The Hush Of Holiness Series

The Hush of Holiness

Psalm 99:1-9

Rev. Brian Bill

August 23-24, 2025

When I was a student at Moody Bible Institute, I served as a summer missionary in Zimbabwe where I taught in a Bible college. At the end of our time, our team took a trip to Victoria Falls, which is one of the largest and most famous waterfalls in the world. Incredibly, it is a mile wide and twice as deep as Nigara Falls. When I got off the bus, I heard a loud, thunderous noise that seemed to be coming from the sky and the earth at the same time. As I walked closer to the Falls, I could barely think because I was astonished, amazed, and undone. As heavy mist clouded my view, my heart started racing, my head was pounding, and my ears were ringing. It was deafening and breathtaking. I couldn’t have talked if I had wanted to because I was in the presence of sheer power and stunning beauty.

When missionary David Livingstone first saw Victoria Falls in 1855, he was astounded and overwhelmed as well. He later described it in his journal: “No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” Struggling to capture the magnitude of it, the sense of majesty left him speechless.

Last week, we focused on the tenderness of God in Psalm 56 as we saw how He calms our fears and captures our tears all through the years. We’re called to trust and obey, for there’s no other way. Today, we’ll be challenged to tremble before the Almighty, to be hushed by His holiness, and to surrender to His reign and rule in our lives.

Please close your eyes and listen to Psalm 99: “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; He is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is He! The King in His might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God; worship at His footstool! Holy is He! Moses and Aaron were among His priests, Samuel also among those who called upon His name. They called to the Lord, He answered them. In the pillar of the cloud He spoke to them; they kept His testimonies and the statute that He gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.”

Here are a couple observations which will help us interpret and apply this astonishing Psalm.

• This is considered one of the enthronement Psalms. Beginning in Psalm 93, and continuing through Psalm 99, we’re reminded of God’s rule and reign:

Psalm 93:1: “The Lord reigns; He is robed in majesty…”

Psalm 96:10: “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns…’”

Psalm 97:1: “The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice…”

Psalm 99:1: “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble…”

• The theme is the holiness of God. The Hebrew language uses repetition to express superlatives or to indicate totality. An example is found in Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” In Revelation 4:8, the four living creatures around the throne exclaim, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” This could be translated as, “God is holy, holier, and holiest!” The Bible calls God holy more than anything else.

God’s holiness is the sum of all His attributes. One commentator says, “The basic idea is separation. It emphasizes the great distance between God and humankind – not only morally, as in the difference between pure and polluted, but also in the realm of being.” God is infinitely unique and transcendently distinct from His creation as we see in Exodus 15:11: “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

One pastor observed: “There is probably no attribute of God which needs to be taught and recognized in our day than His holiness.” David Wells writes: “We have turned to a God we can use rather than to a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill all our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves…and so we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy.”

At the heart of our rebellion against God is to somehow make Him just “one more thing” in our lives, so we bring Him down to our level, where He loses His distinctiveness. The Bible calls this idolatry.