so all summer long, if you've been here, you know, we've been in this summer message series where we've been talking about the attributes of God. It's kind of the characteristics of God, trying to understand really who God is. I mean, that's what this is. Really all about, having a proper view and understanding of God, because sometimes we can kind of make up what we think God is like in our own minds, and then just believe it to be true. Sometimes we've taken other people's words for it, whether it's been a mom or a dad or an aunt or an uncle or a grandfather or a Sunday school teacher or someone else, you've just kind of taken their word that that is true about God, but never really seen it in Scripture for yourself. And so we've been looking at the Bible to see what God has revealed about himself, so that we have, again, a proper understanding, a biblical view of God. But not just to leave here going, Hey, I know a bunch of facts about who you are God, but to know that the more we know about God, the better we can then begin to relate to him. Because this was meant to be relational. It was meant to be experiential. You're not meant to just know about God. You're meant to be in relationship and experience His life and His power and His presence in you and working through you. And so the more you know about him, the more you can engage relationally with him in the same way that you can do so if you know your spouse or friends, and the more you know about them and their personality. You can enjoy the relationship that you have with them. So we've covered a number of things already. I don't have time to go into the details of these, but we've learned so far that God is self existent, that he has no end and no beginning, that he's eternal. He just life himself, is who he is, that God is immutable, which basically just means that he's unchanging. God does not ever change. He isn't going to wake up one morning and go, I'm just in a bad mood and feel like getting with somebody today. You know, it's like, I know he's good and he's always going to be good, he's loving, and he's always going to be loving. And so that is an incredible thing for us to know and understand. If we're going to relate to him better. We've learned that God is good, that He is omnipresent, present everywhere. There is nowhere that you can go and not be in the presence of God. You have access to all of God all of the time, anywhere you go. We learned that God is omniscient, that he's all knowing. He knows all things actual, impossible. He's Omni sapient, meaning he's all wise. He knows how to take all the information that he has, and through his wisdom, actually apply the knowledge that he has for good. And because of him being omnipotent, all powerful, he can actually carry out those plans, which makes him then sovereign. He can rule, and he can reign, and he can work with human choices and mistakes that we make and still move things along in this world for our good and for His glory. Can I get an amen to that? Thank you. I knew you were listening. All right, so we've got a lot more to cover, and today we're going to go over one more of God's attributes, which is God's attribute of holiness. Now let's look at one of the definitions that one of our theologians, pastors, I thought was pretty appropriate for this from just looking at Scripture and coming up with a succinct definition of it, and then we'll dive into Scripture and really talk about it even more. Jerry bridges defines holiness this way. He says, holiness is a comprehensive term to denote all that God is in his transcendent majesty and infinite purity. When we think about the holiness of God, we need to think about it on these two different levels, that he's transcendent in majesty, these high and exalted above all things we sang about that all morning long, during the songs that we were singing in worship. But he's also an infinite moral purity. His Holiness means that he's perfect. He's pure. In Him is no evil at all, and so he's distinct. He is like none other. Now, one of the things that we've been doing when we've looked at all of these attributes has taken you through a number of scriptures all throughout the Bible, but today we're mainly going to camp out in one passage, and there'll be a couple of scriptures here and there in other places, but I think we really begin to see the holiness of God and what's meant by that through what we see in Isaiah chapter six, and we're going to Look at that starting in verse one right now Isaiah is writing, and he says this, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and exalted seated on a throne and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now this doesn't have anything to do with the attribute of holiness what I'm about to mention. But I just briefly want to mention what we see here, because this description, I want to highlight it, and we'll come back and talk about it much more in depth, I'm sure at some point in time, this is Isaiah writing, and he says, Isaw the Lord.He had a vision.There were. A vision where the Lord revealed Himself to Him. Now we live in the year 2025, we had come into this air through this age of of enlightenment and this age of reason and and science and and we can Google anything and learn about facts and practical information and all the above and and we sometimes tend to discount the spiritual, the supernatural, the things that are a little bit more mysterious. But listen, God is spirit. There is more at work in this world than just what it is that you see. And this is one example where the Lord was revealing to Isaiah through a vision. And I just mentioned that to say, don't put God in a box, because you live in 2025 and you're skeptical about supernatural things. You're skeptical about the Spirit moving and working God revealed to Isaiah through a vision. Did you know that there are people on the other part of the world who are coming to know Jesus through dreams, like they go to sleep one night. They're not thinking anything about it. God reveals Himself Jesus in their dreams, they wake up and they're going, oh my gosh, I've seen Jesus, and they're coming to know him and experiencing His salvation, because God revealed Himself to them in dreams. I say all that to just say, Yes, we always go to God's word. It's inspired. We see the truth here. Anything we feel like God is saying to us, or we're sensing in kind of mysterious, spiritual kind of way, in the way that he speaks to us, we check and look through Scripture. We're not gonna go to bed one night and have a dream that God told you to just divorce your spouse for no reason and go, Well, he spoke to me last night. There it is. It's settled. I mean, that's not what we're talking about here. We're gonna check things, but don't discount that God is at work in the supernatural and in a spiritual way. And so I just want to highlight that as we get to now. What Isaiah is revealing about the holiness of God. The first thing that he sees when God reveals something to him about who he is through this vision is that he is high and exalted and seated on a throne. When we talk about the holiness of God, he's his transcendent majesty. That is what we're talking about, that he is high and exalted above all things and all people, because he's like none other. There is no one like him, and so that's what it means to be holy and to be high and exalted. Moses in Exodus, 15 describes it this way. Says, Who among you, or who among the gods, is like you, Lord, who is like you? Majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders. This your descriptions about who he is, his attribute of holiness. And because of that, he asks the question, who's like you? God, you're sitting high and exalted above all things. There's not one more person that's sitting up there that's on level playing with you. There's no one. There's no one like you. So that's part of what we're talking about when we talk about what it means to be holy. Isaiah. Continue. Oh, so the other thing we see here, he says he's high and exalted, and just Just quickly, because we don't think about this much when we're talking about kings and that kind of thing today. He says, in the he's high and exalted. He's envisioning Him. God's revealing to him who he is. And he says, the train of his robe, so he's a king, right? And and kings wear robes, and and the train of a robe, back in the day, would describe their glory. If it was longer and more full, then they had more glory, they had more power, they were more majestic, and that kind of thing. And in this vision, we see that this robe filled the temple. I mean, this is a long train here, and so again, he's just highlighting that He's holy. There's no other king that has a train in his robe as long as he does here, he is holy and he's set apart. Isaiah goes on, Isaiah 62 it says, Above him, above God, seated high, and above it, all above him were seraphim. This is just another word for angels, each with six wings. Now, how many wings do you need to fly?Just two, right? So we already seesomething a little bit interesting here. If they're meant to fly, then why do they need six wings? And we see that they do have two for flying. That purpose has been solved, but he's given them four other wings for other purposes. With two wings, they covered their faces, and with the other two, they covered their feet. Now, why? Is that necessary? Well, God created these Seraphim, these angels, to be in his presence, a God who is holy, and therefore they were going to need certain things to be able to be in His presence. I don't know if you remember this or not. If you've read through your Bible, you studied Exodus at all. But in Exodus chapter three, we're told that Moses is encountering God at Mount Horeb. This is labeled, it's known as the mountain of God. And so he's he's getting closer to God's presence in Exodus three, verse five, God says, Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. He was getting near a holy God. He says it's necessary for you to remove your shoes, to be in my presence. And so knowing that these angels were going to be in God's presence, in His holiness in encountering him, we've got two wings to fly. We've got two to cover up our feet, but we've also got two to cover up their faces, to cover up their eyes. Another thing that we see in Scripture, all throughout Scripture, is that God is light. First John one five says God is light in him, there is no darkness at all. And so God is pure radiant light. We're not talking about a little 60 watt bulb that you put in a lamp at your house. We're talking about God being pure radiant light. I mean, the closest thing that we can come to is picturing the sun. I mean, you try walking out those doors and directly looking at the sun. You can't do it. You're gonna have to squint. You're gonna have to turn your gaze a little bit. And this is the same idea that we're getting away of God is light, that he's so pure, he's so holy, so bright, that these angelic beings who were created to be in his presence cannot look upon His presence. And so they need wings to be able to cover up their eyes, and so just in the sense that we're seeing the way that they were, had to be created, to be in the presence of a holy God. Tells you something about his holiness, and this is something to have ultimate respect for in this way. Now he didn't just create them to fly around and have those areas covered. Here's what they do. Look at Isaiah, 63 and they the seraphim, the angels were calling to one another, holy, holy. Holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full ofhis glory.What's really interesting about this is that just one of these would have done it. If I tell you that God is love, you get the idea that God is love if I tell you that God is merciful, okay, God is merciful. But here's the deal, nowhere else in Scripture that at least I'm aware of, does it say love, love, love is the Lord God Almighty? It doesn't say grace, grace, grace, merciful, merciful, merciful. Let's try saying that. Obviously, I can't do it.But it does say God is holy, holy. Holy. I mean,that is the Bible's way of putting three exclamations point behind something, putting it in all caps. Bolden. Draw this to your attention. He is holy. Holy. Holy. In other words, this should cause us, when we see that, to sit up a little bit more in our seats and go, this is important. This is something we really need to see and understand about who God is. And first of all, it means that he's high and transcendent and exalted above. He's like no other. And in moral purity, there is no one is pure and moral is him. No one even comes close. Now, with that in mind, we've got the angels. We've got them covering holiness. Got to have that happen in His presence. They're declaring this to be true about the Lord, and as they say it, and Isaiah is envisioning this, and God's revealing this through his vision, look at what happens as they say the words and declare Holy, holy, holy, at the sound, at the sound of their voices, the doorpost and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. When, when, when you think of something shaking right and a doorpost and threshold shaking. What do you think of an earthquake? Maybe I've been fortunate to never have been in an earthquake. I don't know. Maybe some of you would, but can only imagine that if things begin to shake and the ground begins to move, how I would begin to react with fear, terror. Error, scared. What's happening. What is going to happen? You think of smoke? What do you think of fire? Right? Can you imagine being in an earthquake and the building being on fire at the same time? So, holy, holy, holy. And this is what is happening. So, fear, terror, all of those things. And so as that is happening and he's getting this vision and understanding more about who God is, this is what it causes Isaiah to say,Isaiah, chapter six, verse five, Woe tome. Woe to me. I am ruined. Some translations say I am undone. I mean, I'm just undone. I'm ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty, the high and exalted one who sits above all things, in majesty, in moral purity, and in countering his presence, makes Isaiah understand that he is unclean. He is a man of unclean lips. He's sinful. When you encounter a holy and a perfect, morally pure God, the only thing that we can begin to realize about ourselves is that we're not him, and that we're unholy in His presence. And that is something that not just Isaiah needs to understand, but that you and I have got to see about who God is and who we are in light of him. We livein a culturewhere everyone gets a participation award, everyone gets a trophy, whether you win or whether it is that you lose. We're just told over and over and over again that we're special, that we're good, and we begin to believe it. And even when we start to think, Okay, well, I may have made a bad choice here. Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was, then most of our minds don't really lean into that. Most of our minds go, Yeah, but look at that guy over there. Look at her right and we go to someone who's made way more of a mess of life than we have and go. But compared to them, I am special. I'm really good. You know, I guess I'm doing okay. Look at Isaiah response here. Is he looking around for anyone and going, Well, I'm pretty good compared to these people over here. No, he's going, I'm ruined. I am ruined because he understood that God is the standard. Other people are not the standard. And if you fall into the presence of a holy and a perfect God, you will realize the depth of your sin, and it will crush you. Think of it like the sun again again. The closer you get, it's so bright and so hot and so powerful that the closer you get to the son's presence, what would happen to you? You would burn up. You would die. You would be ruined and undone. In the same way as you begin to encounter a holy and a perfect God, you would be ruined. You would be undone, you would come to realization that you are just destroyed and there's nothing that you can do about it. And so that's partly my question before we continue this morning, have you come to the place? I mean, listen to me, adults, teenagers in the room, kids in the room. Have you come to the place where you understand how big of a how big of a deal sin is in your life, how crushing it is to fill the weight of God's holiness compared to your un holiness. If not, I would say that you don't understand the holiness of God. You don't understand what we're talking about when we declare that God is holy, because you would be crushed under the weight of your sin before a holy and a perfect God. And you can't go serve in a soup kitchen, you can't read your Bible, you can't come and give something and say, God, I mean, look at those things that I did. Surely I'm okay now. No, you're ruined. This is something that we have to come to understand is true about every one of us, before we come to know Jesus Christ standing in the presence of a holy God, and he's standing in the presence of God, and he begins to get it, and he's like, I am going to die, because this is who God is, and this is who I am, and if you have him, but thank goodness for what we see next. Verses six and seven, Isaiah says, then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar, and with it he touched my mouth and said. See this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for praiseGod for that. Isaiah wasokay. I can I can breathe. I mean, if one scene, I'm ruined, I'm undone, I'm destroyed, I'm going to die. But me, but thank you. Jesus Isaiah understood there was nothing that he could do to get him out of the situation that he needed to be rescued, and someone came to his rescue. And the same is true of you and me and what we see here with the way this is envisioned and his sin being atoned for in this moment in the Old Testament, is a foreshadowing of Jesus coming in the new covenant in his ultimate atonement that would be provided for us through his payment of sin on the cross. And we even see that in the New Covenant, look at first John two, two. He talking about Jesus himself, is the sacrifice that look at this language, atones, same thing we just saw in Isaiah. Atones for our sins today, in not only our sins, but the sins of the whole world. In other words, when Jesus was here and he went to the cross, he took on all of your sins, all of my sins, the sins of the entire world, past, present and future, and died for them. Why do you have to die? Because that was the penalty. There was a penalty that had to be paid for sin, and so that we didn't have to pay it. He paid it for us. And then they put him in a grave, and then God raised Him from the dead three days later and defeated the power of sin and death forever. And so because of that sacrifice, that ultimate sacrifice, that atonement that has been provided for us, he did the work, nothing that we could do in and of ourselves. He offers us that atonement and forgiveness of sins as a free gift. It's Grace. All you and I have to do is receive it, and we receive it by putting our faith and trust in Jesus. It's like pushing our poker chips all into the middle of the table and saying, I'm going all in on Jesus, not holding one back on my effort, and whatever it is that I'm doing all in and that's what it looks like to put my faith and trust in Jesus for salvation. To experience those things. Now, when that happens, things change in our lives. We're forgiven, we're adopted into his family, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But if we haven't, if we haven't received His forgiveness, then you are in the same position that Isaiah was in when he realized, standing before a holy God, I am ruined. I'm undone. There's nothing I can do. And if you don't realize that, before you take your final breath here on Earth,you will experiencewhat it's like to be ruined for all of eternity,not because God's an unloving God, not because he's unkind and mean and cruel, but just the opposite, because he's so loving and so merciful that He sent His one only son to do everything for you, that all you had to do was receive His free gift, and You chose to go your own way, to not accept His kindness, to not accept his love, to not accept His goodness. And so it's my hope and my prayer that if you're here today, you're watching online today, and you've never put your faith and trust in God, and you're realizing that you stand before the presence of a holy God, and you are ruined and you are undone, and you want to experience that transformation that only Jesus can provide, that you'll push your chips all in on Jesus today, and I'll give you a chance to put your faith and trust in him here in a little while. But there's one more thing that I want you to see in this passage that we are looking at. As soon as Isaiah has this experience of having a sin atoned for, he says. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and whom will go for us? And I said, Here I am. Lord, send me. How could that happen? How could things change so quickly? I'm ruined. I'm undone. I'm unworthy to here I am. Send me well, because his sin was atoned for. He was able to be in the presence of God. He's able to work and participate with God and what He was doing and his kingdom work in and through Him, through a temporary indwelling of the Spirit, because things had changed in his life. And the same thing is true for us. We see almost this exact same kind of thing. Send me and I'm able to be a part of things because of the Atonement, of what it is that you've done in this New Covenant, the New Testament first, Peter two nine says this, of you and me, those who have put our faith and trust in Jesus, pushed our chips all in on Jesus. Says you now are a chosen people. Your royal priest. You are a holy nation. This is what's true about you. Now God's very own possession, and as a result of being holy and the work that Christ has done in you to transform and change you, you can now do something that you couldn't do before. You can show others the goodness of God, for He has called you out of the darkness and into his wonderful light. Before you had put your faith and trust in Jesus, you were part of the darkness. You were living in the darkness. You were fighting and trying to find your own way. But now that you've said to you, yes to Jesus, you've been called out of this darkness and into his wonderful life, and you have been transformed, and you've been changed. You have been made holy. There is something different about you, and because there's something different about you, now you can show others the goodness of God. Why? Because you've been made good. Because you've been made holy. This is what we also need to see when we talk about how this practically plays out in our lives today. Because we can talk about God being holy, but I wonder if you believer, you who have put your faith and trust in Jesus, can declare with truth and confidence and say this right here in Christ, not only is God holy,but I'm holy.I am holy, not because of who you are, not because of what it is that you've done, but because this is a communicable attribute, because the moment you put your faith and trust in Jesus, you are joined in a spiritual union with Him. And if Jesus is holy, He shares His Holiness with you. Outside of Christ, you're not holy, but in Christ, you've been made into a new creation, and you too are holy. Show me where it says that, Jason, well, one of the places is right here, but let me just show you a few others really quickly. Apostle Paul in Colossians says, But now he has reconciled you, if you put your faith and trust in Jesus, he's reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you what holy in his sight, you're without blemish. You're free from accusation. Two chapters later, he says, Therefore, as God's chosen people, those who are holy, those who have been made holy. So what I'm trying to say is this a bunch of you, have been a part of church for a long time. You probably understood something about God being holy. You would recognize that God is holy and he's distinct, and he's high and set above, and He's morally pure and all that. And you would say something like this, God is holy and I'm not. I'm just a poor old sinner who is saved by grace. And if that's your view, you have a proper view of God, yes, that's biblical, right? But if that's your view of God, and then that's the view of you, and you're still unholy, then you cannot encounter and experience the presence of the living God, because He's holy and you're just a poor, old, dirty, rotten sinner who's barely saved by grace. And so how could you experience His power? How could you experience His presence? How could you experience Him doing anything in you and through you? If you were not holy, in order for him to dwell in you and express his life through you, you had to be made holy. And so therefore the Bible says you were you were made holy. And so what we've got to see if we're going to experience the life of Christ is a proper view of God in His holiness, and a proper view of ourselves in Christ, in that we have been made holy. And here's what's so beautiful about that. Guess what? If you've been made holy, now you can act holy if you've been made good now you can act good if you're just unholy and you're a dirty, rotten sinner, the most natural thing in the world for you to do is just keep on sinning, because that's who I am. But if I'm holy now, I can act holy. It's not I'm so unholy, but I'm gonna try to get my act together and be more holy one day. Do you see the difference you'll experience acting holy when you start to believe the truth, because it is the truth that you are holy. How much easier is it to live holy? If you know you're already holy, you just go live who you are. This is the Christian life. It's the work of Christ that does this to you, and then it impacts this your actions and what he's doing through you. And so now you can act good, and you can do all these things that we just talked about here show others the goodness of God as a result. Why? Because you've been made good. So this is for those of us who have put our faith and trust in Jesus, we recognize the truth that God is holy and that in Him, we be made holy, and now we have what it takes to experience a relationship with the Living God and have his life. Pressed through us to enjoy his presence and have power over all of the things that we deal with in our life on a day to day basis. For those of you have never said yes to Jesus, your response today is, Woe is me. I am ruined, but thank you Jesus for dying on the cross for my sins, and in this moment, I say yes to you and receive your forgiveness in life, and I want to give you the opportunity to do that right now, as we bow our heads and we close our eyes and we begin to close in prayer