What a blessing it is when God
confirms his message for the morning. Tom and I don't discuss
music generally. Occasionally we do. And I don't
tell him what I'm going to preach from. But the name of Christ
that I prepared to speak to you about this morning is the Holy
One of Israel. the Holy One of Israel. Let's
pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're so
very thankful that we have a high priest, one who is holy, harmless,
undefiled, and separate from sinners. One who is seated at
Thy right hand, who ever lives to make intercession on behalf
of His people. We ask, Lord, that you'd be pleased
now to bless your word to our hearts and to lift up the Lord
Jesus Christ and cause us, Lord, to find our hope, our rest, all
our satisfaction, and all our salvation in his accomplished
work of redemption. For it's in his name we ask it.
Amen. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Isaiah chapter 54? Isaiah chapter 54. For anyone that may be new, we've
been for the last couple of months looking at the various names
that the Lord has given us of himself in his word. He manifests
himself to our hearts by his name. And the name that we're
looking at this morning is found many times in the scriptures,
but here in Isaiah chapter 54 at verse 5, it says, for thy
maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, and thy
Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall
he be called." He's the holy one, the one who is undefiled,
the one who is separate from sinners, the one who is other
than we are in every way. That's what the word holy means. Now look over in chapter 55 of
Isaiah, verse 1. If you fit the description of
the one spoken of here in these first verses, then you have hope
of knowing that there is a holy one who intercedes on your behalf. Verse one, ho everyone that thirsteth. Are you thirsty? come ye to the
waters. And ye that hath no money, are
you poor and needy? You have nothing to bargain with
God with? Buy and eat, yea, come buy wine
and milk without money and without price. You don't barter with
God. You don't offer God anything.
You come with an empty hand. You've got nothing but your sin.
You need one who is holy. One who's undefiled. One who's
not like you in any way. Look at verse 2. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread? Isn't that a perfect description
of man-made religion? People going around, running
to and fro, and involved in this and that, seeking to earn favor
with God by their own work, spending money for that which is not bread,
and laboring for that which satisfies not. You can never do enough. If salvation is dependent upon
you doing anything, and you're an honest person, you have to
ask yourself, have I done enough? I heard a preacher say one time,
honest people don't go to hell. You know there's a lot of truth
in that. Honest people don't go to hell.
People who are honest with themselves about their inability to save
themselves. God's made you that way. The
problem with man-made religion is people are fooling themselves. They're not being honest. hearken diligently unto me and
eat ye that which is good and let your soul delight itself
in fatness." The Lord said my body is meat indeed. He told the woman at the well
if you drink of this water you'll never thirst again. You'll never
thirst again. You'll never ever be looking
for another place to satisfy your thirst. You'll come back
to this same well. It's a well of living water that
will spring forth out of your heart. And he spoke of the ministry
of the Spirit of God who leads us to Christ. Incline your ear. Here's the
The opening to the heart is the ear. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing comes by the Word of God. So we spend all our time
when we come together reading from His Word, expounding upon
His Word, praying that the Lord will give us ears to hear and
hearts to believe. And so He says, He tells us,
hearken unto me, listen, hear. Come unto me, here, and your
soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with
you, even the sure mercies of David." Now, if the making of
the covenant is the result of you hearing and coming, then
that covenant can't be an everlasting covenant. You hear that? If God makes a
covenant with you as a result of you hearing and coming, which
is what most people believe, then that covenant's not everlasting.
It became the moment that you came and believed. He said, you
hear and I'll make it everlasting. In other words, I'll reveal to
you the covenant that has been established in eternity past. The covenant of God's free and
sovereign grace established through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that lamb that was slain before the foundations of the
world. from everlasting to everlasting. He is the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end. You know what men want? They
want a gospel. Men will believe in a Christ
who is an Alpha, but who's not an Omega. In other
words, He started it, but I've got to finish it. Or they'll
believe in a God who is an Omega. He'll finish it, but I've got
to start it. But they won't believe in a God
who is both Alpha and Omega. He's the finisher, He's the beginning
and the finisher of the salvation of His people. That's what He
is. incline your ear coming to me
here in your soul shall live and I will make an everlasting
covenant with you even the sure mercies of David the sure mercies
of David the promises that God made to establish the son of
David on the throne of the kingdom of God and that's where the Lord
Jesus Christ is he is he has God has set him up on his throne
never to be moved Behold, I have given him for
a witness to the people, a leader and a commander to the people." We're just following Christ.
Christ is our rule of life. He's our salvation. He is our
all and He is in all. Looking to Christ, the author
and the finisher of your faith. Behold, thou shalt call a nation
that thou knewest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run
unto thee because of the Lord thy God." Now the scripture says,
no man seeketh after God at any time. And then on the other hand
it says, seek the Lord with all of your heart and you shall find
him. What does that mean? Is there a contradiction? God
forbid that we should even think such. No. If you seek Him, it's
because He first sought you. No man seeketh after God at any
time on his own. But does He make us willing in
the day of His power? Does He cause us to seek Him
out? Yes. Yes. run unto thee. These are people
that didn't know thee. And look at the last part of
verse 6, and for the Holy One of Israel, for He hath glorified
thee. Now a clever artist might, perhaps
you've had a caricature done of yourself at the fair or something
and and you can set it to the side in your home and people
that know you can laugh about it. Perhaps that clever artist
took a predominant feature of your face, whether it be a large
nose, or big ears, or a bald head, and exaggerated it to the
point to where it looks funny. But you wouldn't want that portrait
to be given to somebody that you didn't know and say, well,
there's a picture of me. There's a picture of me. No,
it'd be embarrassing, wouldn't it? It'd be grotesque. It would not represent you at
all. And yet, you know, that's exactly
what men have done. They have caricatured the Lord
Jesus Christ. They've taken an attribute and
they've drawn them out in their minds and they've made a grotesque
caricature of the living God. They've drawn out His mercy without
holiness. And they've made a perversion
of the truth from the mercy of God. They've drawn out in their
own minds His love without holiness. And as a result, they've perverted
the truth of the love of God. Grace without holiness is not
grace at all. They've concluded that God the
Father is a God of judgment and wrath and holiness, but God the
Son entreats the Father because He's the God of love and of mercy. And they've taken the scriptures
and divided the Old Testament from the New. And in so doing, they've perverted
the truth of who God is. The scripture says that the Lord
Jesus Christ is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That He is the express image
of His person. He said, if you've seen me, you've
seen the Father. That hymn that we sang the song
from a few moments ago was taken from Isaiah chapter 6. Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth is filled
with his glory. John tells us in the 12th chapter
of the Gospel of John that that one which Isaiah saw was the
Lord Jesus Christ. He was the one that was seated
upon the throne. He was the one that caused the
doorpost to shake. He was the one whose train filled
the temple. He was the one who filled the
place with smoke. He's the Holy One of Israel. He's holy. Yes, He's a God of
mercy. But He's holy. He's independently,
infinitely, and immutably holy. He's the sum and the substance
of all moral excellence. When we speak of God, the Lord
Jesus Christ, being holy, Hebrews chapter 7 says that He is undefiled. He is holy. He is separate from
sinners. He is our high priest who offers
himself up to God on behalf of those who are not holy in and
of themselves. We need a God that's merciful,
but we need a God who in His mercy maintains His holiness. He's unsoiled even by the shadow
of sin. John said in 1 John 1 verse 5,
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. And Habakkuk said that his eyes
are too pure to look upon sin. And David said that the stars,
the stars, the amoral stars are not pure in his sight. Now that's holy. If the stars
aren't pure in his sight, what does that say about you and me?
Holiness is the overarching attribute of the Lord Jesus Christ. One
writer said it's the attribute of attributes, and it is. In His sovereignty, He's holy. In His love, He's holy. In His wrath, He's holy. In His
judgments, He's holy. In His grace, He's holy. In His omnipotence, He is holy. In His immutability, His unchanging
nature, He's holy. He said, I change not. I'm the
same yesterday, today, and forever. I change not. Therefore, you
sons of Jacob are not consumed. I'm the Lord, there is none other.
Our God is holy. The holiness of God is the golden
thread that runs through and ties together all of His attributes. The glory of His perfections
is His holiness. If His omnipotence is His arm,
and His omniscience is His eye, and His mercy is His bowels,
and His eternality is His duration and His existence, then His holiness
is His beauty. It's His beauty. Listen to what
God says in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. Moses appointed singers unto
the Lord that they should praise the beauty of His holiness. It is the holiness of the Lord
Jesus Christ that sets Him apart and makes Him so beautiful before
God. And Daniel said, when I saw him,
when I saw him, when he was, well, we, we'd already made reference
to Isaiah chapter six. What was the first thing that
came out of Isaiah's mouth when he saw holy, holy, holy is the
Lord God of hosts. What's the first thing that came
out of his mouth. The first thing that came out of his mouth. It's
the first thing that comes out of every center's mouth. to whom
God is pleased to make himself known in his holiness. Woe is
me, I am undone. He's holy, I'm not. And Daniel
said, when I saw him in his holy beauty, my comeliness, my strength
and my beauty, those things that I thought were virtuous in my
life were turned into corruption. Men are not made sinners today
because the holiness of God is not being preached. It's not
being declared. It's not believed. A caricature
of God has been portrayed that denies His holiness. But His holiness doesn't change.
It's the attribute of attributes. It's the one thing that overarches
everything else about Him. He's holy. And if He's pleased
to give us a glimpse of that and give us the faith to believe
that, we'll bow before Him and worship Him. Paul said, we are
the true circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, in the Spirit,
and have no confidence in the flesh. Why do we have no confidence
in the flesh? Because we see Him in His holiness. and were brought before Him in
submission and in worship. What's being practiced in religion
today by men who have perverted and distorted the nature of God
is not worship. It's not worship. It's just,
well, I like what I heard one brother say, they're just religious
clubhouses. Where men get together and they
can have their social fix and their religious needs met all
in one stop shopping. And that's all it is. To worship God in the spirit.
To worship Him in the truth, like He told the woman at the
well, is to worship Him in His holiness. Listen to what David
said in Psalm 30 verse 4. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints,
and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. His holiness. God, you're past
finding out. I can't comprehend your glory, your undefiled nature. All I
can do is ask you for the faith to believe it, to just believe. You know, we really don't understand
anything that we believe. We just don't. People say, we've
got to understand before we can believe. I'm telling you what
the Word of God says and what God's given me faith to believe.
And that is that He's holy. And the fullness of that is beyond. Well, eye has not seen, nor has
ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of man the
things that He has prepared for us. I mean, it's just beyond,
beyond our comprehension. Turn with me to Exodus chapter
15. Last Sunday night in Sarasota
we looked at this passage of scripture. And I said to them what I said
to you last Sunday is that you are either a citizen of Egypt
or you're a citizen of Israel. There's only two nations in all
the world. I don't know how many nations there are, how many languages
there are. I meant to look that up this
week. It'd be easy to find out. But in fact, spiritually speaking,
there's only two nations and there's only two languages. There's
the nation of Israel, which speaks the language of grace. And there's
the nation of Egypt, which speaks the language of works. And that's
it. That's it. It's either law or
grace. You're either in Egypt or you're
in Israel. And in verse 9 of Exodus chapter
15, after the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt and
brought across the Red Sea. The enemy said, I will pursue,
I will overtake, I will divide the spoil. My lust shall be satisfied
upon them. I'll draw my sword and my hand
shall destroy them. Yeah, that's just a perfect description.
And you notice that the personal pronoun I and my is used, if
you just count them in that one verse, six times, that's the
number of man. That's the number of man, six times. And man says,
I'll let God come into my life. I'll pull out my sword. I'll
pray that prayer. I'll make my decision. I'll divide
the spoil. I'll make what Jesus did work
for me. I'll do it. Cody and I were talking
about this this past week. And in Spanish, the word yo,
as most of you know, is the word for I. And I found out that The
toy that children play with on the string, I used to play with
when I was a kid, is in Spanish called the same thing it's called
in English, a yo-yo. And he was saying, you know,
man-made religion is just yo-yo religion. You throw it out and
it comes right back to you. And that's man's problem. He's just got an eye problem,
doesn't he? It's all about me. It's all about I. I'm the one
who starts it. I'm the one who finishes it.
It denies Christ his glory. Now look at verse 10. Thou shalt blow with thy wind,
and the sea covered them, and they sank as lead in the mighty
waters. Here's the gospel. It begins with the blowing of
the wind of the Spirit of God. That's what the Lord told Nicodemus. Nicodemus, Spirit's like the
wind. You've got to be born of the Spirit. You've got to be born of the
wind. He listeth with us wherever he wills. You don't know where he's
coming from. But when the Spirit of God blows, the waters divide
and the people walk across on dry land. Look at verse 11. Who is like unto thee, O Lord,
among the gods? Who is like thee? Glorious in
holiness. Glorious in holiness. O Lord,
thou art holy. You're the Holy One of Israel.
All we can do is bow before you and ascribe to you the glory
for having accomplished our salvation all by yourself. We didn't do
it. The Egyptians are the ones who
say, I'll overtake, I'll pursue, I'll decide when I want to let
Jesus come into my heart, I'll pull out my sword, I'll divide
the spoil, but thou didst blow, why? Because thou art holy, holy. And look at verse 12, thou stretchest
out thy right hand and the earth swallowed them up. Now the right
hand of God is a picture of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
all throughout the scriptures. Thou and thy mercy, verse 13th,
hath led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast
guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. Lord, you
did it. You did it. You pursued us. You
blew the Spirit upon us. You made us willing in the day
of Thy power. You brought us unto the sound
of the gospel. You gave us ears to hear. You
set us free from the bondage of the law. You did it all. You
see the contrast between I and Thou? I and Thou? Jonah put it like this, salvation
is of the Lord. He's holy. He's not going to
share His glory with another. His holiness is His glory. He's
not going to share it with another. He won't share it with you. He
won't share it with me. He's separate from sinners. God's holiness holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ is such that he cannot, he cannot
allow any violation of that holiness to go unpunished. He can't do
it. You think about it. Adam had
one simple law to keep. Adam, when you walk by that particular
tree, you can eat of every tree in the garden. All the fruit
of the field is yours, Adam. There's no limitation. There's
water. I walk with you in the cool.
You can have everything. You just don't take any fruit
off of that one tree. And as a result of Adam's infraction All of mankind was cast into
utter darkness. He said, in the day in which
you eat of the fruit of that tree, you're going to die. Now,
it would be kind of like you're driving down the road and you
look in your rear view mirror and the blue lights are flashing
and you pull over. And you're guilty of a minor
traffic violation. And the police officer jerks
you out of your car and puts handcuffs on you and takes you
down to the courthouse and stands you before the judge and the
judge says to you, deaf. And you say, wait, wait, this
isn't right, this isn't fair. If the judge was God, it would
be. You see, you thought that I was
altogether as thyself, is what David said in Psalm 50. But I'm
not like you. I'm holy. I've got a much higher
standard than you can comprehend. I'm holy. One, what we might perceive to
be a minor violation, God says, death. Why? Because I'm holy. And I cannot
compromise my holiness. I will not compromise my holiness. Now when the Holy One of Israel
bore in His body the sins of his people and suffered the wrath
of God's justice he satisfied divine holiness and consequently
he is just and holy and justifier at the same time every sin is going to be punished
Every sin. Sins of thought, the sins of
attitude, the sins of word, the sins of deed, every sin is going
to be punished. Why? Because God is holy. He
is holy. And He is going to punish it
with the death penalty. There is no purgatory. There
is no slap on the wrist. There is no, okay, I will let
this one go. You see, that's the caricature that men have
developed in their own impressions of God that they've manufactured
in the idol factory of their minds. It's not the God who is. The God who is is holy. He's not going to let one sin
go unpunished. Not one. Now, either the Lord Jesus Christ
will be our holiness before God. We'll suffer the wrath of God's
judgment for all eternity. In Exodus chapter 31, and I close,
the Lord said, You don't have to turn there, I'll just tell
you, you know this story. Exodus chapter 31, he said, the
Sabbath day is holy, and he said no work is to be done on that
day. And in verse 15 of Exodus 31, he said, anybody that's found
working on the Sabbath day, you're almost there, go ahead
and read it. What's he say? You mean to tell me that if I
just do a little manual labor on the Sabbath day that God's
law says I have to die? Yeah. Yeah. And they found a man picking
up sticks on the Sabbath day. And they brought him before Moses. And they said, what should we
do with this man? He was picking up sticks so he could make a
little fire, cook a meal. I mean, he's hungry. Moses went before the Lord and
the Lord told Moses, kill him. Kill him. Put him to death. Now that's a holy God. Now Hebrews chapter four makes
it clear that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Sabbath. He's our
rest before God. He is our holiness before God. If you seek to do any work that
would deny the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory in salvation, then
you are bearing the penalty of the law of God, and God says,
death. I'm holy. I'm holy. I'm not like you. I'm holy. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we're so very thankful for the revelation of your glory and
your holiness that you've given to us in your word. And we thank
thee that we have an advocate, one who intercedes and presents
himself as our holiness. We ask, Lord, that you would
give us the faith to rest in him for all our salvation For
it's in His holy name that we pray, amen.