SET APART: 1) The Holiness of God

We begin a 6 week study on being Set Apart.

The digital age has reconfigured our world.  Things once though unimaginable have come to pass, forever altering our lives.  It is estimated that our world has undergone only about 15%  of the changes expected from the digital revolution, meaning that we can expect even more lifestyle-changing revolution in our lifetimes.

How do we navigate the white-water rapids of such rapid and drastic change in our lives?  We are certainly IN this world, but we need not be OF this world.  We are set apart by God and God has given us a sure Word…God’s Word, a principled reality that has certainty.  God has called us to live our lives in a way that is radically distinguished from the world around us–set apart with hope, wholeness, and holiness.

In this study we will learn how to live our lives set apart in such a way that it brings good to us and glory to God.  And while the probabilities are that will will sometimes too often fail at living such a life, as long as we are practicing, exercising and living such a principled life, we will do so in a way that God will use to teach others how to do the same thing.

We may not all be body-builders but body-bulders and those who DO regularly exercise their body SHOW and demonstrate for us the results of their exercising.  We CAN be spirit-builders who can SHOW and demonstrate for others the results of our exercising our spirits in God’s Word.

We start by looking at the Holiness of God.

The point of this lesson is that God is holy.  God’s holiness means that he is wholly set apart from us.

It can help to think of this in simple terms of a mathematical set and subset:  

• WE are of many different subsets, but we are ALL part of the sub set of humanity (subset A at right). 
• The creator of the universe is obviously not human and is of the set-of-the-whole (set B at right). 
• As the creator of everything, God is a part of everything, just as the DNA in you is a part of the DNA of your parents.  
• Because of Jesus, we can know that God, the set of the whole, ALSO became human, a part of the subset of humanity.  
• God, therefore, is WHOLE…the whole of everything. It is from the word whole that the word HOLY is derived.

God IS every(insert noun here)… everything, everyone, every-energy, every-where,  “every-knowing”, ‘every-powerful”… and more.

Today we look at Psalm 99:1-9.  Psalm 99 is from a group of psalms that focus on the kingship of the Lord. A common refrain among these psalms is “The Lord reigns”. They refer to God as king and stress that His kingdom is eternal. The only proper response is for His people, indeed all the world, to worship and live according to his desires.

Psalm 99:1-3

1 The Lord reigns! Let the peoples tremble.  He is enthroned between the cherubim.  Let the earth quake.

2 The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted above all the peoples.

3 Let them praise your great and awe-inspiring name.  He is holy.

The mention of Zion and “his holy mountain” suggest that this Psalm was written somewhere from about 960 to 587 BC during the time of Solomon’s Temple.  God’s personal name, referenced in the Psalm as The Lord, is Yahweh.  Because the Jews considered this name so holy, they would not speak it. Instead they substituted the title “the Lord.” Most of our English translations follow this pattern but use a capital L and small caps for the remaining letters to indicate that the Hebrew word is Yahweh. 

Zion, the word is mentioned in the Old Testament in the Books of Samuel.  It was the name of the Jebusite fortress conquered by David.  The word may be derived from the Hebrew for castle, or from other words.  Originally it referred to the mountain on which Jerusalem was built, but over the years Zion became synonymous with the city of Jerusalem, in particular, the temple. 

God deserves to be honored and worshiped, but God does not make the people He created into robots. He does not take away people’s free will, and some people choose not to worship Him.  When Moses asked God for His name God replied “I AM WHO I AM”. The precise meaning is open to speculation, but may indicate  being, as in the Eternal being, the being who never changes. It also references the wind, or blowing and may reference that God is the divine wind that shapes everything.

Since Yahweh God is the only true and Eternal God, He is unique, one of a kind. That is why He is holy. No person created by God is naturally holy.   Invariably we all choose to sin, as our “self-preservation” kicks in. We are all sinners. We need God to set us apart as His “holy nation”. God, on the other hand, does not need anyone to set Him apart or enable Him to be perfect. Because of His divine nature He is already all those things. He doesn’t become holy or grow more holy: He is holy.

Psalm 99:4-5

4 The mighty King loves justice. You have established fairness; you have administered justice and righteousness in Jacob.

5 Exalt the Lord our God; bow in worship at his footstool.  He is holy.

Often kings ruled their subjects based on their own selfish desires rather than on what was best and fair for all the people. The Lord was not that kind of King. He always rules fairly according to His own perfect standard of justice. God made His covenant with Abraham. Notice that God did not make His covenant with Abraham because Abraham was righteous but because of Abraham’s faith and his obedience. God promised to create “a great nation” from Abraham’s descendants. When the Israelites left Egypt the people were woefully ignorant about Yahweh and His ways. To guide His people God gave them a new covenant which included instructions for worship and His laws.  God intended these instructions as guidance on how to reflect His holiness and how to live in peace and unity as a community. However, as people often do, they thought that God measured their worth by their good deeds and offerings. They confused outward conduct with rightly tuned hearts. Outward deeds and ritual were never God’s definition of righteousness. His was always through “faithful love and compassion”.

Sadly, this same mindset continued among the first-century Jews of Jesus’ day. That is why Jesus responded with such harsh words to the religious leaders’ legalistic efforts. That is why Paul stressed that God’s gift of His salvation comes only through His grace and not through any human effort. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made clear that what God really wants is humble, obedient hearts in people who focus on the true meaning of God’s kingdom and His righteousness.

Verse 5 calls us to exalt God. Much like the word exhale, exalt indicates to give off vapor, to flow out.  It literally means to bring out from within.  We are called to bring out our love for God and our desire to serve him out from inside of us and into the world.  But because of their spiritual blindness, many people are unable to see who God is. Many choose to live in and love the darkness and the ways of the world rather than allow God’s love to flow through them and out into the world that God creates.

Notice how the psalmist referred to God—the Lord our God.  This literally reads Yahweh God is our God. God had chosen Jerusalem for the site of His temple. As we previously learned, the Hight Priest Eli allowed the Ark of the Covenant to go into war.  The enemy captured it and held it for 60 years.  After that David brought the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem and placed it in a special tent, so the “chest” of God’s Covenant now resided in Jerusalem, again in a temporary shelter until such time as David’s son Solomon built a great temple to house the ark.  The nation recognized heaven as God’s throne, but they considered the ark to be His footstool 

The writer closed this stanza as he did the first with the refrain, He is holy. His justice and fairness gave constant witness to His holiness.

Psalm 99:6-9

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests; Samuel also was among those calling on his name.  They called to the Lord and he answered them.

7 He spoke to them in a pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees and the statutes he gave them.

8 Lord our God, you answered them. You were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their sinful actions.

9 Exalt the Lord our God; bow in worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.

The psalmist illustrated God’s care by citing His actions through three of the leaders He had called out to serve the people of Israel: Moses, his elder brother Aaron who, along with Moses’ elder sister Miriam, remained with their kinsmen in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta, and Samuel. 

The writer referred to these three men as God’s priests. The psalmist was using the word priest to indicate one who served as the liaison between holy God and His chosen people. God called Moses to lead His people out of their slavery in Egypt and then on through the wilderness to the promised land of Canaan. Aaron first appears in the biblical account when God told Moses that Aaron would be his spokesperson in Egypt. God called Aaron to be the chief priest of Israel and to lead the people in worship at the tabernacle with his sons. He continued to serve with Moses throughout their journey toward Canaan. However, like Moses, he was not allowed to enter the promised land because of his rebellion at Mariah. 

We first encounter Samuel in the account of his faithful mother, Hannah, who prayed at Shiloh for a son.  When God answered her prayer, she kept her son at home for a few years. Then she took him to Shiloh to stay with Eli the priest and to learn to serve God for the rest of his life. One day God called Samuel to serve as His prophet and to lead His people in faithful obedience. Everyone recognized that God had called Samuel because “the Lord was with him”.

The purpose of the psalmist for citing the example of these three great servants was to remind his readers of what God had done through them to care for His people. Over and over these faithful servants had called to the Lord to guide and deliver the people of Israel, and each time God had answered them. 

In verses 7-8 the pronouns they and them are used. We have to clarify to whom they refer. God certainly spoke to Moses and Aaron in a pillar of cloud, but He also spoke by the cloud to the entire nation through His many acts of guidance and deliverance (40:36-38). There is no biblical record of God’s speaking to Samuel in a pillar of cloud. The pronouns seem to include all of the people who came out of Egypt and journeyed through the wilderness. They were the ones who first received His decrees and . . . statutes that God gave them through Moses and after Moses told them what God required of them, they pledged to obey all His commands.

We know, of course, that no one who is only human has ever kept every command and perfectly obeyed God’s will. When they failed to obey and honor God, they received the negative effects of their own choices, because God is just and fair and righteous, and allows us to live out the results of our choices in life.

As the psalmist completed the final stanza of his hymn, he called on God’s people to exalt and bow in worship to God because God is uniquely set apart from all other persons. He is unique in His greatness and sovereignty. He is unique in His fairness, justice, and righteousness. And He is unique in the way He answers the prayers of His servants, even when they have disobeyed Him. 

As we read the New Testament we see that humanity has not changed since the times of Moses, Aaron, and Samuel. Because we have all sinned, we deserve God’s wrath, the Hebrew word used is ‘ap.  The meaning of the Hebrew word used here CAN mean “emotion”, but it also means “blow”.  We deserve it when God blows us back on course.  

Sometimes this blowing course correction may be a gentle and effective breeze and sometimes it may be a hurricane or a tornado.  But because God has NOT changed, God will always blow us in a manner that will permit us to CHOOSE to sail into his safe harbor…unless WE chose to wander around in the desert for 40 years…..