YHWH: Study on the Attributes of God

Transcription

1 YHWH: Study on the Attributes of God Sermon #4: Holy Isaiah 6:1-13 Dr. Matt Cassidy --- April 29, 2018 Video on Holiness: Voice 1: Where have you heard the word holy before? Or you ve at least su ng it in a church song once or twice? And for most people, this idea is really just connected to being a morally good person, so, God is holy because he s morally perfect. Voice 2: Yeah, that is part of it. But in the Bible the idea of holiness is even bigger and more rich. What s it s really describing is how God is the creative force behind the whole universe. He s the one and only being with the power to make a world full of such beauty and life. And all these abilities make God utterly unique, which is the meaning of the word holy. So, a helpful way to think about God s holiness is by using the sun as a metaphor. The sun is unique, at least within our solar system. And it s really powerful, the source of all this beautiful life on our planet. And so, you could say that the sun is holy. And you can actually take this metaphor even further in that the whole area around the sun is also holy. Voice 1: Yeah, because the closer you get to the sun, the more intense it gets. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 1

2 Voice 2: Yeah, exactly. That very power and goodness that generates all this life is also dangerous. I mean, the sun, if you get too close, will annihilate you. And in the same way there s this paradox at the heart of God s own holiness, because if you are impure, His presence is dangerous to you. And not because it s bad, but because it s so good. And so, the first time we see this paradox is in the story of Moses and the burning bush. Voice 1: God tells Moses to take off his sandals because he s standing on holy ground. And Moses covers his face in fear and God says, Hey, don t come any closer. It s intense. Voice 2: Right. But it doesn t stop there. This idea keeps developing. So later in the Scriptures there s a guy named Isaiah and he has this crazy vision where he s in the temple and he s right in God s presence. He s totally terrified. Voice 1: Yeah, he knows the rules --- he shouldn t even be in there, and he s worried about being destroyed. Voice 2: And then this crazy creature called a seraphim --- Voice 1: Yeah, that is a crazy creature Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 2

3 Voice 2: Totally. So, it flies over with a hot coal and then it sears Isaiah s lips with the coal and says something really weird: Your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. Voice 1: So, this burning coal somehow makes Isaiah pure. Voice 2: Yeah, it s remarkable, because normally if you touch something impure, it transfers its impurity to you. But now here s this new idea where you have this coal, this very holy and pure object, and it touches Isaiah, and it transfers its purity to him. Isaiah is not destroyed by God s holiness, he s transformed by it. I mean, the implications of this are just huge. So, the last pages of the Bible end with a final vision about God s holiness. This time it s by a guy named John. And in his vision we see the whole world made completely new. The entire earth has become God s temple and Ezekiel s river is there, flowing out of God s presence, immersing all of creation, removing all impurity, and bringing everything back to life. ========================================================== Good morning. I think my earliest memories in life --- two of my earliest memories in life --- took place when I was in first grade. My first grade teacher was Sister Anne Marie. But she wasn t just the teacher, she was also the principal of the school that went from kindergarten through eighth grade. And as principal, she was the chief disciplinarian and the only disciplinarian. And those disciplines took place behind us --- right behind us, no matter what time of day it was. And so, it made for an interesting first year of school. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 3

4 And one time in particular, Ted Pritsky, in the lobby of the church, right before mass, said a cuss word. And it was a scary thing when it happened --- everybody became still and quiet. But then the punishment came. Every day for five days we started the morning with Ted Pritsky in the back getting his mouth washed out with soap. And if you re thinking it was some kind of flavored soap that you like to wash yourself with, it was that old school Borax that came in those little dispensers that went like this. I mean, the mechanics would use it to clean the grease off their hands. And I think one of the hardest parts about it was --- well, besides Ted s part --- was we had to absolutely stay facing forward. And if we looked back --- and you know, Monday and Tuesday he was screaming but Wednesday through Friday he was just crying bitterly --- but if anyone would turn back and look at him, there was plenty of Borax soap to go around. You were next in line. First memories The next one was that I was at Jerry Watkins house and we were in the front yard and we were writing a paper on God. And I had written, referring to God, he with a lower-case H. And I said, Oh, no! Oh, no! And it was on the Big Chief pads, and so I start erasing it and then I burned a hole through the paper and I tried to write over it. I wasn t afraid that the looks of the paper were going to be against the standards of Sister Anne Marie, but that she would know that the reason it was so marked up was because on my initial attempt I did not capitalize the H. And so when I turned it in I was just waiting for my time in the back of the classroom. I didn t get in any trouble, but the point is that some of my first memories were brought to you by Sister Anne Marie, and it was that God was different, that God was separate, that God was holy and He was not to be played with. There were no games with His name, there were no games with His identity, with the Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 4

5 way we spoke about Him, His nature. And I was grateful for that --- honestly, I was grateful for what Sister Anne Marie taught me about the fear and the holiness of God. When our children were very young, Melinda and I had extensive conversations about how I wanted my children to experience something like that. And she would say --- I would talk a lot, and she would just say, No. She said there are other ways to teach children about the holiness of God, so our kids were raised --- their elementary school experiences were teachers that would hug them. And look at my kids now, okay? They re happy and not one of them fears elementary school teachers. So whatever. Today we re going to learn that YHWH is holy. And holiness means --- the word literally means to be cut apart, to be separated from, to be divided. And to understand the word --- you need to know the antonym. You would think that the opposite of holy would be sin or something vile, but it s not. The opposite of holy is common; ordinary, regular. Holy is different and cut apart from that. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. We may fear God s power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness we cannot even imagine A. W. Tozer Tozer has a great definition of this. Let me read it to you: We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. We fear His power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness we cannot even imagine. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 5

6 The holiness of God is the otherness of God, above the above-ness of God. Every single encounter that a man will ever have with YHWH in the Bible is described as something of terror or awe or fear, because God is other. He is holy. YHWH is different. It s like the video ---- not because He s bad, but because He s so good, because of the purity of His holiness. As we approach Him, we will be annihilated. So, today as we talk about and try to learn about the holiness of God, we ll look at one story and see how it progresses as this saint learns about the holiness of God. The saint we re talking about here is Isaiah, a great prophet of Israel, a righteous man. And he will take God up on His challenge, His dare: If you seek me, you will find me if you seek me with your whole heart, declares YHWH. That s the dare that God has for us. And Isaiah does that. Now the reason he was seeking the Lord with all of his heart is because, in the context of things, Judah is on the first day of a life in shambles as a country. What s happened is the King Uzziah has been ruling for decades and he has been greasing the wheels of their economy and things have been quite nice, thank you. And he s also been fortifying the security of their walls and making sure that everyone is safe and everyone is prosperous. And then King Uzziah dies. And as a prophet, Isaiah s job is to speak to God for the people and to speak to the people for God. And so, he s going to go and seek YHWH and seek Him with all his heart, maybe so He could get some guidance from YHWH, maybe so he could get a word to tell the people a message. And he finds YHWH. He actually meets with Him. He has an experience in His presence --- the holiness of YHWH. That is not what Isaiah was expecting. He thought he would just have another good prayer time. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 6

7 Isaiah 6:1-4 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is YHWH Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory! 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. Here's the story, Isaiah 6:1: In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each one of them had six wings: with two wings to cover his face, and two to cover his feet, and two with which he could fly. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is YHWH Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory! And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. Let s take a look at what this picture is. First, in this reference to seraphim, those are angels whose assignment is to constantly be in the presence of YHWH. The word seraph means brilliance or burning bright. Bright and burning is what seraph means. These are seraphim, the ones who are bright and enflamed. But while they re bright and burning, it is no comparison to the splendor of the holiness of YHWH. And so, they can t even endure it, even for their own namesake, they can t even endure to look upon Him. So, they must shield their faces because they can t look upon His purity or His splendor or His glory or His radiance. And so, they hide their faces. They shield their feet --- the expression of their creatureliness. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 7

8 Holiness in angels and saints is but a quality, but in God in is His essence Thomas Brooks And the reason they re having to do this is, as one writer put it --- Thomas Brooks, he said, Holiness in angels and saints is but a quality, but holiness in YHWH --- it the essence of YHWH. It s not a thing about Him, it is who God is. And so, these seraphim are chanting back and forth, Holy, holy, holy. Now some of you know that in Hebrew there s a stylistic thing that when you want to emphasize some point, you ll state that same thing twice. Two times he ll state it, in a row, two times. And the point here is they re having to say it three times because the holiness of YHWH cannot be contained by seraphim in heaven with words. And so, they re just stuttering and stammering and saying, Holy, holy, holy. And the duration of this --- it doesn t just happen in this passage, and you probably might have known of this passage as an Old Testament view of God. Because if you go to the end of the Bible, the New Testament, last book, Revelation 4, it says that in that same throne room are the seraphim burning and bright and they re still chanting, Holy, holy, holy. And it says that as long as the Lamb sits upon the throne, they will be in this condition of chanting back and forth. And then John adds, And He sits on the throne forever. So, the idea here is that in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and new creation, YHWH is holy. He s always holy, for all times. It says that the threshold of the foundation is more rattling or shaking. Some translations say the door planks, the strongest element structurally speaking, of some kind of building Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 8

9 (because it s holding up the great gates) --- that s shaking because the floor is shaking because heaven cannot contain the holiness of God, the brilliance and the glory of YHWH. It s not even safe in heaven. Heaven can t contain it. It says that earth is overwhelmed. And this prophet --- he is unmade in this event. Isaiah 6:5 And I said, Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, YHWH Almighty! Look what he says. He says, Woe is me! For I am lost, I am ruined; for I a man of unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, YHWH Almighty! This great prophet Isaiah, he s lost his credentials in this circumstance. No one s talking about him being the prophet of God, the advisor of great kings, in this story anymore. Even the context of why Isaiah was seeking the Lord in the first place --- you could almost hear, What is it that you want, Isaiah? Something about a king that died? Huh? I forgot. I m unmade. I ve become unraveled in this. Meeting with the holiness of God is never a casual event. And in this story Isaiah shows us the prophet of God for the people of Judah and now he has no reason to exist. He brings nothing to the equation. One peek at YHWH and His holiness and there s no justification for why he s even alive. And he s torn apart --- not at the seams --- he s undone. And when you see YHWH like this --- if you were to take God up on His dare --- If you seek me, you will find me --- If you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him. YHWH declares this, and you ll find Him to be holy. And when you do, you cannot trifle with Him any longer. And you won t argue with Him and you Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 9

10 won t debate or complain with Him. You cannot avoid Him. You cannot lose Him. You cannot question Him. He has shown Himself to be other; the otherness of God is what happens when you experience His holiness. What happens in Isaiah s life is what happens with every saint that has an encounter with God in this way. You realize, sure, you can t live in the presence of the holy God and live. No one sees the face of God and lives, it says in the Bible. But what happens when you actually have an encounter with the holiness of God is you can t live with the vision of who you are anymore. You can t see yourself the same way again. Look what he says here. He says, I am a man of unclean lips. He can t even --- he s listening to the chanting of these angels going back and forth, would love to enter in, but the resonance of his vocal cords would contaminate it. He can t even see himself as a spokesperson for God in the context of this throne room. George Whitefield was a famous preacher and evangelist in the 1700 s. And when he looks at this passage and overlaps it with a passage in Ezekiel I ll be referring to, he makes an interesting point. He is a preacher, Whitefield --- he s an evangelist, he s a person that speaks for God. And when he read this passage, he said, A preacher is asking forgiveness and repenting of his lips? That s the best thing he has going for him! That s what he does, that who he is! That s the strength of his spiritual life, is his speech. In other words, the most righteous body part on a prophet is his mouth. And Isaiah says, I am a man of unclean lips. And so, George Whitefield says this: If you want to truly experience peace with God, you have to do much more than repent of your sins. If you want to have peace with God and enjoy the fullness of who God is and His holiness, you need to repent of your righteousness, of your self-righteousness, of the only thing that you Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 10

11 think you have coming into a relationship with God. Because in the full sight of the holiness of God, that self-righteousness is exposed for what it is. It s the last idol we ever hope to destroy. But when you have an encounter with the fullness of God like this, it needs to be dealt with. You have to repent. When you repent of your righteousness, here s what s great. Everybody wants to repent of their sins, sometimes because of the consequences of that. But when you repent of your righteousness, what happens is you realize that you have no hope. What do you appeal to? All you have is to hope for absolute forgiveness --- complete grace --- total forgiveness and absolute pardon. Because you bring nothing to this. When you have a holy encounter with YHWH as you were meant to, you have not only a revelation of the seriousness of your sin, but the stupidity of your righteousness and how foolish it was to appeal to that. And that s why when Ezekiel has an experience being in the presence of God, he says, My righteous deeds are like a filthy, bloody rag, buried in the desert, pulled out to be looked at and smelled and seen for what it is. That s my righteousness. So, Isaiah here, in his encounter with God, he repents of his sin and he repents of his self-righteousness; the thing that made him right is the thing that made him wrong. In the 1200 s --- there s not a lot of debate on the wisest man alive at that time --- Thomas Aquinas. If you re from a Catholic background, it s St. Thomas. And he set out to use his wisdom that had been given to him from God to write what was called the Summa Theologiae, the summary of theology, and here s why. This is what his objective was: to write the ultimate knowledge of God, to know that we do not know. And this is twenty-one volume tome. And then as he s writing it, he s having a devotional break and he goes into a chapel and he has an experience, he has a vision of the resurrected Jesus Christ. And then he goes back Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 11

12 to his desk and writes this down: I can no longer write, for God has given me such glorious knowledge that all contained in my works are as straw --- where s the straw? --- barely fit to absorb the holy wonders that fall in a stable. And then he put his pen down and he didn t write again. The best he had is straw in a horse stable. Aquinas was the wisest man of his time. It was unchallenged, it was without rivalry. He would dictate to four different secretaries at one time. He died soon after he set that pen down. These were some of his last words --- this is from G. K. Chesterton: He confessed his sins and he received his God; and we may be sure of this, that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy. The wisest man, writing twenty-one volumes and more on the knowledge of God, has one brief encounter with God and repents of his wisdom. That s what happens. You repent of your sin and you repent of your righteousness. And what do you have left? Nothing. And when you have nothing, you can receive everything. Your hands are empty, your soul is finally cleansed, and you can receive the righteousness of God. When you repent of not just who you are, but what you are If you haven t been maimed by the holiness of God, then you can t be healed by the grace of YHWH. They go together. If you haven t been injured on wounded by the holiness of God, then you can t have experienced the profound grace of God. It s a deeper sense of a conversion. It s when we seek God and we seek God with all our heart, and He will respond to that. And it s His nature to be holy. It s not angry, it s just who He is. You ll find Him holy. We have to do this. It s a little bit crazy, it s like a moth that s pulled into the bright light that will destroy him. Our souls, with echoes of Eden, are calling out to rejoin him in a garden walk in Eden. But as we approach Him, we become unraveled, unmade, undone, torn apart. But we have to go there. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 12

13 Isaiah 6:6-7 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. I d like to show you what YHWH does in this state of disrepair. Here s how YHWH responds, Isaiah 6:6. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. The holiness of God exposes him to the wretchedness of his sin and his selfrighteousness that leads to this transforming power of greatness. Let me put it the way we say around here all the time; this is why we have this value. Only grace can transform. Only God s intervention can step into this, because it s in our darkness, it s in this hopeless state, it s past reason that we find ourselves exposed in the holiness of God. We can t live with God, we can t live with ourselves. And then, from the altar, it says --- Isaiah knows what the altar is. That s the place where the atonement takes place, that s the place where blood is shed, so the blood covers over the sin so that the holiness of God can t see this. This is a sign of things to come, when a different kind of lamb is killed. When Isaiah begins this story in verse 1, you see that he has a superficial view of repentance --- repenting of his sins, of course he would. And because of that, he has a superficial view, or experience, rather, of grace. But not now. No. His prayer time turned into a real time when God showed up. The dog has caught the car. Can you work it backwards now, can you see the necessity for the violence that was taken upon the Christ? Can you see the need for the crucifixion of the Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 13

14 only begotten Son, Jesus? Because it was necessary to cover --- that s what an atonement does --- it was necessary to cover the sin and the self-righteousness, so as to shield the eyes of the holiness of God. It was a holy settlement where we could never pay this. The Son was covered in our sin, and then we were covered in His holy blood. Our sins are atoned for. We were unholy. And we understand that, maybe in a new way. And we were made holy. And that s transformative. Being made holy from the infectious holiness of redemption --- it changes us. It causes us to be stripped of our sin, but also our self-righteousness. And now we re free --- that s what happens --- free. Look at the next thing that happens. The Lord says this. Isaiah says, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will for Us? And Isaiah says, Here I am! Send me. Isaiah 6:8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? Then I said, Here I am! Send me. Here s what the Lord is asking, and Isaiah knows this: I m going to need someone to come forward and to give the rest of his life to come and speak to and preach at Judah. And no one s going to listen to him. No one s even going to care. You will be disrespected, you will be ridiculed, you ll be hunted like a dog. And Isaiah says, Can I go? Pick me. Please let me go. And the reason is simple, as Oswald Chambers says. When you fear the Lord, you can t fear anything else. Isaiah is so liberated at this point. What can he lose? Can he become a failure? He s already been a failure. He s already seen the depth of his failure in the eyes of the holiness of God, and now, in a new way, his Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 14

15 own self-righteousness has been exposed, and he was loathsome towards that. And now he s free and he can go anywhere to do anything with anyone at any time that the Lord might ask. There s no playing games with confessions with him anymore, because there s no more shame --- it s been burned away. I had a conversation with someone not long ago and he said that he had fallen into and had been caught doing the thing that all people do. And I said, Doing the thing that all people do? Like hate your cat? Everybody hates their cat. He said, No, the thing all men do. Oh, breaking the speed limit. And he said, What? I said, Why can t you put a word to this? Later on, we were having to meet with his wife because it became such an issue, and she said, Well, he was doing that thing that all men do. And I thought, How fast does this guy drive? He had programmed his wife not to say the sin. Why? Think about it. Why? Because of the shame of it. Why is there shame? Because there is still self-righteousness. If all of that would have been burned away with an experience with the holy presence of God, he would say it out loud so that you would know what he s been through and what God has done for him. There s no playing games with confession. You re free. The holiness of God, the grace of atonement --- it gives you peace, it gives you freedom, it gives you joy because you are unmade and recreated. That s the power of God s holiness. If you will seek me, you will find me if you seek me with all of your heart. And if you do, you will find me holy, says YHWH. And that s when the terror begins. And the awe and the fear. But it doesn t end there. It ends with peace and joy and freedom. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 15

16 In our series we re trying to study the attributes of God. If you think about this attribute, if you meditate on this holiness of God --- meditate: worry in a positive way --- it will change the way you think, it will change the way you behave, it will change who you befriend, it will change what you do in your life. There is nothing more powerful to have intrinsic change in a human soul than an encounter with the holiness of YHWH. Application So, no four points of application this week. Here s the application. It s a dare. And I m not going to dare you, I ll leave that to the Lord. This is the assignment: seek the Lord. And if you seek Him with all of your heart, you ll find Him. And you ll find Him to be holy. And that will terrorize you. Stay there. Stay there until you can t even enjoy your own righteousness. Let that burn, and then enjoy that atoning tong that touches your soul, that covers you with the holy blood of Christ in a whole new way; and watch your life change from the inside out. Would you join me in prayer? I know there are some people in the room today that this idea of a complete dependence on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, to have a relationship with Him, might be a new thing to you. You might have thought, until maybe this story of Isaiah, that being a good person, attending church occasionally, and sacrificing for other people gets you points or an audience with God that you could survive. I hope today you realize that your only hope is in a gift, a gift of forgiveness and a gift of restoration and a gift of rebuilding by YHWH God --- that only grace can transform. Only through faith in the gift and the resurrection of Jesus could you possibly be considered one of His children. If today s that day, just put your faith in that. Let today be the first day of your new life. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 16

17 For others of you, I ll pray that you have an encounter with the holiness of God. If you seek Him with all your heart, you ll find Him, and find Him to be holy. I ll pray Peter s prayer [1 Peter 1:13-23] for Grace Covenant Church. He prayed this 2,000 years ago. He said, Prepare your minds for action, be sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Be obedient children; do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. You are called to be holy. So be holy in all of your conduct. Just like it s written, You shall be holy, as I am holy. And if you call upon Him as a father who judges impartially, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your difficult situation. Do not grow weary in doing good, knowing that you were ransomed, not by perishable things like silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was without blemish or spot. It was through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ that your souls were purified. Be sincere in your love for your brothers, for your sisters, for those around you, from a pure heart. Lord, I d ask you that we would be born again in a whole new way, rebuilt by Your love after being annihilated by the beauty of Your holiness. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Attributes.4.Holy.cassidy 17