February 29, 2020

When someone asks us to describe God – we often will use words like kind, gracious, loving… and God is all of that and more – but He’s also just and holy.  Often we fail to think of that side of God – but Holy describes God probably more than any other word.  “Holiness is that which makes God God.”

Holiness means purity, but “purity” doesn’t describe it well enough. Purity merely means that it is unmixed, with nothing else in it. But that isn’t enough. We talk of moral excellency, but that isn’t adequate. To be morally excellent is to exceed someone else in moral character. But when we say that God is morally excellent, who is it that He exceeds? The angels, the seraphim? Surely He does — but that still isn’t enough. We mean rectitude; we mean honor; we mean truth and righteousness; we mean all of these — uncreated and eternal. God is not now any holier than He ever was. For He, being unchanging and unchangeable, can never become holier than He is. And He never was holier than He is, and He’ll never be any holier than now. His moral excellence implies self-existence, for He did not get His holiness from anyone nor from anywhere. He did not go off into some vast, infinitely distant realm and there absorb His holiness; He is Himself the Holiness. He is the All-Holy, the Holy One; He is holiness itself, beyond the power of thought to grasp or of word to express, beyond the power of all praise If He were to tell us how white He is, we would understand it in terms of only dingy gray. Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. A.W. Tozer

Since God is supremely holy – He demands holiness from His children.  

Be holy, because I am holy. 1 Peter 1:16

We see this in several examples in Leviticus 10.  

1. Aaron (the priest and Moses’ brother) had several sons.  Two of them Nadab and Abihu worked with their father. Verses 1-2 tell us a story of how they did not follow God’s exact instructions for the incense in the temple and God blazed in fire and burned them up.  God expects more from leaders. He doesn’t compromise or negotiate.
2. God’s holiness demanded that the priests be tidy (v.6), abstain from alcohol when serving in the tabernacle (v.9) or they would die.
3. We see God’s instructions for the offering that would follow.

God has always expected holiness from his people and he expects it from you and me.  Praise God for the cross that cleanses us from all of our sin – but this doesn’t exempt us from a need to live pure lives.  

I hope you take God’s holiness seriously live your life remembering that you represent Him and belong to Him.

By: Tim Parsons — Lead Pastor