Reginald Heber (1783-1826)
was pastor of an Anglican Church in the tiny village of Hodnet, England; in fact,
he ministered at the same church once led by his father. Between 1811 and 1821,
Reginald wrote 57 hymns, which he longed to see published. However, the
Anglicans hadn’t yet adopted the singing of hymns in worship. In 1823 his superiors
reassigned Heber to the mission field, so he packed away his hymns in an old
family trunk and sailed to India.
Heber labored with
intensity on foreign soil for a few short years before passing away at age 42. He
never had the joy of hearing congregations sing his hymns. However, a few years
later Heber’s widow was rummaging through that old trunk and found his
long-forgotten songs of praise. Heber’s hymns were eventually published and at
least one is still famous to this day:
“Holy, holy,
holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the
morning our song shall rise to Thee.
Only Thou art
holy;
there is none
beside Thee,
perfect in power,
in love and purity.”[1]
Heber was inspired to
write that hymn after reading the incredible passage recorded in Isaiah 6 where
the prophet gets an earth-shattering vision of God on His throne:
1 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. 2 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. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Notice the three-fold refrain
of the angelic beings focuses on God’s holiness. Admittedly, we don’t hear much
preaching these days about God’s holiness. If you had to define this indispensable
divine attribute, how would you do it?
The Hebrew word for holy, qodesh, is a term that means “separate
from.” Put another way, God is “wholly
other than” everything else in existence.
This means that God is totally and utterly distinct from all creation
and evil. Morally, this means that God
is pure and cannot tolerate sin. God is
the standard by which everything else is measured and His holiness puts Him in
a class alone.
Admittedly, when preachers
and theologians search for adequate illustrations to convey the concept of
God’s holiness we are always at a loss for words. Even our best writing and thinking becomes
quite beggarly. A.W. Tozer once described the problem of talking intelligently
about God’s holiness like this:
“Neither
the writer nor the reader of these words is qualified to appreciate the
holiness of God. Quite literally a new channel must be cut through the desert
of our minds to allow the sweet waters of truth that will heal our great
sickness to flow in. We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by
thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the
highest degree we are capable of. God’s holiness is not simply the best we know
infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart,
unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is
blind to it. He may fear God’s power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness He
cannot even imagine.”[2]
The subject of God’s
holiness is not only intriguing, but utterly terrifying. As believers we desire
to know what God is like, yet if we were actually to be put directly into God’s
throne room we would find ourselves in what R.C. Sproul called “the trauma of
holiness.” The reason is because the closer we mortals get to this holy God the
more His purity reveals our iniquity.
God is not just holy, but
thrice holy. The holiness of God is the
only attribute of his character that is repeated three times in the Bible. God is never referred to as love, love, love
or mercy, mercy, mercy. Because God is
holy, everything else about Him filtered through that single attribute—His love
is a holy love, his wrath is a holy wrath, his goodness is a holy
goodness.
Smoke billowed forth from
the temple and even the furniture and inanimate objects in the temple began to
quake and shudder because of God’s power (Is. 6:4). Isaiah had never seen a light and sound show
like this before and he was reminded, rather forcefully, that the crown and
scepter may have fallen from the throne of Uzziah, but God was still on His
throne.
Isaiah’s only natural
response in this scene is to declare judgment upon himself, “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!” (Is. 6:5).
In a single moment all of
his self-image was completely shattered.
As long as Isaiah could compare himself to other mortals he was able to
sustain a lofty opinion of himself. However, the instant he compared himself to
the Ultimate Standard, he was utterly ruined.
R.C. Sproul in his book, The Holiness of God has written: “The
clearest sensation that human beings have when they experience the holy is an
overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness. That is, when we aware of the presence of
God, we become most aware of ourselves as creatures. When we meet the Absolute, we know that we
are not absolute. When we meet the
Infinite, we become acutely conscious that we are finite. When we meet the Eternal, we know we are
temporal. To meet God is a powerful
study in contrasts.”[3]
It is said that the great
Scottish preacher F. B. Meyer was visiting one of his parishioners on a cold afternoon.
It was washday, and the clothes were on the line. It began to snow, and soon
the clothes did not look so white against the background of the snow. When
Meyer remarked about it, the old Scottish landlady cried, “Sir, what can stand
against God Almighty's white!”
Getting close to God can
be quite painful and uncomfortable, because His character reveals our
corruption. If you think getting close to God is going to be an easy and
enjoyable process you are dead wrong. It
will shatter your self-concept, annihilate your notions of righteousness and
leave you spiritually broken. God’s holiness shows us all our sin in high
definition. Thankfully, there is way into His presence—the blood of Christ
which cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
Were in not for the
imputed righteousness of Jesus, sinners like you and me would be vaporized by a
thrice holy God. Without Christ, we might as well try standing on the sun than
to approach this holy God on our own merits.
“For God hath made Him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21) –DM
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