2023 BBC Bible Conference - The Fount Of All Joy Session Five "The Holiness of God" with Pastor Steve Meister

And I'm grateful for the time to think about the being and character of God and His attributes. That's what we did, if you weren't with us on Friday and yesterday. But what I want to do today, and even in the expositions this morning and then this evening, is continue looking at the attributes of God, but focusing now on holiness, love, and justice today.

We already looked at what's sometimes called God's metaphysical attributes, or attributes of being. We've talked about His aseity and simplicity, His immutability. But I want us to look in the Scriptures, and if you have your Bible, if you would turn with me to the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 6 and the Holiness of God

Isaiah chapter 6. And I want us to think about holiness. And as it's a Sunday School dynamic, hopefully I can pause here and there, and we can interact or get your comments and feedback. But I want to think about, from Isaiah 6, a familiar passage, and broaden our understanding, even in view of what we've considered thus far this weekend, about the holiness of God.

Let me read for us Isaiah's vision, just the first few verses here of Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah 6 -1, it is written, 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 had six wings, with two He covered His face, and with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of His glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him who called. And the house was filled with smoke. 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. 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 atoned for. As far as the reading of God's word, we can stop there. For many Christians, when we think about the holiness of God, it's become tragically common.

I ran into a Christian coffee shop one time that named itself Holy Grounds. We use it, we'll say things that someone's holier than thou, they're too severe or strict. But in Scripture, God takes the description of holy far more than any other in His word.

In the Hebrew Old Testament, before you could bold and italicize words like we do on our computers, emphasis was expressed by repetition. So, for example, in Genesis 2 .17, when the Lord warns Adam that he will die in the garden, it's, you will surely die.

The Hebrew there is literally, dying you will die, which means emphatically, you will die, without question. But there's only in Scripture one triad. There's only one three-fold repetition for emphasis, and it's right here in Isaiah 6, verse 3, called the tri-sagion, that God is holy, holy, holy.

That means emphatically, entirely, absolutely, God is holy. And this emphasis of the holiness of God, to be clear, wasn't altered at all in the fulfillment of the New Covenant of our Lord Jesus. You remember the first petition, what He taught us to pray in Matthew 6, verse 9, Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Now, the word hallowed is just biblish for, may Your name be regarded as holy, be set apart. So our first petition in prayer, which really represents in the Lord's instruction to be our main ambition in life, is that God would be regarded as holy, and that His holiness would be exalted on earth.

Around His exalted throne, God is proclaimed as holy, holy, holy. And our ambition in life is to be, our main aim is that God's holiness would be regarded. Yet the late R .C. Sproul said, the failure of modern Christianity is the failure to understand the holiness of God.

But we can't fail here. We can't misunderstand God's holiness. And so what I want to do is just basically ask two simple questions that have some fairly profound answers, I think, from Scripture. We want to talk about what is God's holiness, and what does it mean.

So that's all I want to do this morning, very simple. Think about the holiness of God, and then think about the implications when we understand it according to its biblical parameters. And so as we think about what is the holiness of God, I want to skip a stone across the Bible and think about how the Bible describes holiness, and then try a definition, and see if we can locate ourselves into defining holiness.

And then we can probably pause here for some questions, and then we'll move on to the implications. But let's think about the Bible's description of holy. I've already said, what first comes to your mind when you hear the word holy?

Often it's moral strictness, or even better, purity or righteousness, that God can't do any evil or any wrong. And that's, of course, absolutely true. But it's not complete, and in fact, it's not even what's most basic to holiness.

God's holiness is fundamental to His very being. So, for example, the late J .I. Packer said this, His holiness signifies everything about God that sets Him apart from us. That's key. He goes on to say, it's the godness of God.

So if you remember our discussion yesterday from Exodus 3 about God's aseity and simplicity, holiness is embracing of those concepts, we would say. That holiness is not just God's moral purity, it's His independence, His irreducibility, His set-apartness.

We see this throughout the Bible. So, Revelation 15, the saints who conquered, they sang and praised God in His final judgment in verse 4, and we read this, Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name?

For You alone are holy. So in heaven, God is glorified in all His work because He alone is holy. He uniquely reigns. He judges over all. And the praise of the church there in Revelation 15 was typified in the Old Testament in Exodus 15, and the song of Moses after Israel triumphed over Egypt, and in Exodus 15, verse 3, we read this, excuse me, verse 11, Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like You? Majestic in holiness. So God is exalted and set-apart. He's distinct from any other power or person, whether that's Pharaoh or any other false god. Who is like Him? And, of course, the answer to that rhetorical question is, No one.

Because You alone are holy. If you're familiar with Isaiah's prophecy, as we've just read, this will course through his prophecy, especially in chapters 40 to 48. One example, in chapter 40, verse 25 of Isaiah, God says, To whom then will you compare Me that I should be like Him? Says the Holy One.

No one is like God because God alone is holy. God is without comparison or class. And remember, yesterday, if you were here, we talked about that as God's aseity, His independence, He's of Himself. Ase just means of Himself.

He's uncaused. He's His own reason for being. And He takes as His name the Holy One. And He does that throughout Scripture. God takes holiness as His name. You remember Mary's Magnificat in Luke chapter 1, verse 49, Mary says, He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.

So, God's unique creative power in the virginal conception of our Lord, He identifies Him as holy, and you can justly call Him the Holy One. Now, this helps us, just as brief touch points, helps us understand that the most basic concept behind the word holiness is something even more basic than purity.

In fact, it explains purity. It's set-apartness. In fact, holy, woodenly translated, is cut off, to be cut off, to be set apart, to be distinct. So that's the main idea you want in your minds. As we think of holy, we want to think of separate, set apart, distinct, cut off.

That's when holiness is emphasized, and even God does that when He manifests His special presence. We spent time, if you were with us yesterday, thinking about Exodus 3 and how the Lord revealed Himself to Moses as He called him to be the new mediator and leader of God's people.

Remember that the Lord showed up in Exodus 3, in verse 2, in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, burning, yet it was not consumed. So this fire was not sparked by creation. This fire was not fueled and sustained by the bush.

It couldn't be touched or grasped or contained by Moses. And you remember what God told Him in verse 5, Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy.

That's holy ground, that's exactly right. So God's presence was depicted by inaccessible, independent fire set apart from His creation, and that signified His holiness, His distinctionness, His cut-offness, His set-apartness.

And then when God goes on and Moses asks for His name and God says, I am who I am, which talks about His independence, His irreducibility, His incomprehensibility, all that distinguishes God from the creation.

We call that the creator-creation distinction. He is not a part of His creation, He's not subject to change, He has not been caused, He's not made up of parts, He is set-apart and distinct. In other words, in a word, we just call that holiness.

God is holy. To say God is holy means He has no peers. He's in a class all His own, He's in no class. He's self-existent, not caused. He's not dependent on another. So holiness is not just God's moral purity, it's His distinct being as the creator and as God.

And we see this even here in Isaiah 6, we just read, with the song of the seraphs in verse 3. One called to another and says, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, and the whole earth is full of His glory.

Notice verse 2, these seraphs, these angels, are each depicted with six wings. They have a pear covering their face and a pear covering their feet. Now beloved, remember, these are unfallen, morally pure angels.

They have no taint of sin. Unlike you and I, they have no moral culpability or guilt. They've never sinned, they're sinless. And yet, God's transcendent and exalted distinction from all creation, including angels, means that even pure, sinless angels must cover their faces.

Because even they are not fit to see God. Even they are not fit to tread upon the holiest realm, because God alone, three times, is holy. Even set apart from angels, morally pure angels, because they're creatures and He is the creator.

So holiness is far more than God's moral purity. It is embracing of His entire distinction from all that He has made. Angels sing this around the throne for eternity. In John's vision, in Revelation 4 verse 8, we are told that day and night, they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

Because He is, He is holy. Because He is the creator, He is holy, set apart, distinct. That reminds us that the distance between us and God, according to holiness, is not one of degree, but of kind. If you remember, and we looked at John Owen's wonderful illustration about worms and angels yesterday, remember how Owen remarked that angels and worms have more in common than us and God.

Because angels and worms are both created. And even though they are maybe on opposite ends of the incredible spectrum of creation, they are created nonetheless. God alone is the holy creator. So, for God to be holy, it means not just that He's pure, but He's peerless.

He's not just impeccable, He's incomparable. He's not just moral, He's majestic and exalted as God. So to say God is holy is to say God is God. And that's how scripture describes it in just our brief survey here.

Let's think about how we would define it and we'll pull some friends in. One of our friends from the 17th century, Edward Lay, good guy, wrote some helpful things. He said this about holiness. The incommunicable eminence of the divine majesty, exalted above all, divided from all.

So God's holiness is His division, His exaltation, His eminence. Our Dutch friend, Wilhelmus Abrakel, he said this,. The holiness is the pure essence of the character of God. Listen, the Lord is holiness itself.

We understand that. God's simplicity, He is. It's not something He has, it's who He is. Or Thomas Boston, the Puritan, he said this,. Holiness is the essential glory of the divine nature. It's God's exalted majesty.

Now that's very biblical. Look at verse 3 again of Isaiah 6 and how interwoven glory and holiness is. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. God's glory is the manifestation of His holiness.

It's the exaltation and communication of His exalted distinction as creator. And if you pay attention to that parallel, glory and holiness, you will find it actually all over the Bible. In Leviticus chapter 10, verse 3, Nadab and Abihu are struck dead because they disregarded God's instructions for worship.

And then God says this to Aaron in Leviticus 10, verse 3, Among those who are near me, I will be sanctified. That is, treated as holy. And before all the people, I will be glorified. What does it mean for God to be glorified?

Well, it's for His holiness to be regarded. His godness, His set-apartness, His distinction as the only creator to be exalted, to be manifested. To glorify God is to regard and exalt His holiness. That's why our first partition in the Lord's Prayer, as the Lord taught in Matthew 6, Hallowed be your name.

God, may you be glorified as God on earth as you are in heaven. May you be properly set-apart on earth, in our life, and in our world. So when God seeks His glory, He exalts His holiness. That means He regards Himself.

And when something is set-apart as holy, it is set-apart to God. So that's what we mean by holiness. So holiness, as we kind of come to a definition, is God's devotion to His own greatness. That's how we would basically define it.

God's holiness is His perfect devotion to His own greatness. God's devotion to His godness. One theologian put it like this. He said, God's holiness is sacred self-regard. That's really good. Probably one of the better, succinct definitions I've come across.

God's holiness is His sacred self-regard. God's regard for Himself as God. Glorifying and setting Himself apart from all that He has made. So, God is holy in His perfect devotion to Himself. Therefore, that must mean that we are holy, and that holiness in creation is in as far as we are conformed to devotion to God.

In His incomparable greatness and His impeccable purity. To be holy, then, among God's creation is to be set-apart and devoted to God. That's what holiness means. Let me pause there with that survey and just try to come to a definition.

I want to tease out some implications here in just a moment. But, lose anybody? Questions? I had an old college professor who used to wrap his rings on the table with his glasses like this and go, Rejoinders!

Rebuttals! And he would just invite you to argue with him. So, Rejoinders! Rebuttals! Excellent question. And what you're touching on is the distinction we make in the attributes of God between absolute attributes, who He is, and relative attributes, God, who He is, in relation to what is not God, what He's made.

So, your question, was God holy before He made anything? What would you venture to guess? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's His Godness. It's His independence. Yes. So, yes. However, there are implications for that in terms of holiness has to do with, also, there are relative implications with God's exaltation for and by His creation.

But, yes, God's holiness is something that's absolute and basic to Him. Yeah. Great question. Oh, I thought I saw a hand. Sorry.

Yes, sir. Jonathan. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent question. So, when we understand, and we see the interweaving of glory and holiness, and it's been said, I'll probably butcher the quote, that God's glory, God's holiness is His glory concealed, and the manifestation of His holiness is His glory revealed, something to that effect, that when we talk about glorifying God, it's His greatness as God, His distinct set-apartness as God that's being manifested.

So, when we say that we are called to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, or we're called to do whatever you do, do for the glory of God, that is a regard for and an exaltation of the uniqueness of God as the Creator, Redeemer, and all that He says of Himself in Scripture and His uniqueness and His set-apartness.

It is, most basically, it's being devoted to God. So, when we talk about whatever you do in word or deed in Scripture, do everything for the glory of God, we're talking about having regard for, consciousness of, and, of course, obedience to, and we'll talk a little bit about that, about God and His holiness, His greatness, His distinction and uniqueness as God.

Yeah, sure. All right, let's think about some of the implications here and tease this out. Now that we have maybe an idea of what holiness means, God's sacred self-regard, God's devotion to Himself, our devotion to Him, let's consider what it means for us, and I want to just hit on four implications.

I want to think through God's law, salvation in Christ, sanctification in God's work there, and then also let's think about our comfort in the holiness of God, which you might at first go, wait, we're comforted by God's holiness?

Yes, absolutely we should be. We'll talk about that. Let's think about God's moral standard and His law. When we talk about holiness or God's holy law, it's important to remember we're not talking about a standard outside of God to which He submits.

We'll think about this this evening, we think about justice. There's nothing before God or prior to Him to which He submits or which He's composed of. He's just God. And so whatever we call morality or holiness or righteousness or justice, that's the expression of God's character.

God is the standard. He is righteousness. He is justice. He is purity. So that means if God's holiness is His sacred self-regard, then anything holy is to be devoted to God. It's regarded to God. And this is in essence how we are to understand the moral law of God.

God's moral law is what it means to be devoted to God. Stephen Sharnock, the Puritan, said this, God's law is the image of God's holiness, a transcript of His righteousness, the overflow of His goodness.

Now that's why we never oppose obedience to the moral law as the guide for the Christian life and devotion to God. And sometimes you'll hear that amongst Christians, well, I'm not concerned about God's rules, I just want to be devoted to God.

That's a nonsensical antithesis. It is to be devoted to God. It is the expression of God's holiness to us as His creatures. That's why for centuries, Christians taught their kids the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.

Because the moral law of God is the guide in the Christian life of devotion to God. So when God says, Be holy, for I am holy, He means be devoted to me as I created you to be, and this is what that looks like as my creatures in life.

And this is why, as we move from the third use to the first use, if you're familiar with those categories, this is why we are all guilty before God by His law regardless of the difference of our conduct.

The guy who's incarcerated for some heinous crime and the guy who's a good citizen beloved by the neighbors on his street are both condemned under God's law because regardless of the distinction in their conduct, neither of them has been personally, perfectly, or perpetually devoted to God, done all things for His glory, lived up to the height of His law.

And this is what we see here as we understand even the position of Isaiah's call here in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah's call to the prophetic ministry happens in chapter 6, not in chapter 1. That's pretty unique.

Most prophets in their vision, which is accounting for why we should take their word as God's word, they put it at the front. Ezekiel's call is three chapters, Ezekiel 1 -3, Jeremiah's call is in Jeremiah 1, but Isaiah here, he begins his prophecy with five chapters that describe Israel's unbelief and idolatry and oppression.

And if you just look with me at chapter 5, there's a litany of woes. So in chapter 5, verse 8, woe to those who join house to house, that is those who oppress and take real estate, take land from others.

Verse 11, woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after strong drink, drunkards. Verse 18, woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood and liars. Verse 20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil.

Verse 21, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. Verse 22, woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and strong drink, the drunkards again. And then in verse 26, we see that judgment is coming as God has pronounced these woes upon his people.

There's six woes. Now in Hebrew accounting, six is something of a cliffhanger. It's like a song ending on the wrong note because seven is the number of completion according to creation. So we have six, it's sort of an incomplete rehearsal of lament and judgment upon Israel until we get to Isaiah chapter six, verse five.

We find our seventh woe, and whose is it? Isaiah. Woe is me. However, Isaiah compared with others when he had seen the Lord and him alone who is exalted as holy, Isaiah had to confess his own sin. And in view of God's holiness, Isaiah saw who he really was, even if he was not really like everyone else in Israel, before the holiness of God, he was still a failure and had not been personally devoted to God perfectly.

And he says in verse five, what does he refer to? He refers to his unclean lips. Now that's not just his speech, we shouldn't think Isaiah just had like a cursing problem or something, maybe he did, but it's referenced to his entire life because out of the overflow of your mouth, the heart speaks.

So it's an embracing of all that you are. And this is why we're all condemned as sinners regardless of the degree or kind of sin. Sin is a failure to be devoted to the one in whom we live and move and have our being, that we were created to live for and to delight in and to exist for.

And it's deserving of an eternal judgment because it's an infinite offense. So we see here God's holiness, his sacred self-regard is the explanation for the seriousness of his moral law, both as a guide for us if we're in Christ, but even more basically, as what condemns everyone as sinners, as God says.

Holiness, Love, and Salvation in Christ

But secondly, let's think about holiness in our salvation. God's holiness in salvation. Can you think about holiness and his love? The answer is unequivocally yes. We never separate the love and holiness of God.

Ever. And we also don't want to think or say things like, well, we want to balance love and holiness. That's what God does. God balances love and holiness. We know if we've thought about simplicity yesterday, we know, well, that's not thinking rightly because attributes are what we attribute to the perfect divine being.

God is his attributes. They're not parts of God. So it's not like God has a holy side and a loving side and sometimes, depending on what day you catch him at, you get the right side. No, he is love and he is holiness.

He's not divided. And the good news, beloved, is that God's love is holy. That's good news. If holiness is God's sacred self-regard, it's not only that in judgment, it's also that in his act of salvation.

Consider Hosea chapter 11. Hosea is the first minor prophet. Let me read for us verses 8 and 9 of Hosea chapter 11. God says to Israel, How can I give you up, O Ephraim? That's his nickname for Israel.

How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adam and how can I treat you like Zeboim? Adam and Zeboim were two of the five cities of the valley that were also destroyed under Sodom and Gomorrah.

So God's basically saying, Israel deserves to be utterly destroyed, just like those wicked cities. But God is asking, How can I do that? He goes on in Hosea 11 verse 8, My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. Think about that. I am holy, so I will not come in wrath.

What would a man do in the face of repeated, inexcusable, incomprehensible infidelities like Israel? What God portrays in the prophet Hosea as gross adultery and infidelity. A man, verse 9, he would execute his burning anger.

He'd be done. He'd rescind his promises. His beloved doesn't deserve them. The human thing to do would be to allow one's anger to override everything else and cut off all relationship. What does God say?

I am God and not a man. I am. He's referring to His divine name. And He is the Holy One in the midst of His people. Notice, it is God's holiness that turns Him, that He accounts for here, towards sparing His people so that, He'll go on to say in verse 11, they will come forth in a new exodus out of the nations, referring to the second exodus fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ in His redeeming work.

What we see here in Hosea 11 is that God's love prevails over His anger. His anger is for a moment, Psalm 36, His favor for a lifetime. God's love is the goodness of His holiness upon the unlovable. We'll see that this morning in Malachi.

God's love is set apart and distinct and wholly unique. It's holy. It's good news that God is holy because it means His love is holy too. And it's peerless and incomparable to anything else on creation.

Praise God that God is without passions or we'd be without hope. If God was a God of passions, His burning anger would destroy, have destroyed everything by now. But we have here a love of a radical difference for which there is no human category.

This is why the church historically has called God's judgment His strange work while calling His grace His proper work. This is love, as Paul writes in Ephesians 3 .19, that surpasses knowledge. It's not motivated or conditioned by His people's goodness.

So what we see here, if God was not wholly other, if God was not wholly, wholly, wholly, then He would not be the God who is love, as He declares. So God's not only peerless in justice, God is peerless in love.

He is holy, so He loves. He loves His people to whom He's committed in His promise of grace because He is holy. God's holiness is an assurance to us, reminds us of the incomparability of His love. And we see that here in Isaiah 6, God's holiness in dealing with Isaiah's sin.

Isaiah says he's in the midst of a people that also have unclean lips. Isaiah's not blaming others here. He's not saying, well, of course I'm unclean because so is everyone else. He's pointing out his lack of resources, his desperation.

That is, I'm unclean and everyone I know is unclean. There's no one around who can help me with my uncleanness. Can we find any therapist or anyone to help us who's not in some way afflicted with the same maladies?

No. Is anyone not ruined like us? No. In humanity, there are no resources in and of ourselves. If help is to come, it must come outside of our cursed creation. And so Isaiah then, in the midst of entirely being taken apart, a seraph in verse 6 flies to Isaiah with a coal from the altar.

Now that's the bronze altar where the sacrifice was consumed. The sacrifice on the altar was a death suffered in substitution for sinners. A substitute so that they could enter the presence of God without themselves being consumed and dying like they deserve in judgment.

And so with this coal, as the coal is brought to Isaiah, the coal is not ceremonially waving Isaiah's sin away. The coal is not burning his lips so that by his pain he atones for his sin. Neither of those can be true.

The coal comes from God's throne as a promise. And so the angel brought the fire of a sacrifice on behalf of sin to Isaiah as if to say, it's yours. That sacrifice is for you. And so in verse 7, it touched his mouth.

It's his lips, his guilt, his sin. It's done. This has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away. Your sin is atoned for. The God who is holy, holy, holy on his own initiative in his own love deals with his people's sin.

Unmotivated by, unconditioned by, unprompted by any goodness in his people. God deals with his people's sin. Holiness means that salvation is of the Lord. The cross of the Lord Jesus is an expression of the holiness of God.

The uniqueness and the sacred self-regard of God. Not only that in the cross our sin is judged by the substitute appointed the Lord Jesus, but that his commitment for the Son to endure our judgment in eternity past demonstrates the unwavering love of God.

He alone is holy. Dear Christian, how do you know that if you confess your sin, God is faithful to forgive and to cleanse you tonight, tomorrow, ten years from now, twenty years from now, how do you know that God still will be faithful to cleanse and forgive your sins in Christ?

Because he is holy. He is holy, holy, holy unlike any other. And so he's committed in the eternal love and work of his grace in Christ. God's holiness is shown in his wonderful saving work. Thirdly, let's think about sanctification briefly.

Far too many Christians in my experience pastorally think of sanctification a little different, not much different than the world thinks of just be the best version of you. You've heard that? A little moral improvement.

But if holiness is God's devotion to himself, his sacred self-regard, then what must be our conformity and holiness what must that outcome of that be? Growing regard for God. God making us more devoted to God like himself.

So we see that God's work in our life and sanctification is way bigger than dealing with the problems that bother us the most. I'm assuming you're like the Christians I pastor on the other side of the country, and when often when you want to talk to an older brother or see your pastor and want to talk about issues in your sin, it's usually the consequences of our sin that brings us to seek help.

It's the porn problem that's defiling our conscience. It's the anger that's disturbing our marriage. But the issue here that I want us to get is that those are just the sins that bother us. So sometimes I'll say that and sit down with somebody we want to talk about we've got this issue we want to deal with this okay, let's hear it out let's hear all that's going on now.

That's just the sin that bothers you. Do you want to talk about the rest too? We've got to talk about everything. Because God's holiness and therefore it's his regard to himself so that our growing in holiness is not just God working and dealing with the sins that bother us and that bring consequences to our lives.

It's dealing with everything that has to do with regards to God that's brought into conformity and devotion to him. So we're not just called for example to grow in holiness is not just stopping sinful acts actively we're called to love.

Why are we to love our enemies? To do good, to be kind and show mercy? Because that's holy. Jesus says in Luke 6 verse 35 and 36 that he is kind your father is merciful kindness, love and mercy is to be holy as he is holy.

Or think of what the Lord Jesus says the second great commandment in Leviticus 19 verse 18 you shall love your neighbor as yourself but do you know what comes after that? I am the Lord. Why do we love our neighbors as ourselves?

Because he is who he is and that's what it means to be devoted to him is to regard with love everything everyone else made in his image. You see, we never escape any relationship to God because he's related to all things as a creator.

So that means that our growth and sanctification by the grace of God is far broader and bigger than we often assume. And just dealing with the things that bother us it has to do with our growth and devotion to God himself.

And that means that worship and communion and devotion to God are far more integral in God's sanctifying work in our lives than we often assume. We often imagine. That's why God's command for worship to adore him and his sanctifying work are concurrent.

God is working in our life as we worship him as we adore him as we behold the greatness of God as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3 .18 we're being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Finally, let's think about comfort from God.

I want to end with thinking about how God's holiness is our comfort. Just think of Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2, verse 2. There is none holy like the Lord. That's what we've seen. Unique, set apart. She goes on.

For there is none besides you. There is no rock like our God. It is the fact that our God is incomparably and singularly independent of all creation that we can rely on him alone as our rock. God is totally dependable in grace and mercy.

He does not change like every created thing changes. He is everywhere and not bound like creation is bound. So he is totally dependable. And we might say there is no pillow as soft as the rock that is our God.

And we are assured that this is true because God is holy. In the distresses of life it ought to be a comfort to us that God is holy. Because it means he's always there. We can seek him. There is none like him.