Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.  And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.  And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.  I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.  I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” - Ezekiel 36:22-27 (ESV)

What does the word "holy" mean to you?  Before you read any further, take a minute and think about what it means to you that God is holy.  We desperately need a proper understanding of the supreme importance of God's holiness.  Our depth of understanding of this will determine how we pray, how we worship, how we walk with Him.  It will determine our very identity.  Without a proper understanding of God’s holiness, we are left with a shallow faith.

I have heard that God's holiness means that He is "completely separate from sin".  This is true but this only tells me what holiness is not. Holiness is the opposite of sinfulness. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines holiness as "exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness".  That is our God!  He is WORTHY of complete devotion.  He is PERFECT in goodness and righteousness.  He is to be EXALTED, above all else!

I remember my childhood growing up in the Roman Catholic Church.  It seems to me looking back that there was a great awareness of God’s holiness in the Catholic Church.  Our voices would be hushed as we entered.  Our heads would be bowed.  We would lower ourselves on bended knee as we prayed to our Most Holy God.  Since I left the Catholic Church, I have been back to visit on occasion, and am always struck by the reverence for His Holiness that I sense as I enter that church. I thank Him for that experience of His Holiness from my youth.

This passage from Ezekiel tells us so much about God.  God cares deeply about His holiness.  And He desires that we care deeply about His holiness.  And it is because He is "worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness" that He cares and that we should care about His holiness.  There is nothing we should care more about.  Yet, we do not.  How often do I profane His great name?  How often do I speed right past “Hallowed be your name”, so that I can get more quickly to “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:9-11).  How much of my prayer time is spent thinking about myself, and how much of it is spent thinking about the One I am praying to?

R.C. Sproul wrote an excellent book called The Holiness Of God.  In it he notes the importance of the sequence of the Lord’s prayer which Jesus taught us to pray.  He writes, “There is a kind of sequence within the prayer.  God’s kingdom will never come where His name is not considered holy.  His will is not done on earth as it is in heaven if His name is desecrated here.  In heaven the name of God is holy.  It is breathed by angels in a sacred hush.  Heaven is a place where reverence for God is total.  It is foolish to look for the kingdom anywhere God is not revered” (p. 13).

We are people who have not revered God.  We are a people who have profaned His holy name.  And yet, God, in His great mercy, gives us a new heart, and a new spirit, that we may care about His holiness, and that we may live in a way that glorifies Him.  He does this, because He loves us, but even more than that, He does this because He desires to see His holy name glorified.  It is not for our sake that He acts, but for the sake of His holiness.  We must not ignore this point, that God desires, above all else, to be glorified.  And this is right and good, because He alone is worthy to be glorified.  It is not until we live in light of His holiness that we will be complete.  It is then that we will live as we were created, for the purpose that we were created.  It is only then that we will experience the Shalom that we all long for so deeply.  Let us spend the rest of our earthly lives seeking an awareness of God’s holiness.  Let us give glory to our Most Holy God.  Today let us "be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).

“And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8).

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.  For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”  - Jeremiah 31:31-34 (ESV)

Covenant - “an unchangeable, divinely imposed legal agreement between God and man that stipulates the conditions of their relationship” - Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem, p.515.

God had made a covenant with His people Israel.  This was the Mosaic covenant, or the “old covenant”.  This covenant was “a series of detailed written laws given for a time to restrain the sins of the people and to be a custodian to point people to Christ” (Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem, p.521).  God’s “old covenant” was good.  It was merciful and kind.  It was given out of God’s steadfast love, to be “our guardian until Christ came” (Galatians 3:19).  And God’s people broke this covenant.  The people of Israel have broken it.  We have broken it.

So God, in His infinite mercy, now declares a new covenant, an everlasting covenant.  And this covenant is a covenant of grace.  The foundation of this new covenant is that He will be our God and we will be His people, and this shall be carried out through God’s forgiveness of our iniquity, remembering our sins no more.  We learn two chapters later in Jeremiah more details of how God will carry out this beautiful and gracious covenant.  “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely.  And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 33:15-16).

Those whom God has chosen to save, now understand with confidence that this “righteous Branch” is Jesus Christ.  He is “the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15).  God is infinitely holy.  Therefore, to allow a sinful people to stand in His presence and be His people, we must first be redeemed from our transgressions, and it was through the blood of His Son, Jesus, that this was accomplished. For “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).  God is faithful, and He has carried out His everlasting covenant.

In this new covenant, Christ is the King, which Israel was longing for (John 1:49).  In this new covenant, Christ is the priest who atones for our sins (Hebrews 8:1-2).  In this new covenant, Christ is the Savior who redeems faithless Israel from her unrighteousness, her wickedness, her harlotry.  Praise be to our great and merciful God!

Thank You God that we now arrive at this turning point in the history of redemption, where You, in your infinite wisdom, have established a covenant, by which we, your faithless bride, are made faithful again.  Let us pour out our affections for You in thanksgiving, as we remember that You, through the blood of Your Son Jesus Christ, have forgiven us, and redeemed us, and saved us.  Thank You for this covenant of grace that You have freely offered to us.  Praise be to our great God forever.

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gatherings, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24).

What then?  Are we better than they?  Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

“Their throat is an open grave;

they use their tongues to deceive.”

“The venom of asps is under their lips.”

“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

in their paths are ruin and misery,

and the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. - Romans 3:9 (NASB); Romans 3:10-18; 23 (ESV).

I draw incredible comfort from this passage of scripture.  You might ask why.  I grew up thinking that I had to be good enough to get to God.  But I never knew how good I had to be.  That is a dangerous and scary place to be.  Either you feel like you have failed, and are going to spend eternity in hell, or (more rarely) you feel like you have succeeded, and you are puffed up with pride.... and then you have again failed and are destined for eternity in hell.  It was not until I spent time in this passage from scripture, that I understood, that NO ONE is good enough to get to God.  But yet, scripture also tells us that many WILL get to spend eternity in paradise with our God.

It was our pastor in Seattle, Mark Driscoll, who very simply, yet elegantly, unpacked this theology for me.  He explained that many religions and even many churches think that the world is divided into the good guys and the bad guys.  That is wrong.  We are ALL bad guys, and there has only ever been one good guy, Jesus Christ.  He ALONE lived a sinless life, He ALONE is righteous, and so He ALONE is able to atone for all of my sins, past, present and future.  What a glorious and liberating truth this is!  Yes, ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  I have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  You have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  I cannot be “good enough” to get to God, so God entered into human history, and lived a perfect life, “good enough” to get to God. Through His sacrificial death, He secured a path for me and for you to get to God, despite the sin that we were all stained with, and are now cleansed from, because of His blood shed for us.  Let us find rest and peace in this, that we are now “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:24-25).

Thank you Lord Jesus Christ, that there is now a fountain filled with Your blood, and that we, when plunged beneath that flood, lose all our guilty stains.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (Psalm 51:1-4).

Then the Lord said to Jeremiah in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen what faithless Israel did?  She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.  I thought, ‘After she has done all these things she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. For a spirit of harlotry has led them astray, And they have played the harlot, departing from their God.  Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God.  For a spirit of harlotry is within them, and they do not know the Lord.  - Jeremiah 3:6-7; 9 (NASB), Hosea 4:12; 5:4 (NASB).

God is so patient.  As you read the above passages of scripture, God’s patience may not be be the first thing that occurs to you.  However, this is the 16th week that I have been writing blog posts on the history of redemption. Week after week, we read about a faithful God, who is pursuing a faithless people.  I confess that I am growing weary of the Israelites.  And yet, God is so very patient with them, and with us.

I am writing this post ten thousand feet above the face of the earth.  No I am not on a space shuttle, and no, I am not on drugs.  I am on an airplane flying to Ethiopia to bring home my beautiful adopted daughter.  It is from this kind of ten thousand foot view that we need to examine scripture.  And it is only after spending day after day, and week after week in His word, that we attain this view.  And when I look at the history of redemption through that lens, it is God’s patience that so clearly comes into focus.

My wife and I have been pursuing the adoption of this daughter for slightly over one year now.  During that time, there have been countless times when I have been frustrated, and downcast.  My wife can attest to my almost daily complaining about the adoption process, and about all the unnecessary red tape involved.  I am not a patient person.  The root of my impatience is a lack of faith in God’s sovereignty and a lack of faith in the perfection of His plan and His timing.  When I take time to meditate on my lack of patience, I remember my God, who waited not one year, but 27 years for me to accept Him as my adoptive Father.  I remember my God, who waited thousands of years for His chosen people to repent and to trust in Him.  He is truly abounding in patience.  And His patience shines brightest when we look at the thousands of years that He has endured the harlots and whores who have departed Him.

We should glorify God for His patience and remember it often.  For, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make know his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory - even us whom he has called” (Romans 9:22-24).  Judgement will indeed come for those whose hearts are hardened to God, but for the sake of His “vessels of mercy”, He is patient.

Thank you God, for being so patient with me.  Please give me faith to be patient, trusting in Your perfect timing and in Your sovereign grace.

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah; and they said to him, “Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations”.  The Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them”.  Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, “No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles”.  - 1 Samuel 8:4-5; 7; 19-20 (NASB) "They have rejected Me from being king over them".  I am writing this on Good Friday.  These words today come alive to me, in a powerful way.  God had created a people for Himself.  He had loved them, and protected them.  He had spoken to them, and had showered them with His kindness and His grace.  They in their depravity had rejected Him.  In His perfect timing, God Himself entered into the history of redemption in human flesh, as the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  He came in humility, and gentleness.  He came because, despite our rejection of Him, He loved us.  "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet he opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7).

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, He was led before "the chief priests and the rulers and the people" (Luke 23:13).  And Pilate said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" And they cried out again, "Crucify him." And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him" (Mark 15:12-14).  "They have rejected Me from being king over them". "But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed" (Luke 21:23).  "They have rejected Me from being king over them".

I remember as a young boy, in church, as the priest read from the passion narrative, at the appointed time, the whole congregation would shout, in unison, "crucify him".  This left a strong impression on me.  It was impossible at that moment to convince myself that it was "everyone else" who had rejected God.  I knew it was me.  I knew it was my sin that had crucified Him.  "They have rejected Me from being king over them".

I remember the first time I saw The Passion of the Christ.  It was as if I was watching my best friend be rejected, brutally tortured and murdered.  "They have rejected Me from being king over them".  I left the theater that night with my heart broken wide open.

I remember the countless times I have chosen to forsake my God, to deny Him, to walk away from Him.  "They have rejected Me from being king over them".

Let us mourn and weep as we remember today that we have rejected our Most High God from being king over us.  And then let us allow God to transform that mourning into joy, as we remember how He in His infinite wisdom transformed our rejection of Him into salvation.  Let us cry as we remember that it was our sin that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross, and then let us celebrate with hearts of gladness as we look upon the empty tomb.  Let us praise Him with outstretched arms as we remember that we, "who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.  This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to shame, by triumphing over them in him" (Colossians 2:13-15).  That is my King.

My God and Savior, forgive me for all the ways that I have rejected You from being king over me.  Allow my heart to mourn over this, and then turn my tears into laughter and let me shout for joy as I celebrate Your victory over sin and satan and death.  To You be the glory forever and ever and ever.  Amen.

"Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.  And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:10-12).

Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them.  Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. - Judges 2:16-17

We who proclaim Jesus Christ as our Lord are called to live lives of submission.  We are commanded by God to submit to Him (James 4:7), to our church family (Ephesians 5:21), to our church leaders (Hebrews 13:17) and to the government over us (Mark 12:17).  We feel this desire to submit, yet we continually submit to all the wrong things.  We chase after other gods, bowing ourselves down to them in worship, all the while ignoring the amazing grace that has been shown to us by the only true God.  We are a proud and stubborn people, who think we know what we need and deserve, so much better than God, who is the height of knowledge.  So it was with Israel.  God raised up judges for them to protect them and guide them in times of war, out of His graciousness and kindness.  We are told a few verses later that, “Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge” (Judges 2:18).  God is sovereign and He can and does work through the leaders that HE has placed over us.  How often do you pray for the leaders over you?  How often do you pray for President Obama, or your congressmen, or your mayor, or your boss, or your elders and deacons?  How often do you joyfully submit to those above you, in your family, in your church and in your job?  God in His providence has placed these “judges” over you, and we hold firm to the truth that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  We need to embrace “submission” as part of our DNA, and to see the beauty and the purpose in it.

How does one joyfully submit, when our flesh constantly tells us not to?  The foundation of biblical submission is humility.  It is only by a better understanding of how broken we are, and then by seeing how perfect God is, that we are truly humbled.  We should seek humility daily, asking God for a greater portion of this.  We live in a culture which tells us we should be proud, and that humility is for the weak.  Yet the word of God, tells us exactly the opposite.  “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).  And it is only once we accept this true and right order, that we will experience the peace of God.

We need to remember often, that it was Jesus Christ who ultimately submitted His very life to secure our salvation.  “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).  Jesus was obedient to the point of death!  This is our savior!  He did not come as a rich and noble government official, but as a servant!  He came in humility, and obedience, and in total submission to His Father.  In response to this, we should live lives of humility, and obedience and submission to Jesus Christ, our great high priest.

“Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Be wretched and mourn and weep.  Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:7-10).