Wholly Holy (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. I just got a couple of good emails from people who listen to the show. They said they even listen on Tuesdays as well, in spite of. Not because of, in spite of. Well, you can always email us at info at nocompromiseradio .com, or if you want to send it directly to me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

We occasionally will do shows that the audience clamors for, requests, suggests, and we can be requisitioned through. It�s that time of year here in real time. This is around December 12th or so, and it�s fascinating to me that I�m getting all the onslaughts of �we need money�.

$2 .2 million to finish the year, $100 ,000 to finish the year. I just thought that�s a lot of no-cos. If our budget is about $20 ,000 a year or something like that for everything, that�s a lot of years.

Anyway, when I get those kind of emails, I just have a little shrug, I delete them, and I think to myself, �If the Lord has raised up a ministry to exalt his Son, then he will also provide the means. I guess the means are through asking people for money, but that�s not my style.

That�s not the no-cos style. Well, I was reading in Christianity Today, an old Christianity Today, 1998. Now I didn�t have the actual magazine paper printed, but I found it online, Christianity Today.

In the old days, they had lots of theological articles, conservative, evangelical. These days, not so much, but anyway, I will give them credit. They reported in 1998, January 12th, John W. Kennedy, in an article entitled �Bittersweet Cuban Memories� about this Cuban youth pastor who spent 22 years in nine different Cuban prisons.

He received 20 years hard labor for conspiring to assassinate Castro, that he was abetting the flight of counter-revolutionaries, and he gave opium to people, except the opium wasn�t real opium, it was Christianity.

Now he was tortured. He had psychological torture as well as physical. They gave him for cellmates rats, cockroaches, snakes, and lizards, according to this article by John W. Kennedy. Fascinatingly, the story goes on to say that he suffered food poisoning from eating maggot-ridden gruel.

They dunked him in an icy lake and he would lose consciousness. They whipped his legs with electrical cables. They shot him in the hand and the leg and the thigh with a gun. He, for whatever reason, could get a Bible smuggled in on occasion, and he received a 90-day sentence in a coffin-like box where he could barely move because he had a Bible.

When he had a hymnal and got caught with the hymnal, he had to stand in a shower-like stall for 42 days with water dripping on his head, and he was also dunked into a cesspool of rotting debris, and the story says putrid excrement for three hours.

Well, I forgot to tell you why this man, Noble Alexander, was in prison. Well, he was teaching the Bible in February 1962, and some KJB kind of agents came in. They're called G2, and they arrested him for his sermon.

What was his sermon about? Original sin. Isn't that amazing? Original sin. Not a very popular subject. Oh, the moral of the story? Not the real moral. The ending of the story is that he was released as a humanitarian gesture after he served his sentence when Jesse Jackson, all people, went down to Cuba to get him out.

Point of my story, sin isn't too popular. When you preach against sin, it might kill you. I just was reading Acts chapter 8 this morning, 7 and 8, with Stephen and Saul. We don't like the sound of sin.

We don't want to be realist and face up to our sin all too often, and it's not really a popular subject. It doesn't draw in audiences, at least it doesn't draw in unbelieving audiences or immature audiences.

We would rather call sin, I don't know, a disease, maybe an illness, maybe a syndrome. But to call sin, sin, a slap in the face of God, a spitting in the face of God, something so grievous that just one of these, that is sin, would cause us to be ever, forever banished from the presence of God.

When you talk about sin, it means you sin against someone, and that ultimate someone is the triune God. Now when David sinned, he sinned against the nation, he sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah, but the ultimate sin, Psalm 51 .4, against you, and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

And so when you think of sin today and how it's not preached like it ought to be preached, it's no wonder that we have a problem understanding the holiness of God. So today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about sin and holiness and how when you understand the holiness of God, then you really grasp sin.

When you grasp sin, then you really see in full light the glory of the holiness of God. And so how do you recover a view of holiness? How do you restore in your minds a holy God and his attribute called holiness?

And the answer is, you go to the Bible. So the Bible can inform you, the Bible can teach you, the Bible can get you to think right. Remember Cool Hand Luke? Gotta get him to think right. I always talk to my son Luke about that.

I didn't name Luke after Luke Skywalker, although when I was growing up, one of my friends, he named his kid that because of Luke Skywalker. I didn't name my son Luke because of Cool Hand Luke, although Luke Paul Newman was pretty cool in that show.

I named him Luke because it's a tough sounding name, masculine, one syllable. My son's a Gentile, and Gentile writer Luke in the Bible was the namesake, my son's namesake. So if you had to pick a passage that talked about the holiness of God, what passage would you pick?

And remember, it's going to help us as we understand sin, and then it eventually will drive us to what a great sin bearer we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. What passage would you go to for holiness? Now you might talk about the Garden of Eden and the angels and what happened, how they protect Adam and Eve from going back in.

You might talk about Isaiah chapter 6, which is probably the passage in all the Bible about the holiness of God. Isaiah sees the Lord Jesus Christ, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory.

You might go to the New Testament and see Jesus, you're the Holy One of God, remember the demon-possessed man said, the Holy One of God. And my Bible apps, by the way, when the demons talk, they kind of, they do something with the mixer.

The Holy One of God. I don't want to do demons talk that way, it's like some kind of Mr. Roboto or something. I'm the Holy One of God. When I was younger, my kids were little, we watched that Jesus movie a lot.

Remember the Jesus movie? This is going to be a digression, but it's my show. So what we thought we would do is here in West Boylston, where the church building is located, we thought, all right, what do we need to do?

Let's get one of those Jesus movies and give a VHS copy to every household here in West Boylston. I think there was like a thousand houses or something like that. It's a town of about 6 ,000 people. So let's put a tract in there.

I believe we used the stop track from Grace Community Church because the Jesus video is, it's not really evangelism by video, it in my mind was, this is our gift to our neighbors and the evangelism came in the form of the track that was found in there and also an invitation to our outreach concert where the gospel would be preached.

And so we've got these little bags. I think we put maybe a New Testament in there as well, and we went around the neighborhoods and knocked on the doors. And it was with the Jesus video. So there's my story with the Jesus video.

By the way, when someone wasn't home, you could just leave the bag on the door and four weeks to come after that event, I would come to the church building here, 307 Lancaster Street in West Boylston, Mass.

And on the door of the church building would be the bags returned. It was like a statement, stop it. We're Catholics, we don't want to know about Jesus. Maybe they were atheists, maybe they were Hindus, we're not sure, but 80 of the people around here say that they're Roman Catholic.

So I thought probably that was such a video that it wasn't denominational, it was just reflecting, I think, one of the gospels, maybe Luke or something like that. So the Jesus movie would have the demon possessed man, holy one of God.

See how many rabbit trails we can go on at once? And then finally get back to, if you want to talk about the holiness of God, if you'd like to go to a passage, maybe not the passage, but one of the key passages in the Bible that talks about holiness of God, I think the passage would be, you would say the passage that you think of regularly when you think of the holiness of God is, you would tell your children, kids, let's talk about the holiness of God today, the holy one of God, and let's open our Bibles to, see isn't this fun, isn't it fun?

Because I'm holding all the cards, I have all the answers here in the radio studio. It is Exodus chapter, you could say 19, but let's go to Exodus chapter three. Moses and the burning bush are the bush that doesn't burn.

What a great passage. Now, I'm in between books here on Sunday morning, and I just finished up Jonah, and we're going to get into Malachi soon. And so I'm just preaching some passages that I want to preach, that I like, that I want to go back and study.

And as I've studied Exodus chapter three this week, I've said to myself what I regularly say when I study the Bible. You know, I thought I knew what the text said and meant, I thought I understood it generally, but now that I've sat and looked at it for a week, contemplated it for, actually this has been two weeks, just looking at the nuances, seeing what's going on, it is wonderful.

It extols who God is, and it makes me see in God's plan of redemption, what's happening and why. And so when you want to recover the right doctrine of sin or holiness, what do you do? You go to the Bible.

And so today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to start a little mini-series. And this little mini-series is on Exodus chapter three. Now of course, if you think of micro and macro context in the context of the chapter within the book, within the entire Bible, that'd be the best way to go.

And so Exodus chapter one, even if you'll look at probably the ESV Bible liner notes there, Israel is growing in Egypt, Pharaoh oppresses. Those are the two statements that he gives. And then Exodus two, it says Moses is born.

And let me pick it up in Exodus chapter two, verse 11 and following before we get into chapter three, because that is what you do, okay? When you teach your kids the Bible, Exodus is a great book to start with, by the way.

And you read them Exodus one, you talk about who God is, why a Redeemer is necessary, how God deals with humans, you can ask a lot of different questions. And then the next time you get together, probably the next night and a couple nights, what we learn from Exodus chapter one, now let's read Exodus chapter two, and you just keep going.

So 2 .11 says, Exodus, one day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way, that, seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand.

When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion? He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.

And he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. Shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered the flock and watered their flock.

When they came home to their father, Reuel, he said, how is it that you have come home so soon today? They said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hands of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.

He said to his daughters, then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with a man and he gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah. She gave birth to a son and he called his name Gershom.

For he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. During those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groan because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.

God heard their groaning and God, okay, this is key here. No compromise radio listeners. This is key. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham. So you're thinking Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, right?

Genesis 21. He remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people. Here's the last verse of Exodus 2. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. And now we move into chapter three.

God's going to do something about this oppression. God has not forgotten his promises. We might think his promises are not going to be fulfilled in the middle of the trials and tribulations, but God is faithful and he will keep his promises.

In chapter three, God is going to get this deliverer's attention. Chapter three, we're looking at Exodus, the book of Exodus, Genesis, Exodus. I think they say in German, there's Moses one, Moses two, three, four, and five.

So if it'd be Deuteronomy, that's Moses five. I don't think it's alphabetical. I think it's numerical. So it'd be Moses B, I think it's Moses two. I don't know how they pronounce it either. It's probably got those two dots over the O.

What's that called, umlaut or something? Two dots. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led his flock to the west of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And so we've just picked up in chapter two, some background of Moses. And here, the writer is trying to tell us how Moses got there. Here's an explanation of how Moses kind of got isolated over here by Mount Horeb.

And Moses, the Egyptian prince, is now shepherding his father-in-law's flock of sheep and goats at this mountain called Horeb, which is really Mount Sinai. It's just a different name for Sinai. And Horeb means desert, isolation, desolation.

And there's lowly Moses. There's the shepherd Moses, no longer in the house of Pharaoh. And he's just doing what he's supposed to do, filling his matrimonial vows right back in chapter two. And so he's isolated, but it's been good for him.

It's been beneficial for Moses because for 40 years, he's, I'm sure, learned a lot about patience and what it means to shepherd sheep. And I would imagine for Moses, it's just another day at the office.

It's just another day working. And I would imagine he knew most of the rocks and the crannies and the nooks and where the good grass was for the sheep. And I think he's just going about his business. And yet now we're coming to this spot where it's the crux of Israel's history, a turning point for their history.

And who shows up? Chapter three, verse two. And the angel of the Lord, angel of Yahweh, appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And so here we have this appearing. Here we have this epiphany. Here we have Moses looking at something. And it is not a something, it's someone. It's the angel of the Lord in a something, in a bush. And when you study the messenger of Yahweh, literally angel means messenger, you're going to see that this is literally God himself.

It's not just any old angel. It's the particular message of God. And so when you think about this, even early on, and to see what happens when you start diving in the Bible, you can't go, yes, that's me turning my Bible pages.

You can't go too fast because you think, okay, a messenger of Yahweh, he's identified with God, but he's sent by God. And so quickly now, especially in light of the New Testament, in light of fuller Trinitarian revelation, it's not that hard to think, okay, someone's sent by another.

He is God, but he's sent by God. And so how does that work? If you listen to chapter 3, verse 4, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. And so this is God himself.

And when you see the angel of the Lord, you are going to notice that's going to be a theophany, Theogod, epiphany, appearing, God appearing, and most specifically, it's called the Christophany. This is the second person of the Trinity.

He is God, but he's sent from God to show up. And there's going to be the unfolding of Moses, what Moses is to do in light of what the second person of the Trinity says. This bush is on fire, but it doesn't burn up.

That's what the language is saying. And remember, in the context of Exodus so far, not a lot of supernatural stuff going on. Oh, the providential working of God with the midwives. But in terms of laws of nature suspended, something above nature, over nature, super naturally done, it's not happened.

And so here we have God showing up. He personally shows up to Moses, the older shepherd, and God is taking the initiative, and he's going to do something about Israel. Because remember, at the end of chapter 2, it says, and God knew.

He heard their groaning. He remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He saw the people of Israel, and God knew about their oppression. And here he shows up, the rescuer, the savior. God is going to do something because he keeps his word.

Now, I also know it's God, the angel of the Lord, because Jesus said in Mark chapter 12, verse 26, but regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And so God shows up, and he is manifesting his presence in the bush as fire. That's what the text says. Do you notice the text? In the flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush. That's where the Lord appeared to him.

So here's what we have to do. We're not going to get to the end of the passage today, obviously. But when you think of fire, what comes to your mind? Well, probably hot, probably Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, those kinds of stories.

But when you see the pattern in scripture, fire, you're going to notice the holy presence of God. And so listen to some of these verses. How does God represent himself earlier in Moses 1, Genesis chapter 15?

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. And so the presence of God, the holy presence of God is symbolized by this fire. When God wants to lead the Israelites through the wilderness, it says in Exodus chapter 13, later on in Exodus, and the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way.

And by night in a pillar of what? Fire to give them light that they may travel by day and by night. At Sinai in Exodus chapter 19, Sinai is wrapped in smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. We have the presence of God in the scriptures shown by fire.

And so my name is Mike Ebenroth, this is No Compromise Radio. We're working through Exodus chapter 3, kind of doing some, a little interpretation stuff, a little hermeneutic stuff, talking about sin and holiness, theophanies, christophanies.

Hasn't it been a fast 24 minutes? It has. So if you'd like to have all our archive shows, there are about 2 ,000 shows, you can just go to nocompromiseradio .com. You can access a lot of our shows through Worldview Weekend.

You can get the app, the Worldview Weekend app. There's TV shows, NoCoTV shows on the Worldview Weekend app as well, and we'll see you next time.

Mike Ebenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.