Abraham – Blameless before God

Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.”

Read Genesis 15:3-6, Gen. 16: 1-4, 15-16.

Genesis 15:3-6 New International Version (NIV)

³ And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

⁴ Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” ⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring^[a] be.”

⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 15:5 Or seed

Genesis 16:1-4 Hagar and Ishmael

16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slavenamed Hagar; ² so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years,Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.  When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.

Genesis 16:15-16 

¹⁵ So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.(NIV)

 

God promises Abram a son, Sarah takes matters into her own hands by giving Abram her servant to get a child by, as Sarah doesn’t trust God to give Abram a son by her.  This causes them a lot of grief and stress in their lives, but God is faithful and does provide Sarah with the pregnancy of Isaac.

Read Gen. 17:16-22, and Gen. 18:10-15, Gen. 21. 

Genesis 17:16-22 New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”

¹⁷ Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

¹⁹ Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.^[a] I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. ²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. ²¹ But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” ²² When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 17:19 Isaac means he laughs.

Genesis 18:10-15 New International Version (NIV)

¹⁰ Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. ¹¹ Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. ¹² So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

¹³ Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

¹⁵ Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

 

Genesis 21 New International Version (NIV)

The Birth of Isaac

21 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. ² Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. ³ Abraham gave the name Isaac^[a] to the son Sarah bore him. ⁴ When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. ⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

⁶ Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” ⁷ And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away

⁸ The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. ⁹ But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abrahamwas mocking, ¹⁰ and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

¹¹ The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. ¹² But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring^[b] will be reckoned. ¹³ I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

¹⁴ Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.

¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she^[c] began to sob.

¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. ¹⁸ Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

²⁰ God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.²¹ While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.

The Treaty at Beersheba

²² At that time Abimelek and Phicol the commander of his forces said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything you do. ²³ Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants. Show to me and the country where you now reside as a foreigner the same kindness I have shown to you.”

²⁴ Abraham said, “I swear it.”

²⁵ Then Abraham complained to Abimelek about a well of water that Abimelek’s servants had seized. ²⁶ But Abimelek said, “I don’t know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today.”

²⁷ So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelek, and the two men made a treaty. ²⁸ Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs from the flock, ²⁹ and Abimelek asked Abraham, “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs you have set apart by themselves?”

³⁰ He replied, “Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.”

³¹ So that place was called Beersheba,^[d] because the two men swore an oath there.

³² After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelek and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines. ³³ Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Eternal God. ³⁴ And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time.

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 21:3 Isaac means he laughs.
2. Genesis 21:12 Or seed
3. Genesis 21:16 Hebrew; Septuagint the child
4. Genesis 21:31 Beersheba can mean well of seven and well of the oath.

Abraham was faithful to God, and had a feast after Isaac was weaned.  Note:  Abraham cared about Ishmael as his son, and did not want to send him away, but God promised to make Ishmael a father of many nations also, but said that his covenant was with Abraham through Isaac, not through Ishmael.  So, Isaac is the son of promise. 

It is important to note that God was faithful to Abraham and Sarah, even when they were not patiently trusting of him.  Sometimes we hear God, and we naturally want to make God’s words happen on our own and in our own way. 

 That is what happened with Sarah and Abraham.  This sometimes causes us to sin. Sometimes, there are actions that we can take that are okay in preparing ourselves for God’s promise to be fulfilled.  If that is the case we should take those actions,  but there is never a time, when sin is the answer to making God’s promise come true. 

We should always strive to remember that God’s timing isn’t always right away when he promises something.  Sometimes we are just not ready for that fulfillment to take place.  We may have some growing to do first on a spiritual level.  Ultimately, the reason Isaac was the chosen child was that God had already determined that mankind needed a savior and who his chosen people were, and that the savior was going to be a member of his chosen people, I am sure that Abraham’s feast when Isaac was weaned was a feast of Thanksgiving. 

Something to recognize is that God’s chosen people were chosen, not to Lord it over others, but in order to be developed into people who could show the world the character and love of God.  

Sometimes, in our world, we find ourselves falling into the sin of jealousy and resentment whenever we hear someone has been chosen for something instead of ourselves…that is because we have the idea that if they are being chosen, then we are not being chosen, so we are being rejected.  That is a worldly idea…God doesn’t reject people automatically, just because someone else is chosen for a particular task or mission. We each have our own task or mission to accomplish in our lives.  No one person’s task is more important or notable than the one that each of us has been given.  That is part of being in the body of Christ…we all have a task, and each task is important…if the foot is not there, then the body cannot move…the foot is not less important then the arm, or the head, or the body…each is important in its own right.  We cannot forget that, we are all to work together for the good of the kingdom of God.

We just need to follow God and be blameless due to our willingness to follow God, and be faithful in this journey we have…just like Abraham.  If you refer back to Matthew Chapter 1 you will see that Abraham was the first person listed in Jesus’ list of ancestors…yet Abraham was not a perfect person, he was a forgiven person!

 

The Confusing Knowledge of Good and Evil

Read Genesis Chapter 3

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring  and hers;
he will crush your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

²⁰ Adam named his wife Eve,  because she would become the mother of all the living.

²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

 

Looking at the Garden of Eden God mankind gained the knowledge of Good and Evil from eating the forbidden fruit….but does this mean that they while knowing that there is Good and there is Evil (which destroyed their innocence) that they understood what is good and what is evil? No, it doesn’t seem so.  For instance, it obviously was not a sin in the Garden of Eden to be in a state of nakedness…if it was then God would have clothed man right off the bat, wouldn’t he? Yet, their response to this new “knowledge of good and evil” was to notice that they were naked and go and hide from God…in fear.

I kind of picture this as the same reaction as a deer when the headlights of an oncoming car get into its face….it knows that something is outside of the norm and knows that this is scary, but doesn’t know exactly why or what to do about it.

Another way to examine this issue is to think what it is like whenever we have to go to a place where we don’t know anyone.  Most of us feel quite a bit of concern and stress, anxiety and fear even about these kind of new situations.  I ran into a person at my church this past weekend….she came into the door, and told us that she had passed by many times, but was really afraid to come in.

To hear this, you would think that we were not a nice place, or had a bad reputation, but that is not the case at all.  The lady was simply verbalizing the common fear almost all of us have of new groups and situations.

The question is why do we have this fear?  If we really analyze it the answer is clear….anytime we enter a new group of any kind and especially when we don’t know anyone there…we have a very tough situation…a tough question must be answered…we ask ourselves:  “What if I don’t fit in?  What are the rules of this group?…how do I learn them?…What if I make a mistake because I don’t know the rules?!!  How uncomfortable will I become? How embarrassed will I become?”

So now, let us revisit the Garden of Eden situation here…doesn’t it seem like that even though they were suddenly aware that Good and Evil existed that they did not really understand what Good and what Evil were?

When God deals with them there are certainly consequences to their disobedience…they obviously knew that they had disobeyed, but the mindset they had was not one of sorrow and repentance…it was the mindset of “who can I blame that will let me off the hook?” (Doesn’t seem like much has changed for mankind in all these centuries since Adam and Eve’s time, does it?!)

The thing is that God sent them out of the Garden and their act of disobedience definitely had consequences…hard labor both for Adam and for Eve….the earth itself was put under a curse.  The peculiar thing is that it seems that God is saying that the curse was because of Adam and Eve and the serpent….it doesn’t say that God was “kicking them out of the garden because he was mad at them”.  It does tell us that God was sending them out of the garden to keep them from eating from the tree of life.

Now I have heard the idea that this was a protection for them, so that their state of sin would not be permanent.  Mankind and the earth would not be permanently cursed.  I think we have all seen movies and read stories about immortals who are self-centered and destructive…after all what have they got to lose…they are not able to be killed so they can do anything they want.  That is the problem with someone who lives forever, but has no moral compass, no compassion, no love for others.

One of the things not mentioned in Genesis 3 is anything about love. Desire is mentioned…desire for the apple, desire for the husband…all of these are fleshly desires, but no mention is made of tender love and concern for one another.  There is no evidence of it at all…just desire, and blame.

John 15:1-25 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prune so that it will be even more fruitful. ³ You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

The World Hates the Disciples

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ²¹ They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

The thing is we are all born as selfish and self centered human beings…we have to be taught how to love and care for others and put their needs above our own.  By setting Adam and Eve outside the garden in a situation where they had to struggle in their everyday life God put them into a situation where they would learn to rely on one another and need each other…where they would have to learn to care about the other person for their own survival.  Now, some of you may think this is just plain mean…but to be truthful…it is tough parenting…God style.  They could have obeyed and remained in the Garden, yet they chose not to do so.  God was not surprised by this choice!

So, now we have people struggling day after day to figure out what is good and what is evil. Another way of saying it is…”What are the rules?  So that I don’t get into trouble?”

2 Cor 10: 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

In a parenting magazine when my first child was born I read what turned out to be very sound advice:  “Kids like to know that you are in charge…because if you are not in charge, then they are in charge, and being in charge is scary…therefore, kids like routine because it is comforting and shows that you have things under control and that you are in charge.”  Or “kids like rules and boundaries.”

Ephesians 6:1-3  1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 

2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 

3 “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

To God we are all children, and God is a wonderful parent.  So he lovingly gave us a set of rules to live by…the rules were not given to us so that we can feel condemned or hemmed in, or constrained.  Though many times that is the attitude we hear from people about God’s rules.  People many times have been given the impression that God is mad, and mean, and just gave us a bunch of dos and don’ts so that we can be kept under control and have no fun at all in life!  Nothing could be further from the truth!

God gave us his laws so that we would not be like the deer standing in the head lights…scared and confused and unsure of what to do…or how to please God.  God gave us his laws because he loves us and wants to clear up the issue of exactly what is Good and what is Evil?  How can we tell one thing from the other.  He sent his son to further clarify what is Good and what is Evil by living out for us in a normal day to day life how to abide by God’s law.  While we were in a state of sin, outside the Garden of Eden, God loved us so much that he gave us both his laws, and his son.  His laws so that we can live together in peace and harmony in a Godly way, and his son so that we can understand how to draw close to God and what God considers important in our daily walk with him.

I am a parent, both my children are adults, and I can tell you that no matter how many of the rules my children broke or what they do in their lives I will always, always love them.  Yes, sometimes, I have been mad at them and disappointed in them..as I am sure my parents were at times mad at me and disappointed in me…but there has never been a moment that I have not loved my children.  There never will be a moment when I won’t love them.

That is how God, the Father, feels about me and about you…sometimes we don’t follow his law…we miss the mark (sin) or even, willfully, disobey a command, but when we turn back to God, the Father, with a heart of sorrow and apologize…God forgives…just like we earthly parents forgive our children.

There are penalties to sin that cannot be avoided on this earth…if you steal you can be put in jail, if you kill you can be put in jail, or killed yourself, if you lie, then you lose the trust of those you have lied to…etc.  There are some penalties or responsibilities that have to be taken for doing the wrong things, but God is gracious to forgive and restore your place in relationship with him regardless of the penalties you have to face.  God says, I will be with you always to the ends of the age. (Matthew 28:20)

God’s law is a law of love..he gave us those laws because he loves us…unendingly…eternally…God loves us!  Each and every one of us!

John 3:16-21 ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

 

Holy One

This is at Yellow Stone National Park…who, but God could create something so beautiful and full of such color?!!

 

1Samuel 2:2  There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. (NIV)

Read Psalm 99 and Psalm 111 Both of these Psalms talk about the nature of God.

Read Isaiah 6  This chapter is where Isaiah is commissioned by the Lord to serve Him.   The Seraphs recognized God’s Holiness, loudly.  It was noticeably praiseworthy.

Can you just imagine being Isaiah and finding yourself in this situation?  Here he is suddenly confronted with the holiness of God, he looks and sees the Seraphs who are regularly in God’s presence are not daring to look directly at God or stand on the ground in His presence.  Isaiah expresses to us the idea, “I am certainly going to die!”  After all, no one can look upon the Lord and live!  Nothing can survive God’s presence if it is unclean! 

The marvelous thing about God is that He can make things clean….God is the only one who can clean things up that others would think are beyond saving!

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is an important prayer that the Jews say regularly:

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.

Note:  There is only one Holy One, and that is God. 

Psalm 89:5-7   Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

⁵ Lord, the heavens praise Your wonders—
Your faithfulness also—
in the assembly of the holy ones.
⁶ For who in the skies can compare with the Lord?
Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord?
⁷ God is greatly feared in the council of the holy ones,
more awe-inspiring than all who surround Him.

Psalm 89:5-7 mentions the “holy ones”, which means those surrounding God in heaven….this would be, most likely, God’s other creation…the angels, seraphs, and cherubim.

Being Holy according to Unger’s Bible Dictionary is to be set apart, or separate from something.  Truthfully, this definition falls far short of describing the Holiness of God.  We in our humanity have no way to describe God’s Holiness.  We are too self centered and judgmental.  The only valid guidelines we have for what God’s Holiness is like are God’s guidelines.  Since he is the Holy One and we are not, then shouldn’t we use his guidelines to establish what living a Holy life is to be like?  

Job 4:17-21  “Can a person be more righteous than God,
or a man more pure than his Maker?” If God puts no trust in His servants
and He charges His angels with foolishness,
¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in clay houses,
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like a moth!
²⁰ They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk;
they perish forever while no one notices.
²¹ Are their tent cords not pulled up?
They die without wisdom.

Eliphaz the Temanite in Job 4 has a very tough picture in his mind of who God is, doesn’t he?  Yet, we know that God charged Eliphaz, and Job’s other friends with misrepresenting God to Job!  However, Eliphaz’ attitude is very similar to our attitude toward God.  We frequently charge God with characteristics that he does not have.  We blame God whenever things go wrong in our lives.  We blame God whenever things we have done, or others have done cause pain and suffering.  If we cannot understand what is going on, then we blame God for not stepping in and “fixing it!”  because he has the power to do so!  The truth is that just because someone has the power to do something doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do!

God is the Holy One, he is the only one who actually knows everything that is going on…the full picture!  Only God knows when it is the appropriate time for him to step in and “fix things!”  We don’t!  We are not qualified to make that decision, as we are not the ones with all of the information.

God does not have the ability to sin…it is not in his nature.  Sin is not Holy!  Nothing that is unholy can be a part of God.  That is why Satan who was the most beautiful and glorious angel in heaven was cast down along with 1/3 of the population of angels who threw in with him and sinned!  God gave us free will and free choice, and he did the same for the angels in heaven.  Truthfully, there can be no such thing as love without choice.  Love that is forced is not love, but coercion.  God wants us to love him and choose him freely and genuinely.  That is the most Holy thing we can do.

It is true that God knows what choices we will make, but we don’t know what choices we will make. He didn’t give us free choice for his own benefit, but so that we may grow closer to him by our voluntary obedience to him.

In the Bible sometimes, men are called Holy men.  This means they have dedicated their lives to serving God, and living faithfully to follow God’s direction for their lives.  Even doing that we fall short of the Holiness of God. However, God loves us, anyway!  He loves when we choose Him.

Only Jesus lived up to God’s standard of Holiness, being God in the flesh.  That is what made him a perfect innocent sacrifice for mankind.  Jesus told us that the two most important commandments are to Love God above everything and everyone and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves….our neighbor being our fellow man.  Jesus gave us these as the two most Holy things that we humans can do.  He said if we can keep these two commandments we won’t have to worry about any of the other ones.  That is because the other ones will take automatically fall into place in our lives if we follow these two.

 In Mark 1:21-24, during Jesus’ casting out of a demon from a man, the demon recognized Jesus’ Holiness and Authority as being that of God and in John 6:69  The disciples recognized Jesus’ as the Holy One of God.

Challenge: Make a personal scrap book, or journal of your journey towards being closer to God.  You may use, poetry, stories, magazine pictures or articles, bible verses, anything that  expresses your journey to know God.  We should pursue God’s holiness in our lives.

Bible Verses:

Isaiah Chapter 6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and His robe^[a] filled the temple. ² Seraphim^[b] were standing above Him; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.³ And one called to another:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts;
His glory fills the whole earth.

⁴ The foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of their voices, and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵ Then I said:

Woe is me for I am ruined^[c]
because I am a man of unclean lips
and live among a people of unclean lips,
and because my eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of Hosts.

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. ⁷ He touched my mouth with it and said:

Now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed
and your sin is atoned for.

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying:

Who should I send?
Who will go for Us?

I said:

Here I am. Send me.

⁹ And He replied:

Go! Say to these people:
Keep listening, but do not understand;
keep looking, but do not perceive.
¹⁰ Dull the minds^[d] of these people;
deafen their ears and blind their eyes;
otherwise they might see with their eyes
and hear with their ears,
understand with their minds,
turn back, and be healed.

¹¹ Then I said, “Until when, Lord?” And He replied:

Until cities lie in ruins without inhabitants,
houses are without people,
the land is ruined and desolate,
¹² and the Lord drives the people far away,
leaving great emptiness in the land.
¹³ Though a tenth will remain in the land,
it will be burned again.
Like the terebinth or the oak
that leaves a stump when felled,
the holy seed is the stump.

Footnotes:

1. Isaiah 6:1 Lit seam
2. Isaiah 6:2 = heavenly beings
3. Isaiah 6:5 Or I must be silent
4. Isaiah 6:10 Lit heart

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee. All rights reserved.

Psalm 99

The King Is Holy (HCSB)

¹ The Lord reigns! Let the peoples tremble.
He is enthroned above the cherubim.
Let the earth quake.
² Yahweh is great in Zion;
He is exalted above all the peoples.
³ Let them praise Your great
and awe-inspiring name.
He is holy.

⁴ The mighty King loves justice.
You have established fairness;
You have administered justice
and righteousness in Jacob.
⁵ Exalt the Lord our God;
bow in worship at His footstool.
He is holy.

⁶ Moses and Aaron were among His priests;
Samuel also was among those calling on His name.
They called to Yahweh and He answered them.
⁷ He spoke to them in a pillar of cloud;
they kept His decrees and the statutes He gave them.
⁸ Lord our God, You answered them.
You were a forgiving God to them,
an avenger of their sinful actions.

⁹ Exalt the Lord our God;
bow in worship at His holy mountain,
for the Lord our God is holy.

Psalm 111 King James Version (KJV)

111 Praise ye the Lord. I will praise the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation.

² The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.

³ His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever.

⁴ He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.

⁵ He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant.

⁶ He hath shewed his people the power of his works, that he may give them the heritage of the heathen.

⁷ The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure.

⁸ They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness.

⁹ He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name.

¹⁰ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.