The Holiness of God

Exodus 19: 16 - 25

Recalling what we have learned before, the obedience to God is always a personal orientation. It is not only about the obedience to certain principles of the law. Sometimes Christianity can slip to this side and as Christians, they think that they are morally better than non-Christian or other people. Yet in fact, they do not have any personal and love relationship with God. If there is a love relationship, there should be communication between the one who loves and the one who is loved. If there is a love relationship with God, we should be happy to read the love letters from God. There is a danger in Christianity if we only focus on thinking about what is right and what is wrong. Indeed, we always strive for the right, but the danger is that we become proud of ourselves that we are more righteous than others. Christianity does have aspects of right and wrong, but again there is also another important aspect, namely love relationships. In a love relationship between humans, we do not always talk about what is right and what is wrong. The love relationship will become boring if it is only limited to correcting each other and there is no admiration, imagination, or poetry for each other. We must also remember that God gave this Law for our good. The Law that God gave is a Law that is liberating. God will not become insecure if we don’t obey Him. If we don’t want to obey Him, then we ourselves will be broken. So obedience is actually good for us.

In Exodus 19: 16-25, Moses was called to consecrate the people of Israel. Being consecrated doesn’t only mean being set apart from other nations, but also being set apart from ordinary or daily affairs. These daily affairs are not necessarily sinful, but we can come out of there to consecrate a certain time and place to come before God. It is important to us to understand that this is not a dualism. Let’s take a look at a simple illustration, if you meet someone that you respect, you will certainly dress well. You probably will not wear shorts and sandals. Indeed, wearing shorts and sandals is not sinful, but you consecrate that special moment to meet that person. Similarly, when you come to the church, you are also consecrating not only yourself but also consecrating this certain time and place to serve and worship God. You intentionally come and consecrate a certain place to worship God. Why can’t we just hold or join online Sunday service? The answer is because in online services there is not necessarily a consecration of place. There may be a consecration of time, but there is definitely no consecration of place. Sunday services are a specially consecrated time and place. In our daily lives, we should create “small or miniatures” of time and place that we consecrate for our God. And when we are talking about the holiness of God, the idea of consecrating time and place is closely related. On one occasion, I visited the Neuschwanstein Castle near Munich. This castle was built by King Ludwig II and the construction of this castle cost a lot of money, even making him bankrupt. The King chose a special place to build this castle. Looking around, there’s no better place to build this castle than there. When I explored the castle, there’s one corner that was very interesting for me. There is a praying corner in that castle. So despite his craziness in building this castle, he still had the idea to dedicate or to consecrate a certain area corner to build this praying corner.

Looking back again to the story in Exodus, God asked Moses to consecrate the Israelites. In verse 22, they need to consecrate themselves because this is a special moment when God came to them. There is a commentary which interprets that this story is a kind of anticipation of the holy of holies in the tabernacle event which will occur later. When God came down, the whole mountain trembled greatly and wrapped in smoke (read verse 18). This part wants to declare God’s holiness. There are people who want to try to reduce this religious experience by saying that this is just a natural phenomenon, for example an earthquake or volcanic eruption. However, there are some parts that are difficult to explain as a natural phenomena, for example in verse 19. There is a sound of trumpet, and where did it come from? We also read that God spoke to Moses and he can understand His voice but the Israelites can not. How can this be explained by natural phenomena? Moreover we see that the Israelites were warned not to violate the boundaries set around the mountain so as not to die. Unbelievers might say that the Israelites would die by stepping on lava if they crossed the line. However, we also know there is another story in the Old Testament when certain people from the Israelites were carrying the ark of the covenant, and one person accidentally touched the ark of the covenant and he died. How can the unbelievers explain this by natural phenomena? When we talk about faith, Christianity or religion, there are parts that cannot be explained by natural phenomena. Again, the focus is to declare God’s holiness, God who is not easily approachable. What difference does it make if we say God is always approachable? If God is always easy to approach, it means that God is waiting for us and we are more sovereign than God. God must wait for us to have free time to talk to Him. To make it easier to understand, let’s take one example. When you are a student in a university and you want to meet the professor. The professor is the one who will set the time to meet, not you as a student. We can understand this example, but why in our prayer life to God, we let God wait for our time? If we do not understand God’s holiness, our spirituality will be terrible and we will take our encounter with God for granted.

Why is it necessary to reveal the image of God’s holiness here in the book of Exodus chapter 19? This part is not wrongly put in this book because after that there will be the ten commandments (chapter 20). Before God gave the ten commandments, there needed to be a proclamation about God who is most holy. The God who gave this law is a holy God, not like sinful human beings. The understanding of God’s holiness preceded the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. After the Israelites understood how holy God was, God then made an exception for Moses to come closer. Moses was given an exception by God because he was the mediator chosen by God to convey God’s Word (see summary of last week’s sermon). We know that Moses was the mediator who pointed to Jesus Christ. The difference is that Moses still needed to have his sins forgiven to become a mediator but Christ did not need to be forgiven because He was sinless. Through Jesus Christ, we know about God’s holiness and God’s love. However, humans tend to imagine the love of God without Jesus Christ. Moreover, they do not want to talk about the attributes of God’s holiness and only want to talk about the attributes of God’s love. If it is like this, then we won’t be able to know God. Because knowing God is impossible without Jesus Christ.

God’s holiness and God’s love cannot be separated. Understanding of God’s holiness grows hand in hand with understanding of God’s love. If we do not understand God’s holiness, then our understanding of God’s love will be shallow. Let us read God’s Word which is very comparable to Exodus 19, that is the Book of Revelation 4:5-6. We see that the depiction is unpleasant and rather terrifying. Yet, this is actually the depiction of heaven in the new Testament. Sometimes people see that the image of God in the Old Testament is scary and frightening, while in the New Testament God is full of love. Be careful, this is not a Christian teaching, but a Marcionism teaching. However, in reality, don’t we often reflect on the image of God who is loving and merciful rather than the holy one? Question for all of us, when was the last time you went to church, took part in holy communion feeling unworthy? How deeply do we still contemplate God’s holiness? If this terrifying depiction of God is not there, then I’m afraid maybe you don’t understand about God’s love. In the Martin Luther era, when you entered the church door there was only the final judgment, God’s holiness. But what is missing there is God’s mercy and God’s love. Now, what is missing in today’s Christianity is the depiction of God’s holiness. This condition is as dangerous as the Reformation era, where there was no God’s love. So, before we talk about the ten commandments, let us contemplate about what is the meaning of coming before God that is most holy. (G.N.S.)