How God Shows Himself as Holy-1 — Sandeep Poonen

We just sang a song, we declare your name. You know, when we get closest to the throne, whenever humans have had a chance to get closest to the throne, the beings around the throne, called four living creatures, cry out day and night, and they say, holy, holy, holy are you God Almighty.

Holiness as the Call of God's Presence

The closer we get to God, the call that we hear coming out of God's throne is holiness. And we want to call Him friend, we want to call Him our everything, we want Him to be our only desire, but the one thing that oftentimes scares us away is that very call, the call to holiness.

How do we negotiate that? How do we deal with that? How do we respond to God's amazing command and stupendous command when He says, be holy just as I am holy? How do we even interact with that? That's the title of my talk.

I titled my talk, How God Shows Himself as Holy. I did not title my talk, How We Ought to be Holy, because I'm discovering something fundamental about our holiness. I'm discovering that our holiness is not a great chore, that our holiness is not a tremendous effort that we must constantly be working towards.

Now, to be sure, the command to be holy does include effort. To be holy does include self-control and discipline. However, I'm learning something beautiful about the call that God has on us to be holy, and it is this.

So I hope you listen carefully. Our holiness is primarily a response, not a regimen. Our holiness is not a regimented and a strict life of following rules and commandments. If we look at our lives, that's what holiness may have been reduced to, a regiment, a strict set of rules that I look at as a law of commandments that God says, you must do this, you mustn't do this, you should do this, you shouldn't do this.

Thou shalt and thou shalt not. We've made our holiness to be reduced to that, and I'm discovering that the beautiful message of Jesus Christ is that holiness is not primarily that. I find that our holiness is primarily the natural and instinctive response to encountering and experiencing and interacting with God as completely holy.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If I see God as altogether holy, then I will instinctively surrender everything that holds me from approaching God in His holiness. If I set apart God so far above everything else in His holiness, then I will be quick to drop everything that prevents me from getting close to God.

So much so that if I am not pursuing holiness like I should, it is not that I'm not trying hard enough, it is that I have not seen God as holy. And if I have let my standard of holiness drop lately, I don't have to do penance.

I don't have to spend six months in the penitentiary, of God's penitentiary, no, I just need to have a fresh revelation of God in His true holiness. I will respond by being holy. The good news is God wants us to have this kind of holiness.

He desires to show us His holiness so that we can respond by being holy. And I want to go through a story in the Old Testament that talks about this. In Numbers chapter 20. So let's turn there. We're going to go through the first 13 verses of this story in this chapter.

God's Holiness Revealed Through Israel's Trial

And I want to start at the end of the story and the conclusion of that story so that you understand where I got my message from. Numbers chapter 20. I just want to start with verse 13 and then we'll go all the way to the beginning of that chapter.

It says that these, those were the waters of Meribah, Meribah I believe is a word that means quarreling. They named these waters quarreling because the sons of Israel contended or quarreled with the Lord.

And here's the sentence. He proved Himself holy among them. He didn't make them holy. That was secondary. He said, I want to prove myself as holy. So let's read the story to see how God proved Himself holy.

And let us ask God to open our eyes that God, I want you to show yourself holy to me. Numbers chapter 20 verses one through five, we'll start with those five verses. Then the sons of Israel and the whole congregation came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month and the people stayed at Kadesh.

Now Miriam died there and was buried there. There was no water for the congregation and they assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron. The people thus contended with Moses and spoke saying, if only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord, why then have you brought the Lord's assembly into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die here?

Why have you made us come up from Egypt to bring us into this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink. Let's look at the really tough situation the Israelites were dealing with.

Miriam had died and there was no water. Miriam was just not a member of the congregation, she was one of the leaders. In fact, you could call her the matriarch. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, she led the people in song.

The prophet Micah says, these are the people who led you out of Egypt, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. But she was gone now. And I'm sure the present sense of thirst that they felt because of a lack of water was compounded by the fact that Miriam wasn't there.

And I'm sure Miriam would have given them some perspective on how to deal with this thirst and would have reminded them of how God had dealt with the thirst in the past time. But now Miriam was gone and now they had this thirst.

Let's be clear, they had thirst for water. I'm sure they would have liked fine wine and other things like they said, all the fruits of pomegranates and everything else, but they were also primarily thirsty.

This was a necessity. They weren't asking for a comfortable ride, they just said, can we have our necessities? Do you think God was not aware of this situation? Of course He was aware. But God wanted to prove Himself holy.

And He allowed this to happen so that He could prove Himself holy. That's my first point. God uses the tough trials and times of grief and loss in our lives, not because He's sadistic, but because He wants to show Himself as holy.

Most of us probably don't deal with physical thirst, but we might still be thirsty. Some of us might be thirsty for financial needs to be met. Not for us to have a great grand life, but just for our financial needs, for all our bills to be paid, and a little to be saved up for our family.

Some of us might have the thirst to be healed from a nagging sickness that just prevents us just from being ourselves. We're always bedridden or something like that. We're always debilitated from moving forward.

Or it could be a desire for justice, a thirst and a desire for justice. God, I don't want a grade, all these bonuses, I just want justice in my workplace. Or my family situation, where my brothers or sisters are not treating me right.

And that's compounded by loss. There could be loss of many different kinds. There could be the loss of a family member who's died, a father or a mother. It could have been a spiritual relationship that you thought would last forever, but now it's gone.

It could be somebody who you leaned on and you thought, hey, you could walk through this journey together, but now he or she's moved to a different part of the country. And Miriam's loss was even harder for the Israelites because Miriam was a source of spiritual strength.

And when we have relationships in our lives that are sources of spiritual strength to us, and then we lose that something or that someone, then we can really feel the loss even more, and we can have questions, and we can have bickerings, and we can have quarrels that we have with God.

And God is watching our attitude, and I see the people of Israel divided into two categories at this time. God allows thirst, God allows grief and loss to come into our lives, but He's watching people's attitudes.

How's our attitude been lately? Have we felt that it's probably better to give up on God because it seems an easier life to live as part of the world than to keep hanging out with God and have Him take you through this present season of thirst or loss, or thirst combined with loss?

Have you felt that God has let down His part of the bargain as you've tried to come faithfully to church every weekend and He's not providing your needs or whatever it is like you think He should? Do you feel like you've lost your trust in God because He hasn't been there like you think He should have been?

What is your attitude? We see what the Israelites did at this time. They complained, they bickered, they had an argument, they had problems with God, and they had problems with His leaders. And God doesn't stand for that.

God doesn't care for people who quarrel with Him. God cannot accomplish His purpose with people who are quarreling with Him, who have issues, who have a controversy with Him. He cannot move forward with them.

God is trying to show Himself holy. But you see Moses and Aaron, you see how Moses and Aaron were different. You look at that in verse six. Look what Moses and Aaron did. Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces.

Then the glory of the Lord appeared to them. Look, you must understand, Moses had lost somebody more special. The Israelites had lost Miriam as a leader. Moses had lost his very own older sister. And Miriam had been his protector from the day almost that he was born.

She watched over him as he was put in a little basket in the river. And his mother told her to watch over him. And she saw how Pharaoh's daughter discovered him. And she boldly went up to Pharaoh's daughter and said, hey, I can find a Jewish nurse to take care of this little baby.

And I can imagine how she must have assisted her mother and her father to teach Moses in the few years that they had with him that you are not to give in to the Egyptian way of thinking. That Yahweh, the Jewish God, is the only God.

And Miriam was there all through his life. And then when Moses came back and led him through the Red Sea and all of that, Miriam was with him. And Miriam must have been a constant reminder to Moses that the God that he was believing in was for real.

But now she was gone. Moses felt that loss more than the Israelites. And Moses was thirsty too. Moses didn't have a private supply, some backdoor creek that he had access to that the rest of the congregation didn't.

No, he was thirsty just like the rest of them. He felt the need of thirst just like the rest of them. And so did Moses and Aaron. But you see what they did. They did not grumble against God. They could have.

They could have joined in the people's complaints. They went to the Lord and they fell on their faces. That's my second point. God wants us to be a group of people who fall on our faces before Him. And especially those who consider themselves spiritually mature must fall on their faces before God quicker.

So of course I mean that the elders must fall on their faces. But I also think that the pastors and the staff and the small group leaders and the lay people who minister from up here on the worship teams or anybody who considers themselves spiritually mature must get into the habit of falling down before the presence of the Lord quickly.

That is a litmus test for myself of spiritual maturity. That I am growing in spiritual maturity because I'm getting better in the habit of falling on my face before the Lord more often for my needs and for the needs of His people.

That proves that I am a leader because I care for the needs of other people inside of myself. Otherwise, if I'm only thinking about myself, God says, I have a greater vision for you. But I want you to fall on your face before me that I can provide your needs.

Falling on Our Faces in Dependence on God

You know, psychologists have come up with the term that they have studied animals and they say that every animal, including humans, have two instinctive responses to when animals are faced with danger.

It's fight or flight. They either fight against their enemy or they run away from their enemy. I believe that a spiritual person must have a third response to danger, not physical danger but spiritual temptation, afflictions, thirst, loss.

They don't fight against God and their leaders, they don't fly or run away from their God and their leaders, they fall on their faces before God and His leaders. But to be clear, I am not talking about a physical falling.

I don't have much credence on falling backwards, slain in the spirit, or any soul power falling that seems to dominate Christian television. And the reason I don't do that is because I don't covet it.

In fact, I resist it because I find it unscriptural. But if I need any reason not to covet it at all, it is because it makes no difference as to whether I'm going to be holy or not. If doing somersaults was going to make me holy, I'd do it right now.

But I know falling backwards, falling forwards physically doesn't make a difference in the moment of temptation. When I'm tempted to be angry, all that is not going to help me. I'm not going to fall on my face in my heart.

I'm talking about a spiritual posture of the heart. This is what I mean by falling on our face before the Lord. It means we say to God, it's a heart that turns to God with complete dependence and full confidence in God alone, often.

And it's a heart that is quick to turn to God with gratitude in the midst of thirst, in the midst of that loss. And it's a heart that is quick to surrender anything and everything to the Lord, often, again, having multiple interactions with the Lord every day, many times a day, saying, God, I'm surrendering everything, every bias, every agenda, every dream, every preference, every censure and criticism that people give, every praise that people give.

God, I surrender everything. I fall at your face in my heart in full confidence and complete dependence on you. Do we have that heart? Do we covet that heart? And it's not something that we have to do now that proves our allegiance to the Lord.

It is proved, especially in the moment of trial, in the moment of temptation, when the thirst really feels hard within us, when the grief and the pain of loss really gets a hold of us. For the millions of Christians, I wonder if there are even a few who are making that commitment to the Lord.

Oh, how the Lord desires that we would be a people who will fall on our faces and our hearts often, constantly. Then God will show us his glory. It says there's a number, chapter 20, verse 6, they fell on their faces, then the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

Praising God on Sunday morning and preaching a sermon here is not going to show me his glory like it should. Going into the mission field is not going to show us his glory like it should, but falling on our faces and saying, God, I depend on you in every single temptation, no matter where we are, no matter what we do, that will show us his glory.

Have we discovered that pathway to glory? We must. But the rest of the story in Numbers, chapter 20, doesn't have a good ending. Moses and Aaron did the right thing by falling on their faces. Moses and Aaron had the privilege of seeing the glory of the Lord appearing to them, but they were overpowered by their emotions and their anger, and they made a subsequent error.

Moses, the Rock, and Treating God as Holy

Let's read about that. Numbers, chapter 20, verses 7 through 13, and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, take the rod and you and your brother Aaron, assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes that it may yield its water.

You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink. So Moses took the rod from before the Lord just as he had commanded him, and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock.

And he said to them, listen now, you rebels, shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock? Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod, and water came forth abundantly, and the congregations and their beasts drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you have not believed me to treat me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.

Those were the waters of Meribah, because the sons of God, sons of Israel contended with the Lord, and he proved himself holy among them. You may not know this, but some of you may, that earlier in Moses' history, God did tell him to strike the rock.

Soon after they came out of the Red Sea, and they've walked through the Red Sea, the Israelites were thirsty, and Moses went to God and asked him, what should we do? And God told him, strike the rock.

And Moses struck the rock, and water gushed out. And the people there must have looked at Moses when that happened and had been in awe on him. He had just parted the Red Sea. And then he struck a rock and water came out.

They must have been in awe on him. And then he went up to Mount Sinai and came back with two stones with things written on it by the very finger of God. And he came back, and it says that his face shone like the sun, that people couldn't even look at his face.

People must have been just awestruck by this man of God. Now God was telling him to speak to the rock. God was telling him, it's not your place to shine anymore. Now I have to show myself as more holy.

Now I have to shine. This is not your time to shine, Moses. This is my time to shine. Moses couldn't handle that. Moses always trusted his physical strength, but never trusted his voice. Let me tell you what I mean by that.

Moses, when he was 40 years of age, growing up in the Egyptian palace, was a strong man. And when he was 40 years of age, he killed a man. He killed an Egyptian. That's why he had to run away from Pharaoh.

He was a strong man. But you read what happens in Exodus chapter 4, verse 10. When the Lord calls Moses to say, hey, you're the one to deliver my people out of the Egyptians. Read what Moses says to the Lord.

Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently, nor in time past, nor since you have spoken to your sermon five minutes ago when you started speaking to me. I've never been eloquent, for I'm slow of speech and slow of tongue.

God, I stammer, I'm tongue-tied. You know me, I don't have this ability to communicate effectively. And so when God told him the first time, strike the rock, Moses said, I got that down. I'm a physically strong guy, I can do that.

Give me a rock, I'll strike it. How hard do you want me to strike it? He had no problem with his physical strength. But when God said, I want you to use your weak vessel, I want you to use that weak tongue of yours to speak to a rock, even if it comes out as a stammer, even if it comes out brokenly, and in all the wrong words, in the wrong order, speak to the rock.

Moses couldn't do that. Moses was so full of anger towards the people, and he said, I can't express to you how angry I feel with you, and I'll call you rebels, and I'll say a couple of sentences, but I'm just not, I haven't gotten my fix in as yet.

God's Power Perfected Through Human Weakness

So where's my rod, let me strike the rock. But God is looking for us to move past our strengths, and God has his eye on our weaknesses. And that's what my third point is. God wants to move us out of the way.

God longs to shine through our weaknesses. God is looking at our lives, and he sidesteps all the things in our lives that we think we're so strong in, just like Samuel was asked to sidestep all the elder brothers, all the eldest sons of Jesse.

And the Lord has his eye on that little shepherd boy that even the own father doesn't think too much of. And God has got his eye on that weakness of yours, and God says, now it's time for me to use that weak vessel of yours to shine.

What does that mean for us? Some of us think that we have strong athletic abilities, and we're going to use our athletic prowess to serve the Lord and to shine as a light, but we could be wrong. God's got his eye on that tongue of yours that is uncontrollable, that wrecks havoc in every single relationship that we deal with.

And God says, you work out the muscles in your body, but your tongue is absolutely out of control. I've got my eye on that tongue of yours. I want to use that tongue that you tell me can never be controlled.

Your father had a loose tongue, your grandfather had a loose tongue, I'm just destined to have a loose tongue. God says, I want to shine and show my glory through that weak tongue of yours. And some of you may have an eloquent tongue and say, hey, God wants to use me to speak and to share his messages and to preach, and we could be wrong.

God says, I've got my eye on your eye, and how your eyes rove around and grab every single woman and you lust after them, and you've not been able to control it, and you still dabble in pornography, and you tell God, God, this is one member that can never be fully yours.

And God's got his eye on that weak eye of yours that's still not fully devoted to him, and says, I want to shine through that eye. I want those eyes to look only at me so that I can give you revelations of me that you can then share with people, not through your eloquence.

And some of us might think, oh, we've gotten gifts of administration, so maybe God wants us to be a pastor or a manager of a church. But God sees how you've been caught up with the staff politics, and all the cliques, and all the gossiping that's going on, and now you're starting to participate with it.

And God is saying, stand up and be a Christian who bears my name, who are declaring your name, bear my name then, and stand up and don't seek the approval of people and say, I will not be part of these politics.

Then God can use you in that corporate place, even if you're still there. And some of us might think that God is going to use us because he's gifted us with physical beauty and appearance. We're definitely wrong.

We think we're going to lead non-Christians to the Lord because we're so beautiful. We're definitely wrong. God's got his eye on our spirits that are still so insecure and crave the deceptive and flimsy affirmations of broken men who call themselves Christians but just want you.

Listen to any wise person who reads the book of Proverbs, he'll tell you, or she'll tell you, beauty is vain. And all that charming, beautiful, coy voice is deceptive. God wants to grab a hold of your spirit.

He wants to affirm you. There's nothing like the affirmation that comes from the Lord, and he wants you to be affirmed only by him. You can spread that affirmation to other people. God wants to use us in our weaknesses.

God wants us to go past all of our strengths that we've figured out, that every psychology self-assessment test tells us this is what your strengths are. God says, put that away. What's your weakness?

What's that one besetting sin that God says, I still want to deal with you in this one area? God wants to do business with you, and he wants to use that weak vessel of yours to show his glory. If he uses your strengths, you'll get the glory.

If he uses your weaknesses, he'll get the glory. Second Corinthians 12 verse 9, you may know this verse. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected, not in strength, in your weaknesses. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Do we have a most gladly attitude towards our weaknesses? Do we have a firm belief that God's power can perfect our weaknesses, and God's power is perfected and made most glorious through our weaknesses, not our strengths?

Moses didn't have that. He fell on his face before God. He saw God's glory, but then he got up and acted on his own accord. So we can't follow Moses' example all the way, but we do have an example. We do have a man who was also tempted when he was very thirsty and very hungry after 40 days of fasting, and he too was presented a rock, and he could have struck the rock and turned it into bread.

He could have spoken to the rock and turned it into bread. This man was Jesus, but in his case, both would have been wrong. See, Jesus was not blindly religious. He was not going to appropriate Moses' story for him because it acutely fit his need.

He, what did he say? I'm going to depend for a living Word that's proceeding from the mouth of my Father for this situation. And his father was saying, not yet. Don't touch those rocks. Don't look at those rocks.

Don't speak to those rocks. Don't listen to the devil's temptations on here. I've got angels at the backside of this temptation that are going to minister to you. That's what it says happened. But Jesus wasn't supposed to strike the rock.

Jesus wasn't supposed to speak to the rock. And Jesus overcame every single temptation because he had a godly reverence for his holiness. You may not believe that, but it is God's Word. You may like to think that Jesus had some supernatural power that we don't have to overcome sin, but he had the Holy Spirit that has been given to us too.

And it says that he was tempted as a man that in the days of his flesh, Hebrews 5, 7, Jesus offered up loud crying and tears to the one who was able to save him from spiritual death, which is sin, and he was heard and his prayers were granted because of his godly reverence.

If our master found the escape route for sin that way, why do we think we have another easier option? We too will be saved from sin when we see God in his holiness, and we have a reverence for his holiness.

Not when we try to work out our holiness and grit our teeth and be holy like God. But no, we need to have a revelation of him in his holiness, trying to shine through most of all our weaknesses. I want to end with a little picture of holiness and worship.

Holiness and True Worship Before the Throne

A lot of us love the concept of worship, and it is one of the most fundamental pictures that we must adopt, but I want to show you a connection between holiness and worship. In Revelation chapter 4, verses 8 through 11, and the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings and full of eyes around and within, and day and night they do not cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.

And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, to him who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders will fall down before him who sit on the throne and will worship him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne saying, worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power.

For you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created. I want you to understand the order and what just happened there and what I read. The four living creatures call attention to the holiness of God.

When that happens and they give glory and honor to God and his holiness, those around the throne toss their crowns, fall down and worship God. They didn't have any command to follow. They didn't have any great big regimented rules that said this is the way to do it.

No, when the call from the throne of God was heard, holy is God, the people near the throne flung their rewards of righteousness, their crowns, and said, God, you are worthy. That's the way we worship.

That is true worship. So let us reject the notion that worship primarily is being emotionally stirred by a good sermon or intellectually stirred by a good sermon. Let us reject the notion that worship is primarily feeling a tingle down our spines or feeling moved to tears when we hear a beautiful song or we listen to some good music.

Those are all helpful things. Those are all things we use to get us closer to God, but primarily our spiritual act of worship is to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices in the moment of temptation in light of God's great mercy, this holy God who desires to be with us.

That is our spiritual act of worship. So let me summarize it to what I've all said so far. How does God show himself as holy? He will send you, allow trials to come into your life. He will allow afflictions and thirst and feelings of loss.

Then I hope we will be faithful to fall on our faces before the Lord in our hearts, telling Him we depend fully on Him. We're completely confident that He will see us through. And then let us get up and obey Him.

Surrendering Our Will to God

Like Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, not my will but yours be done. Not my will but yours be done. Till the very end, He prayed that and then He got up and He proved that He meant it. When they were nailing Him to the cross, He meant it.

Not my will, God. I hope this cup will be passed from me, but not my will. So Father, forgive them. Let me end with a story. My mother called me yesterday. I told her what I was going to be sharing about, and she said, hey, think about sharing this story.

I think it may work well. My mother helps me close my sermons these days. I thank her for that. She's got a wonderful gift. It's a story about a person who was walking late at night, and it was pitch black, pitch dark and he couldn't see a thing.

And he's walking along the ocean and his foot stumbled upon something and he felt it was a bag and there were some rocks in it. So he was walking home, so he decided to make just a little game with himself to see how far he could throw it, and he would count to see how long it would take before he heard the splash.

And then he'd take the next rock out and throw it as far as he could and count and see, okay, how far, how long would it take before it splashed? That would give him a determination how far he threw it.

And then he was walking through that, throwing the stones, and then he finally got home and he turned on the light and there was one rock left and he pulled it out and he discovered it was a diamond. And he realized that what he had been flippantly tossing into the ocean all along were diamonds.

Trials as Treasures Turned Into Diamonds

Family of God, God tells us through the book of Job that he wants to turn trials, not comforts, trials into gold, into precious stones, into diamonds. When we get to the light of eternity, God will show us all the opportunities and the diamonds he had in this bag that we saw as trials and firsts and afflictions.

Let us stop flippantly discarding him, saying, God, when are you going to get me out of this? Just please, I just want to be comfortable again. Let us fall on our faces. Let us move ourselves out of the way.

Let him use us in our weaknesses. We will store up treasures in heaven, diamonds. Those trials will be turned into diamonds. I hope our eyes will be open to recognize that all of those things, the only objective is God, show yourself as holy.

Let your holiness be reflected through me in this trial, in this sense of loss or grief or whatever we're going through. Let's pray. Father, we repent for how we have treated your gifts. These gifts of trials and afflictions.

Lord, we have not seen the truth of what James said, to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials. You want us to become perfect. You want us to store up diamonds. Father, we have squandered so much already, but it's not too late, Lord.

We take our, we bow down low before you right now in our hearts. We take off our shoes, Lord, because we're on holy ground. You are here. Father, inspire us, Lord. Help us to have constant, frequent encounters with you, that we may see you in your holiness, and that we will just simply respond instinctively by allowing you to use us in our weaknesses.

In Jesus' name we pray.