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This is the 3^rd week of the series I’m doing called God is. Essentially just taking time to reflect on the character of God, of who He is and I’ve said from the beginning that this is a task that I feel like is on one hand incredibly necessary and on the other hand pretty impossible to do. That this is essential to everything. That your view of God kind of affects everything in your life, whether or not you believe that God is good, whether or not you believe that you can know God. Whether or not you believe that God is a judge who cares about the things you do that you will have to answer to Him one day. What does it mean that God is a healer? What does it mean that God is a provider? What do those things mean? What do they not mean? All of this is essential to who you are and how you live. Of how you spend your life and what your motivation is. So I know this is incredibly essential to just lay the foundation of who is God. At the same time, I feel like this is a pretty impossible task because I’m speaking of Someone who – it’s like an ant trying to describe us. It’s trying to describe and put into words that which is beyond words. And the first couple weeks, as an impossible task that it felt like to me, I felt like the application of the first two weeks made sense.

The first week I talked about how God is the Trinity. God is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, He is 3 in 1 and therefore He is a relational God. From His very essence from the very beginning, He’s been a relational God. Not some lonely God up in the sky twiddling His thumbs going, “what am I going to do today? There’s no one around but Me.” But He’s been from the very beginning Father, Son, Holy Spirit. A community. Displaying unity and diversity, self-giving love. And that’s what He’s called us to be, part of that community. To be in relationship with Him, to be in relationship with each other. And so I felt like even though it’s hard to understand and comprehend the Trinity, the application I can understand. That God wants a relationship with me, that God wants us to be in community with each other. I can get that.

The second week I talked about how God is eternal, that He’s unchanging. Again, it’s hard to wrap your head around that He was there in the beginning, He’ll be there in the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He exists outside of time and space. Hard to wrap my head around that, but again the application I can get. That God is the Rock therefore. He is unchanging. He is the one you can trust in the midst of a world that is completely always changing. I can get that. I can understand that.

Today however, I have a difficult task. I’m going to talk about the holiness of God, that God is holy. And I feel like yes, that’s hard to get my head around, but that’s also difficult when it comes to the application. And you’re going to understand why when I get to that aspect of it. I’m going to start by talking about what it means that God is holy and then we’ll get into what are the implications of that are for you. That’s where it gets difficult.

But I want to talk first about Holy One of God. The Holy One of Israel. This is all over, of course, if you go through the bible, especially through the psalms. Again and again he’s referred to as the Holy One. We sang up here holy, holy, holy. And that’s one of those words that you’re probably, unless you’ve been around the church awhile, you say what does that even mean? The only time you ever hear the word holy is usually in a curse or epithet, holy this or holy that. I mean, that’s the only time people use the word holy these days. It’s not a word you talk about. It’s just usually in a negative context. So what does this word holy mean and why is it supposed to mean so much? Where we’re talking about God being holy. What does that even mean?