Today, we continue our series on the Attributes of God. While our LORD has many attributes, we will focus on seven. Last week we studied "The Sovereignty of God." Now, we will teach on "The Holiness of God." The whole world is in revolt against God and is rushing headlong toward hell without brakes. Everywhere you turn the God of the Bible is held in utter contempt by men and women in the pulpit, the pew and the world. There is a spreading over this country a false revival which Satan is using to try to make the world religious without Christ. Satan's masterpiece is an imitation that looks like, smells like, walks like and acts like the original, yet at heart knows not the God of the Bible but worships a god of their own creation. You have heard the words, "God is love, He loves everybody, He is too loving to send someone to hell unless they are a murderer, rapist, or child molester." Poor blinded humanity cannot tell the difference between the God of the Bible and the god of this world. The old paths of Holy Spirit Conviction, Bible repentance and the New Birth are practically unknown. Man has lost his way and is looking for the easiest, fastest and least intrusive method to avoid hell. Man wants fire insurance without transformation. Today's message on the Holiness of God will expose Satan's and man's attempts to compromise the truth contained in the Word of God.
Section 1: The Holy God
If you take a concordance and check the books of Isaiah, Psalms, Kings, Job, Jeremiah and other books of the Old Testament, as well as the Gospels of the New Testament, you will find that God is frequently called "THE HOLY ONE." Even the devils call Him "Thee Holy One." In Revelations 15: 4 reads: "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For Thou art holy." This is because the sum of all moral excellency is found in Him. 1 John 1: 5 states: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." This shows there is no shadow of sin connected with Jehovah God. In Exodus 15: 11, we are told the great God is "glorious in holiness." Habakkuk 1: 13 says: "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity."
His Name is "THE HOLY GOD." There is no blemish or defilement in Him. The Scriptures command us to praise Him for the beauty of holiness (Psalm 9: 2; 96: 9; 110: 3). An old Puritan divine put it like this:
"Power is God's hand or arm, omniscience His eye, mercy His bowels, eternity His duration, but holiness is His beauty." It is the great attribute of holiness which makes Him appear so lovely and beautiful to those who are delivered from the power and dominion of sin. The Prophet Nahum cried out, "The LORD is good." (1:7) Why? Because He is Holy. Every born-again believer knows that he should praise God for the beauty of His Holiness. His Holiness is His beauty. Now, we cannot begin to grasp His Holiness. I believe in our human bodies; we would be struck down because of His Perfection in Holiness. Think about if you could step into heaven's throne room you would hear the redeemed and the angels celebrating His Holiness by constantly saying, "Holy, holy, holy, thou art God; Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts."
God's holiness is set forth probably more than any other of His attributes. It is His attribute of attributes even more than love. In Psalm 89: 35 God said, "Once have I sworn by my holiness." You may ask, "Why does God swear by His Holiness? The reason is that His Holiness is a fuller expression of Himself than anything else. In Psalm 30: 4, we read: "Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness."
In Psalm 27: 4 we read of "the beauty of the LORD." And then we are told what this beauty is--listen--it is the "beauty of holiness (Psalm 110: 3)." As His power is His strength, so His Holiness is His beauty. Listen to this: The power of God is YOUR strength. But the holiness of God is OUR beauty. Most of the time we pray for power. How often do you hear people pray for the beauty of holiness of God to be upon your life? What good is strength without beauty? What good is power if you do not have God's holiness showing in your life? Make sure you hear this: WHEN YOU LOSE OUR PURITY AND OUR HOLINESS AS GOD'S CHILD, WE LOSE OUR STRENGTH AND OUR WISDOM AND OUR POWER." THINK ABOUT THE PROMISE OF PENTECOST. THE DISCIPLES WERE PROMISED POWER (Acts 1:8). What did they get? Read Acts 15: 8-9. They received a purified heart. That is what happens when you receive the Holy Spirit! You get a new heart, a purified heart. A heart that has the Holy Spirit dwelling in it. When you have a holy heart, you will also have a hatred for sin.
May God give us a hatred for sin, an abhorrence of evil and give us grace to turn our backs upon sin and flee from it.
Our God is a Holy God. If He is our Father, we should reflect His Holiness.
Section 2: God's Holiness Manifested
First, God's holiness is manifested in His works. Psalm 145: 17 reads: "The LORD is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works." Not one thing can proceed from God that is not holy. Holiness is the rule of all His actions. When God saves a person and makes him a new creation in Christ, He gives him a holy nature that hates sin, that revolts against sin, that abhors sin; and this holy nature cannot sin. It is the nature that loves the holiness of God, that longs after the holiness of God, that sees the beauty of the holiness of God. Is that your experience listening friend?
Personally, there are two things I know:
1. I know what a sinner I am; I know the old sin nature; I know how sinful it is.
2. I know the holiness of God. I hate sin. I long after the holiness of God. I hate sin. I long after the holiness of the Lord. I do! I want to be more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ.
Is that your desire?
God has saved His children from the penalty of sin, and He breaks the power of sin in the believers' lives now. One day, He will save us from the Presence of sin, and we will be like our blessed Lord--holy and perfect. Until that day, we are to resist the devil, resist sin and draw closer to our Lord every day.
Second, God's holiness is manifested in His law. In Romans 7: 12, we read: "The law is holy, and the commandments holy, and just, and good." Psalm 19: 8-9 state: "The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether."
The Law demands perfection, the Law does not and cannot bargain with an individual. Ezekiel 18: 4 says: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." But you can't keep the Law, can you? You can be perfect only by the grace of the living God in your Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Third, listen to this great truth: God's holiness is manifested at the cross. We see the holiness of God on display as we look to the cross of Calvary. As we gaze upon the Son of God dying for our sins, we see the holiness of God on display. The cross shows God's hatred for sin. A hatred so intense that He sent His Son to die for those sins of His elect. The death of Christ displays God's infinite holiness and His abhorrence of sin. Oh, how hateful must sin be to God, how He must hate sin to punish it to the utmost after having imputed it to His Son.
As we look at the cross, we see the sins of God's elect imputed to Him--counted to Him as His own sins! That is the thing which should break your heart. To know that God imputed your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ. He so hated them and loved you that He laid your sins upon Him--Him who knew no sin! (II Cor. 5: 21) The greatest demonstration of God's hatred for sin is seen, not in His casting the sinner into a devil's hell to be punished for ever and forever, but when He poured out His wrath upon His Son. Listen to me, I want you to get this: Never did Divine holiness appear more beautiful and more lovely than when the countenance of the Lord Jesus Christ was marred than any (Isaiah 52: 14) in the midst of His dying groans. We see this in Psalm 22 when God turned His face from our Lord Jesus and thrust His sharp knife of sacrifice into His heart, which forced His lips that terrible cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
It is here we see a Holy God hating sin, so abhorring sin that He is suffering the punishment of it in His own body. on the tree that He might put it away. (I Peter 2: 24) This is why born-again believers can see in Christ such beauty and glory of His perfections, that we are made to cry out as the bride in the Song of Solomon, He is "the chiefest among ten thousand;" He is the "Rose of Sharon," He's the "Lily of the valleys." How glorious He is in His beauty of holiness. We have been made to exclaim: "If only the world knew the beauty of our Lord and the beauty of holiness in Christ Jesus!" Hear me those who are unsaved, if you only knew the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His holiness, as He manifests the holiness of God! Oh, I wish you knew Him. The Son of God was never more beautiful than when He bowed His head on the cross and became our sin substitute by bearing our sins in His own body and receiving the stroke that was due us.
Let me make a statement that will most likely offend your theology: GOD NEVER FORGIVES SIN!!! You let that sink in. God never forgives sin. His holiness will not allow Him to. God cannot forgive sin. God must punish sin. God doesn't bargain with sin. God doesn't compromise with sin. God doesn't overlook sin. However, GOD DOES FORGIVE THE SINNER, BUT HE NEVER FORGIVES SIN. Sin must be punished. Sinners need a substitute. Blood must be shed, Hebrews 9: 22 reads: "Without shedding of blood is no remission." In other words, God must punish sin in you or your substitute. God cannot forgive your sin; it must be punished. But He will forgive the sinner who repents and has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ because Christ died for the believer.
Awakened sinner, this is your only hope. You have no righteousness that appeals to the LORD. There is nothing in you that He finds attractive. Your only ground of pardon, your only ground of forgiveness is that Christ died for you. God cannot forgive your sins, but He can forgive you on the ground that Christ paid your sin debt in full. Every one of your sins were punished in Christ. The greatest thing in the world is to stand before God forgiven in Christ Jesus.
GOD IS SO HOLY THAT HE WILL NOT FORGIVE SIN. SOMEONE HAS TO PAY THE PRICE. FRIEND, DO YOU HAVE A SUBSTITUTE? I DO AND HIS NAME IS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!
Section 3: The Beauty of Holiness
Let's talk about the beauty of Holiness. A holy God hating your sins; a holy God abhorring your sins and mine to the point that He came down and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and in your place and mine He became our Substitute, pouring out His own wrath upon Himself until Justice cried out, "I'm satisfied!" He will come to you sinner and say, "I've paid your sin-debt in full, sinner. Now I can forgive you, because I died for you." The old preacher would say, "Down, down at His feet pleading for mercy on one basis--that your sin debt has been paid in Christ Jesus. Believe it and be saved; disbelieve it and be damned.
Nahum 1: 2 reads: "The LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies." Sin is awful in the sight of God, and He says in Hebrews 10: 30-31: "Vengeance belongeth unto me, i will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
Don't discount the number of sins. One is dangerous. One sin removed Adam and Eve from the Garden. For one sin damnation fell upon the entire human race. For one sin, the descendants of Ham fell under a curse. For one sin the servant of Elisha was smitten with leprosy. For one sin Ananias and Sapphira were stricken dead. God hates sin! God being holy hates sin! If we could just understand this. The central theme of the Holy Bible is the cross of Christ and how it establishes His Holiness. You will never know the meaning of the cross of Christ until you come to know God's hatred of sin as He opens your heart and lets you see that you are a sinner and deserve hell and you come to know the hell in your bosom.
The unsaved, whether in the pulpit or pew or the world, do not believe in the holiness of God. Friend, do you see the connection between the Holiness of God and the wrath displayed at the cross of Calvary? The unsaved have some kind of hope that God's mercy somehow or in some way will be applied to them and that He will not let them go to hell. This is one reason why most preaching today is so soft and weak. Most modern preaching today does the following:
1. Emphasizes the love of God for all to the exclusion of the wrath of God.
2. Doesn't talk about specific sins and the consequences of dying in sin.
3. Eliminates any talk of hell.
4. Redefines sin as a mistake, error in judgment or indiscretion.
These approaches deny the Holiness of God. To understand the Holiness of God you must embrace the wrath of God. When you begin to understand how much God hates sin, the lengths He went to provide a way of salvation and deliverance from sin, you will begin to see the beauty of His Holiness. His Holiness is beautiful because it hates sin and gives us a substitute that we might be saved. God cannot forgive like you, and I forgive. Sin must and will be punished. We must face the fact that the Holiness of God provides only one way to escape His wrath. God forgives our sins upon one basis only, and that is, that they are paid for in Christ Jesus.
I don't care how religious you are. You may be a Reverend, Sunday School Superintendent, district leader, layman or deacon in the church, it does not matter. You may pray faithfully, but listen friend, you and your prayers will go to hell if you don't have a substitute. God hates your abominable prayers unless they are saturated with the blood of Christ. God's holiness is manifested and demonstrated in His utter hatred of sin.
Do you know what the average person's idea of sin is? It is what the world calls crime. Everything else man looks upon as a defect, or a mistake, or a weakness, and whenever sin is acknowledged or owned, they make excuses for it. Man today in his totally depraved state will not face the fact of sin. We live today in a world that calls good evil and evil good. What used to be right is now wrong and what was wrong is now right. We are living in the times of Romans 1. People with reprobate minds control the narrative. You can cancel me, but you cannot cancel my Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you know that the "god" which the vast majority of professing Christian's love, and worship today is looked upon very much like a feeble old man, who himself winks at sin. No! God's Holiness requires Him to hate sin and punish it. Otherwise, He would not be holy if He tolerated sin. Listen to God's Word:
1. Psalm 5: 5: "Thou hatest all workers of iniquity."
2. Psalm 7: 11: "God is angry with the wicked every day."
Let me be clear, darkness cannot dwell with light. The Holy One will not overlook sin. Sin will not be forgiven. It must be punished. If you have a substitute in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can be forgiven. Praise God for this truth!
Conclusion
God's grace has provided in Christ Jesus our Lord a basis for us to escape the wrath of God's Holiness against sin. That which a Holy God demands, His grace provided in Christ Jesus our Lord. My friend, are you ready for a day when you will stand at the judgment bar of God? Are you ready to face the Holiness of God? There is only one way you can be ready. Cry out to the Lord, ask the Holy Spirit to awaken you to your lost condition, repent of your sins and have faith in the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ to save you.
My friend, time is running short. Are you ready?
No comments:
Post a Comment