Encountering God's Holiness: Awe, Fear, and Reverence

The number one answer that people gave for dropping out of church was this: Church is boring. The number two answer given by these people who quit going to church was the answer: Church is irrelevant. Let me ask you that question: Do you ever get the feeling the Church is boring? Have you ever been bored in church? Don’t lie! Have you ever felt that what was going on in church was irrelevant. You know, asking yourself, “What in the world am I doing here?” [00:00:49]

Well, when I heard the results of that survey I thought again to the narratives that we find in sacred Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament of what happens when people encounter God. We’ve already seen what happened to Isaiah when he got an unveiled manifestation of the character of God. Let me ask you this. Was he bored? No! No way! I mean, he was on his face, he’s screaming in pain, you know, and cursing himself. [00:01:15]

You will never, ever find in the Bible an example of somebody’s meeting the living God and being bored. Because there is nothing less boring in all of reality than God Himself. And can you imagine somebody like Isaiah, having this experience of seeing God high and lifted up, and walking out of that situation – going out on the street – and saying, “Hmm . . . so what? Big deal! That was irrelevant!” [00:02:41]

If God is holy – in fact if God is, that’s all we have to say – it’s the most relevant affirmation any creature can ever understand. And that’s why it boggles my mind when people are saying that the reason they don’t go to church and that they drop out of church is because they’re bored and because they find it irrelevant. That tells me one thing. It tells me that when they come to church, they are not having any kind of encounter with the living God. [00:03:39]

She said, “Well he never talks about the wrath of God. He never talks about the justice of God. He never talks about the sovereignty of God and he certainly never talks about the holiness of God. All he talks about is the goodness of God, the love of God and the mercy of God. He just tells us what we want to hear. But he’s afraid that if he preaches the whole counsel of God and sets forth the whole character of God as God reveals Himself in Scripture, that people will be upset and they will quit going to church.” [00:04:55]

Well we’re more sophisticated than that. Instead of fashioning idols out of stone or out of wood, what we do is we go to the Scripture with scissors and paste and we construct for ourself a god who has been stripped of the attributes that we don’t like; the attributes that frighten us. I remember once lecturing on the holiness of God and some little old lady objected at the end and she says, “Well my God is a God of love.” [00:05:58]

You see, the same place where we find out that God is a God of love is the same source that we get that He is holy. So like it or not, the God who is, is a God who is holy. And if we’re going to relate to God as He is, we have to take His holiness seriously. Well what are we talking about? What do we mean when we say that God is holy? What comes into your mind when you think of that word holy? What does it mean to be holy? [00:07:04]

Now the Bible does use the term “holy” like that. And when the Bible says, “You shall be holy even as God is holy,” that’s the reference it’s making there. That we are supposed to mirror and reflect the character of God – His righteousness – we’re supposed to behave in such a way that mirrors His own behavior. But that’s the secondary meaning of the term “holy” in the Bible. It’s a legitimate use of the word “holy” and one of the ways in which it is in fact used, but it . . . in terms of numerical frequency, is second. [00:09:28]

The primary meaning of the term “holy” refers to what we would call the “otherness” of God. The greatness of God. The sense in which God is different from you, from me, and anything in this created order. Now, it refers to His transcendent majesty. That majesty that is high and above anything in the created realm. Now, sometimes when we talk about God – particularly when we’re teaching theology and things of that sort – we can define God as the Supreme Being. [00:10:08]

But God is never changing. God never grows older or taller or heavier because He is eternally perfect in who He is and what He is. Now the biggest difference between every creature and God is this: That I as a creature cannot live by my own power. I had a beginning in time, didn’t I? I have a birthday and so do you. How long can you live without oxygen? Not very. How long can you live without water? Not very long. [00:12:36]

Because you’re a dependent creature. You’re fragile. Your life could end this afternoon. But God can’t die. He doesn’t need water. He doesn’t need food. He doesn’t need anything because He has the power to be in and of Himself. And not only does He have the power to be in and of Himself, but He holds the power of everybody’s existence. You know, the Bible says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” [00:13:41]

And there’s a sense in which even in Christ we will always have – I hope – a healthy fear, the fear of respect, the fear of awe, that when we contemplate who He is, we will still have the capacity to tremble before Him. [00:25:16]