The Holiness of God (03/10/2002)

Bible of the different major doctrines of the Bible, not so much from a doctrinal point of

view, but from a practical point of view.

And if you remember, we started with the Word of God, and we had

proceeded to the place where we were talking about God himself, or we might call it the character of

God, and we just got started into that, and then we went in a different direction for a while.

I'm going to return to that study this morning.

We had talked about the personality of God, or the fact that God is a personal God, and if

you remember, there are three things that theologians look at to

define what a person is.

Now, theologians are interesting creatures.

They have to define everything.

So most of you know what a person is, but they have to define what a person is.

And so usually, the consensus of everything I've read comes up with three points to that

definition.

And first is that to be a person, you have to have intellect, and that may leave some of us in the room out, I

guess.

It doesn't have to be a lot of intellect, but you have to have some intellect.

When you're studying theology where you're talking about the Lord himself,

usually you substitute the term omniscience for intellect, but it falls in the same

category.

It's just that God's intellect is omni, which means it's all -encompassing.

There's not anything that he doesn't know, and he never had to think it up to know it.

So let's just call it the omniscience of God, but the fact that God has intellect is part of the

proving of the fact that God is a person.

He is not just some impersonal energy force out there who started everything in motion.

He's certainly not like what, I guess it was, what magazine was it, Life?

Which one was it that was the oversized magazine back in the 60s?

Life magazine came out on the front cover back in the 60s, God is Dead.

And the whole theory of the intellectuals in the 60s, one of the reasons we have found ourselves in the place we are today

as society worldwide is because of what was started in the 60s, the popularity of these

movements.

But their theory was that God was some impersonal energy force who started everything in motion, and then

he just simply kind of went like this, and he just looks at what's going on, but he takes no personal interest in

it anymore.

He's just flung it out there, and he's just watching to see what'll happen.

Now, unfortunately, a lot of our modern theology has gone in that direction, and it has seeped into even a lot of the Baptist

churches, all types of churches all over the world.

I call it Arminianism, but it is the concept or philosophy that man is in control

and that God simply, if he does anything, he responds to what man does.

And that has never been taught in the churches.

If you go back as recently as 75 years ago, you wouldn't find that theory in any of the churches of

God, but now we find it in almost every pulpit across the nation and around the world today.

And maybe it found its roots in that Life Magazine article, who knows?

But God is not an impersonal energy force.

God is a person.

Now, when we think of persons, our definition of a person, we look at ourselves, excuse

me, and our friends, and so it does give us the wrong impression of the personhood of God

because he is not bound by any of the things that we as people are bound by.

But that's why on this intellect part, we don't use the word intellect with God, we use the word omniscience.

It simply means all -knowing.

The second category of proof that something is a person, we call it sensibility.

Sensibility is simply the word for higher forms of feelings and emotions,

such as love or even hate, or such as the concept of goodness.

So when we say God is good, we're speaking of the fact that he has sensibility, he has feeling, he has

emotion.

That's part of personhood.

And the third category, we'll just call that will.

In order to be a person, you have to have a will.

You have to have the ability to determine to do something and then to carry it out.

And so God certainly has this.

In fact, God's will is that which puts into effect all that God has designed.

And God is, in fact, a sovereign God.

That is the opposite philosophy to Arminianism, the philosophy that God is sovereign,

which we stand strongly on that in our local church here.

All of us believe very strongly in the fact that it is God who is in control, not man.

Thank his goodness for that.

Well, we began our study earlier, several months ago, and we covered the omniscience of God.

So that's point one, under intellect.

We talked about that God is omniscient, he is all -knowing.

And even in some of the recent sermons that really weren't along these topical lines, we have studied in the

holy place, in the wilderness tabernacle, as well as later on in the temple, you had the candlestick

that was over on the left -hand side as you walk into the holy place that the children of Israel had.

And they were exhorted or commanded, actually, by God to keep the lights on the

candlestick lit all the time, never to let them go out.

Because the lights on that candlestick literally pictured the fact that God is

always with us.

It also pictures he is all -knowing and he is eternal.

All of that was pictured in the little lamp stand.

So we've kind of hit on that a little bit even in recent days.

So we're going to move beyond the study of the omniscience of God, and we're going to move into the second category this morning, the

sensibility of God.

Remember, there are three, omniscience, sensibility, which means feelings, emotions, and number three,

will.

We'll get to the will part later, the will of God later.

Today, we'll start on sensibility.

Now, there are several subdivisions under the sensibility of God.

Let me just tell you what they are.

We're only going to cover one this morning.

But under this category, we would talk about the holiness of God.

Then we would talk about the justice of God.

Then we would talk about the love of God.

Then we would discuss the goodness of God.

And then fifthly, we would discuss that God is truth.

And there are probably other categories we could study under sensibility, but those are the ones we'll study in this time

that we have.

So this morning, now you kind of have a little roadmap of where we've been and where we're headed.

So let me get into the message this morning.

We're going to talk about the holiness of God.

It is a subject that is not popular today in the church.

In fact, it's not really popular to talk about God that much in the church other than as his role as a

genie in a bottle that we can rub and get what we want when we need it.

That is the modern philosophy in a bottle right there is that prayer is

all about getting from God what you want.

And that Bible study is all about finding out how God can make us have successful marriages, be

successful at child rearing, be successful in business, and that God's written all this for our success and so

forth.

That's predominantly the modern preaching.

Go back 75 years and walk into a church and what you'll hear is you'll hear a pastor preaching on God

himself.

You'll hear him discussing who God is from the scriptures.

You'll hear him discussing what is God like from the scriptures.

You'll have him discussing what is God's will from the scriptures.

What are the desires of God's heart from the scriptures?

God, that's what it's all about.

And I believe I found several years ago in my ministry that if we would focus on the Lord himself

in our services together and preach sermons that predominantly have to do with God, my children

laugh at me sometimes and say, where are you going to preach on this Sunday?

And I'll say, Jesus, that's a pretty good answer for most sermons.

But if we would focus on the Lord, the other things happen as wonderful

byproducts.

It is true that God will hear your prayers and answer prayers.

It is true that there are specific passages in the Bible that will tell you how to be

successful in your life.

It's there.

I mean, I like to say this is one things about this Bible is it's like an owner's manual for a human.

So it is all here.

But I believe that we get the emphasis in the wrong place when we emphasize man, we should

emphasize our Lord.

So as we come to the Lord and we think of him, probably it's appropriate that the first thing we should discuss is his holiness.

It's not easy for us to think about the holiness of God because God has made our brains in such a way

that most of the things we learn, we learn by comparison and contrast.

The fortunate thing is, I suppose we can use contrast quite a bit to try to understand

God's holiness because we can think of what we're like and he is the opposite.

We can think about our frailties and our weaknesses and his holiness is absolutely

opposite of that.

But it's a little bit difficult to get a grip on the holiness of God because we tend

to personify God and bring him to our level and think of him as we are.

We use the fact in Genesis where it says God created us in in his image.

We turn that around and we try to figure God out by looking at us.

We say, well, if we're in his image, if I can figure myself out, I've got God figured out.

Doesn't work that way.

It's bad logic.

It doesn't work that way.

We tend to do that.

So we try to think of God.

We say holiness.

Well, that's kind of like me when I'm having a good day and I'm not doing anything wrong.

Well, you can't get a grip on God's holiness by thinking of yourself on your best day because

the Lord says even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in comparison to God.

So all I know to do as your pastor today is to get into scriptures with you.

And to see what the word itself says about the holiness of God and just hope that God will teach us

as we read through the scriptures together.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing that I can add as a man to anything the scripture says in

dealing with God's holiness.

I can only understand God's holiness to the extent that he's revealed it to you and to me in this book.

Because it's totally incomprehensible.

Unless you're like John and have been there and had a look or like I believe the

apostle Paul got that opportunity as well.

We just have very little clue.

Isn't it wonderful, though, that those men took a look and wrote some things for us?

So we do have that and we have God's Holy Spirit within our hearts to teach us this morning.

Let's pray.

Father, we ask that you would reveal yourself today to us in ways we haven't seen you before.

Reveal to us today a glimpse of your holiness.

I know, Father, that if you do that, you will also place within our hearts a certain fear

that we might not have had when we came in the building this morning, a healthy fear of an awesome God.

But Father, still, we ask for a glimpse of your holiness and we ask it for Jesus' sake and in his

precious name.

Amen.

Turn to Exodus chapter three and verse one.

I'm going to show you the absolute first place that this concept is discussed.

In the Bible, the best I could find, and I want you to see the

context that God introduces the idea of his holiness in.

So Exodus chapter three, verse one, follow along with me.

I'm going to read through about verse 14.

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father -in -law, the priest of Midian,

and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even

to Horeb.

Now, do you think that Moses knew this was the mountain of God yet, or is this just information for us,

historical information?

I don't believe Moses necessarily knew this yet, but he's going to find out about it today in this

passage.

One thing that would help a lot of the gentlemen in the room today is this.

When Moses was a young man, he felt that God had called him to lead the people

of Israel out of bondage, and as a young man, he attempted to

do this once, and he failed miserably because it wasn't God's timing.

God knew in his omniscience that Moses was not prepared yet for the task.

Moses had the zeal of a young man, but he didn't have the knowledge that he needed from God.

And so I suppose for the next 50 years of this man's life, this

brilliant man who had been schooled at the hands of the best universities in Egypt of that

day, mathematics, science, philosophy,

languages, he goes out into the desert having

failed, and I'm sure somewhat distraught like those of us men who have attempted

things in our lives that didn't quite work out like we thought, and we went through a time perhaps of depression, a time where we were

down.

Well, he goes out for some 50 years into the wilderness and tends sheep.

How many of you like to do that?

Some of us probably like to do that.

But do you think that he felt fulfilled out there?

Do you think that as a man, he felt this is what God had called him to do?

And I see Sarah back there laughing because that's what her husband's doing, tending sheep.

You're not quite as old as Moses yet, so you never know what can happen when you're out here tending the sheep.

My point for us gentlemen is this, sometimes,

especially in our society, we think that God's time for us is when we're in our 20s, and that if we pass that and we

haven't done that great thing for God in our mind, that we've failed and God's not going to use us.

If Moses had taken that view, we wouldn't have any scriptures right now.

We would have certainly no nation of Israel right now.

Of course, all that's impossible because it was God's plan, but Moses simply couldn't take that view.

He was out there 50 years with sheep until this day.

Now, God had done some equipping that we don't know about, I'm sure, but as we come up to this place, we see

the final end of the equipping time and the beginning of the journey,

the beginning of the journey of Moses, great thing in life that God called him to do, and

yet he's already a much older man.

So, gentlemen, don't ever think that God is finished with you.

He is merely in the midst of preparing you and equipping you for a great work, for the whole

purpose of your being, the reason he brought you into existence and called you from your mother's womb

to be a servant someday.

You didn't know that at the time, but God did.

It's all about equipping, even the things we think are bad that happen in our lives, all about equipping.

Now, let's go on and see this man that's been out here in the desert all this time, since the time that he perhaps felt he had

failed.

In verse two, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of

fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold, the bush burned with

fire and the bush was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will now turn aside to see this great sight.

He's thinking to himself, what is going on here?

I'm going to pay attention to this for a few moments, why the bush is not burnt.

Now, I love verse four because it says,.

And when the Lord saw that, that he turned aside to see.

Now, is God omniscient?

Does God have to see Moses turn aside before God knows it's time for God to speak?

Well, when we think of the father, certainly he does not.

He knows all things.

But I want to put before you an idea that I've put out many times, certainly in my thinking and in some of my

sermons, it tends to come out.

And I believe that this is true.

God chooses to come down into time.

He made this place, he made you and me, he made his entire creation for himself.

It is not illogical to think that he would come down into it and enjoy it.

And I think that he does that in the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord, also in the person of the Holy

Spirit.

But sometimes he enters into time and acts as if he's bound by it.

He certainly did that during 33 years of his walk on this earth when Jesus Christ was walking, he was

bound by time.

But in this place, when he comes down to meet with Moses, he is now in time,

the eternal God who is outside of time and not bound by time, has placed himself in

time.

Now, you can debate on whether this is an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.

My opinion is that perhaps this is when you see the word Lord in all

caps in your English Bible, it means Jehovah.

And yet no one really knows how to pronounce that word today because it has been such a holy name to the Jewish people through the

years, the ages, that they stopped pronouncing it out loud.

So no one really knows how to pronounce it today.

But we call it Jehovah.

And yet it says an angel of Jehovah.

Many times there are places where the angel of Jehovah appears to be the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.

I believe this is probably such an incident.

So this is God in time and the Lord looks and beholds that Moses has turned

aside to take a look at this burning bush.

And at that moment.

It's as if the Lord is ready to address him, verse three says, Moses said, I will now turn

aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called into him out of the midst of the

bush and said, Moses, Moses.

Now, what would you have said?

You're out here tending the sheep, you've been doing it every day for 50 years, you're used to it, it's not new, it's not fun

anymore, it's not exciting anymore.

It's the same thing you've been doing every other day.

The only difference is there's a bush that has just caught on fire and it's not burning up.

And you turn to it and a voice comes out of it and calls your name twice.

What do you do?

What do you say?

Here's what you're supposed to say if this happened to you.

Here I am.

What better answer?

Moses, Moses, I'm over here as if God didn't know where he was.

But I think Moses is trying to convince himself where he is.

I'm here, I think.

I don't think that I've been elevated to the heavenlies and yet God has appeared and is speaking.

And the first thing that happened to Moses was fear gripped his heart because he wasn't sure that

any man had ever looked upon God and lived.

And so he doesn't want to look anymore once the voice comes and calls his name out, but he does answer and he says, here I

am.

And he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet,

for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

That is the first reference to the holiness of God that I can find in the Bible.

And it's an interesting reference because what it teaches us is that the presence of God

creates holy ground.

When God, as they say, shows up.

All of a sudden, the place where you are, if you're there, becomes holy ground.

Now, God is omnipresent, he's everywhere at once, but there is a sense in which God chooses to

come down, even uses it, I will come down.

He uses that expression, I will come down into the earthly realm, into time.

And when God chooses to do that, the place where he chooses to be becomes

a holy place.

Now, I would say this, we know one place that he chooses to be is in our hearts, is it not?

He dwells within the heart of a believer.

And so this is such a place, it is a place where you should take your shoes off, is a place where

the ground is actually holy.

Verse six says, moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God

of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon

God.

Now, we don't have a great way to understand the holiness of God other than try to be here

and picture what's going on as this happens to Moses.

There's not just a whole lot of information given to us, but we know this.

We know that when God spoke and Moses said, here I am, and God identified

himself as the God.

That Moses apparently bowed down to the earth with his face in the dirt and would not look at the burning

bush because of the holiness of God, that is how this holiness affected this

man.

And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people, which are in Egypt and have

heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

Now look at this phrase, I am come down to deliver them.

He has come from a different dimension into time and space where we are,

and he calls that coming down.

We view heaven as being up.

We don't know that that's a fact, although some believe it's in the direction of the northern star, the third

heaven.

But whatever God expressed it this way, he said, I've come down, I have come into time to deliver

my people out of the hand of the Egyptians, which picture the world and Satan and even the

flesh.

So I've come down to deliver the purpose is for deliverance, and so a holy

God comes from a holy heaven to this earth where his people are and comes

into time and space.

And he tells Moses to take his shoes off, for this is now a holy place, and

Moses bows down to the earth when he finds out this is the God.

And now God continues, he says, I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them

up out of the land, out of bondage into a good land and a large and to a land flowing

with milk and honey and to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the

Perizzites, sorry, I started to say parasites, the Perizzites and the Hivites and

the Jebusites.

Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is coming to me, and I have also

seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.

This is all a picture of the world system and Satan himself and

even your own flesh that you dwell in, how that it can begin to oppress you.

But God came down to deliver them.

Come now, therefore, and I will send you unto the devil,

he says, Pharaoh, Pharaoh's a picture of the devil himself.

Now, here you are.

You've got to be here to get anything this morning.

You've got to be in this place.

You've got to try to become Moses.

You've got to be out there with the humdrum day in, day out, everything same way happening.

Archie's saying it ain't never the same way when you're dealing with animals.

And I know that's a fact.

But yet, same old, same old every day for 50 years.

And all of a sudden, Moses' life has a turn of direction.

God speaks to him.

God comes down into time, speaks to him.

He takes his shoes off.

He bows his face to the ground and he gets information.

And the information that God gives him is that my people are captive.

They are slaves to the world, the flesh and the devil.

And now I'm going to send you, Moses, to talk to the devil face to face to

Pharaoh himself.

Now we know the story of Moses.

Moses began to give reason why he couldn't be the one.

You see, the experience for 50 years with the sheep was humiliating, was a humbling

experience to Moses because Moses needed that as a young man.

He was brash.

He was powerful.

He was intellectual.

He was strong physically.

He whipped a man, he killed a man.

I don't know that he intended to, but he hit him so hard he killed him.

As a young man and was going to lead Israel at that time, and God said, no, it's not the time for you.

You've got to go through some humility.

You've got to live some years in this world where I'm going to place you with the thorns and the

thistles and all the things that won't go right in your life.

And as a young man, you young guys that are out here today, this is going to happen to you.

You're going to have your wilderness.

You're going to have your sheep to tend for many years before God will use you because you have a pride that you

don't even understand as young men and women.

You haven't lived long enough and gone through enough hardship to be wise in these areas, and so you're very

susceptible to falling to pride.

So God will take you through time and hardship and suffering, and he'll take you all the way to the

bottom sometimes.

So don't give up when he does this.

He had done this to Moses.

And all of a sudden you'll have your burning bush and God will tell you what your life is all about and you'll find the

strength in that humility.

To allow Jesus to work in you to accomplish this great thing, you will be out of

the way enough that he can do this.

Well, Moses comes to this day.

God looks at him through that bush and Moses is not looking back, but he is

listening and he says, I will send you to Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my

people, the children of Israel, out of bondage, out of Egypt.

And Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go into Pharaoh?

It's exactly what you and I would say.

At least if you've been through the humbling, that's what we would say.

Who am I that I should go?

Am I equipped, Lord?

Am I ready for this?

Who am I and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

And he said, certainly I will be with thee, God told him.

Was this a great comfort to Moses heart at this point in his walk?

No, because his faith is not extremely strong at this point.

And he's saying, I'm not sure that's enough.

Well, if you're in a place where you're not sure that's enough, you've really been humbled.

You've got the place where you're so low in your own estimation of what you can accomplish that you don't even think you can do

it with God.

And this is where Moses was.

And he said, certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee

when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this very

mountain.

And Moses said unto God, behold, when I come into the children of Israel and shall say unto them, the God of your

fathers hath sent me unto you and they shall say to me, what is his name?

What shall I say unto them?

He said, God, if I go tell them I'm going to lead you out because your God has sent me to lead you, they're going to say, what's

your who is your God?

They're going to challenge my authority, Moses said.

And God told him, you tell them this.

And God said unto Moses, I am that I am.

And he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am have sent you

the word Jehovah.

That we use today is comprised of the same Hebrew word that

would create the English phrase, I am that I am.

It simply means that I am the one who is self -existent and I am also the one who reveals

myself to my children.

So I am the self -existent one who reveals myself to my children.

The burning bush was proof of this.

Here he is, a personal God speaking in the language of his child, Moses,

in a personal way.

But he says, my name is I am I am in the eternal present tense.

Everything is now to me, he says, you go tell them that's who sent you, that the one who is from eternity

and to eternity, the alpha and the omega has sent you.

And so here we see our first encounter on this planet, at

least as it's recorded in the scriptures with the holiness

of God.

Now, turn with me to one other place, Joshua, chapter five, verse 13.

Now, a lot of history is passed at this point.

And, you know, the story of how God did work in Moses led the people out of

captivity into the promise or to the edge, I should say, of the promised land.

Moses.

Made a tremendous error later in his life.

When he.

Messed up a type or a symbol that God told him to use to teach people a truth and

Moses in his anger.

Didn't do what God said and he gave the wrong picture.

If you remember one time they were out of water and God told Moses to smite the rock and water would flow forth enough

for the children of Israel drink and God and Moses did strike the rock with his rod and God brought forth the

water.

And then there was a second time in Moses life when they ran out of water again.

And God very carefully said to Moses, this time, go and speak to the rock

and it will give water.

And Moses was angry with the children of Israel and he went in anger and he smoked that rock with his rod when he was

not supposed to.

He was merely supposed to speak to it and it did give forth water.

But God said, guess what, Moses, you don't get to go into the promised land now.

And Moses didn't.

He was not allowed to go in because of that.

You know what?

You can't smite Jesus Christ twice.

And that's the picture that Moses gave.

A lot of people in churches today believe that.

They believe you can lose your salvation and get it back again.

If that were true, you would have to crucify Jesus anew.

Hebrews chapter six says in the first few verses, you would have to recrucify the son of God and

put him to open shame.

That's impossible to do.

Therefore, if his death and his blood is not sufficient to save you forever.

Then you're in trouble because he's not going to be smitten twice.

Now, if you are saved and you're covered by his blood and you've been washed by his blood and then you find yourself

committing a sin.

And you come to the Lord the second time for water, you don't have to recrucify Jesus.

All you have to do is go to him with first John one nine and and agree with him how sinful your sin

was and confess your sin.

And he's faithful to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

You simply speak to him.

You don't recrucify.

Well, Moses kind of messed that picture up, didn't he?

So God didn't let him go into the promised land.

So guess who the leader was going to be?

The great Joshua.

Do you remember the story of Joshua?

Was he a young man when he got to lead them into the promised land?

Think about it.

Was Joshua a young man?

Or had he and Caleb already gone in once and seen that?

Yes, we can take this, but no one listened to him.

So they wandered in the wilderness until Joshua became an old man, perhaps about the age

Moses was when his day of leadership came.

Why is that?

Because as wonderful a young man as Joshua was, do you remember the time when they had this is before the wilderness

tabernacle?

But they built another tent outside the camp where they're going to go meet with God.

And best I can tell from the scriptures, pretty much Moses and Joshua were the only two that went out there.

The rest of the men came to the to the opening of their tents inside the camp and looked out and tried to worship.

But they were supposed to go out there, but they wouldn't go.

But Joshua did as a young man, and he followed Moses out to this place and the Shekinah glory of

God, which is a beautiful earthly picture of God's holiness.

The best we can see if we can picture resplendent light coming out from inside this tent

and the presence of God is in this place and his holiness is there.

And I'm sure that Moses and Joshua took their shoes off on this occasion as well.

And they walked into this place where God was.

And when Moses had received his instruction, he immediately got up off his knees or his face and he

walked out the tent, went back to prepare to do the job.

But guess what Joshua did as a young man?

He just stayed in there.

I don't know how many minutes or hours he stayed by himself because he didn't want to leave the holy presence

and the awesome wonder of God's presence.

As a young man, and yet he wasn't ready, even after that experience, to lead the people until

many years of trouble and trial and sorrow and suffering in his own life.

And you come to this place, now he's ready.

So look at Joshua 5 .13 and look how this is introduced.

So very similar to the way Moses' ministry really began.

And here we have with Joshua 5 .13, and it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, they had

gone into the promised land and as soon as they got in, they began to face the enemy, didn't they?

Do you know why it is that God didn't just let them go in and take all the cities at once?

Because they couldn't have handled it.

They couldn't have handled it.

They had to take it little by little, just like our growth is.

From the moment we're saved, we begin to grow little by little, line by line, we begin to understand the scriptures.

God reveals himself each to us at a different time, in a different place, in a different way.

And we all grow to maturity down a different path, but it's all within his word and by the leading of his Holy Spirit.

But it's very personal.

Just as personal as this encounter of Moses and this encounter of Joshua, they were similar,

but they were different.

They were similar in the sense that they faced a holy God and understood the holiness of God, but they were

different in the sense they were personal.

And so Joshua comes and it comes to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, they come into the promised land, first thing they

find is a fenced city, a walled city, and they can't go beyond without conquering this city.

And here they've been out in the desert.

And I don't know what kind of weapons they may have had, but I don't sense that they felt prepared for battle necessarily.

And yet Joshua was to lead them to battle.

And they come to this place and Joshua was by Jericho.

And that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and here he is, he's not tending sheep, but I view

him as being out alone.

Walked out away from the camp a bit to spend some time alone and perhaps to pray.

And as he goes out to this place, this lonely place, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold there

stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went unto the man.

I don't know if there's a man in this room that would have reacted that way yet.

Now maybe God will bring us to a place in our life where we would.

But if we had seen this man, this particular man with a drawn

sword, the reaction would be to go the other direction very quickly.

Yes, I would take my shoes off so I could run.

But look at Joshua at this place and time in his life he moves towards this man.

Joshua went unto him and said unto him, and I'm going to tell you something about Joshua that if you haven't seen it yet, you see it now.

This man was not just a man of God, but he's a warrior.

He was a man who was going to fight God's battles.

And he goes to this man and he says, are you for us or against us?

He says, are you for us or for our adversaries?

And he said, nay.

Isn't it interesting he didn't answer that question directly?

He didn't say, well, I'm for you or I'm for your adversaries.

He just said, nay.

But as a captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.

And Joshua fell to his face.

Have you seen this response once already this morning?

He fell to his face on the earth and did worship and said unto him, what sayeth my

Lord unto his servant?

Very similar to what Paul said when Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus Road.

First thing Paul says, Lord, what would you have me to do?

And Joshua now recognizes that this is the God.

This is most definitely an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament before the manger

scene.

Theologians call it a theophany.

It is an appearance of Yeshua, Jehovah.

The everlasting son of God who calls himself the captain.

Is he not the captain of our salvation?

And he appears and Joshua begins to discern who this is.

And as soon as he discerns this, he falls with his face on the earth and begins to worship.

Now, worship in the eastern part of the world, in the Middle East, especially in that part of the world,

worship.

There is a predominant posture of worship.

Now, in the Bible, there are several postures.

But the predominant posture is to be on your knees with your head and face buried in the dirt.

And your hands perhaps out in front, not looking at the one you're worshiping.

That perhaps is the posture that Joshua takes.

And he begins to worship and he said unto him, what saith my Lord unto his servant?

And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, loose thy shoe from off thy foot.

Have you seen this before this morning?

Take your shoes off for the place whereon thou standest is holy.

And Joshua did so.

So when the presence of God appears in time, at least that's the scenario we're studying right

now, in time on this planet, on the earth, and you become aware of the presence of God,

then the place where you are is holy.

And they take off their shoes and they fall on their face.

And they began to worship the God, the God of the universe.

Loose thy shoe from off thy foot for the place whereon thou standest is holy.

And Joshua did so.

Joshua had already fallen on his face and begun to worship before he knew to take his shoes off.

He worshiped God right there as he was because it was a response to the presence

of God.

You can't be taught how to worship by anyone except God.

Don't try to look at the person next to you in whatever posture they take.

It may be like this.

It may be like this.

It may be down with their face on the ground.

It may be standing.

I don't do that real naturally, do I?

And it may be standing like this.

Don't try to copy.

God will speak to your heart and he'll tell you.

You'll say, what would you have thy servant to do?

He may tell you, take your shoes off.

But he just did all he knew to do.

He fell on his face and began to worship.

God gives him further instruction.

Tells him, loose your shoe because I am here and this is holy ground because I am here.

And so he obeyed and Joshua did so.

Now Jericho was straightly shut up because of the children of Israel.

None went out and none came in.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, see, I have given into thy hand Jericho

and the king thereof and the mighty men of valor.

We don't have any time left this morning.

We've got much, much, much material about the holiness of God.

But I want you to take this home with you today.

That in both cases as these men came into the presence of God and became aware that God was there.

I'm talking about in time, with you.

And God was there.

They both responded by falling on their face and worshiping God and saying, what would you have your servant

to do?

And God said, take your shoes off.

This is holy ground.

They recognized the holiness of God before anything else happened in their life.

I would have to say that's probably the same scenario that has to happen with us.

You and I have got to come to the place where we recognize the presence of God.

But beyond that, in his presence, we discern his holiness.

And his holiness becomes so awesome that the tendency is for us to be fearful at

first to try to gaze in the direction of where he is, but simply to fall before him

and ask him, what should I do now?

And only at that time when you've discerned God's presence in your life and his holy

nature, which he is by nature.

It is not like us where we strive to be good.

With God, it's not that he becomes holy.

It's that he is holiness.

Holiness means separation.

It means totally separate from sin.

Totally absent from any thought of sin.

And we understand the purity that comes from that in his presence.

And we ask him, what would you have us to do?

And the next thing that can happen in our lives is exactly what just happened to Joshua.

God said, look, the enemy is before you, but I've already put him in your

hand.

Not only have I put him in your hand, but I've put all of his mighty men.

That could picture the demons of hell.

The king is picturing Satan here.

The fenced city pictures the whole world system that Satan uses to try to lead us down the wrong pathway each

day of our lives with influence in a satanic way.

The philosophies of the world, whether it's in the universities, whether it's in the schools, whether it's in the post office,

whether it's in the government, whether it's in the churches, wherever these

philosophies of man come into play, they're pictured by this fenced city.

And God says, now that you know I'm with you, and now that you understand my holiness, and you

begin to understand what you have to do to be in my holiness, in my presence, in the presence of

a holy God, you are now beginning to be just ready to fight the spiritual battle.

But he said, I've already given it into your hand.

I've given you the victory.

Now that is the word that Joshua got before they went into their first battle.

He was not like Moses in the sense that he said, well, I'm not sure I can even do it with you with me.

The thing about Joshua, he didn't say that.

I think Joshua was ready to go.

But it took many years of the Lord working his life to get him to that place.

So some of us today may be in that place.

Some of you may go home and think about these passages, and the Lord may use this in your life.

Some of you may have been to this place already.

Some of you haven't been here yet, and God is still preparing you through suffering, tribulation, trials,

hardships, perhaps death of a loved one.

But he's getting us to the place where we're going to comprehend more about his holiness

than we ever have before.

And when we get to that place where it brings a literal feel into your person, a feeling of

fear into your person, a feeling of awe into your heart and

mind, an urge literally to do nothing but fall down before him and say, what would you have me to do?

Then you're not far from entering the battle.

We do live in the end times, folks.

We live in the end of the end times, I believe.

And I believe there are going to be many more battles.

Some will be subtle.

Some won't be quite so subtle.

And we've got to be the place where we're equipped to go through them.

We won't get there until his holiness becomes real to us.

Now once we see his holiness, the natural thing that happens to God's children

is we begin to reflect that when we're in his presence.

And it changes our life and we become more in his image because of being in his

presence.

Happened to Moses.

Happened to Joshua.

And it's going to happen to you and to me.

Let's stand and have prayer together.

Father, we have had time this morning to have a brief introduction to this

vast topic.

But Lord, it will be nothing much more than academic to us if we don't as

individuals come before you and kneel before you in

the quietness of our own personal relationship with you.

And if you reveal yourself to us in such a way that we see what it means, what the holiness of God means.

Lord, we live in such a vile world.

We live in such a country that's given over to lasciviousness and all manner of ungodliness.

And yet this may be the greatest nation in the world.

So our world is in terrible shape.

We know that you said at the end there would be a great falling away or apostasy from the truth and from godly ways.

And we're seeing it all around us, even in the churches.

And so, Father, we ask that you would meet with us.

Lord, any time that you choose to meet with us when we're together like this, it's wonderful.

But we ask that you would meet with us individually and that you would reveal more of yourself to us,

more of your holy nature, and that it would affect us and have that equipping effect

of causing us to be ready for battle.

Lord, help us to want to fight the fight and not to be on the bench.

Help us to want to be in the front.

We live in wonderful and exciting times and days when the heavenlies are as

a great audience, many witnesses,

all excited about the end of this age.

And you've allowed us to be born into a time where we'll be players in this

awesome thing that's about to happen.

So we pray, Father, for your equipping, both corporately when we come together but also as we're alone with

you.

Cause us to sense your holy nature and to fall before you and

understand that where you are is holy ground.

Lord, we pray for that change of our lives that Moses had and Joshua had.

We pray for that equipping.

Lord, may that also affect our children and the young people in our congregation, that they might be equipped for the day

in which they've been called to live as well.

We ask that you bless our fellowship together and the food we're about to have and our afternoon services, and we ask

this in Jesus' name.

Amen.