Exploring My Strange Bible - Language of Faith Part 1: Holiness

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

In this first teaching, I explore the biblical word and concept of holiness: God’s holiness, people’s holiness, the story underneath it all, and more. This is an extremely important idea for understanding what followers of Jesus believe about God and themselves.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. Well, this is a new episode, first of a four-part series that represent a series of teachings that I did when I was a teaching pastor at Door of Hope. We did a teaching series over just the most common vocabulary words of the Bible and of Christian faith that are also words that are hardly used in modern Western culture.

Or if they are used, they're used in ways that are totally different than how they're used in the Bible. And so we wanted to both qualify, resurrect, or give new meaning to these old terms and how important they are. And so this is the first of four. In this first teaching, I explore the biblical word and concept of holiness, of God's holiness, of people's holiness, the story underneath it all, and so on. It's a really important idea for understanding Christian and biblical faith. So there you go. Let's dive in and see what the scriptures have to say.

what the scriptures have to say. The language of faith, what are we doing in this series? We're taking about three months, and each week we're considering a different word, but not just so that we learn more words, not like reading a dictionary. We've chosen, we could have chosen many, but we tried to choose 12 of the words that are part of a core vocabulary for how a follower of Jesus thinks and views the world. A part of what makes following Jesus hard, there's many things that are hard about following Jesus.

One of them is living in a culture whose values and story is so shaped by so many other different things. Being a Christian means cultivating these categories, these ways of thinking about God and ourselves and the world and where we are and what the real problems are. You have to consciously adopt a new way of thinking about everything. And vocabulary is how we do that. And so we're taking these core words, you know, of the Jewish and Christian tradition, faith or freedom, holiness, we're going to look at today,

or righteousness, glory, salvation, atonement, really core words that none of us use in day-to-day conversation. So it's no surprise that following Jesus is hard because even the vocabulary is foreign to us. It's not integrated into our lives. And so we wanted to take a few months. This is like Christian Grammar 101, something like that, but I hope way more interesting than that. That sounds really boring, actually. But the language of faith sounds more interesting. So what we're talking about today is holiness. We're trying to approach the series or the flow of ideas from kind of A to Z and build them into kind of a story. And so we've talked about what faith is, according to Jesus' teachings. We've

talked about what freedom is, rooted in the good news about Jesus. Today, we're considering God's holiness, which will then lead us kind of in a story into, this is about God, and then about who we are, and what the problems are, and sin, and salvation, and so on. So God's holiness. Here's a word that you haven't used in the last week. Holiness. Anyone. It just didn't come up. And I don't think you need to feel bad about that necessarily. It's just a reality about modern English. I don't know what occurs to you when you hear the word holiness.

My hunch, because I'm a Western American just like you, my hunch is that the word holiness exists in this realm of religious vocabulary. And it's part of the religious vocabulary or morality. Here's one way that you might hear someone use the word, is if you have a coworker or a friend or something, and they became religious, right? They got religion. And then they're starting to make all these changes in their lives. And then there are some people, you know, at work who might be bummed that this person isn't doing whatever with them anymore after work gets over. And so they'll say something to the effect of like, you know, she became religious. She thinks she's holy or something. Holier than thou. Are you with me? There is a common use of the word holy in English. It's somewhere like that. It has to do with being a religious moral person. That's holiness in our

culture. And this is one of those things where that's like, it's not even a half truth. It's like an eighth truth. It's a 16th truth. Religious morality. It is a part, but it's a small and way down the line in terms of what's really important about this idea. It's a small part of a much richer, I think more beautiful, truth. Part of becoming a Christian and adopting this vocabulary is coming to the place where I see like the modern world, the modern Western world is actually impoverished because it doesn't have this vocabulary anymore. And holiness is one of those things, I think. Here's why. I had the chance to go on a retreat with some co-workers out to Eastern Oregon earlier this week. It was like really hot here. Remember when it was really hot? It's hard to remember that on

a day like today, which is a glorious Portland day. Today is. But it was really hot last weekend. And last Monday, it was like in the 80s here. So I hopped over the mountain to eastern Oregon around Keneda, Warm Springs. Not Keneda, but near there, Warm Springs. And it was 95 out there last Monday. And so I had the retreat day. And then that night, I went with some friends and we just went out and laid under the stars. It was just a crystal clear night. And there's no light pollution out there. And it was just one of these. It's been so long since I'd done something like this. We just laid there for nearly two hours just staring at the Milky Way because it was so clear. Like it's so hard to see it in Portland, but when you go

lay where there's no light pollution, you just can stare for a long time. You know what I'm talking about? The bands of the Milky Way just streak across the sky. And where there's so little light, the sky is alive with shooting stars, with satellites, different kinds of satellites, the ones that spin and so they flash on and off, you know what I'm talking about? Occasionally they'll do a little burst of light. And then there's just the effect of the light coming through our atmosphere of stars flickering and their different hues and colors and so on. It was amazing. It was amazing. How many of you have recently laid under the night sky for an hour?

Good for you. We all admire you. And you're better humans for it, I bet. And we should all be like you when we grow up. You're obligated as a human being to do this, at least on an annual basis. This is what I've decided now. It was so remarkable. It was just so amazing.

And as we were laying there staring up, there was these long periods of silence that was never awkward because there was actually the appropriate response to the majesty and the mystery and the grandeur of everything opening up. Now, I can't recreate that experience for you. But what I was experiencing laying there, just awestruck, is the effect that something holy and transcendent has on human beings. It's the effect of, maybe you go up the gorge, go up to the mountain, I don't know, wherever, go to the coast. It's when you get into an environment where all of a sudden it's not familiar, it's not human-made anymore. Like in the city, we're surrounded by everything that we've made. So we think that we're the center of the universe, which it's hard to deny that when you're in the center of a city, which is a little universe that we make for ourselves. But you get out of that, and you're reminded that like, oh yes, I am so tiny. My life is relatively insignificant in the

grand scheme of things, and I'm mortal and frail and all that kind of thing. And you face your smallness when you look at Adam and Eve. You guys know what I'm talking about. And I know some temperaments like gravitate towards these kinds of experiences, and they tend to be people who live in their heads a lot, and I'm one of those. And so whatever. You actually may spend a lot of your waking hours trying to avoid having experiences like that, because it freaks you out. But I think you're obligated to at least spend one night staring up at the stars a year. There was one saying, and this was

cool when we were out there. My friend was more acquainted with the architecture of the constellations and so on. He was trying to look for the Andromeda Galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way. But one thing that I kept seeing, but I wasn't sure, because when I looked

at it straight on, it actually wasn't really there. But when I looked to the side of it, it was there. You guys know what I'm talking about? Have you had that experience? And so it was very clear. It looked like a star, but it had a clear circular shape to it. It was bigger than a star, but when I looked at it, it wasn't quite there. And so then I went hunting around on Wikipedia the next day, like, what were you looking at? And so on. And I'm pretty sure it was this. It's called the Omega Centauri Cluster. And to the naked eye, it appears like a star or a planet. And even to super old school telescopes and so on, it was so dense that it appeared as an object. But with higher powered telescopes, now they can look at it. And this is a Hubble space photograph right into the heart and center of that thing of Omega Centauri. So let's back up again

for the effect. So you can make out this disk. It's a cluster, a density of stars. It's within the Milky Way. It's in our galaxy. And it's relatively close. It's only 16,000 light years away. Would you remember a light year? 193,000 miles a second. So it's really far. However, you know, it's really billions of miles away.

It's relatively close, though, in terms of the scope of the universe. And so it's a cluster of stars. And then when Hubble zooms into it, it's this. And this is a density of some 10 million stars. It's the Omega Centauri cluster. It's 150 light years across. And these stars, some of them, the colors aren't what our eyes would see them as. It's different coloring technology. But they're all burning a different number of strengths.

Some are more powerful than our suns and less powerful. The energy output of Omega Centauri is four million times the energy and heat of our sun that we orbit around. That's what's generating out of this thing. And the reason is because the stars are so close. They're 0.1 light years apart from each other on average, which is, you know, it's still like a ridiculous number of miles. But in sun space, that's relatively close.

So there you go, Omega Centauri. That's just one tiny mote, node of light in the night sky. Where do we live, you guys? You thought the Wizard of Oz was a strange land. We live in that. It's even more weird. Look at this. Are you with me? Now, I can't recreate the experience I had the other night, but I'm trying. I'm trying. And I don't know what you like when you hear this kind of thing, but that's it. Like you feel small. You feel frail. The timeline of your life all of a sudden becomes just a speck, and you realize there

is grandeur and space and expanses of time and energy and power at work in our universe that you will never even be able to conceive of in our short little lives, and then we die. And you're worried about how many likes you had on your Instagram photo yesterday. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's so stupid. None of this, right? None of that matters. That's the effect that something transcendent and holy and other has on us, human beings. It's a powerful experience.

It's universal to the human experience here on planet Earth. And it's something that the story of the Bible in its depiction of God's character really locks in on that experience and says that there's something real there. There's a truth that we're becoming aware of about our place in the universe and about the other that is behind all of this. And the word used to describe that experience and that reality is this word. The first person who has an experience, like what I had under the stars, but cranked up,

volume at 11, is a story that uses the word holy for the first time in the Bible. As you're reading from page one, moving on, you come across the word holy at some point for the very first time. And it's a story about a man who has a way more intense experience than what I had. It's a story about a guy named Moses in the book of Exodus, chapter three. You can open there or turn on your Bible. It's going to be up here on the screen. And it's probably a familiar story to you, but there's some elements here that are always surprising and really profound to me. There's Moses. Moses, you've read the story or seen the movie. He's a fugitive, right? At this point, he fled Egypt where he was raised. You know, he lost

his temper and murdered an Egyptian and he had to flee. But he's now decades into his life in exile. He's a shepherd. He's been a shepherd for decades. And so he's out, you know, cruising the desert lands with his flock, and here's the story. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb, the mountain Now Moses saw that even though the bush was on fire, it wasn't burning up. The bushes burn fast or slow. A dry bush out in the forest. So it burns and typically really intense. That's why it's so fun to throw like pine needles onto a fire or whatever with right dry branch bushes and so on, bush branches and so on. So because

they consume quickly. So imagine, just put yourself in this scenario. It's a vivid story. It's appealing to our visual imagination. So you come upon a bush, and first of all you're wondering, oh, spontaneous combustion? Why is this thing on fire? And then you think, okay, this should be over in like 30 seconds.

This is how bushes burn. And then, like it's not over. It actually keeps getting more intense. And it's just full power, consumption, fire, but the bush still has its integrity at the center of it. Are you with me? Is this odd? This is very odd. This is very odd. So part of what makes an experience with transcendence and otherness and holiness is all of a sudden we live our day-to-day lives and just our everyday framework, and we're all concerned about how many people like our photos and this kind of thing.

Like that's all man, human-made. And so we are the center of it. And then all of a sudden we have experiences that remind us that we are not at the center. And you're just overwhelmed by the scale and the grandeur of the universe. And there's all this stuff that just blows all my reference categories. Are you with me? So on a miniature scale, I'm laying there with my friends having that. And now here's Moses, right?

And he knows these lands well. He shepherded them for decades. And then here's something that just breaks everything he thought he knew about the world. And it's encountering him. And what's his first response? This is interesting. What's his first emotional response? He thought, well, I'm going to go over and see that strange thing.

That's just very odd. Why isn't that bush burning up? So it's surprise and curiosity. Are you with me? It's like, oh, whoa, the world's a stranger place than I thought when I woke up this morning. You know, here's the bush, and it's doing something I've never seen a bush do before. And it's outside of what he thought is

possible. It's curiosity, mystery. That's what it encounters with the transcendent do to us, right? They stir our imagination. We go, whoa, where am I? What's happening? So I'm going to go over and see the strange sight. That's stage one of this encounter with the holy. That's stage one of this encounter with the holy. But the story goes on. Now, when the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses. And Moses said, I'm right here.

It's a very bizarre story. Like, put yourself in the moment. What would you say? Like, you're laying there looking at the sky. It's just Tim. Tim, what would you say? I'm right here. Here I am. So that's surprising.

Then what the voice says is this. Don't come any closer. Stop right there. Stop. Take off your sandals. The place where you're standing is holy ground. It's the first time the word is used in the Bible. Then God said, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And at this, Moses hid his face because what's his emotional response now? It's not curiosity anymore. It's terror, fear. He was afraid to look at God.

So think about how this experience goes. It goes from surprise that generates curiosity and wonder from surprise that generates curiosity and wonder, to then he's having a personal encounter with the presence of the creator God. And then it turns from curiosity to absolute terror. He's confronted with all kinds of realities. The story doesn't say it leaves you as the reader up to put yourself in Moses' shoes and fill in the experience, what you would feel like with your mortality, with your smallness, with the, oh my gosh, this is not a space that I should be in right now. But that's what he's feeling. And while we don't learn in this story what it is that makes God holy, just pause, we'll get there. What we do learn is that the space around God radiates with God's own holiness. So holiness is like a power energy.

It's connected with fire in this story. And then around God is a space that's holy. And how is Moses supposed to relate or treat this holy space that he surprisingly encountered? He's supposed to take off his shoes. So there's something in the story here, it gets you thinking, like what? There's something, Moses has a normal way of existing and being outside the space, but now that he's in this space, he's in personal proximity to the holy, to the source of all of the wonder and beauty in the universe. And then that space is

also holy, which means what, and what is his relationship to it? So here, we'll nerd out for just a second. The Hebrew word, try crack at it. You can do it. It's not a hard one. Kadosh. Yeah, kadosh. And we're going to see in its uses that we're going to look at today all across the Bible, its most basic meaning is referring to something or someone that's unique, utterly unique, one of a kind, and therefore set apart. And then there can be things associated with the Holy One, and then those things or people or places become designated, or kadosh also. So God is kadosh, but this story is focusing on the space around God then becomes kadosh as

well. And so Moses has to change. He has to change his normal way of existing to be in that space. And you might think like, okay, maybe that makes sense to you. I don't know. Think back to me looking up at the sky with my friends. If one of my friends, we had cell service out there. It's really surprising and disappointing, actually. But we had cell service, and if one of my friends had pulled out their phone or something, you know, we're just out there. It's a quiet moment, and then he wants to show me a video of his cat on YouTube or something like that, you know? And it would be, put that away. It's so inappropriate right now. Are you with me? You would think that too. That's dishonoring, right? The mystery and the beauty of this space and this moment before the grandeur of the sky.

It's like that. It's like there's something about being in the presence of such power and purity that there's something on his shoes that have to stay behind. Now, the gesture of taking off your sandals, there's been a lot of discussion about this throughout the history of interpretation and people reading and thinking about this story. Some people think that it connects to the still common practice

in many cultures of the no-shoe policy in your house. And so this is God inviting Moses into his house. It's hospitality. I think that's wrong, but it could be right. I don't think I'm wrong, but I could be. But I think it's way more likely that the majority of people through Jewish and Christian history are right when they're saying that there's something about the bottom of his sandals that's inappropriate to bring into the sacred space. I think that's what's going on here. Now, what does he do for a living? He's a shepherd. Do you get it? I mean, it's not hard to get. I think if you're not a shepherd,

you don't think about it. But what does he walk on all day long? The poop and the pee of these animals, right? And their blood and mucus and bodily fluids and hair. Are you with me? And not just that, then the dirty bugs and the creature, right? So dirt. So that's almost certainly what's going on here. It's the same reason that it's weird for you to get into bed with your shoes on. That's gross. Don't ever do that. It's the same reason you don't want to eat your dinner in the bathroom, because that's gross, right? It's gross. There are things in that space that you think are going to be on your food, but you'll brush your teeth in the bathroom. So the shoes is different. Shoes, it's, you know, you don't lick your shoes, right? You're stepping on grease and dirt and bugs. Are you with me?

So there are things associated with death and decay and impurity. They don't belong in space that's kadosh because it's in close proximity to the very author of life. We'll explore that more in the next story we're going to look at briefly. But this is just making the point. How does Moses feel? Again, he's curious and then he's what? Terrified. So is it good to be invited into the presence of God? Is it good? Yes.

Can you imagine looking at the night sky and then you believe in God and believe that there's a being whose mind is responsible for architecting all of this and that being actually wants to be in a relationship with you, that's pretty remarkable. I would like to go near this being and be around this being. But the first time that God's presence is explored is in this story and there's a paradox at the heart of it. God wants to be known

and he's inviting Moses to come close to him but at the same time, it's dangerous to Moses. And so Moses has to change to get into the Kodosh space. And that's actually what gets played out, and what he's experiencing here is just one small little microcosm of what his people are going to experience on the whole. After Moses walks away from this experience, he's commissioned to go confront the powers of evil and Pharaoh and Egypt and demand that Pharaoh humble himself before God and let Israelite slaves go. They eventually do get to go, and then where Israel goes is right here, to this place where Moses had this encounter. And then all of the people of Israel together have this encounter as God's holy kadosh presence

comes down and it freaks the people out. And what God does is he enters into a covenant relationship with these people, Moses and his people. And he says he wants to plant his kadosh presence right in the middle of Israel. And that is all going to be symbolized and embodied in the form of what? In the middle of Israel's camp, a sacred tent called the tabernacle, a sacred tent. And then if you're familiar with it, it's all these elaborate designs. Very beautiful. It's a kadosh space. And not just anybody can waltz into the tent.

People who have become unique and set apart themselves are the ones who represent Israel. Moses, they can go into the space and right at the center of it, it's like the hot spot of God's presence. It's called the most holy place, the most kadosh space. And only one special person can go in there on a specific day of the year. It's all very kadosh. And the point isn't about just God's uptight and he only wants to be with certain kinds of people. It's the same experience of stargazing.

It's the same experience of like, oh my gosh, I'm so small. I'm so frail. I'm so weak before all of this. And it's not because the universe is a jerk. It's because it's the universe. And in the same way, there's this paradox at the heart of God's own holiness. His presence is so powerful and beautiful and good, it's dangerous. It's not either or, it's not a but, it's an and of those two together. And so here's what Israel is called to do by the holy God. I'm being very brief here, but this is a classic passage where it all comes together. Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, say to the people of Israel, I'm the Lord your God. Make yourselves holy, therefore, and become holy because I'm holy.

You shall not make yourselves impure with any of the defiling things that are in the land, for I'm Yahweh. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. And so you guys are going to be holy because I'm holy. It's a lot of kadosh in one paragraph there. So here we're finally to the connection of our common English use of this word about being a moral person, a moral religious person. There are certain behaviors that if I'm in the presence of the author and the creator of life, the very embodiment of purity and power and beauty and truth and justice and goodness, there are certain ways of living and being a human that are inappropriate when I'm in proximity and relationship to this being.

in relationship to this being. And so this being calls his people to share in these divine qualities of beauty and goodness and justice and truth. And that's why you love to read the book of Leviticus. It's your favorite book of the Bible. So this is how God called ancient Israel to take off their sandals, to exist in the Kaddosh space. And a lot of how he asked Israel to do that, it seems very strange to us. And that's because it's from a different time and a different culture and a different place. Israel had this elaborate symbol, cultural symbol system. Anthropologists call it cultural taboos, where based on a core worldview and set of values that a culture has,

cultures often form behaviors and patterns of avoiding certain kinds of things. And sometimes they're completely irrational, but they speak to those core values. Just like it's irrational that you won't eat your dinner in the bathroom, but you will brush your teeth in the bathroom. Do you see how irrational that is? But it speaks to this core value that's good. Germs, there are bad germs in the world, yes? Will they kill you and make you sick? So do your utmost to not get those things in your body. That's what it means. That's why you won't eat your dinner in the bathroom. And it smells bad and it's gross, but are you with me? Like that's a core value expressed through an irrational behavior.

And so through these commands in Israel, so like don't touch mold and then go offer a sacrifice in the temple. And you might think, well, you know, what's wrong with mold? So there's things like mold or bodily reproductive fluids or blood or diseases or skin diseases or dead bodies. If you've come into contact with these things, you're not a sinner. It's not sinful. You are impure because you've come into contact with what in their imagination is associated with death, symbols of death and decay and mortality. To have those traces on you of death and mortality and then just to waltz into the presence of the author of all life and beauty and truth and goodness.

Are you with me? That's the problem. The problem isn't being impure. The problem is when you're in an impure state, waltzing into the presence of the one who is kadosh. That's the problem. And so you just don't do it. They wouldn't do that.

And you wait seven days, you take a bath, offer sacrifices, and then you're good. Like go back into the Kodosh presence again. And so this was the way that they embodied this value, like we get to host the presence of the Holy One, and they honor his presence through this way. Israel was also called to honor the presence through their moral purity. And the book of Leviticus is really concerned with the sexual behavior of Israel, with their business practices, with generosity to the poor, and healthy, loving relationships. And this is how Israel sets itself apart from the nations, because they live in proximity to the author of love and beauty and relationships and goodness and so on.

So that's the setup. Israel is supposed to change themselves to live in proximity, the presence of the Holy One. How do they do as the story goes on? How do they do at this task? They fail. They fail utterly. I just summarized the whole Old Testament for you. They failed utterly. They just summarized the whole Old Testament for you. They failed utterly.

They didn't do it. And that's why if you try to read the Old Testament, you're like, oh, there's blood and sex and political scandals. Human history, we call it. And Israel's history is a part of human history, even though they were called to something different. And so into that complex, dark history of Israel come these figures called the prophets. And the prophets typically were people who had encounters like Moses had. They had some powerful encounter with God's presence, and then they look out at the people of Israel and they go, oh man, we say God lives in our midst, but look at how we live as a people. This is not good. And so they go stand on the street corner and write scrolls and books to accuse Israel and warn them and challenge them and so on. So one of these guys, prophet's name is Isaiah. And he had an experience much like Moses's. And it becomes a commentary on

how Israel's story opens up into the story of Jesus and the rest of the future of the universe. The future of the universe in Isaiah chapter 6. Let's read the story. So in the year the king Uzziah died, Isaiah speaking, I saw the Lord. Oh, really? Wow, that doesn't happen every day. In fact, I thought that's supposed to never be able to happen. But here, you're reading it just like I am.

So I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings, with two covering faces. With two, they covered their feet. And with two, they're flying. So let's pause real quick here. So when he says, I saw, he's using standard prophet-like language to tell us he's talking about a vision or a dream that he had.

Because he's in a space that he would never be allowed to go in reality. He lived in Jerusalem. He's having an experience where he's in what space? He's in the equivalent of like standing inside the burning bush. Like he's sitting on a burning branch, so to speak. He's in the hot spot. The temple in Jerusalem, there were gradations of holy space. There's the courtyard where everybody can go. Then there's the building itself where only priests can go. And then there's a back cube-shaped room where only the high priest can go on one day of the year, Kaddosh Super Holy. And so he's in that space. He like wakes up and he's in that space. He's not supposed to be in there. And then what he sees is what you would see if you were in the temple but on drugs. Because what he's seeing is all the symbols and the images and the iconography that you would see in the temple.

Bizarre winged creatures that flank and surround the divine presence. And then at the hotspot of the Holy of Holies is the Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? It's the Ark of the Covenant. And then with these creatures. So what are these creatures? He calls them seraphim. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, they're called cherubim. We butcher it as cherubim. And they're not little babies, plump babies with wings. That's Greek mythology. So these creatures are not human. They're winged and they're always multi-formed, made up of multiple animals. Sometimes they'll have a human feature, like a face, but it's got a bull's body and bird's wings and so on. These are watchers of the divine presence, but they're symbols of the created realm, all of the created realm of life that flanks and surrounds the author and creator of

life, and they worship in grateful praise. That's what all these symbols are about. So he's standing there, and he sees the one enthroned, who normally is invisible, because they weren't supposed to depict God with the image, because that's reducing the Holy One into something within the creation. But here, but here he is, he's seeing it. It's the temple on acid. It's like what Isaiah is experiencing right here. It's crazy. And so, an altered form of consciousness.

Sorry, that might have offended some of you. But it's an altered form of consciousness. He's having an ecstatic vision. Are you with me? Okay. So then they were calling to one another. And here's what these beings are screaming out. What are they screaming?

Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh. Here's the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. So you have these symbolic beings who represent all the created order, and they're screaming out, right? And there's smoke filling the room, and they're screaming out that God is Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. He's the utterly

unique one. The one who is wholly other and transcendent. And notice that God's status as Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh is directly connected to his status as creator. Do you see that? The whole earth is full of his glory. And glory is a word that we'll explore later in the series. It means that all creation speaks to God's reputation and significance.

Creation is this God's handiwork. How you guys doing? Creation is God's handiwork. How are you guys doing? How would you like to be in Isaiah's experiential shoes right now? How would you feel about being in that space? At the sound of their voices, excuse me, let's go back. Sorry about him.

At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook. The temple's filling with smoke. I'm not liking being here right now. I don't want to be there right now, and definitely not after what happens next. Woe to me, I cried. I am ruined, for I'm a man of impure lips, and I live among a people of impure lips, And my eyes are looking at the King, the Lord Almighty. Does he feel great? Like God's his buddy that day. I thought this was like better as one day in your courts kind of thing. And that we would all be happy if we could be there. We sing songs about it. But then, like, here's the guy who got to do it,

and he's absolutely terrified. It's the burning bush moment, and no curiosity, just object terror. It's crazy. And why? It's actually the same feeling that I had stargazing. I'm small, I'm frail, I and weak. It's the same experience that we assume Moses had of why he hid his face and why he was scared. And now it's why are frail, morally

broken, selfish humans terrorized by the gift of the divine presence? I'm a man of impure lips. by the gift of the divine presence. I'm a man of impure lips. There's something about this contrast. Whatever being is responsible for this stranger-than-Oz universe that we inhabit, whatever mind or being, just the power and the ability to architect and design and imagine where we exist and what's happening here. And that there are such things within that mysterious universe like love and beauty and goodness.

To encounter the author of all of that reality in one space is absolutely overwhelming. And how many likes I had on the photo and the really angry thoughts I had towards that person and how selfish I am on a regular basis to my roommates and my family members and other friends. All of that is just like spotlight. And that's no fun. It actually sucks to have all of your moral compromises exposed before the author of the universe. That's the experience that he's having. And God's not his

buddy in his mind. He's going to be incinerated and destroyed before such power. But look at what happens. And this is the surprise in this story. Then one of those creatures, stay away from me, one of those creatures flew to me. It's not good. With a live coal in his hand. So we're in the temple,

and all this is based off of what's inside of the temple. There's an altar of incense with hot coals that just burn incense 24-7. So this being, alien-like being, gets tongs and then starts flying towards you with tongs with a hot burning coal. It's coming towards you. You get it?

This is crazy. I don't know what you're feeling like in this, you know, if you're here, you, you want to run? It's probably a dream. Like, I can't get away. Are you trying to run, but you can't run fast enough? There's an alien coming at you with a laser gun, and it's about to incinerate you. That's what's in his mind. That's it. I'm done for. And then what happens? It touches him. And then he's alive still, right? And then he hears. He hears what's happened. I can't imagine it felt great. It probably hurt. But we are told is what he remembers hearing, which is, look, this fire has touched your lips and and your guilt's taken away,

and your sin's atoned for. Who saw this coming? I thought if Moses didn't take off his shoes, he'd get blown up or something. And I thought there's a story or two in the Old Testament about people who did waltz in to holy presence and got struck by lightning or something like that. But that's not what happens here. There's something about Isaiah's posture in holy space is that of owning his own moral brokenness, his own failures. He owns it. I'm a man of unpure lips, and so are all the people I spend my days with. And all of a sudden, God's holiness, which you thought was dangerous to mortal humans, actually it becomes intimidating, but then it becomes this fire that purges him. And instead of destroying him, it heals him. It makes him more like the Holy One. That's the story. And this is not a normal way of having your sins atoned for.

That's another word we're going to talk about in this series. Normally, if you're in the area of the temple having your sins atoned for, what ritual are you going through as an Israelite? Animal sacrifice, which is way less painful, I think, than this experience here. This seems way worse. But this is the experience he has. If his sin and impurity is really going to be dealt with and healed and transformed, God's holiness is going to have to invade his personal space in a much more radical way. That's the story. And with this, you realize that the whole story of Israel, you thought this was a story about a God who planted himself in the midst of miserable sinners

and then said, okay, everybody shape up and so you can come be with me forever. And then when you hit the prophets, you realize like, oh my gosh, that's not what the story is at all. Like this is a story about a God who chose a people, and in their experience of being close to the Holy One, it made the gap so clear between broken, sinful humans and the beauty and purity and power of God. And the long-term plan, the ultimate purposes of this God is not this, however. It's actually of God's space to come into other people's space and to overwhelm it with his purity and to restore and redeem and transform people. Are you with me?

That's what's happening in this story. And this is where you see God's holiness become a part of God's mission to our world. God's holiness is his standard of purity and power and perfection, but it's him bursting out of the holy space into our world to come confront us and heal and transform us. And it's exactly that that brings us to the point where Jesus fits into the story of the Bible. And I could go on a lot longer, or I could show you a video that a friend and I made about it that'll summarize it all in like five minutes. It'll be way more interesting, I think. And so this is a way of landing the plane. I'll come up and prepare us to take the bread and the cup. But I just, this fundamental question of how you think of God, is he waiting

for you to shape up to come be holy like him? Or did he, before you even thought to even think about that question, make a decision to move towards you in his holiness so he can heal and transform you? Those are two totally different kinds of God, aren't they? Which one do you think Jesus points us to? Let's watch the video. You've probably heard the word holy before, or at least sang it in a church song once or twice. And for most people, this idea is really just connected to being a morally good person. So God is holy because he's morally perfect. Yeah, that is part of it.

But in the Bible, the idea of holiness is even bigger and more rich. What it's really describing is how God is the creative force behind the whole universe. He's the one and only being with the power to make a world full of such beauty and life. All these abilities make God utterly unique, which is the meaning of the word holy. A helpful way to think about God's holiness is by using the sun as a metaphor. The sun is unique, at least within our solar system. It is really powerful. It is the source of all this beautiful life on our planet.

And so you could say that the sun is holy. And you can actually take this metaphor even further in that the whole area around the sun is also holy. Yeah, because the closer you get to the sun, the more intense it gets. Yeah, exactly. So that very power and goodness that generates all this life is also dangerous. I mean, the sun, if you get too close, will annihilate you. And in the same way, there's this paradox at the heart of God's own holiness.

Because if you're impure, his presence is dangerous to you. And not because it's bad, but because it's so good. And so the first time we see this paradox of God's holiness, it's in the story of Moses and the burning bush. So God tells Moses to take off his sandals because he's standing on holy ground. And Moses covers his face in fear. And God says, hey, don't come any closer. It's intense.

Actually, that intensity of God's holiness, that's explored even more in the stories about Israel's temple, which was the main place where God's holy presence was located. And at the center of the temple was this room called the Most Holy Place, the hot spot of God's presence. And whether you're an Israelite living in the land around the temple or a priest working right in the temple, you're in proximity to God's holy presence, which is dangerous.

Yeah, this is a problem. So how's it supposed to work? Well, in the Bible, the solution is that you need to become pure. So like being morally pure. Yeah, and that's easy enough to understand. But the Bible spends a lot of time talking about another kind of purity, being ritually pure, which is a state where you separate yourself from anything related to death, like touching things like diseased skin or dead bodies or even certain bodily fluids.

All these make you impure. And becoming ritually impure isn't necessarily sinful. What's wrong is waltzing into God's presence when you're in an impure state. And so that's why God gave the Israelites very clear instructions for knowing when they were impure, steps to become pure so that they could go into the temple again. So that's what the book of Leviticus is about. Right. But it doesn't stop there. This idea keeps developing. So later in the scriptures, we find this really interesting story by a prophet named Isaiah. And he has this crazy

vision where he's in the temple and he's right in God's presence. He's totally terrified. Yeah, he knows the rules. He shouldn't even be in there. And he's worried about being destroyed. And then this crazy creature called a seraphim. Yeah, that is a crazy creature. Totally. So it flies over with a hot coal.

And then it sears Isaiah's lips with the coal and says something really weird. Your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. So this burning coal somehow makes Isaiah pure. Yeah, it's remarkable because normally if you touch something impure, it transfers its impurity to you. But now here's this new idea where you have this coal, this very holy and pure object, and it touches Isaiah and it transfers its purity to him. Isaiah is not destroyed by God's holiness.

He's transformed by it. I mean, the implications of this are just huge. But there's one more development, this time from another prophet, Ezekiel. And he has this vision where he's standing at the temple and he sees water trickling out from it. And then that water turns into a stream and then it grows into a deep river that starts flowing through the desert, leaving this trail of green trees behind it. And then it flows into the Dead Sea, making everything fresh and alive. So instead of becoming pure first and then going into the temple, here God's holiness comes out from the temple, making things pure and bringing them to life.

What does it all mean? We don't know until we meet this man, Jesus. And he claims that he's fulfilling all of these ancient visions, but in surprising new ways. So Jesus, he went around touching people who are impure, people with skin diseases, a woman with chronic bleeding or dead people. And when he touches them, their impurity should transfer over to Jesus. But instead, Jesus's purity transfers to them and actually heals their bodies.

Jesus is like that holy coal in Isaiah's vision. Right. And Jesus claimed that he was the human embodiment of God's own holiness and that he and his followers were now God's temple so that through them, God's holy presence would go out into the world and bring life and healing and hope. And so this is why Jesus described his followers as having streams of living water flowing out of them. So this is our part of the story where we find ourselves now. But where is this all heading? So the last pages of the Bible end with a final vision about God's holiness. This time it's by a guy named John.

And in his vision, we see the whole world made completely new. The entire earth has become God's temple. And Ezekiel's river is there, flowing out of God's presence, immersing all of creation, removing all impurity, and bringing everything back to life. As we come to take the bread and the cup, we believe that we are together as a community gathered around the Holy One, that we are meeting together with the one who loved us

and whose holiness came to purify us. And that happened through the story we're telling with these symbols, through his broken body and shed blood, where Jesus, the Holy One, took into himself all of the impurity and sin and death and decay that we contribute to, and he took it to the grave for us and on our behalf so that his holiness, that his life, that his new creative power could be unleashed into the world and into our own lives. And so this is the question I would just encourage you to ponder and pray, as we sing and take the bread and the cup. Is there a part of your life, if you're trying to follow Jesus, is there a part of your life where you know you've closed it off?

There's a certain way of thinking. There's a pattern of behaviors. There's a certain way of thinking. There's a pattern of behaviors. There's a relationship. There's some part of your life where you're down to follow Jesus here and let his love and holiness permeate you here, but like this part is off limits. And you may not even know that it's like that until all of a sudden a moment of Jesus' holy love confronts you, until all of a sudden a moment of Jesus' holy love confronts you, which is both wonderful and unpleasant. And it allows us a moment, like Isaiah, to own up to our failures,

not in a form of self-hatred, but in a form of open honesty, and knowing that the Holy One, whose grandeur and handiwork you can go stare at at night and whose love meets us in the human person of Jesus, that this holy one loves you and wants to be closer to you and heal you. That's the one that we come to meet with today. meet with today. All right, thanks for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. Hopefully that was helpful for you. It sparks a whole bunch of questions and gets you thinking bigger and better thoughts than you did maybe 45 minutes ago. So future episodes, we're going to be tackling key words like atonement and glory and covenant. This was a really helpful series for me, at least, to bring a whole bunch of reading and reflections together. So onward and upward. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.