Sunday Sermon

"God is Holy"
[Psalm 99:1-9]
February 18, 2007 Second Reformed Church

We concluded our current look at the Doctrine of the Trinity last Sunday, and today, as a bridge from that topic to the Lenten season, we are looking at a Psalm about the chief attribute our of Triune God: holiness. On this Transfiguration Sunday, we are looking at the revelation that God is Holy. And after these past several weeks, we can say, the Father is Holy and the Son is Holy and the Spirit is Holy.

What does it mean when we call God "holy"? What does "holy" mean? When we say that something or someone is holy, we are ascribing the greatest possible purity, ability, being to it or him. When we say that God is Holy, we are saying that God is the Greatest, Purest, Ablest, Most Perfect, Most -- everything else we can ascribe to God. There is none greater than God and God, in His Greatness, is Most Pure, Most Innocent, Most Everything Good. St. Anselm said that God is "that than which none greater can be conceived" (Cf., "The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.")

Psalm 99 can be divided into three different verses, of differing lengths. Let us look at each verse of this song separately:

"The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!"

The Psalmist opens his hymn with the declaration that YHWH is king; God is the ruler. Of what? Of everything. God is the Sovereign Ruler over all. He always was and He will always be. Everything occurs under the banner of His Sovereignty and under His Control. Not an atom can fall out of place, not a sparrow can perish, not a hair can fall from our heads without the Divine Sovereign’s permission and will.

Christian! Is that not good news? Our God, our Triune God, is perfectly, wholly carrying out His Good Plan throughout the universe. Neither the Taliban, nor Al Qaida, nor the Republicans, nor Democrats, can thwart the Hand of our Almighty God. Do not be afraid, brothers and sisters, our God is King!

We do not need to be afraid, but those who do not believe, the Psalmist says that they should tremble before our God, because He is Holy, and all must stand before the judgment seat on that final day, and there is One and Only One Way that anyone can survive, and that is through the Blood of Jesus Christ. It is only through believing in Jesus Christ Alone for Salvation that anyone will survive the judgment.

David Dickson wrote, "Albeit the church be compassed about with enemies, as the lily among the thorns, yet because her Lord reigneth in the midst of her, she hath reason not only to comfort herself in him, but also hath the ground of defying her enemies and boasting against them; ..." (The Treasury of David, vol. 2., 226).

Our God is He Who sits upon, or between, the cherubim, those angels with wings, and eyes covering their whole bodies, with four faces, those heavenly bouncers that were set at the Garden of Eden to keep out Adam and Eve and their children -- forever. God sits above these mighty angels, and the earth quakes, the earth shudders, the created realm has sense enough that when God Almighty, the Holy God appears, that they fall down and shudder in unworthiness, covering their creatureliness before their Creator. Remember how the seraphim covered themselves as they flew in the presence of God as Isaiah looked on and how the very temple itself shook in awe before God her Creator.

Why? Because He is Holy. We have come into the sanctuary of the Holy God this morning. Have we been moved in His Presence? Have we felt anything in this place, before the One God Who reigns? If we haven't felt something emotionally, have we at least understood intellectually, where we are and Whose Presence we have come before?

All peoples are admonished to praise the Great and Awesome Name of God -- it can be translated "the Great and Terrible Name of God." And God is Great and Awesome, or Terrible, for the same reason -- He is Holy.

He is Holy and Great; He is to be praised among the peoples, for He is the Ever-Good God. He does no evil. He is not petty. He is not forgetful. He is not lazy. He is not like the other gods.

He is Holy and Awesome, and keep in mind the other translation of Terrible, because God is Holy in the sense that being in the mere presence of His Holy Law exposes our sin, and Isaiah found when he, even the prophet of God, came into God's Presence, he was undone. If we have truly come before God, we have been exposed, our darkest parts have been seen, our secrets have become known, that which we most greatly desire to keep hidden is before His Holy Gaze. "The misery of sin consists not merely in its consequences, but in its very nature, which is to separate between God and our souls, and to shut us out from God, and God from us" (Alfred Edershaim in The Treasury of David, vol. 2, 227).

But, there is hope, for those who belong to this God, as one commentator put it, "The FATHER'S name is 'great,' for he is the source, the Creator, the Lord of all; the SON'S name is 'terrible,' for he it to be our judge; the name of the HOLY GHOST is 'holy,' for he it is who bestows hallowing and sanctification" (Hugo Cardinalis, Genebrardus, and Balthazar Corderius in The Treasury of David, vol. 2, 227).

And He is to be praised at all times. Charles Spurgeon wrote, "Under the most terrible aspect the Lord is still to be praised. Many profess to admire the milder beams of the sun of righteousness, but burn with rebellion against its more flaming radiance: so it ought not to be: we are bound to praise a terrible God and worship him who casts the wicked down to hell" (The Treasury of David, vol. 2, 223).

Hard as it seems, when God strikes us, when God chastises us, when God allows us to reap the rewards of our sin, God is still to be praised. God is not to blame for our sin, nor from giving us justice. In this fallen world, we must endure the fruits of sin, even to the final earthly fruit of death. Still, in life and in death, we have reason to praise God, because He is Holy.

"Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!"

Our Holy God, the Ruler of Rulers, the Lord of the Universe, is the God of Justice and Equity, and He not only desires justice and equity, but He causes justice and equity and righteousness, by bringing them to pass. Charles Spurgeon wrote, "Justice is not merely established, but executed in God’s kingdom; the laws are carried out, the executive is as righteous as the legislative" (The Treasury of David, vol. 2, 223).

God is bringing about justice and equity and righteousness, through His Son and through His Kingdom, as it comes to earth. We will not always live in a world of corruption and deceit. The day is coming when God's Kingdom will fully be among us, when the New Heaven and the New Jerusalem and the New Earth will fully reflect the Glory of God forever and ever. And His will be a Kingdom of Truth and Righteousness. Sin and evil will have been put down, forever to receive their reward. And now we look for it, we ready ourselves for it, we work to make ourselves ready for it by the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit Who is even now readying us, changing us, to the Glory of our Holy God.

Let all creation and every people praise our God for His Government. Let us always praise our God, our King, our Savior, for He is worthy; let us be worthy for Him. Let us worship at His footstool. Let us humble ourselves before Him. Yes, we might come into the Throne Room of God, boldly, as His sons, but not presumptuously, not sinfully, not pridefully. Let us understand that we are creatures, beloved creatures, brothers and sisters of Jesus. Yet, let us bow in heart and soul and mind and strength, if not also in body, before our Holy God, Who calls us and loves us and makes us like His Son, our Savior.

"Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried out to the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of the cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Extol the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy."

God has given us earthly priests, people who speak for God and bring the prayers of the people to God. This does not mean, as some teach, that we can only pray or repent through a minister. No, we all have direct access to God, through Jesus Christ. However, ministers are in a peculiar and special office, as they give the Word of God to the people and lift the prayers of the people to God. Just as God gave priests in the days of the Bible, God also gives ministers, His priests, today. God has given ministers who speak the Word of God, Who bring the Law of God before the people, that they may see it and repent and return to God. And, as then, God will answer our prayers -- in His Time, according to His Will -- and He will continue to speak to us through His Word.

And God will always answer the prayers of His people, and God has given us His Word forever. But God expects more of us than to repent; God expects us to do what is right. We are to repent of our sin, we are to pray to God, we are to receive His Forgiveness, and then we are to know His Word and believe His Word and keep His Word.

Most of our denominations began because one or both sides of an argument refused to believe what God had said. Most of the arguments in our own denomination occur because one or both sides have refused to believe what God has said. And I have said it before and I will say it again: God, out of His Great Mercy, has given us His Word, in a language that most people can understand most of what is in it, and everyone can understand what is necessary for salvation and life. Yes, there are difficult passages, but most of them are not. "You shall not commit adultery." It doesn't take a PhD in Bible to figure out what that means. "You shall not lie." "No one comes to the Father except through Jesus." "Feed the poor." "Praise God in all things."

We are saved by Jesus Alone, but God has given us work to do and a way to live, and I am afraid that most of the Church has stuck her fingers in her ears and is saying, "la-la-la-la-la," while the Word of God is being preached. We cannot continue to dismiss the Word of God; we cannot continue to neglect the Word of God -- and the doing of it.

"Well, aren't we forgiven of all our sins?" Yes, Pharisee, but how? We are forgiven by Jesus Christ suffering the Wrath of God -- the whole eternity of Hell in a moment -- on a cross. The Psalmist tells us that "you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrong doings." God forgives us in Jesus, but the punishment for sin is still carried out. We cannot do whatever we want and have no consequences. Even if we "get away" with a sin, even if we think we did not suffer for some sin we committed while on earth, Jesus suffered horrifically. How can we continue to sin, unless we are sadists? Unless we enjoy Christ’s suffering, unless we wish we were there to say, "Whip Him again!" -- if we know we caused His Suffering -- that these sins now caused His Suffering...

Thomas Goodwin wrote, "The covenant that is made with us in Christ is not a covenant made with works, but with persons; and therefore, though the works be often hateful, yet he goes on to love the persons; and that he may continue to love them, destroys out of them what he hates, but cutteth not them off. A member that is leprous or ulcerous, a man loves it as it is 'his own flesh,' Eph. V. 29, though he loathes the corruption and putrefaction that is in it; and therefore he doth not presently cut it off, but purgeth it daily, lays plasters to it to eat the corruption out: whereas a wart or even a wen that grows on a man's body, a man gets it cut off, for he doth not reckon it as his flesh" (The Treasury of David, vol. 2, 230). How Great, how Awesome, how Merciful is our God; He is worthy of praise, is He not?

He is Worthy, because He is Holy. "So let us extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy."

Let us pray:
Almighty and Holy God, Sovereign King, we bow before You in awe of Your Holiness and Mercy. How is it that You have chosen us for Yourself? Why do You listen to Your foolish children? Why did You come to save us? Great is the Lord, worthy of praise. Holy God, receive our thanks. In Jesus' Name, Amen.