God has many attributes, and they serve to describe the essence of God. They are not parts of God in the sense that He is 20% eternal, 25% love, etc. He is infinitely eternal, infinitely loving, infinitely just, etc. He cannot be more love than just or vice versa because that would make Him less God in whatever attribute is less important. All that is to say, there are no attributes of God that are more important than the other…however, the Scripture does want to emphasize some particular attributes in a special way to get our attention. One such attribute that the Bible shouts loud to get our attention is the holiness of God and that is the thing that our study of Eli’s sons, the captured Ark, and the despair of the Philistines ends on. This attribute is also one that we make many assumptions about as well as one that ought to cause us to give Him such glory.
I encourage you to reread 1 Samuel 6:1-9 and continue reading to verse 18. I will summarize what happens there, and we will focus our attention on verses 19-21. Recall that in Part 5 God is displaying His glory through the despair and plagues against the Philistines. The Philistine diviners and priests devise a test to ensure this is really God and not a coincidence causing such anguish. The Philistine rulers follow the results of the test and (spoiler alert), it was God and not coincidence. The Israelites take back the Ark and make sacrifices to God. Everyone is happy…until verses 19-21 sobers everyone up to an important reality.
Now He fatally struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord. He struck 50,070 men among the people, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter. 20 And the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom will He go up from us?” 21 So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have brought back the ark of the Lord; come down and take it up to yourselves.”
1 Samuel 6:19-21
Well, that’s awkward. They just get the Ark back and 50,070 men promptly die for peeking inside? Why could that be? “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?” That question is rhetorical, and the clear answer is, “no one.” The reason becomes clear as we explore the attribute of God’s infinite holiness. This is a good time to use the incident in 1 Samuel here to springboard to one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, Isaiah 6.
Isaiah is called to be a prophet and has this vision of God sitting on His throne in His temple. It is glorious and overwhelms us with His magnificence.
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim were standing above Him, each having six wings: with two each covered his face, and with two each covered his feet, and with two each flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.” 4and the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5 Then I said, “Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your guilt is taken away and atonement is made for your sin.”
Isaiah 6:1-6
The mark of royalty and majesty—the length of the train of the king’s robe—flows over the throne and is so long it spills outside the temple. He is surrounded by Seraphim which cry “Holy!” 3 times over continually. In Hebrew writing instead of using bold type or underlines, they would repeat a word for emphasis. You could not emphasize something greater if you repeated it 3 times over. Holiness is the only attribute of God that is ever repeated 3 times. It is something we need to get. Even the beings crying this out are a testament to the pure holiness of God. “Seraphim” is the plural of the root word “saraph” literally means “to burn.” It is as if to say that the beings constantly in the holy presence of God are constantly on fire due to his infinite purity and holiness.
What is Isaiah’s response? Horror. He cries a curse (woe) upon himself and is unraveling before the presence of the King. The seraphim cry the Lord is “Holy, Holy, Holy” and that the “earth is full of His glory.” You might think they would say that the earth is full of His holiness, but there is a certain beauty and glory in holiness. God is so beautiful, so pure, so glorious, so holy, that anything imperfect or sinful must either be cleansed or consumed in His presence. Even though Isaiah might be the most righteous man on earth at the time, he rightly believes he is about to die because he is standing before God’s holy presence. The special ability of the card, Holy unto the Lord reflects this nicely in that all Evil Characters in play are shuffled and all evil cards are discarded from your revealed hand. All sinful things are laid bare before such a holy presence and nothing evil can remain intact. By God’s grace, Isaiah wasn’t left in that miserable state because God took away his guilt and made atonement for his sin.
Conclusion and Application
We sometimes make light of the holiness of God and even make assumptions that we would love seeing the face of God in our current state. Thankfully, God mercifully denies our request to see His face when we ask for that in our worship songs on occasion. God’s holiness is a terrible thing for humanity because sinful man cannot have a relationship with Him; we have only destruction to look forward to. The greater we understand the infinite purity and holiness of God, the greater we understand the depravity of our sin, our helplessness at making things right with such a God. But this is not the end of the story! This is why the Gospel is so glorious! Because of the atonement of Christ for our sin, we are declared not guilty of our sin and are instead clothed with the very righteousness of Christ before God. It is only through the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf that we can (are you ready for this?) have a personal relationship with and spend eternity in the presence of a perfectly holy God—not in fear, but in rapturous joy at the beauty and gloriousness of His holiness. It is when we read of accounts like the 50,070 Israelites being struck dead because they violated the holiness of God can we appreciate the great chasm between our sinfulness and God’s holiness. How easy it is to take for granted the death and resurrection of Christ that was necessary to bridge that chasm. If you take nothing else from this study, I pray that you do as I am now and enjoy a moment being frozen in awe at the fact that we look forward to the day that we can stand before the presence of God robed in all of His majesty and holiness so that we might glorify Him through our endless praise and enjoyment in Him. Now the worship songs asking to see God’s face sound so appropriate because the greatest fulfillment of our desires is to enjoy the presence of One so pure and holy without a trace of fear.
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