In the presence of a Holy God
Exodus 3:1-5 and Acts 9:4-8
In 1961 A.W. Tozer was given the opportunity to speak to a group of ministers on a subject of his choice.
Not surprisingly he chose to speak to them about the holiness of God. During that talk he said the following words: “I believe we ought to have again the old biblical concept of God which makes God awful and makes men lie face down and cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.
That would do more for the church than everything or anything else.”
Quoting the English preacher John Daniel Jones: He lived from 1865-1942, this is from his sermon The Sovereignty of God
In our absorption in the thought of God as Father, we have almost lost sight of the fact that He is the Holy Sovereign, ruling the world in righteousness. The result has been that to a large extent, we have lost the sense of religious awe, of reverence, and of godly fear.
To make our religious life deep and strong we need to recover that lost sense of awe. We need to be taught afresh the fear of the Lord. And to recover that lost sense of awe, to create a feeling of reverence, we need a fresh vision of God as the Holy Sovereign. The Lord reigns, let the nations tremble. Why (should the nations tremble)? He is holy. We have only to realize that God is the Holy Sovereign, and the awe is bound to come back. The will that rules is a holy will. The power that governs is a holy power. All who sin bring themselves into collision with the sovereign will and power of the universe.
If the realization that a Holy God is sovereign fills us sinful men and women with awe and godly fear, that same realization of God as sovereign ought to fill those of us who love goodness and long for the triumph of Christ with a happy confidence.
Psalm 97:1 The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice.
The destinies of the world are not, for instance, at the mercy of fleets and armies. The Lord reigns. To know that God rules – to realize His sovereignty – is to be delivered from fear and despair.
"The Lord reigns." This is the ground of our confidence in the triumph of the church. The church has not, in recent years, been in a triumphant frame of mind. She has been depressed, nervous, harassed, and anxious. She has been conscious of strained resources and inadequate powers. My brethren, what we want for a recovery of our courage and confidence is the recovery of our faith in the sovereignty of God.
Our lives get broken and harassed just because we forget that it is the Lord who reigns.
Our God is Holy, and once we have had an encounter with our Holy God , we will never be the same.
Exodus 3:1-5
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. [2] And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. [3] And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. [4] And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. [5] And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
We sometimes forget, that our God is Holy. That is one of His main attributes.
We hear the word holy used in a lot of different ways today.
Holy cow, holy smokes, holy Toledo, and we make light of the word, holy.
God doesn’t make light of it.
The prophet Isaiah didn’t make light of the word Holy.
Isaiah 6:2-3
Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. [3] And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
Our God is Holy, meaning that He has no flaws.
Our God is blameless, He is perfect, His character is spotless, and sinless.
God is called Holy, many, many times throughout the Bible.
Isaiah 12:6
Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.
Isaiah 30:12
Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon:
Jesus , in the new testament, is called Holy.
Mark 1:23-24
And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, [24] Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.
LET US LOOK AT SOME EXAMPLES OF PEOPLE WHO HAD AN ENCOUNTER WITH GOD, AND SEE THAT THEY WERE NEVER THE SAME AFTERWARDS;
1. Moses
After Moses had encounter with our Holy God , when he saw the burning bush, and God instructed him to go to Egypt and talk to the Pharaoh and tell him to let the Israelites go.
Moses began making excuses.
a. Moses first excuse was, who am I, that I should go.
Doesn’t that sound like some of our excuses that we use, when God tells us to do something?
We say ,Lord, can’t you get someone else. There are others more qualified.
b. Then Moses used the excuse, suppose that they will not believe me.
c. Then Moses said, Lord, I am not an eloquent speaker. I cannot talk very well.
But the Lord told Moses, go ahead and go Moses, I will put the words in your mouth.
We do the same. We say, Lord, don’t ask me to wittness for you. I don’t know the bible that well. They might ask me some questions, and I may not have all the answers.
But God tells us, Just tell them what I have done for you, just tell them how I delivered you out of the bondage of sin. Tell them how they too can be delivered.
God told Moses, "I will certainly be with you.
After that encounter with God, Moses was never the same. When Moses realized that God would be with him, he was able to do what God had commanded
2. Isaiah
The prophet Isaiah had an encounter with our Holy God, and he was never the same.
Isaiah says in Isahiah 6,
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Master sitting on a throne--high, exalted!-and the train of his robes filled the Temple.
Angel-seraphs hovered above him, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew."
And they called back and forth one to the other, Holy, Holy, Holy is GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies. His bright glory fills the whole earth.
The foundations trembled at the sound of the angel voices, and then the whole house filled with smoke.
I said, "Doom! It’s Doomsday! I’m as good as dead! Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted-- blasphemous even! And the people I live with talk the same way, using words that corrupt and desecrate. And here I’ve looked God in the face! The King! GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies!"
Then one of the angel-seraphs flew to me. He held a live coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar He touched my mouth with the coal and said, "Look. This coal has touched your lips. Gone your guilt, your sins wiped out."
And then I heard the voice of the Master: "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" I spoke up, "I’ll go. Send me!"
Isaiah saw his sinful condition when he was in the presence of a Holy God.
But then after being in Almighty God’s presence, he said, "HERE AM I LORD, SEND ME
WE too, when we are in God’s Holy presence, we will realize our sinful condition, and begin to really appreciate God’s gift of His Son, whom God gave freely, so we could be justified.
On our own, we could never accomplish this.
3. Paul
When the Apostle Paul had an encounter with our Holy God, he was never the same.
When Stephen was preaching, and telling the people about Jesus, they were angered and began to stone him.
The bible tells us that the young man that was holding their coats while they were stoning Stephen was Saul.
Stephen looked up into heaven, and being full of the Holy Spirit, he saw the Glory of God, and he saw Jesus at the right hand of the Father.
Stephen said " Look, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the Father’"
Later on, Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest other Christians, and on his way he had an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ.
On the road, a light shone down on him from heaven, and he was blinded.
Acts 9:4-8
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? [5] And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. [6] And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. [7] And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. [8] And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.
After his encounter with Jesus, Saul became Paul, and we know the rest of the story.
Paul spread the gospel, and preached to the gentiles as well as the Jews.
Paul went on to write nearly 2/3 of the New Testament.
Moses, Isaiah, and Paul were never the same after they met our Holy God.
When we have experienced the presence of our Holy God, we wont be the same either.
