God is Holy (Isa. 6:1-7)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, February 2, 2025

Once upon a time, there were two brothers, eight and ten years old, who were exceedingly mischievous. Whatever went wrong in the neighborhood, it turned out they had had a hand in it. Their parents were at their wits’ end trying to control them. Hearing about a priest nearby who worked with delinquent boys, the mother suggested to the father that they ask the priest to talk with the boys. The father replied, “Sure, do that before I kill them!”

The mother went to the priest and made her request. He agreed, but said he wanted to see the younger boy first and alone. So the mother sent him to the priest. The priest sat the boy down across a huge, impressive desk he sat behind. For about five minutes they just sat and stared at each other. Finally, the priest pointed his forefinger at the boy and asked, “Where is God?” The boy looked under the desk, in the corners of the room, all around, but said nothing. Again, louder, the priest pointed at the boy and asked, “Where is God?” Again the boy looked all around but said nothing. A third time, in a louder, firmer voice, the priest leaned far across the desk and put his forefinger almost to the boy’s nose, and asked, “WHERE IS GOD?” The boy panicked and ran all the way home.

Finding his older brother, he dragged him upstairs to their room and into the closet, where they usually plotted their mischief. He finally said, “We are in BIG trouble.” The older boy asked, “What do you mean, BIG trouble?” His brother replied, “God is missing, and they think we did it.”[1]

I don’t remember the date. I think it was a Sunday afternoon. A group of us went to a mall outside of Cincinnati. The group included Meagan and I, my brother, and my now sister-in-law. None of us were married at the time. I was twenty-one years old. While at the mall, we entered a jewelry store and looked at rings. It was not in our plans to look at engagement rings, but I could tell the one Meagan liked. It was a “princess cut” diamond ring. It was under the light and absolutely beautiful. The light made the diamond sparkle. It was the ring I knew I had to purchase for Meagan. I gave her that style ring a few months later as I proposed marriage to Meagan.

Do you ever notice that the jewelry looks more beautiful at the store? Why? The jewelry is clean and displayed in a way that shows its beauty. The light shows how gorgeous the diamonds are.

One could argue that the jewelry in the store is holy. That is a generic sense of the word. It means set apart for a purpose. That is very generic. It does not compare to the subject today, but I did want to use it to explore the holiness of God.

God is holy.

God is set apart. God is completely other than who we are.

My theme today:

God is holy; understand and take seriously the holiness of God.

Application:

Respond like Isaiah- woe is me…

Receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. The only way we can come into His presence is through Jesus.

1. Isaiah in the temple.
   1. Look at Isaiah 6:1 (ESV) 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. This gives us some context.
   3. Understand that Isaiah was already a prophet of the Lord. We can read about that in Isaiah 1.
   4. Now, King Uzziah had died which was 740 B.C. This marks the end of a lengthy reign of prosperity (2 Chron. 26).
   5. Uzziah ascended to the throne when he was sixteen years old. He reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-two years. Think of it, fifty-two years!^[2]
   6. How many presidents have we seen in the last fifty-two years?
   7. Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, and Nixon.
   8. I like how R. C. Sproul shares: But when Isaiah entered the temple he saw another king, the Ultimate King, the One who sat forever on the throne of Judah. He saw the Lord.^[3]
   9. C. Sproul shares that the village of Rome was founded the same year Uzziah died. Also:
   10. He points out that most scholars think Isaiah is not seeing this in the temple but seeing into the Lord’s heavenly temple. Further, God created everything with what they need. He created fish with fins. God created Seraphim with the ability to cover themselves from the holiness of God.[4]
   11. So, Isaiah sees the Lord seated upon the throne.
   12. Did he see this? Yes.
   13. Was God literally there, or was this a vision?
   14. It was a vision, but we know it affected the temple Isaiah was in (verse 4).
2. The Holiness of God.
   1. Look at this. Isaiah sees the Lord upon a throne, high and lifted up.
   2. The train of His robe filled the temple.
   3. Isaiah is seeing the Lord in majesty.
   4. Once upon a time, I was in the sanctuary. I started with “once upon a time,” but this did happen. I was walking through and spending time in prayer. It was a Saturday evening, and it was dark outside. Then I thought I heard voices. Eventually, I did hear voices. After some phone calls, I realized that a radio station was coming through the speakers in the narthex. Now, that was quiet. However, what Isaiah sees is not quiet.
   5. Isaiah sees the greatness of God.
   6. How big is your view of God?
   7. I believe if we would only begin to recognize the awesomeness of God we would not trifle with Him.
   8. You are thinking, “I do not trifle with God.”
   9. Yes, you do.
   10. How seriously do you take worship?
   11. How seriously do you take sin? Do you realize that our sin is high treason against the creator of the universe?
   12. What if I told you that this facility had been exposed to a deadly virus and that anything you touched would contaminate you? What would you do? Would you hurry to wash your hands, clothes, and everything else? Would you wash them extra well? Would you try not to touch anything before you leave?
   13. Of course.
   14. Why don’t we think of sin that way?
   15. We are exposed, we are contaminated, and we do not care.
   16. God redeems us through Jesus, but we are not eager to seek Him to get help from our sins.
   17. God is holy.
   18. Isaiah 6:2–3 (ESV)
   19. 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 the Lord of hosts;  the whole earth is full of his glory!”
   20. This is more detail.
   21. There are angels.
   22. What do the angels do? They cover their faces, possibly because no one can see the Lord.
   23. They cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts…”
   24. Do you know this is the only attribute of God repeated like that?
   25. In Hebrew, we cannot use the term “holiest.” No, they must repeat something three times to express that God is the most holy.
   26. Sproul shares: Nowhere else in scripture is an attribute of God repeated three times.
   27. Nowhere do we hear that He is “love, love, love.”
   28. Many scholars think that holiness is not a single attribute but one that captures all the others. Holiness makes Him unique. Holiness points to the transcendent majesty, the superlative greatness, the otherness that characterizes God and makes Him unique and worthy of our worship.[5]
   29. Isaiah 6:4 (ESV) ⁴ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
   30. What Isaiah saw affected creation.
   31. There was an earthquake.
   32. There was smoke.
   33. This was Isaiah experiencing the holiness of God.
   34. Timothy Keller shares:
   35. One of the more hilarious examples of the presence of the holy is in Mark 4 where Jesus is in the boat with his disciples. There is a storm that comes up, and they’re all afraid. He calms the storm, and they’re terrified, because the rescue is more terrifying to them than the peril from which they were rescued.
   36. The storm isn’t anywhere near as terrifying as to realize you’re in the presence of God Almighty. They were terrified. They said, “Who is this?” I don’t know what Ludwig Feuerbach and Freud thought about Mark 4. Those are the guys who tried to explain religion. They said, “Religion grew up because when human beings were primitive we were scared of nature. We were scared of the storms, so we had to invent a God we could go to and get help from. We were afraid of impersonal nature, so we had to invent a God who would enable us to deal with the frightening world we lived in.”^[6]
3. Isaiah’s response.
   1. Isaiah 6:5 (ESV)
   2. 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, the Lord of hosts!”
   3. How do we respond to the holiness of God?
   4. If we read Scripture and something convicts us, do we repent? Do we ask God for help so that we can do better? Do we get help? Do we repent to those we sinned against?
   5. How do we respond if we are convicted in a sermon like this?
   6. Isaiah 6:6–7 (ESV) 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. ⁷ And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
   7. Sproul shares: A recent survey of ex-church members revealed that the main reason they stopped going to church was that they found it boring. It is difficult for many people to find worship a thrilling and moving experience. We note here, when God appeared in the temple, the doors and the thresholds were moved. The inert matter of doorposts, the inanimate thresholds, the wood and metal that could neither hear nor speak had the good sense to be moved by the presence of God. The literal meaning of the text is that they were shaken. They began to quake where they stood.^[7]
   8. How is God boring?
   9. I think too often, we try to entertain people because they find God boring.
   10. Again, Sproul: The doors of the temple were not the only things that were shaking. The thing that quaked the most in the building was the body of Isaiah. When he saw the living God, the reigning monarch of the universe displayed before his eyes in all of His holiness, Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me!”^[8]
   11. Do we know that we need forgiven?
   12. I saw in a video of a man getting pulled over by a police officer. The man quickly said, “I think I know why you pulled me over. Can I step out of the truck?” The officer said, “Yes.” The man said, “Can I step to the back of the truck?” The officer said, “Yes.” The man said, You see, the woman in the front seat is my wife. The woman in the back seat is my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law came to visit, and she and my wife started arguing. Eventually, my mother-in-law said to take her home right away. Officer, I am trying to get her home as quickly as possible. They may start talking if I take too long, and my mother-in-law may want to stay longer. Do you understand my problem?” The officer said, “Yes, I understand. I am going to give you a police escort. We will use the lights and everything.” They then left.
   13. That man will need to be forgiven for that one. Obviously, that is just for humor.
   14. Ha ha!
   15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave the illustration for this in one of his sermons I’ve never forgotten, and some of you have certainly heard it. He says if somebody comes to you and says, “I’ve paid one of your bills,” you have no idea how excited to be. It could be they’ve paid postage due, paid a couple of dollars so a package that had postage due could be received. On the other hand, maybe they paid $40,000 of your back IRS taxes. Until you know the actual amount of the debt, you don’t know how joyful to be. The size of the debt actually determines the magnitude of the joy.^[9]
   16. Do we recognize the holiness of God?
4. How do we respond to God?
   1. In Genesis 15:9-17 we see the account of the covenant ceremony between God and Abraham.
   2. God is making a covenant with Abraham.
   3. Abraham brings God a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.
   4. The goat and the heifer are cut in two.
   5. A deep sleep falls upon Abram.
   6. God walks between the animals.
   7. That is an ancient covenant ceremony in which God was saying, “If I do not keep my covenant with you, may I be like these animals.
   8. Two thousand years later, Jesus was stricken for us.
   9. The Israelites and we did not keep the covenant with God. Yet, our holy God was stricken for us.
   10. Romans 5:8 (ESV) …but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
   11. Jesus went to the cross, and He was stricken.
   12. Jesus went to the cross, and He was cursed.
   13. Jesus was slain for us.
   14. Why?
   15. Because God is holy, and we needed a holy sacrifice for our sins.
   16. Receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. The only way we can come into His presence is through Jesus.
   17. How can we come into a relationship with a holy God? Only by receiving Him as Lord and Savior can we know Him. Jesus went to the cross for us.
   18. God is holy. That is why we need a Savior.

[1] https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/where-is-god.html

^[2] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 27.

^[3] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 29.

[4] Renewing Your Mind. 03.10.2021

[5] Sproul, Renewing Your Mind; 03.11.2021

^[6] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[7] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 39–40.

^[8] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 40.

^[9] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).