The Secret Place: 21 Day DevotionalSample

HOLY MATTERS (PART 1)

Revelation 4:8

Revelation 4 and Isaiah 6 paints for us a picture of the throne room of heaven. In both chapters, we read about the angels gathered around God, repeating one word. Not “love, love, love” or “gracious, gracious, gracious is the Lord God Almighty” but “holy”. Repetition in scripture is for the purpose of emphasis - this tells us that God is most holy. This is not to say that words like love and peace do not describe the nature of God, because they do, but the fact of the matter is He wouldn’t be loving nor would He be a God of grace and every other good thing that exists if He wasn’t holy. Every characteristic of God stems from His holiness. God wouldn’t be God, neither would He be good, if He wasn’t holy. The holiness of God means He is completely set apart from everything. He is nothing like you’ve ever known or will ever know. To try and understand God’s holiness, we will focus on His moral purity. In Luke 18:19, Jesus asks a certain ruler why he described Him as “good” and proceeded to say that “only God is good”. Jesus was right and the young ruler had recognised a characteristic in Christ which can only be likened to God himself. This is very different to us describing ourselves as “good people” - we have a definition of good which derives from our own, flawed standard of sin, where there is a hierarchy of big sins and small sins.

The truth is, the fact we are born in sin means we are not good. Why? Because the comparison is against the standard of God, which is holiness. The holiness of God means He is perfectly good. He is pure. In the same breath, God’s moral purity means He is also just. Scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death. This means that where there’s sin, something has to die. Why? Because sin completely goes against the holiness of God. His just nature isn’t something that is often talked about - only when it pertains to us getting justice from those who have offended us, but rarely when we have done the offending. We love to talk about the love of God, sometimes as an excuse to continue in our own sin - after all, most of the time we believe we are “good people”. This is because at some point we have believed the lie that God turns a blind to our wrongdoing because of His love for us but the truth is, our God is a consuming fire. His love derives from His holy nature which means it is still based on his standard of good. 1 Corinthians 13:6 “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth”. God’s holiness means He cannot and does not turn a blind eye to sin, however where the wrath of God was supposed to be directed to you and I, it was directed to His Son. With Jesus, we see the beautiful balance of God’s love and His justice, all embedded in holiness with nothing compromised, a payment for our sins to give us access into his Holy presence. Let us never forget that this is a big deal - the Old Testament reminds us of this. God warns Moses to tell the people not to come near the mountain. Why? Because when their sinful nature encounters the holy presence of God, there is only one result - death. Every year, the high priest went into the “holy of holies” to atone for the sins of himself and the people in the land. He had to ensure that the animal sacrifice being offered was spotless, without blemish for it to be accepted otherwise he would die. Jesus is our spotless sacrifice. Christ is God’s goodness poured out. May we be reminded that God’s goodness is unwavering because it's based on His nature. He is holy and therefore good, which means He is good to you and I. He cannot sin against us. Through His Son, He allows access for sinful people to partake in hisHholiness.

When God calls a thing holy, it has been set apart for Himself, for holy use. Key phrase - holy use.