“Wholly, Holy, Holy”

The Appomattox Court House Presbyterian Church Pulpit
The Lord’s Day, April 24, 2005
Leviticus 16:1-10; 29-34; Isaiah 6:1-8; Hebrews 9:1-14
Rev. Cameron S. Smith

Last week, we were introduced to the sacrificial system found recorded in the book of Leviticus.  There were a couple of points that I wanted you to take home last Sunday:  First, the sacrifices offered in the wilderness tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple actually foreshadowed what God would do for us in Christ; and secondly, the sacrificial ritual portrayed graphically the seriousness of human sin and our need for Christ.

Today, I want to add a third perspective to the mix:  The sacrifices served as a vivid reminder of the holiness of God.  To say that God is holy is to say that He is set apart from the sinful and profane.  God is perfect in justice; perfect in righteousness; and perfect in love.  Through His acts recorded in Scripture, we know that He is compassionate and beneficent.  Holiness includes all of this and so much more.

God is holy; but His people, on the other hand, perpetually struggle with sin and, as we all know experientially, rebellion comes all too naturally.  Given this reality and the corresponding reality that God desires to dwell with His people, human sin must be accounted for because holiness and rebellion are not compatible.  Romans 6:23 reminds us that “the wages of sin is death,” and so blood must be shed.

Unfortunately for the Church, I think this regard for God’s holiness and our sinfulness has become somewhat passé.  Philip Yancey, in the latest issue of Christianity Today (May 2005, A Bow and a Kiss), picks up on this theme as he writes of a lack of awe in our approach to God.  There’s no sense of the holy in contemporary Christian worship:

“To most moderns…a sense of awe comes with the greatest difficulty.  We have domesticated angels into stuffed toys and Christmas ornaments, made cartoons of St. Peter at the gate of heaven, tamed the phenomenon of Easter with bunny rabbits, and substituted for the awe of shepherds and wise men cute elves and a jolly man dressed in red.  Almighty God gets nicknames like ‘The Big Guy’ and ‘The Man Upstairs.”

“I wonder what we are missing when we seek to reduce the distance between creature and Creator, a distance expressed so eloquently by Job, Isaiah, and the psalmists.  John, the disciple Jesus loved, who had lain against Jesus’ breast, records in Revelation that he fell at his feet as though dead when Jesus appeared in full glory[!]”

Nadab and Abihu, the two oldest sons of Aaron referred to in the first verse of our passage in Leviticus 16, learned about God’s holiness the hard way!  According to Leviticus 10, they offered “unauthorized” (or strange fire) sacrifices to the Lord, and both fell dead when fire from the altar consumed them.  The words Moses speaks to Aaron after their death is instructive:  “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored.” (Lev. 10:3).

God’s holiness is a key theme in the book of Leviticus.  Among the various sacrificial offerings provided by God, there was one in particular that stood out from the rest.  It was the sacrificial ritual followed on the annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).  Judaism still considers it to be the holiest day of the year.  On this day, atonement was made for the entire nation.  Think of atonement as (and I do recognize that this is a gross over-simplification, but hopefully, helpful!) satisfaction given to God for our sins; or perhaps, making amends with God.

On this holy day, the High Priest and the whole priestly order were cleansed.  The tabernacle itself and the people received cleansing as well.  All sins, intentional and unintentional, were forgiven so that a holy God could continue to dwell in their midst.

The entire ritual of the Day of Atonement is recorded in Leviticus 16.  The High Priest made his one and only trip into the Holy of Holies where the ark of God was kept.  The ark was God’s footstool.  It was where His visible glory was manifested.  Scripture tells us that He spoke to Moses from that location above the cherubim.  2 Chronicles 3:1 identifies the Holy of Holies as the location in the Jerusalem Temple where Abraham was to offer his one and only son, Isaac, as a burnt offering.  Jewish legend identifies the Holy of Holies as being the very spot where Adam and Eve were created.  It was a holy place!

In response to the significance of the day, Israel was to refrain from their normal, mundane activities and humble themselves as their sins were forgiven, washed and taken away.

You may notice that I framed our liturgy this morning around Isaiah 6; the call of the prophet Isaiah.  I did this because it fits so well with our passage in Leviticus 16:

1.  The holiness of God is magnified:  “In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.  Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.’  And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.” (Isaiah 6:1-4).

2.  In contrast to the holiness of God, the gravity of the sinful condition we find ourselves in is obvious.  Notice Isaiah’s response to being in God’s presence:  “Woe is me, for I am ruined!  I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)

3.  But at this point, the similarity to Leviticus ends.  Isaiah doesn’t go and get an animal to sacrifice.  Normally, that would have been the appropriate response to an encounter with God.  But God does something different here; something marvelous.  Before Isaiah can even collect his senses, God acts:  “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.  He touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.’” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

And this gracious action by God is the whole point of our New Testament reading from Hebrews this morning.  “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.  For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:11-14).

Just as Isaiah was cleansed and forgiven by God directly; so we too have been forgiven and cleansed through the work of our High Priest, Jesus Christ.  Christ is the High Priest, Christ is the sacrifice and Christ is the scapegoat that bears our sins away, never to return.  Looking forward to the blessings of the coming Messiah, the Psalmist says, God “has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.  As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:10-12)  John the Baptist, seeing Jesus for the first time says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).  Truly, Isaiah’s cleansing was only a foretaste of the kind of cleansing God was going to accomplish through Christ!

I told you that the point of today’s sermon was to emphasize the holiness of God, and so it has.  Perhaps you’re of the opinion that this hasn’t been a “practical” sermon.  Maybe you’ve been bored out of your mind hearing, holy, holy, holy, over and over?

The painful truth of the matter is that I believe that boredom in this regard is a symptom of selfishness.  We are so self-focused:  Life and anything we consider important is all about what we want; what we like; what we want to do and how we want to live!  But my friends, when you purpose to set your gaze upon God’s holiness, selfishness and all of its attendant baggage becomes the first casualty to fall away.  Being sanctified by God’s holiness re-writes the basic questions:  Consequently, it’s not so much about what we want, but what God wants;  not about what we like, but what God likes; not about what we want to do, but about what God wants us to do;  not about how we want to live, but about how God wants us to live.

Do you realize that your cleansing through the blood of Jesus Christ has made you holy?  You are saints, i.e. holy ones.  You have been set apart and God is at work in you!  Therefore, there is no such thing as a part-time Christian.  The reality is that Church membership, so cherished in the life of our community, is meaningless without a changed, holy life.  If you have no sense of growth in holiness, it’s time to start doing some heart-felt self-evaluation.  Please hear me well, don’t squander your life in mediocrity.  If I could paraphrase that last verse from our Hebrews passage (i.e. Heb. 9:14), it would virtually cry out:  “You were saved to be holy!  You were saved from an unholy life whose only end was death!  You were made holy to serve a holy God!”

Consider well this final thought:  Casual may be appropriate and acceptable to describe how you dress sometimes, but it can never be used to describe a follower of Jesus Christ.  And so, by God’s grace and strength, may we all make Isaiah’s response to God our very own: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”  Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”  Amen.