Habakkuk 3:2 Part 3: Holiness of God

Habakkuk 3:2
Theme: The Holiness of God

Read Habakkuk 3:1-6

When we talk about fire, no one complains or struggles with the fact that it by its very nature burns. When we talk about gravity, no one complains or denies that it by its very nature causes things to fall. But when we talk about the holiness of God very few people ever take the time to consider the implication that holiness has on our lifestyles, beliefs and behaviour. Some people even outright deny or worse rebel against the implications of God’s holiness for the Christian life.

Maybe part of that has to do with the way the word is abused. We say it all the time when we are impresses with something: “Holy cow!” “Holy Smokes?” Or just plain “Holy…!” And when we say it like that, the meaning of holy is reduced to “wow”! You can’t look at the grand canyon and say holy cow and then let that word have any meaning when you talk about the holiness of God. So I want to reclaim that word this morning.

As I said last week I am preaching a series on the essential elements of a revival that includes so far repentance and Prayer- hearing the Voice of God. I have attached my series to this verse in Habakkuk 3:2; it reads this way in the Message,
GOD, I’ve heard what our ancestors say about you,
and I’m stopped in my tracks, down on my knees.
Do among us what you did among them.
Work among us as you worked among them.
And as you bring judgment, as you surely must,
remember mercy.

It’s a prayer on the eve of judgment and a request that God would bring a revival of His works.

In verses 3 and following, Habakkuk describes what is referred to by theologians as a theophany. A theophany is a coming or arriving of God. Every theophany in the Old Testament follows a certain pattern that includes the process of God’s coming from afar and drawing near to His people. The Exodus is described metaphorically as a theophany. In theophanies God is always seen as coming in clouds often in a chariot along with the accompanying violent reaction on the earth including earthquakes and the grieving of the nations.

There is another name for this theophany, it is known as the Day of the Lord. In the New Testament it is ultimately fulfilled in the coming of Jesus for judgment against the wicked and to deliver his church. The Bible says that Christ will come in the clouds and at his coming there will be many signs on the earth and the nations of the earth will mourn.

Look at how Habakkuk describes the coming of the Lord in his day. V. 3:
God came from Teman,
The Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah
His glory covered the heavens,
And the earth was full of His praise.

God is called the Holy One whose glory covers the heavens and for whom the earth is full of praise. Habakkuk saw in the political and spiritual circumstances of his time a greater more eternal reality that most other people in his day were blind to: the reality of God’s glory covering the heavens. (I wonder how He would see our age.) And His vision of the glory of the heavens occurred long before telescopes and space probes could take pictures from the edge of the solar system and beam them back to us.

I once saw a picture from one of the Voyageur probes looking back at earth as it left our solar system. Earth -our home, the centre of our universe, the thing we could spend our whole lives traversing and still only see a fraction of all there is to see, this rock in space that is too large for our finite minds to hold in one thought- is a speck of dust in a solar system that is barely a crumb in a galaxy that is only one of perhaps millions of galaxies… and we’re not even at the centre of our own galaxy.

Do you see His glory covering the heavens? Have you seen some of the images that have come from Hubble? They bewilder the greatest minds of our age!

We can barely contain with our affections the glory of a sunset, much less the heavens with galaxies that are full of countless billions of suns that make our sun look like a failed spark from a flint strike. In 1 hour, the sun produces 3.8 x 1023 kilowatts of power. And there are 1024 stars in the universe. Can anyone here conceive of the amount of energy that the universe produces every second? Probably enough to light every city on earth for a million years!

Get this: a light year is the distance that light travels in 1 year; in 1 year, light travels 9.5 Trillion km (or 5 trillion miles). That’s 25 Billion km a day or 1 Billion km per hour (that’s nearly 7 times around the earth every second). That’s moving at a speed that we humans just cannot comprehend. Scientists estimate that the observable universe would take at least 93 billion light years to traverse (that’s only what already know is there).

No wonder the first thing God said when he created the universe was say, “Let there be light.” He was saying, let there be speed and distance and power beyond human comprehension. And if His finite creation is too big for our brains what of the infinite creator? God can traverse the universe in the blink of an eye and He holds all of it in his hands.

Not only that, but God holds the times and the life of every being in His hands right down to the sparrow and the single cell amoeba. And not only does He know the times and the life and the name and the day of birth and the day of death of every man women and child that has even been born or will be born on this inconsequential speck of dust at the fringe of our galaxy, but he even has the hairs of our heads numbered! I think He even has every cell and strand of DNA numbered and that’s no big deal to Him!

That’s the kind of God who entered time and space and thundered from Teman and received the combined clamor of the earth in the form of waterfalls, glaciers crashing, mountains crumbling, nations raging, volcanoes erupting, clouds bursting with lightning and thunder and hurricanes uprooting entire cities and all of that is a hymn of praise to the mighty God who set it in motion and contains it all by a breath and a thought.

His brightness was like the light;
He had rays flashing from His hand,
And there His power was hidden.
5 Before Him went pestilence,
And fever followed at His feet.
6 He stood and measured the earth;
He looked and startled the nations.
And the everlasting mountains were scattered,
The perpetual hills bowed.
His ways are everlasting.

And does anybody wonder that Habakkuk feared?

But what was the reason for this destruction. Is God just a belligerent angry dictatorial Tyrant of a deity who holds humanity to such unreachable expectations in order to have object on which to vent his wrath and anger for his own amusement? Is that the kind of God that the Bible describes?

God is far more complex than that!

Why is He so angry at Israel and the nations? He is so angry because He is so Holy! It was His holiness that was involved in His creation; His holiness that was affronted when Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden; His Holiness that was crucified and His holiness that will establish the new heavens and the new earth. He is the Holy One and because of that He can’t not be angry at our unholiness Just like gravity can’t not hold us to the ground or fire can’t not burn us no matter despite our vain protests to the contrary. And his holiness is undergirded by his Power so that what amazes me is that He does not just destroy us all in an instant.

God’s Holiness cannot be compared to anything. There is no tool in existence to measure God’s holiness and even if there were a way of measuring holiness, it would have to have an infinite measurement in order to measure God’s holiness. There is nothing to compare it too: ““No one is holy like the LORD, For there is none besides You, Nor is there any rock like our God” (1 Sam 2:2). In contrast, we humans are described as totally depraved:
the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart (Gen 6:5-6)

“Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods?
Who is like You, glorious in holiness,
Fearful in praises, doing wonders? (Ex 15:11)

When Isaiah saw all the heavenly hosts worshipping God and singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” (Is 6:3). It was a mirror turned upon him to show him his own incomparability to the holiness of God. In comparison to that image, this prophet of God could only cry out,
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.”

God’s Holiness is displayed in His name:
For thus says the High and Lofty One
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,
To revive the spirit of the humble,
And to revive the heart of the contrite ones (Is 57:15)

His Holiness is shown in His Word:
My heart within me is broken
Because of the prophets;
All my bones shake.
I am like a drunken man,
And like a man whom wine has overcome,
Because of the LORD,
And because of His holy words (Jer 23:9).

His holiness is shown in His Works
17 The LORD is righteous in all His ways,
Gracious in all His works.
18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him,
To all who call upon Him in truth.
19 He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He also will hear their cry and save them.
20 The LORD preserves all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy.
21 My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD,
And all flesh shall bless His holy name
Forever and ever. (Ps 145:17-21)

His Holiness is shown in His separation from Sin
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10).

God’s Holiness adorns all his other attributes the way that the sun adorns the day:
…His holiness is the beauty of [all His other attributes]; as all would be weak without almightiness to back them, so all would be uncommonly without holiness to adorn them. Should this be sullied, all the rest would lose their honor; as at the same instant the sun should lose its light, it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue. As sincerity is the luster of every grace in a Christian, so is purity the splendor of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is a holy justice, His wisdom a holy wisdom, His power a 'holy arm' (Psalm 98:1). His truth or promise a 'holy promise' (Psalm 105:42). His name, which signifies all His attributes in conjunction is 'holy'" (Psalm 103:1) (S. Charnock).
God’s holiness is ultimately displayed in the Cross. When we contrast the violence and the brutality and the savagery with the willful submission and humility and purity of the Son and the willingness of the Father to turn away from His only believed son we see the ultimate display of the glory of God that fills the heavens and causes mountains to bow down. A. W. Pink says:
God's holiness is best manifested at the cross. Wondrously and yet most solemnly does the atonement display God's infinite holiness and abhorrence of sin. How hateful sin must be to God for Him to punish it to its utmost deserts when it was imputed to His Son!
Finally, His holiness demands our submission the same way that the flame demands that we draw back from it lest it smolder us,
4 Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?
For You alone are holy.
For all nations shall come and worship before You,
For Your judgments have been manifested.” (Rev 15:4)

Application:
I am not even going to try to suggest an application because for me to present to you in some easy package what you should do now would be to sully the Holiness of God and imply that there is anything we can do to make it practical and relevant. Instead, I am going to allow the Word to take root in the soil of your heart and let the spirit of God water it and give it over to God to cause the increase.

In a couple of weeks I am going to ask the church to consider a Daniel fast and I will explain that then. But I just want you to prepare yourselves for it so it won’t be a surprise. Prepare for it by meditating on the holiness of God and counting the cost to follow Him.

22 Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!” (Lam 3:22-24)