Today, we are going to rabbit trail for just a week, and talk about holiness.
One of the hardest things to explain in the entire Bible, in my opinion, is the idea of holiness. The Bible often tells us that God is holy, and when the Bible tells us this, it tends to be in very serious, weighty situations. Every time you hear that God is holy in the Bible, it's in situations where God is treated with total respect, and reverence, and awe. Language about God being holy also tends to lead God's people into feeling every bit of their sinfulness, when aren't walking rightly with God. When you are close to God's holiness, you feel not holy.
And so, what I've found, at least for me, is that the language of holiness hits hard. Language about holiness makes me reflect on how I've been compromising, and sinning, and perhaps outright rebelling against God in different areas of my life. But at the same time, I've never quite been satisfied with the way people have described what "holiness" means. Most of what I've heard has been sourced from systematic theologians, and it's always seemed to me that it's at least a couple steps removed from what the Bible actually has to say. When I've heard people talk about God's holiness, I've usually heard it described in terms of Otherness, and Transcendence. God is Other. He is Not Like us. He is Different. And there is a huge gap between God and us. But when I hear people talk this way, they sound like famous theologians like Karl Barth. They don't seem really connected to the Bible, or to biblical scholarship, and so I've just always kept this mental reservation about all language of God's holiness. That's been on my to-do-list of things to try to figure out, at some point. [And the resource that helped me most is Andrew Case's journal article, "Toward a Better Understanding of God's Holiness: Challenging the Status Quo." If you google it, you can get free access through academia.edu, if you give them your email].
Now, I think we'd all agree that if we want to find an answer to the question of what holiness is, that the best place to look is in the OT. It's not that the NT says nothing about it-- holiness is important to Paul (Romans 6:22; 12:1; 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 Timothy 1:9), and Peter (1 Peter 1:15-16), and Hebrews (Hebrews 12:14). But there are lots of places in the OT that talk a lot about holiness-- Isaiah 6 has a famous throne room scene where spiritual beings proclaim God as holy, holy, holy. Ezekiel, less famously, describes God as The Holy One (Ezekiel 36:23; 38:23). But no matter where in the OT we find a launch point, we will always end up eventually in Leviticus 19 and 20.
And what I think we'll find, when we turn there, is that holiness is actually a really straightforward, easy-to-explain thing. My immodest goal this morning is to give you total clarity about what holiness is.
So let's start in Leviticus 19:1.
(1) And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
"Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel,
and say to them,
"Holy, be ["holy" is focused], [the Hebrew word is "qedosh"]
because holy, I Yahweh your God/Elohim [am]. ["holy" is focused]
I'm not going to read the rest of chapter 19-- I'll let you do that later-- but I'll give you 15 seconds to skim it...
Even just a quick skim of Leviticus 19 shows that it has lots of commands about how God expects his people to live. Yahweh wants his people to worship and serve only Him. He wants his people to treat each other rightly, with respect. And Leviticus 19:18 has the famous sentence about loving your neighbor like yourself.
The chapter then closes, verse 37, with God commanding his people to keep all of his rules/customs and laws.
So the question is, how do verses 2-37 relate to the opening command to be holy, because Yahweh your God is holy?
What I think, is that these verses tell you "how" to be holy. You are holy, when you obey God, and keep all his rules. And we can see that holiness is both vertical, having to do with God, and horizontal, having to do with each other. It's been said (Walter Brueggemann, I think) that we love God by loving one another. That's probably a deliberate overstatement that's designed to provoke, and push. But certainly, you are holy when you love God and people.
But I'm not convinced that tells us what holiness is. If we read Leviticus 19, we will know how to be holy. If we obey Leviticus 19, we will be holy. But what is holiness?
God continues of all of this into Leviticus 20. And then let's read Leviticus 20:7-8:
(7) And you shall keep yourselves consecrated/dedicated/holy (hitpael of qadash), [Exodus 19:22; Leviticus 11:44]
and you shall be holy (qadash),
because I [am] Yahweh your God,
(8) and you shall keep my rules,
and you shall do them.
I [am] Yahweh, The One consecrating/dedicating/holying (piel of qadash) you.
What we see in verses 7 and 8 is a huge clue about what holiness is. English Bibles help us in some ways see the truth here, but they also sort of hide it. The stem, or root, for the Hebrew word qadash occurs three times in these two verses. God expects his people to maintain holiness/consecration. He commands them to be holy/consecrated. And God calls himself the one "consecrating/holying" you.
These two verses tell us what holiness is. It has to do with consecration, or dedication. That's a big, loaded, theological word. What does it mean?
Older people tend to have two sets of dishes in their house. They have everyday silverware and plates, and they also have a cabinet filled with fine china and crystal. The china is only brought out on special occasions, a few times each year-- Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Those dishes are usually really fragile, and beautiful, and expensive. It's too risky to use them every day, because life is filled with dropped dishes. But those dishes make a meal special. That china is consecrated. To be consecrated, means to be dedicated for a specific person or event or thing [and what I'm trying really hard to avoid is the focus on being "set apart for" a specific thing]. In the OT temple, for priests, there were certain articles of clothing you'd only wear when you were going to enter God's temple. There were certain cooking utensils you'd only use at the temple. Those things are "consecrated"-- they are holy.
So what does it mean, in Leviticus 20:8, when Yahweh tells his people that He is consecrating them? God is picking his people out for himself; He's dedicating them to himself (piel of qadash). And God expects his people to maintain this status of being dedicated (hitpael of qadash). They are fine china, dedicated to God, and they need to respect that dedication. They aren't toys for a sandbox. They aren't frisbees for the backyard. They aren't a plate for dog food. They are dedicated to God. To maintain consecration, means to faithfully live a consecrated life to Him (Exodus 19:22 is the key here; the priests are supposed to maintain a status of consecration so that God doesn't break out against them; it's not an initial, opening "consecrate yourselves"). God expects you to maintain dedication, and not jump in and out of it. You can't be dedicated to God on a Sunday, and dedicated to other gods or to yourself on Monday through Saturday.
So this still doesn't answer our question, "What is holiness?" But we see that holiness is a lifestyle, and we see that it's connected to this idea of consecration, or dedication.
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HALOT, which is followed by Christo van der Mere:
hitp: pf. (Bauer-L. Heb. 328c) ????????????, ????????????????, ?????????????/????????, ????????????????; impf. (??)??????????????, ??????????????; impv. ?????????????/????????; inf. cs. ???????????; pt. sg. fem. ?????????????, pl. ?????????????? (24 times).
—1. to keep oneself sanctified Ex 19:22 Lv 11:44 20:7.
—2. to show oneself as holy (????) Ezk 38:23.
—3. to keep one another in a state of consecration, in a state of ritual purity Nu 11:18 Jos 3:5 7:13 1S 16:5 2S 11:4 (a woman after sexual intercourse), Is 30:29 (with ??? of the feast, see Wildberger BK 10:1207, 1219f :: H. Barth Israel und das Assyrerreich in den nicht jesajanischen Texten des Protojesajabuches 72: “if the festival is celebrated” cf. 4), Is 66:17 1C 15:12, 14 2C 5:11 29:5, 15, 34 30:3, 15, 17, 24 35:6.
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Now let's hop down to Leviticus 20:22, and this is where I want to focus:
(22) And you shall keep all my rules/customs and all my laws/regulations,
and you shall do them,
and[/so that] the land won't vomit you out,
which I [am] bringing you there to dwell in it,
(23) and you shall not walk in the rules/customs of the nations who I [am] driving out before you,
because all of these [nations] acted [in this way],
and I detested them,
and I said to you,
"You shall inherit/take possession of their land,
while I will give it to you to possess it-- a land flowing with milk and honey.
I [am] Yahweh the God/Elohim of you,
[you] whom I have distinguished from the nations,
(25) and you shall distinguish [same verb as line above] between the clean animal to/for the unclean,
and between the unclean bird to/for the clean,
and you shall not defile yourselves/your throats with the animal and with the bird and with anything
that moves along the ground,
which I have distinguished to/for you to make it unclean,
(26) and you shall be to/for me holy,
because holy, I Yahweh [am],
and I have distinguished you from the nations to be to/for me.
There are certain kinds of candies, where the candies look different, but they taste the same. M&Ms are a great example, or Canadian Smarties. And most people, eating a bag of M&Ms, aren't going to pick out the brown ones, or pink ones, and save those for the end. You grab a few at a time, and mindlessly shove them in your mouth, without distinguishing them.
These verses are focused on the idea of distinguishing. The world is filled with people, like a candy bag is filled with M&Ms. But God distinguishes between his people, and the world as a whole. In verse 24, and again in verse 26, Yahweh says that He distinguishes his people from the nations "for himself."
God's people are like the brown M&Ms. And God says, don't be like all the other M&Ms. Obey me completely, faithfully, so that the land doesn't vomit you out, and so that you don't end up being a people I despise. Live in a place of consecration, and dedication. Be like the fine china.
So what is holiness?
I think verses 22-26 reinforce the clues we found in verses 7-8.
Holiness is about consecration, and dedication. It's about being picked out by God, for God, to belong to Him.
So we are holy, when we obey all of God's rules and regulations, when we faithfully love God and each other. We are holy when we respect what God has made us to be, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. We are holy when we distinguish between things that are clean, and unclean, and when we avoid unclean things.
Did I make this too complicated, or are you all with me?
Now, at this point, we are left with one final question. What does it mean, that God is holy?
God says, repeatedly, "Be holy, because I am holy."
I would argue that God's holiness is not about Him being Set Apart, or Transcendent, or the Divine Other. God's holiness is not a way of describing the vast gulf between us and God.
God's holiness has to do with his dedication, and commitment, to his people. Holiness is about dedication.
To say that God is holy is to say that God is radically committed to his people. In a marriage covenant, it sometimes happens that one partner is more faithful, more committed than the other. One is determined to not let go, and to make things work. One wakes up every day absolutely determined to overcome every fight, every disagreement, ever hardship. Ideally in a marriage, both partners have this kind of commitment. But sometimes, after a while, it only becomes one.
What God is looking for, in his covenant with his people, is for his people to have the same type of radical commitment to Him, that He has to them. He wants his people to mirror his dedication. That's what it means, to be holy, because God is holy.
And so when Isaiah sees God, and hears the divine beings calling God "holy, holy, holy," Isaiah knows that he and his people are doomed. Why? Because they haven't mirrored God's dedication. They've become the type of people that God detests-- the type of people the land vomits out. They've failed to love God, and love each other.
And God, after cleansing Isaiah, sends Isaiah off to fix that.
Let me try to put this all together, before you leave today.
God has made you holy in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. He's picked you for himself, to be dedicated, holy, consecrated to Him.
When God commands you to be holy, He's commanding you to walk in line with what He's called you to be. He consecrated you; He expects you to be consecrated.
And what this means, concretely, is obeying everything God commands. Obey all his rules, and laws (Leviticus 19:37; 20:22). Specifically, obey God's commands vertically, going up, to love and worship and serve Yahweh, and no other god. And secondly, obey God's commands horizontally, by treating each other with love and respect. Treat people rightly. Respect people's stuff by not stealing it, or envying it. Respect people's families, by not chasing other people's spouses and committing adultery. Make sure people get a fair shake, regardless of their social status.
And God expects you to maintain all of this, as a way of life. Holiness isn't something you can slip in and out of, and expect God to be okay with that. Holiness is something you stay in, from the second you wake up, until your head hits the pillow.
You are holy. Be holy. Maintain holiness.
