“Wholly Holy, Lord God Almighty”
Exodus 34:29-35
January 12, 2003
The Rev’d Quintin Morrow
Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Fort Worth, Texas
www.st-andrew.com
The Text: Exodus 34:29-35
The Message Outline:
I. The Crisis: Our Loss.
A. We have lost our ability to be awed.
B. We have lost our sense of the holiness of God.
1. We have presumed an “over-familiarity” with God.
2. We have made God after our image.
II. The Corrective: God’s Holiness.
A. Believing and submitting to God as He has revealed Himself to us.
B. Holiness is the fundamental attribute of God’s character.
1. Holiness (Hebrew: qadosh) describes the Lord’s “otherness” from His creation.
2. Holiness describes the Lord’s moral purity, complete uprightness, and justice.
III. The Call: The Believers’ Response.
A. Filial Fear.
B. Worship.
1. Praise for who God is.
2. Thanks for what He has done for us.
C. Imitation.
Following the great London fire in 1666, the architect Sir Christopher Wren received a royal patent to design and rebuild St. Paul’s Cathedral. Wren personally supervised the construction, which took 35 years to complete at a cost of 738,845 pounds.
When finished in 1710, one contemporary wrote in his diary that the cathedral was “terrible” and “awful.” Those two words have shifted lexical meaning somewhat since 1710 and convey now to our modern ears notions of inferiority and extreme inadequacy. In 1710, the words “terrible” and “awful” were employed by the diarist beholding St. Paul’s Cathedral for the first time to convey the feelings this imposing edifice evoked in him. He was terror-struck at the cathedral’s height and full of awe at its matchless beauty.
One of the sadder commentaries on modern life is that all of our medical, scientific, and technological accomplishments, and all the advances in cinematography, computer-generated reality, and access to information have left us a people unable to be awed. We have explored sub-atomic space, mastered micro-technology, and cloned sheep. Yet most of us, despite the exponentially increasing wonders in the world around us, shuffle through daily life un-awed, uninspired, and underwhelmed. When was the last time something accomplished the incredible feat of taking your breath away, and leaving you feeling awed and lost in a sense of wonder? For many of you I suspect it has been some time. Perhaps we’ve become cynical, jaded, and now have our “awe-receptors” overloaded with too much stimuli. Whatever the cause, most of us have lost that childlike virtue of being impressed and left in speechless awe. And make no mistake about it, that loss is truly our loss.
As modern-day Christians we must likewise confess a similar tragic loss in our own lives. Along with our loss of an ability to be awed has come a commensurate loss in our sense of awe at the holiness of God. In Exodus chapter 3 God’s mere presence in a desert bush was enough to sanctify the patch of barren land around it, and God told Moses to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. In Exodus chapter 34, our first lesson appointed for this morning, merely being in the Lord’s holy and awesome presence was enough to effect a physical change in Moses’ countenance. When he had been with the Lord Moses’ face shone. A delegation of his countrymen had to be sent to Moses to tell him to put a rag over his head when coming into camp. His shone shine so brightly after being with God that people were unable to look upon him. Most of us come to God’s house weekly—if that often—unconcerned not only about what is on our feet, but with what is in our heart, what has passed through our lips, what is on our mind, or what we’ve done. Most of us leave God’s house on Sunday, not with shining faces, but with bored faces, faces anxious to beat the Baptists to the countryclub for lunch, faces anticipating kick-off or tee-off time.
I recall a cartoon in Christianity Today magazine which tellingly described our loss of a sense of the holiness of God. It depicted three scenes in three boxes. The first showed German Reformer Martin Luther, quaking with fear and sweating. He says, “In the pages of Holy Scripture I encountered an utterly holy God. And there I learned that I was completely unable, through my own good works, to acquit myself and quiet my conscience before Him.” Scene two shows John Wesley, the great revival preacher and father of Methodism, with arms outstretched to heaven, crying, “God’s holiness, revealed in His holy Word, convicted my sinful heart and there I discovered that I was undone. And after reading Luther’s commentary on the Book of Romans my heart was strangely warmed.” The final box shows a modern, 21st woman with frizzy hair, big spectacles and big earrings. Her smiling face is saying, “In Skip and Jodi’s Bible study I discovered that I needed a check-up from the neck up! I don’t need another diet. What God wants me to do is learn to love me.”
We have lost our sense of the holiness of God. We have ceased to acknowledge and honor Almighty God—in a manner worthy of Him—simply because He is, and because of His majestic character and mighty deeds. And this loss is not just among individual believers but has pervaded whole denominations. Richard John Neuhaus, in the most recent issue of his opinion journal First Things, writes that the foundational error of modern American Christianity is a denial of the transcendent. “In other words,” he writes, “Christianity, in both its academic and popular presentation, [has become] increasingly expert in helping people get to Damascus without incident.”
What accounts for our modern poverty of a sense of God’s holiness? The causes are myriad, but chief among them are two.
The first is our modern tendency to a rushed intimacy with our superiors and a presumed over-familiarity with our Creator. We’ve put Jesus on everything from ballcaps, t-shirts, to breathmints. Consider the bumpersticker “Jesus is my best friend.” That theology is not so much in error as it is out of balance. Of course, as believers, we are friends of God and joint-heirs with Christ. On the night before He suffered Jesus told His disciples that they were no longer just disciples, but His friends. But this friend is not just the same as all of our other friends, because He is also God. He is one with the Father from the beginning; the one by whom all things are made; the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being; the one by whom all things consist; the one to whom all things in heaven and earth are subject. Of which of our other friends may we say those things. Our friendship with our Creator and Savior has to do with the enmity between us being ended by His cross, and not a newfound ability to slap our arm around His shoulder and enjoy a beer together at a football game. Love the Lord. Pray to Him. Commune with Him. But remember that at His name every knee shall bow.
Secondly, our loss of a sense of God’s holiness is related to our propensity of remaking God in our own image. It been jokingly said that on the sixth day God made man after His own image, and we have been returning the favor ever since. Listening to a sampling of the sermons of most modern TV and radio preachers makes it clear that many these days believe God exists only to meet our needs. Broke? Come to Jesus and He will make you rich. Bad marriage? Disappointing job? Difficult childhood? Come to Jesus, the great therapist, and He will fix you. Jesus came to affirm us in our upper middle-class values, didn’t you hear? Besides from this pulpit, when was the last time in church you heard about the blood of Christ, the reality and pains of Hell, the justice of God, the necessity of repentance, the demand of sacrifice, and the call for believers to live as strangers and pilgrims in this lost world. Most modern, so-called “seeker sensitive” preaching appeals to people’s felt needs. But you have a need, ladies and gentlemen, that you may not feel: A need to be reconciled to God and rescued from His sure and certain wrath. God does not exist for us. We exist for Him.
What is the corrective for our crisis? There is one and only one: A re-introduction with the holy character of God Almighty. And that involves believing and submitting to Him as He has revealed Himself in Creation, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Word of God.
Throughout the pages of Scripture, whenever God manifests Himself to man, the response is always the same: An immediate sense of moral inadequacy, fear and trembling, and bodily obeisance. God thunders with smoke and lightning from Mount Sinai and the people of Israel are afraid to come near. The mere train of God’s robe passes through the Temple, and the pillars shake amidst the smoke, and Isaiah cries out that he is a man of unclean lips, from a people of unclean lips. Jesus causes Peter and the disciples to catch a great draft of fishes and, Luke 5:8: “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’” Jesus appears to John on the Isle of Patmos, Revelation 1:17, “And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.”
Holiness is what all of the saints in old times experienced when God showed up—pure, unadulterated, breathtaking holiness. And holiness is the fundamental attribute of God’s character. It is the first attribute a creature experiences when the Lord manifests Himself. You can’t help but notice it. God is holy and we are not.
The Hebrew word is qadosh: It is one of the words our English Bibles translate with the word “holy.” The Jewish concept of holiness involved two separate but related ideas. The first is the notion of “separateness,” “uniqueness,” and something or someone “marked off from common use.” For example, upon completion of the utensils to be used in Tabernacle worship, God called them “holy unto the Lord.” Since the instruments were inanimate objects, ethical uprightness is clearly not intended. The vessels were to be used exclusively for Tabernacle worship, and thus were holy. The second understanding of holiness moral uprightness and purity. Both aspects of holiness apply to God. He will not share His glory with another, because there is no other being like the Lord. He is unique. And no other being can compare to Him in moral uprightness, purity, and unimpeachable justice. All of His actions are right and pure. There is no spot of evil or imperfection in Him. “Who is like you, O LORD?” Moses cries out in Exodus 15:11. “Who is like you, majestic in holiness….” The question expects a negative answer: No one. Were the President to walk into St. Andrew’s this morning, we would all rise in respect. Were the Lord to appear, we would all fall on our faces. “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts,” the seraphim cried in Isaiah 6:3. God is holy to the superlative degree.
What then must be the believer’s response to the revelation of such holiness in our maker and redeemer? There are three.
The first might surprise you. But it is fear. That’s right, I said fear. There simply isn’t time to rehearse all the places in Scripture where God’s people are commanded to “fear the Lord,” because there are so many. I stopped counting at 40.
The great German Reformer Martin Luther rightly distinguished between two kinds of fear when discussing the concept of the fear of the Lord. The first is a healthy respect for the power or position of another. There is an element of that involved in our relationship with the Lord, to be sure. The other type of fear is what Scripture mostly means by the “fear of the Lord,” and Luther termed it filial fear. Filial fear is a fear of offending someone we deeply love. Yes, we ought to fear the Lord, when contemplating volitional sin, because if we belong to the Lord He will take us the woodshed. But more than that, we ought to fear damaging such a unique relationship, and fear offending the One who has accomplished so much to rescue us. Filial fear toward my wife is part of what keeps me faithful to my marriage vows. Filial fear toward God involves submission, humility, gratitude and love. “Fear the LORD, ye his saints,” Psalm 34:9 says. Filial fear keeps me from using God’s name in vain; prevents me from silly, vain jesting; enables me to reach out in love to the seemingly unlovable; helps me forgive the unforgivable; causes me to want to strive for righteous living—even when I fall short. The Lord is holy, and He loves us. So we love Him and fear Him.
Secondly, our response must be worship. In Revelation chapter 4 John is taken up, by the Spirit, into the throne room of heaven. There he witnesses God’s holiness in a way few mortals have, and he relays the natural response of those attending God’s throne to us. Their response is worship. He says they never stop falling down before Him who sits upon the throne, and before the Lamb, and they never stop crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”
We too, if convinced of God’s holiness, ought to be a people who have been converted into worshippers. “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power,” the Bible says. From whom? From us! Attendance at the Lord’s House, on the Lord’s Day, ought not be an option for the believer. To truly comprehend the magnitude of God’s majestic character, and to be the recipient of His unmerited favor and love, means to be a debtor—one in obligation—to praise and say thanks to this Lord. And worship is not just for Sunday mornings, but should be a minute-by-minute, daily exercise. “The LORD is great in Sion, and high above all people. They shall give thanks unto thy Name, which is great, wonderful, and holy. O magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before his footstool, for he is holy.” So says Psalm 99, which we heard today. And that, by the way, is why we also continue using the classic Book of Common Prayer—despite cultural pressures to abandon it. It honors God from His rightful place: “O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the LORD our Maker. And it reminds us of ours: sinners saved by grace, who without that grace are miserable offenders with no spiritual health in them.
Our response to God’s holiness ought to be fear, worship, and finally, imitation. It is no accident that after spending time in the proximity of this holy God that Moses’ countenance was changed. He physically began to resemble the one with which he was communing. Moses’ face bore testimony to the holiness of God.
God’s call to imitation has always been on His covenant people. “Be ye holy, even as I am holy,” the Lord tells His first covenant people in Leviticus. And Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5:1 to “Be imitators of God, as dear children.” Because God is holy, we His people should demonstrate that essential aspect of God’s character to an unholy world by imitation. Remember, holiness has two aspects: set-apartness and moral uprightness. As believers we are called to live lives set apart from the world. Paul tells us to “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed” in Romans 12:3. By our dress, our speech, our conduct, our values we are to be in this world but not of this world. In the old King James Bible we are called in I Peter 2:9 to be “a peculiar people”—strange, set apart, different. And we must be a morally upright people. There are wicked things that should not even be named among us. We are to be pure, honest, forthright, and compassionate to a fault. It isn’t us we represent, but God. We will never be perfect in this life. That awaits our glorification. But we should be making progress in a life of love and holiness. Avoid immorality. Shun dishonesty. Be above reproach.
There isn’t much left in this world, it seems, capable of inspiring awe in us. But maybe not much in this world should. It should be Almighty God—great, majestic, wonderful, and holy—that drops us to our knees in awe, wonder, love, and praise.
Every Sunday, after we have heard the Word in order to rightly fear the LORD, and after we’ve worshipped Him, we are sent from this place to be like Him.
“O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him.”
AMEN.
