Behold Your God - Holiness Series

Reading: Isaiah chapter 6 verses 1-8.

Ill:

• Have you ever had to look for the right word to describe something?

• Maybe it was a place (e.g. that’s beautiful, it’s breathtaking),

• Maybe it was a smell e.g. (ugh, that’s awful, it’s horrible),

• Or how about a taste? (e.g. uuumm, good, rich, yummy).

• Sometimes it’s hard to put into words when we want to accurately describe something.

• Let me ask you a tougher question,

• “How would you describe God?”

• e.g. Awesome? Loving? Merciful? Gracious? Just?

• What if you could use just one word to describe Him?

• I wonder if you could you do it?

• I couldn’t!

• And even the Seraphs in verse 3 of our reading could not!

• They got close in they found one word – but then they had to repeat it three times

Note:

• Repeating a word in Hebrew is to emphasize something.

• ill: it is kind of like you using a highlighter to mark something.

• The angels were NOT saying God is ‘Holy’,

• They were NOT saying He was ‘Holy’.

• But they WERE saying God is ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’.

There is no other characteristic of God that gets the emphasis that His holiness does.

• e.g. We are never told in scripture that God is wise, wise, wise,

• e.g. And we are never told that God is strong, strong, strong,

• e.g. And we are never told that God is powerful, powerful, powerful,

• e.g. We are not even told that God is love, love, love!

• Only one attribute of God is repeated again and again and again,

• That is his holiness!

Ill:

• If for example some described to you said a stone saying it was ‘big’,

• It would bring to your mind an image of a large stone.

• If they said to you the stone was ‘big, I mean really big’,

• You would enlarge that image in your mind to a huge stone.

• And if someone said to you it was a ‘big, big, big’ stone;

• You would surely think – they must mean that it was a ‘gigantic boulder’.

• As far as I am aware;

• Only one attribute of God is repeated again and again and again - that is his holiness!

Quote:

• If you want holiness defined;

• Then R.C. Sproul gives us a simple way to remember the definition of holiness,

• He says; “The first prayer I learned as a child was the simple table grace:

• "God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for this food."

• The two virtues assigned to God in this prayer, greatness and goodness,

• May be captured by the one biblical word, holy”.

SO, THERE ARE TWO IDEAS TO HOLINESS.

The first is the idea of greatness.

• One of the meanings of holiness is the idea of being "set apart".

• God is apart from us - He is in a class by Himself.

• e.g. He has no equal.

• In other words’

• There is a profound difference between Him and those He has created.

• Holiness means that God is transcendent (or unique and superior) in His greatness.

The second aspect of holiness (and the one we generally think of first) - It is the idea of purity:

• God is good;

• That means he does what is right and never does what is wrong.

• God is unstained by, and uncompromising with sin.

• God does not "bend a little" when it comes to wrong-doing.

• God always acts in a righteous manner because His nature is holiness.

• Therefore He is both great and good.

In our reading Isaiah chapter 6:

• We see those truths illustrated for us in call of Isaiah into the service of God,

• We see his divine call into life as a prophet.

Quote: Lenord Ravenhill:

“If you have a vision without a task, you’ll be a visionary,

if you have a task without a vision, it’s drudgery.

But if you get a task wedded to a vision, you’ll be a missionary”.

• Isaiah was a missionary;

• He was called of God!

• And he had a heart to reach out to people and bring them back in touch with God.

• In this short narrative we find 5 principles – with present day applications.

5 RELEVANT PRINCIPLES FROM AN ANCIENT PROPHET

Principle 1: God Uses Circumstances to Make Us Aware of His Presence (vs 1).

In the year that King Uzziah died,

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple

• In reading these verses it is easy to become so impressed with the vision;