Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see; only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee, perfect in power, in love, and purity. --Reginald Heber (1826).
When a person is shocked or surprised, he may make an exclamation invoking holiness. According to Wikipedia, the phrase "Holy Cow!" may have been adopted as a means to avoid using obscene or indecent language. It may have been based on the general awareness of the holiness of cows in some religious traditions like Hinduism. A similar phrase would be "Holy Moses," referring to the biblical figure so important in Jewish and Christian tradition. This may have been shortened to "Holy Moly" not only because it rhymes, but also because more conservative religious people thought that invoking Moses or other saints was tantamount to idolatry, or perhaps was disrespectful of the saints whose names were invoked.
Other examples from Catholic tradition include "Holy smoke", referring perhaps to the selection of a new Pope; "Holy mackerel" from the tradition of eating fish on Fridays; and even "Holy mother of God", referring of course to the Virgin Mary. A more obscure reference is made in the phrase "Holy Toledo", as it refers to the city in Spain which was a center of three competing religions a millennium ago.
In today's study, I want to attempt to gaze at the very soul of God. When we try to peek behind the curtain to see who God is, we are immediately blinded by the intense light of His holiness. Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, said, "What are we, that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?" Isaiah 6:1-5 says,
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train his His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!" And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said, "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."
What struck Isaiah immediately upon encountering the holiness of God was his own sinfulness. R.C. Sproul wrote in The Holiness of God, "God's grace is not infinite. God is infinite, and God is gracious. We experience the grace of an infinite God, but grace is not infinite. God sets limits to His patience and forbearance. He warns us over and over again that some day the ax will fall and His judgment will be poured out."
We see this judgment being poured out in our text today, from Judges chapter 10, beginning in verse 6:
Then the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; and they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him. So the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the people of Ammon. From that year they harassed and oppressed the children of Israel for eighteen years--all of the children of Israel who were on the other side of the Jordan in the land of the Amorites, in Gilead. Moreover the people of Ammon crossed over the Jordan to fight against Judah also, against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was severely distressed. (Judges 10: 6-9)
According to Matthew Henry's commentary, it appears as if Israel's chief trade was to import deities from all countries. "It is hard to say whether it was more impious or impolitic to do this. By introducing these foreign deities, they rendered themselves mean and despicable, for no nation that had any sense of honor changed their gods." Since Israel had turned their hearts from the one true God, there was no distinction between them and the nations around them. Idolaters from Syria, Sidon, Moab, Ammon and Philistia found comfort in the temples that Israel had erected for these false deities. The foreigners would take root there, and Israel found that strangers would devour their strength. "If they did it in compliment to the neighboring nations, and to ingratiate themselves with them, justly were they disappointed; for those nations which by their wicked arts they sought to make their friends by the righteous judgments of God became their enemies and oppressors. In quo quis peccat, in eo punitur-Wherein a person offends, therein he shall be punished." (Matthew Henry).
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, Joshua, and Gideon--this God did not become one of the several that Israel worshiped. Instead, they turned their backs on Him entirely. "They forsook the Lord," Scripture says, "and did not serve Him at all." Again from Matthew Henry: "Those that think to serve both God and Mammon will soon come entirely to forsake God, and to serve Mammon only. If God have not all the heart, he will soon have none of it."
A Humble Confession
Here is where we begin to see the heart of God. Verse 10 says, "And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord saying, "We have sinned against You, because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baals." Sproul writes:
When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction.
The people of Israel found themselves again oppressed and enslaved by pagan peoples. They realized the double-sin: forsaking God, and serving other gods. They repented from the first, but not necessarily the second when they cried out to God. In his book Night Driving: Notes From a Prodigal Soul, Chad Bird writes:
Jeremiah diagnosed our ailment long ago: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). If our hearts were only deceitful or only desperately sick, that would be tragic enough. But the alliance of the two is deadly. The Hebrew word for "deceitful" is the same root in the name of that devious patriarch Jacob, whose life is punctuated with grasping, self-serving lies. The Hebrew word for "desperately sick" is better translated as "beyond remedy" or "incurable." It describes hearts no merely afflicted with clogged arteries in need of a spiritual stent or two. There's no plumbing the depths to which our hearts have fallen. None of us like this unflattering description of ourselves. We spend most of our lives in an ongoing state of denial about our true condition. We're like chain-smoking couch potatoes who keep boasting about the marathons we'll run. The deceitful heart achieves that goal easily. It is, as John Calvin described it "a perpetual factory of idols."
A Humbling Message
I remember when Muslim extremists hijacked airplanes on 9/11 and carried out a number of attacks on American soil, Americans cried out to God. There was a short spike in church attendance, as more Americans cried out to God for help. Unfortunately this new-found religion was short lived. Within a few weeks, church attendance settled back into its previous level.
God knows the hearts of men. His response is therefore reserved.
So the Lord said to the children of Israel, "Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites and from the people of Ammon and from the Philistines? Also the Sidonians and Amalekites and Maonites oppressed you; and you cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hand. Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods. Therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in your time of distress. (Judges 10:11-14)
Sproul writes, "Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority." God is perfectly justified in His response. Time after time He had come to their rescue, and time after time they had forsaken Him and served other gods. They did not deserve grace now, no matter how sincere their cries. Chad Bird writes:
To realize the heart of our problem is to also realize the heart of God's solution. But it's not what we might first imagine. We might suppose that our Lord, seeing us struggle with false worship and its manifold fruits in our life, pumps strength into our hearts so we fight free of our attachment to lies. Or that He's like a life coach who teaches us how to rid ourselves of harmful practices so we can begin to live to His glory. The fatal flaw? Both these views of how God works are only slight amendments of the fiction that we're capable of redeeming our lives no matter how bad things become. All that's different is we've added "with God's help." With God's help, we will conquer our obstacles. With God's help, we will redeem any tragedy our lives become. God, however, is not here to help us. He is not our assistant, our coach, or our motivator. He is here to do for us what we cannot, and will not, do for ourselves. Part of how He does this is by launching a full-scale assault against the temple of our hearts.
Man's nature is not so much fickle as it is hypocritical. We turn to God when we need Him most, but when things are going well for us we forget about Him and follow our own desires. Why should God think our prayers and petitions are sincere if we were not faithful to Him all along? What's to keep us from falling again into sin and debauchery? What is the guarantee? In the Christian world view, Christ is our guarantor, for it was He who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Yet how often do we turn our backs on Christ, as well? This is why true repentance is of paramount importance.
A Humble Submission to God's Justice, and a Humble Plea For His Mercy
"And the children of Israel said to the Lord, 'We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems best to You; only deliver us this day, we pray.' So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord. And His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel." (Judges 10:15-16, emphasis added).
One of the purest signs of true confession is the admission that our sin deserves punishment. Until we come to the realization of God's holiness, we cannot begin to fathom the depths of His grace. Sproul says, "When God's justice falls, we are offended because we think God owes perpetual mercy. We must not take His grace for granted. We must never lose our capacity to be amazed by grace."
Let's take another peek at the soul of God, after putting on the sunshades of grace. At what point is God's soul ever grieved? Genesis 6:6 says, "And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." Our sin grieves God's heart. There is no other way to put it. Our actions are grievous to Him. And yet He delivers us.
Psalm 106:42-45 says, "Many times He delivered them; but they rebelled in their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity. Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry; and for their sake He remembered His covenant, and relented according to the multitude of His mercies." Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:22-23, "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
Remember the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15? When he came to himself, the son desired to repent, but he knew that the father had every right to refuse him. Jesus gave us some insight into the heart of God the Father, as we read in verse 20, "But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." This is the heart of God, who longs to forgive and welcome us into His holy presence.
Knowing this, we dare not grieve the Holy Spirit, which is described by Jesus as the unforgivable sin. There will come a time when God's limited mercy will expire. Jonathan Edwards said, "The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood."
Repent and believe, and God will rescue you. Repent now, while there is still time.
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