grew up on an island and let me tell you, you have to respect it as beautiful as it can be. And the truth about God Church is that even though God is the epitome of beauty in a sense is also terrifying for his holy, holy, holy, the only attribute of God in the Bible that is raised to the third degree. In the words of R.C. Sproul, the holiness of God is traumatic to unholy people, which is to say all people. It's traumatic because God is holy and we are not and that's the problem with humanity right there. That is your problem and my problem.

That's the problem. That's the reason why we all need Jesus because God is holy and we're not. So when we soft pedal the entire biblical portrait of God, we will take sin lightly.

God wants us to stop playing with sin because sin is not playing with us and his holiness is not playing with us either. There's a pattern in the Bible of responses to the holiness of God in the presence of God. And those reactions are not that God is just sweet and tender, he is, but that he's also terrifyingly holy.

Not because he's mean in any way, but because he's holy and we're not and the contrast of his matchless and perfect purity compared or contrasted to our sinful desires is just too great. When you look at encounters in the Bible of people with the holiness of God in the presence of God, the reaction was terrifying due to the holiness of God contrasted with their sin. I don't have time to show you those encounters today besides Pastor JD did an amazing job with the example of Peter last week where the presence of the power and the holiness of Christ, Peter's reaction was get away from me Jesus, I'm just too sinful.

Peter's reaction was right, he had it right. But think of this, if the encounters we see in the Bible between humans and angels of God, which doesn't even have the same effect as God himself, if throughout the Bible men and women quake and tremble at the presence of one of his angels, how much more will we not tremble at the actual presence of the Holy One. And that's why I firmly believe my brothers and sisters that the reason we need a new glorified body in order to be in the presence of the Lord in our current state, the reason we can't be in our current state there is because if we see the Lord as we are right now, we would either die of pleasure, for he's exceedingly better and more exquisite than all pleasures, and so he would be too much pleasure for us to the point where this body can't take it, or we would die of horror as we see the gravity on full scale of our sin contrasted to his holiness.

If I see God right now, I would either die of pleasure or horror. The only reason I do not drop dead just reading his holy word right now behind this pulpit is because of the holiness of Jesus imputed to me by his grace. Without Christ, I'm just like Uriah and this message I carry will be my own death sentence. Beloved church, a lack of regard for the purity and the holiness of God will lead you to be more aware of the sins committed against you than your many and very daily sins. A lack of regard for the purity and holiness of God will lead you to not even consider whether what you are posting or typing or saying to others honor God or not. A lack of regard for the purity and holiness of God will lead you to sexual immorality like addictive secret self-gratification, and let me tell you, you can fool everyone and play your pious face in front of everyone, but God will not and cannot be fooled. A lack of regard for the purity and holiness of God will detour your ears from the word of God to the news and the internet will become your teacher and mentor and you will start looking more like the world than Jesus and it will lead you to anxiety and the sin of self-pity making you ignore the Lord of hosts mighty in battle. But when we start to take the holiness of God seriously, we start to examine every thought and every desire and whether those desires honor God or not. Listen, the best resolution you can make every month is to please the Lord because it leads to joy and freedom.

Seek lasting happiness and you will find none in this world. Seek a holy God and by His grace you will get both God and the joy your soul longs for. Now it is important that I explain to you the two kinds of holiness of God so that you do not fall into despair.

And if you fall into despair today, well bless the perfect love God that will drive you to the rock called Jesus. But there are two miracles that every human being needs, salvation and sanctification. What do I mean by two types of holiness of God? Theologians call this, this first holiness, the perfect holiness of Christ by which we're saved. And the second, the progressive or gradual, that's what they mean by progressive, gradual holiness of God that God calls us to live by.

You don't have to worry about the second if you don't have the first and you can't say you have the first if you're not growing in the second. The first holiness, we'll call it Christ holiness applied to us. And that one has all to do with our salvation or as the Bible calls it, justification. The second holiness, we will call this one our holiness in response to Christ. And this holiness has all to do with, like it says, sanctification being transformed into the likeness image of Christ. It is not the same holiness when the Bible says without holiness no one shall see the Lord. And the holiness that Christ calls us to live by when he says be holy as I am holy. It's not the same holiness, not even the same Greek word. The first holiness, the one that has to do with our salvation or justification is a monergistic work.

Mono meaning alone and erg from the root meaning work. It's a single work. In other words, God alone does it. God alone accomplishes it. This is the perfect holiness of Christ that we cannot produce imputed to us by grace as he reconciles us to the only holy God.

There's no way you can produce the standard of holiness necessary to be able to be reconciled to God and be with him forever. Now, I know this could be a little confusing, so let me explain it using this kind of fake conversation that I've made up between a person and a preacher. So someone asked this, do you have to be perfect to enter heaven? The preacher replies yes. The person is a bit confused, then asks, but is any human being perfect?

The preacher replies no, not at all. The person is a bit ticked off at this point and says, so then if you need to be perfect to go to heaven and no one is perfect, then nobody goes to heaven and the preacher says wrong. It's called God's grace. The people who are in heaven are not there because of their perfection or holiness, but because of the perfection and holiness of Christ that they humble themselves to trust in, acknowledging their sin and repentance and trust in Jesus. God in his grace imputed to them his holiness through Christ, making them just before him and giving them heaven and himself. Now, the second holiness, the one that has to do with our gradual or ongoing sanctification, we'll call this our holiness in response to Christ.

This one is a synergistic work, synergistic meaning working together. It is an enterprise inspired by God, but it's actually a mutual work between you and God together. This is the holiness that sometimes we forget to mention.

Church, listen to me. We cannot just talk about salvation. We also have to talk about sanctification, which is what I'm trying to do today in seeing the holiness of God. Without sanctification, you have shallow Christians. Without sanctification, you have this unity. Without it, we're in danger of not seeing God's word as our highest authority for our good. The only anchor in the shifting sand of this world is the word of God. And God didn't save us to leave our world views messed up and deceived.

He wants to renew our minds. He wants for us to experience the joy and freedom of obedience to Him. Now, you may think that your sin gives you some type of satisfaction, and it does, I know.

But you have no idea the freedom and pleasures that lie in obeying God and His word. He says that in Christ there's fullness of joy delights forevermore. I've tasted this with the health issues that I've battled with, where in the days where I have the most pain, I am worshiping God. And I can tell you that though the pain is terrible, the presence of God is stronger than my pain.

There is fullness of joy. There is pleasures forevermore in Jesus Christ. So listen, sanctification, it is not a work for heaven.

It is a work for here and now. So let us humble ourselves and do so often that God may shizzle out of us anything that doesn't look like Jesus Christ. The great commandment is all about growing in holiness. It's about sanctification. Love God with all your heart and mind and soul. Love your neighbor. A lot of our animosities would cease if we took the pure and precious and good and awesome holiness of God seriously or if we would desire to honor God first.

You know what would happen? God would be honored and the beneficiaries of that would be our neighbors. If the church broke back the importance of growing in holiness, many of our issues and differences would be solved. I was thinking about this and I was thinking that surely 504 years ago God used the Reformers to bring the Bible back to the church. But I was thinking today we need to bring the church back to the Bible. There is no greater solution than to please the Lord. And when that becomes primary, anyone who surrounds you will see a holy God and glorify Him. When you realize that your offenses offend a holy God first before they offend your brother and your sister, you think twice about offending. There's been plenty of times in my marriage where my wife and I have had a disagreement and I felt the desire to really defend myself because we all have this lawyer advocate for ourselves.

We think too highly of ourselves. And then I'm like, I'm going to go over there. I'm going to defend myself. And then the Holy Spirit stops me in my tracks and whispers to me, be careful what you say to her and how you say it because before you offend her, you will be offending me, a holy God. I remember a long, long time ago, this past Monday, I went downstairs ready to defend myself. All that day I felt so pious. I felt like I had prayed for my wife, served my wife by nighttime. I felt so pious because of something that happened and I was going to go downstairs and defend myself. And literally as I was going downstairs, the Holy Spirit whispers this to me. Sadly, he whispers this to me a lot. And by the time I got down, I got down with a deer in the headlights face and she says, hey honey, you okay?

I'm like, yeah, I just came to get water from the refrigerator. What a lie, right? Because before I offend her, I am offending the holiness of God. Summit, there's nothing more beautiful than a church that wants to be pure and purified. Pure and humble people look beautiful, beautiful.

Conceited Ken's and Barbies that don't want sanctification, they'll look very pretty. Let me tell you, God is not impressed with numbers. He's not impressed with your theology.

He's not impressed with glamor. He wants righteousness of heart and word indeed. It is written, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold to obey is better than sacrifice. That's worship.

And to heed than the fat of rams. We can fool everybody but the Lord. He sees when you exploit others for your own gain. He sees when you love yourself through others. He sees the indifference, which hurts more than hate. Because at least, let me tell you, at least hate has a reason.

I don't like hate, but I like it better than indifference because at least hate has a reason. He sees when you think so much about yourself that you ignore blessing others. He sees that your lack of passion and hunger for him may be that you're too full of yourself. And he wants to make you free. He wants you to taste freedom. Oh, if you would take the holiness of God seriously.

Now let me make this clear. God calls every disciple to purity, to holiness. Everyone who follows Jesus is called to purity.

This is one of the march of a disciple of Jesus Christ. But it is for your joy and your good and his glory. God told the prophet speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy for I am the Lord your God. I'm holy. Consecrate yourself therefore and be holy for I am the Lord your God. You shall be holy to me for I am the Lord. I'm holy and have separate you from the peoples that you should be mine says the Lord.

And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. It is written you shall be holy for I am holy for God has not called us for impurity but in holiness. Now the caveat to this is that any sanctification that is not rooted in the unmerited grace and justification of God is just a growth of the ego and self sufficiency leading many to believe they're growing when in reality they're growing in their own pride. That's why I don't even like the phrase of we owe Jesus too much. I get it why we say of course we owe everything to Jesus. But the reality is that if you take any pious steps, if you do anything good at all then you're more in depth with Jesus because he's the author and perfecter of our faith.

He's the author justification and perfecter sanctification of our faith. Grace doesn't mean lack of effort. Grace doesn't mean that you don't have to put the deeds of the flesh to death in his holiness.

You do. Listen if it does not honor God it's not good for you. If it does not honor God it's not good for you.

Let me start to wrap this up with a question you may have. It's got grumpy then? It's got like a mean and cruel God because he's holy? Because man you make him look so terrifying and he is. Remember that in that text in Luke 4 the demon is terrified by Jesus holiness but what is the context of that statement? It is that Jesus is setting somebody free. Is it that Jesus is flexing his muscles and being a bully?

No not at all. The context is that Jesus is restoring life and wholeness and heals. Please know that the Lord Jesus Christ restores life and wholeness and heals. He's in the business of reconciliation and restoration. Perhaps that's why I like cars so much.

I'm a car guy and you know I just love to see old cars, rusted out cars be restored and returned to the glory in which their maker made it. Well God is way better restored than me or any car guy because he restores your soul and that is the context. Now why then does the holiness of God crushes us without Christ? Is it because God is angry and grumpy and resentful?

Not at all. Part of the answer we already saw that God is holy and that we're not. Part of the answer also is that his very nature is holy and that's good for you. You know why? Because God doesn't mix with evil at all and that's good news to us because you don't want a God that seems holy and deep in a corner hidden somewhere. He has some evil secret agenda.

That's not a holy God. Think of it this way. Think of the sun. The sun meaning sunny sun. We need a lot of sun in RDU. Lately it's been way too cold and way too rainy.

Now think about this. No one hates the sun. We actually depend on it or we will freeze to death. You will never hear a NASA scientist say that mean, grumpy, hateful sun. It has never allowed us to land a spaceship on it.

Nobody says that. Not even Elon Musk is trying to land anything on the sun. The reason we can't land on the sun is not because the sun is mean or bad or grumpy. It's because the sun is heat. In the same way the reason a sinner cannot commune and be with God apart from Christ is not because God is bad but because God is holy.

Listen now. In the same way that anything that approaches the sun too close will incinerate, a sinner in the presence of God apart from Christ will disintegrate not because God is bad but because God is holy. Even the caribbean angels that are right by the throne of God cover their faces with two wings and sing holy, holy, holy. So please don't think or say that God is bad because he's fierce, because he's terrifying.

The sun is terrifyingly fierce and nobody batches it. In fact we praise it because we need it. Why wouldn't you praise then the one who made the sun and is holy? Also apart from Christ his holiness will crush you in eternity and that's out of love because he's just for your good. He will not mix with evil. Again you wouldn't trust a God if there's a little hidden evil in him, right? Well there isn't any evil in God. The fact that God is holy makes him, you know what, trustworthy. You know the angels around the throne don't sing holy, holy, holy because they like repetition, right? But because God really is holy, holy because he is trustworthy, more trustworthy than anyone.

So you can come to him. There is no evil or sin in God. The only time and the closest time God came close to sin was when he out of love for you and me voluntarily in the cross took upon himself our sin and assured death. And what happened to sin and death when they encounter a holy God? Well death died and he lived.

Sin was crushed and he rose. The hope of the holiness of God for you and me is the holiness came to us for us. There is a way to be justified.

There is a way not to be afraid. There is a way his holiness won't crush a sinner like you and me and that is to receive the holiness of another, our Lord Jesus Christ. You know my son Danny got saved last year.

There's been a lot of trials but there's been some good things too that we have to acknowledge. And he got saved over a family devotional where I was explaining the holiness of Christ. And at first he fell into despair because he saw the size and the weight of the holiness of God compared to his sin and inability to attain it. And then he saw Jesus alone was his hope. One of the things he said when he was getting baptized is he said, the Lord opened my eyes to his holiness. Fourteen year old said this, what I can accomplish and can only run to Jesus to get, I am no longer a slave to fear.

Receive him today. And if you have already trust in him, stop taking God's holiness lightly. Every hour of every day you either honor his holiness or offend it. Every sanctification seriously, it is for your freedom and joy.

Listen, nobody in the Bible has a response other than my God, I am so sinful when they encounter the holiness of God. You guys know I've been poor half or half my life. I thank God for this amazing country that gave me a tremendous welcome that I don't deserve. But I hadn't seen half the things. I mean, I didn't even know what gum was when I was growing up.

Candy and all that stuff. I can't tell the story, but I was really shocked by so many things. And one day I'm walking in one of these like laser tag places. I didn't know what laser tag was. I thought I was going to die in there.

But I'm like, you know, you know, this has to be safe because you know, it's in USA, you know. So I went in there and what I was not expecting was there's a dark room with this ultraviolet light. And there was the most embarrassing thing because there all the stains like the coffee stains that I have in my jeans that you can see right now and my shirt, it was all exposed.

That ultraviolet light exposed all my stains. That's sanctification. The closer to God you get to God, the closer you get to the holiness of Christ, nobody says, oh, I'm at another level. Yeah, another level of sin.

Because what you see is you see your stain. And then you see how much greater his grace is. So take the holiness of God seriously. Let me wrap this up in 10 seconds. Because the text wraps up saying that people saw what Jesus did and started telling everybody, listen, how much more wouldn't we tell all people the report of what Jesus can do?

Well, I ran out of time. I wish I could tell you more about the holiness of God and how the holiness of God is. It brings goodness to all the world, but preachers always run out of time. I'll leave you with this little portion of the old hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy. Santo, Santo, Santo. Remember that hymn? Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful men thy glory may not see, only thou are holy. There is none beside thee. God, you are perfect in power, in love and purity. Let us pray. Thank you, Jesus, for your word. Thank you that you're holy and you don't crush us because of Jesus. Thank you for reminding us that grace also is not a lack of effort, that there is a sanctification you've called us to, a renewing of our mind, a purity. Renew our mind, God. Renew our minds. Give us for offending your holiness.

Thank you. Change us that we may act like you and speak like you. Change us, God. Let us take your holiness seriously, that we may see that sin is not playing with us, so is it in your holiness. Transform us to the image of Christ. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.