What comes into your mind, when you hear the word ‘holy’? What do you associate with the idea of holiness?

To speak of holiness these days is to invite scorn. Indeed, before someone comes to Christ, probably the only time he has heard the word holy is as a form of mockery: someone is accused of being holier-than-thou, or a Christian is called a holy-roller. A.W. Tozer said that “we have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.” We no longer expect anything like moral purity in our teachers, ethics from our businessmen, or uprightness from celebrities. It’s safe to say that such is scorned. Just this last week, it emerged the U.S. Vice-President apparently doesn’t dine alone with women or attend events where alcohol is served if his wife doesn’t accompany him. The outrage from the liberal media was unbelievable, assailing him for not respecting women, for being prudish. Of course, they’d be the first to call him a hypocrite if he fell into sin with another woman, but when he behaves like a Christian, they attack him, too.

But it is not just the world that seems uncomfortable with holiness. Professing Christians seem awkward about it too. How many churches sing hymns or songs about God’s holiness anymore? How many believe the very atmosphere of worship should reflect the holiness of God? How many people dress to church as if they’re going to worship a holy God? Edward Farley commented that contemporary worship creates a tone that is “casual, comfortable, chatty, busy, humorous, pleasant and at times even cute…if the seraphim assumed this Sunday morning mood, they would be addressing God not as ‘holy, holy, holy,’ but as ‘nice, nice, nice.’”

Start addressing the topic of God’s holiness in an unbroken fashion, and should you pause to take a breath, some professing Christian will jump in and say, “Yes, but He’s also a God of love.” What we’re going to see this morning is that God is a God of love because He is holy. God’s holiness is at the heart of His love. And any Christian who claims to love God can be tested on his claim by seeing if the God he claims to love is a holy God, and if the love he offers this God is a holy love.

We see something of the holiness of God in this well-known scene in Isaiah 6. But perhaps we have not fully understood a lot of the background and the symbolism that gives this scene its fullest meaning.

Isaiah and His Time

Isaiah lived during the days of the divided kingdom. He was born around 766 B.C, in Jerusalem, when good king Uzziah was on the throne of Judah. Isaiah means “Salvation of Yahweh”. He was married, and had two sons, Shear-Yashub, meaning “a remnant will return,” and Maher-shalal-has-baz, or “quick prey.” Isaiah lived around 80 years, and had a long ministry of around 60 years, mainly under kings Uzziah and Hezekiah. One of the oldest Dead Sea Scrolls, possibly as old as 300 B.C., contains the entire book of Isaiah, exactly as it is in our Bibles.

Isaiah was in his early twenties when he began his ministry, but his real call to ministry is this well-known chapter 6. This is where Isaiah was truly commissioned by God to prophesy to Judah. This was the year Uzziah died, and so it was a year of deep uncertainty. Though Uzziah had done some foolish things, he had been a godly king. His one very arrogant act was to offer incense in the Temple, a right which belonged to the priests alone. He was struck with leprosy, and his son Jotham had become a kind of co-regent. So when Uzziah died, Jotham essentially kept on doing what he had been doing. But that didn’t take away uncertainty. Remember when Reheboam, Solomon’s son, became king? No one was sure if he would be as wise as his father, or foolish? Sadly, he chose foolishness.

The Vision of God’s Holiness

So Isaiah, around 25 years old, receives this vision of God. Whether Isaiah was in the Temple at the time, or whether it was a vision of God in the Temple, we don’t know, but it is one of the most striking visions of God’s holiness in all of Scripture.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.

The first thing we notice is that Isaiah saw the Lord. But you’ll notice the word for Lord is not the same as in verse 3, where it is LORD – Yahweh. This is Yahweh, but the word here is Adonai. It is what we see in Psalm 110, when David writes, “The LORD said to my Lord” – Yahweh said to my Adonai. Jesus quoted that Psalm to show the Pharisees that Messiah had to be both human and divine – a descendant of David and the Lord of David. John tells us that No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (John 1:18) Therefore, who is Isaiah seeing? Isaiah is seeing the one who manifests the Trinity to human eyes: the eternal Son of God. He is seeing a manifestation of God, who is a Spirit, who is omnipresent, but here is made visible and localized and manifest like a human king.

And Isaiah sees here that this one is on a throne. King Uzziah has died, and will be replaced by another king, but this king lives before and after earthly kings. He lives on when nations replace their kings with parliaments, and then revert back to kings. This one is eternal and immutable. And the way that God is eternal and immutable is if He is self-existent, and self-sufficient.

Never in Scripture is God fighting for His right to rule. He is always seated. But Isaiah says he was high and lifted up. His throne was not a regular throne. A coronated and supreme king, with absolute power. He is omnipotent and sovereign. This is the king with all knowledge and all wisdom, making Him perfect in justice and righteousness. And what we will see by His actions in a few moments is that He is also gracious and merciful, faithful and true.

Now Isaiah says something which summarises all this. The train of his robe filled the Temple. Now that might sound odd to us. But it is not so far away from us culturally as to have no meaning. It is still a custom in our time for royal wedding dresses to have long trains. In the Roman Catholic church, certain cardinals, bishops and prelates are allowed to wear a robe with a long train. It is an image of royalty, splendour, dignity. God’s robe does not stretch out a few metres, it seems to cover the ground, everywhere Isaiah looks.

The Meaning of God’s Holiness

God’s holiness is all of His attributes combined in glorious excellence. When you hear holiness, you tend to think of moral purity. But that is not the primary meaning of holiness. In fact, our English word holy comes from an Anglo-Saxon word that means ‘whole’, complete. God’s holiness is His perfection. It is all that He is, combined, if we can so speak, and summarised. All that we have studied in the last weeks, that God is self-Existent and Self-Sufficient, Omnipresent, Eternal and Immutable, Omniscient and All-Wise, Omnipotent and Sovereign, Just and Righteous, Gracious and Merciful, Faithful and True taken together are what make God God. As the seven colours of the rainbow combine to make white light, so the attributes of God cannot really be separated, they combine to form the gloriously beautiful white light of God’s holiness. God’s Godness, God’s uniqueness is His holiness. So as Isaiah sees a King who is all these things, and as His beauty fills the Temple, this is holiness. The beauty of holiness.

This is why in the Old Testament, this is the way God wants to be known, as the holy God. When He does so, He is calling for people to know Him as the unique God, the God who is beautiful and glorious because He is all the attributes we have studied. He is Perfect, He is glorious, He is blessed.

This beauty of His, is what God loves most. Henry Scougal made a penetrating observation when he wrote “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” In other words, the value and nobility of a person is tested by finding out what that person loves. If he loves base and immoral things, then he is that sort of person. If he loves high and glorious things, he is that sort of person. What sort of things does God love? God loves the beauty of His holiness more than anything, which makes Him the most beautiful soul. “God is love” – yes, he is, and this is what He loves first and most, His own holiness, His glory.

The Seraphim and Their Worship

But Isaiah sees something else quite spectacular.

Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

Though this is a Temple scene, Isaiah is allowed to see some creatures which presumably are only seen in Heaven. Above the Lord, are these seraphim, how many, we are not told. This is the only time in Scripture we meet them. We are accustomed to calling any spiritual being in Heaven an angel, but that’s not strictly true. The Bible describes at least nine different kinds of spiritual beings that serve God: archangels, seraphim, thrones, rulers, authorities, powers, cherubim, living creatures, and angels. The word seraph comes from a Hebrew word which means ‘to burn’. They seem to be exclusively devoted to the throne of God, to the worship of God, to the holiness of God. With their six wings, two keep them flying, two cover his feet, and two cover his face. Why do they cover their feet and faces?

It is an act of deep reverence and respect. God’s holiness is so other, so unique, so pure, that these exalted beings feel it is only appropriate to humble themselves. A direct look at the face of the Lord seems to them presumptuous. Being in His presence with uncovered feet seems to them irreverent. So even though they are sinless and glorious, the holiness of God is of an entirely different degree.

As they fly, they chant in a kind of responsive antiphony, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory. These gloriously powerful beings, so powerful that their voices cause the foundation-stones on which the doorposts rest to vibrate and shake, these hyper-intelligent beings choose to say one thing about God: He is holy. He is holy three times over, which was a Hebrew way of emphasising the completion of something, but it certainly also points to the idea that God is Himself in three subsistences, Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit.

The Transcendence and Otherness of God

Now the response of the seraphim tells us something else about God’s holiness.

God’s holiness is what sets Him apart from His creation. Holiness is not only God’s glorious perfection and beauty, it is the absolute uniqueness of God. God is completely other than His creation. When we say that God is transcendent, we mean that God stands apart from His creation in certain unbridgeable gaps. God is not merely the very best of the best, as if He is what Michael or Gabriel are, even stronger. He is not what you and I think of as a good person or a great person multiplied many times over. No, God is holy in that He is distinct.

This is why the seraphim cover their feet and eyes. They are not sinful, or needing atonement, morally, they can stand in God’s presence. But so transcendentally superior, and other is God, that these spirit beings are burning with the truth that God is completely other, beyond us, incomprehensible. Here is where our theology becomes mostly made up of negatives. When something is completely other to us, we can only say what it is not. So we say God is not finite. He is infinite. We say He is not comprehensible, He is incomprehensible. We say He is not physical, He is immaterial. We say He is not composed of parts, but is a unity, a simplicity.

He is a Spirit. He is an infinite Spirit. He is a God in whom exists three separate but united instantiations of Himself: Father, Son, and Spirit.

When God asks this question, there is no answer: “To whom then will you liken Me, Or to whom shall I be equal?” says the Holy One. (Isa. 40:25)

Psalm 86:8 Among the gods there is none like You, O Lord; Nor are there any works like Your works. (Ps. 86:8)

Holiness is not only the beauty of God, it is His uniqueness, His otherness. This is why the words for holy in Scripture come from root words meaning to set apart. To keep distinct. The idea of sacredness is something completely unlike what is common and ordinary. Even the ancient pagans understood this idea of the sacred and the profane. The sacred was what belonged to a god, unlike us. And the word profane comes from two Latin words, pro and fanum. Fanum = temple, and pro = before. The practice even in pagan worship was to discard what was common and ordinary in front of the Temple, before you went in. Particularly items that represented ordinariness, like shoes. Because if you went before a god, and acted like this was ordinary, common, everyday, average, you were profaning that god.

This is not just a pagan idea. So many of the Mosaic Laws were put there, in God’s own words, to teach Israel “that you may distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean (Lev. 10:10). Many people in Scripture were disciplined for profaning God’s Ark, or His temple. And when you come into the New Testament, Paul warns the Corinthians that they are profaning the Lord’s Supper.

But in modern evangelical Christianity, it seems people are doing everything they can to erase the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The highest goal for modern churches, is to make God seem familiar, accessible, a God you can know in three easy steps, a God who will be your pal, and your therapist and your buddy when you need him to. Listen to the preaching. Listen to the music. Listen to the praying. Does anything in it say, “This God is unlike anything you know?” When last did you hear ‘Christian’ music played on the radio that gave you a sense that God is mysterious, wondrous, unfamiliar, daunting? It’s easy to find easy-listening music, that is familiar to everyone, and put Jesus lyrics to those words, and hey-presto, we have a “Gospel-song”. But is it possible that all that is being done is an attempt to make the holy God seem familiar, ordinary, everyday?

This is why Proverbs 9:10 says “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Prov. 9:10)”

If you have no reverence, you cannot even begin to know who you are dealing with. If you come to God with no humility, no reverence, then you are probably coming to a god made in your own image that you pray to.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, With him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

The Immanence and Love of God

But there is good news here. These seraphim also say that “the whole earth is full of His glory”.

Though God is other, and unique, and transcendent, God desires to fill the world with knowledge of Himself. He is not only transcendent, but also immanent. And just as it happened when the Temple was dedicated, smoke and a glory cloud fills the Temple, showing God’s pleasure, and His desire to manifest this beauty outward.

This is the love of God. Though He is incomprehensible, He can be known. Though He is transcendent, He draws near. Though he is unique, He gives metaphors and analogies for our imaginations to grasp. God’s love is His self-giving. The three persons of the Trinity have given themselves to one another for eternity. And that love has now overflowed into creation, where God has given Himself to the whole world, filling it with Himself. His goodness is over all His works. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord.

Isaiah’s Response to God’s Holiness

But there is one more thing we see of the holiness of God here:

Isaiah 6:5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because 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.”

Isaiah probably has some of the purest lips in all of Israel. But when He sees the perfection and otherness and purity of God, the contrast between himself and God overwhelms him. He sees himself as small, evil, and corrupt. His words mean, “I am ruined! Doom and destruction is coming to me, because I am unclean and I live among the unclean.” Next to the spotlessness of God, any form of corruption becomes painfully clear by contrast. So here is the third truth about holiness, the one most of us have been familiar with:

God’s holiness sets Him apart from all corruption. God is perfect, and God is other, and God is completely separate from every defilement and corruption and imperfection in His creation. Sin, evil, corruption, is not something that God can dwell with. You might think of those terrible experiences you have had when something you smelt or saw, or tasted made you physically sick. So, in God, there is a revulsion for anything that corrupts His perfection.

Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.

Habakkuk 1:13 You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness.

You remember in Scripture how often God set up barriers between Himself and the unholy. In the Temple, only the purified priests could approach. And to the Ark of the Covenant, only the High Priest, especially purified, could approach past the veil once a year.

But once again, see how God’s holiness, and God’s love coincide.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.

And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”

God’s love is that He desires holiness for Isaiah. Yes, Isaiah is ruined on his own. Isaiah is doomed, on his own. But God’s desire to spread His glory abroad means He finds ways to give of Himself to the sinner. In this case, a seraph flies to the altar, perhaps the altar of incense, perhaps the altar of burnt offering, either place symbolised sin offering and intercession. The coal symbolically touches Isaiah’s lips, where he felt his corruption most acutely, but all of it symbolised, God will provide atonement so that you can stand. God’s love is that He desires holiness for us. The word atonement was a word invented by some early English Bible translators, taking the two words ‘at one’. This is what God does. He loves His own beauty, and otherness, and perfection, and hates the corruption. But He loves spreading His glory, and spreading the happiness of His creatures as they know Him more than He hates their corruption. So He has made a way. And the Temple and the sacrifices were only signs and shadows of the final atonement, when Jesus the Messiah would hang on a cross, suspended between Heaven and Earth, making atonement between the two.

Isaiah’s Commission

Now look at Isaiah’s response:

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

And He said, “Go, and tell this people:`Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'”

“Make the heart of this people dull, And their ears heavy, And shut their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And return and be healed.” (Isa. 6:9-10)

Isaiah is now so unburdened by his conscience, so free, that when the counsel of God asks for a volunteer, Isaiah is straining at the bit to be used. When God’s love draws us into His holiness, the result in us is love. We love Him, because He first loved us.

The Identity of the One Isaiah Saw

But now I want you to understand better who it was that Isaiah saw.

But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”

Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again:

“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, Lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.”

These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him. (John 12:37-41)

Whose glory did Isaiah see? Whom did Isaiah speak? The person in verse 37. Who is that person in verse 37? Jesus Christ. Sitting on that throne, high and lifted up, with his train filling the Temple, with seraphim, calling out His glory, was Jesus Christ, God the Son.

In Jesus all the beauty and perfection of God is revealed. who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, (Heb. 1:3).

In Jesus, all the transcendence and otherness of God is also made immanent. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (John 1:18) God has taken a human nature, and this union of natures is now the one we enter into union with. We can begin to sail the waters of the infinite, begin to explore the incomprehensible, because of Jesus.

In Jesus, all the moral purity of God is reconcilable to sinners, because He paid the penalty for our sins on the cross. Jesus is the mediator, the substitute, the offering, the altar, and when you have come to Him, and received Him, you will respond like Isaiah.

We began this series with Moses, where Moses said, I beseech you, show me your glory. God’s ultimate answer to that request is to give us Jesus. Here is my glory, all my perfections, now made visible and more comprehensible, and available to all who will receive Him.