Exploring His

Excellencies

He is Holy
John Isaacs
May 24, 2009
KingsWay Community Church
“Everything will
work out fine,
if we press into
God's presence
in 2009!”
The Most Common
Barrier To
“Pressing Into God”

Not Knowing
Who God Is
What is God like?
I think God is like …
- Will lead to idolatry!
God has revealed Himself

in the Bible
- Will to be …
inspire worship!
God is who the
Bible (in its
totality) reveals
Him to be.
We will experience
God more completely
as we come to
understand Him
more clearly.
 The Bible Reveals
God To Be …
• All Good
The Goodness of God
is the sum total of all
of God’s “favorable”
characteristics.
 The Bible Reveals
God To Be …
2. All Powerful
God is able to act or to
produce any effect or
result that He wants.
 The Bible Reveals
God To Be …
3. All Wise
Able to see the most
perfect way and how
to get there by the
most perfect means.
 The Bible Reveals
God To Be …
4. Eternal
God is forever. He
didn’t have a
beginning and He will
not have an end.
The Bible Reveals
God To Be …
1. All Good
2. All Powerful
3. All Wise
4. Eternal
 The Bible Reveals
God’s Attributes As …
1. Original
The source or cause from which
everything arises. He isn’t a
copy of anything – all things
exist as a copy of Him.
 The Bible Reveals
God’s Attributes As …
2. Essential
Implies belonging to the very
nature of a thing and therefore
being incapable of removal
without destroying the thing
itself or its character.
 The Bible Reveals
God’s Attributes As …
3. Infinite
Without measure. To extend
indefinitely or to be endless.
Subject to no limitation or
external determination.
 The Bible Reveals
God’s Attributes As …
4. Immutable
To not be capable of change or
susceptible to any variation.
 The Bible Reveals
God’s Attributes As …
1. Original
2. Essential
3. Infinite
4. Immutable
• He is originally powerful:
Powerful in Himself, which nothing else
is.
• He is essentially powerful:
Not only powerful, but He is power itself.
• He is infinitely powerful:
There is no measure to His power.
• He is immutably powerful:
There was never a time when God was
more or less powerful. He doesn’t
change.
Jesus was and is the perfect
representation of God the
Father.
• He is the revelation of God’s
goodness.
• He is the demonstration God’s
power.
• He is the manifestation of God’s
wisdom.
With the goodness of God to
desire our highest welfare,
the wisdom of God to plan it,
and the power of God to
achieve it, what do we lack?
Surely we are the most
favored of all creatures.
- A. W. Tozer
God
is
Holy
Isaiah 6:3
And one called to
another and said:
"Holy, holy, holy is
the LORD of hosts; the
whole earth is full of
his glory!"
Revelation 4:8
Each of the four living
creatures had six wings and
was covered with eyes all
around, even under his wings.
Day and night they never stop
saying: "Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord God Almighty, who
was, and is, and is to come."
 Holiness
• The loftiness, exaltedness, and
splendor of God.
• The absolute purity of His
goodness. God is untouched
and unstained by evil. He is
perfectly pure and complete in
His character.
 Holiness
• He is separate from His
creation. Distinct from all else
in the universe.
When you talk about the
holiness of God, you have not
only the problem of an
intellectual grasp, but also a
sense of personal vileness,
which is almost too much to
bear. Each one of us is born
into a tainted world, and we
learn impurity from our cradles.
We nurse it in with our
mother’s milk, we breathe it in
the very air. Our education
deepens it and our experience
confirms it — evil impurities
everywhere. Everything is dirty;
even our whitest white is dingy
gray. This kind of world gets
into our pores, into our nerves,
until we have lost the ability to
conceive of the holy. Holiness
means purity, but “purity”
doesn’t describe it well enough.
Purity merely means that it is
unmixed, with nothing else in
it. But that isn’t enough. We
talk of moral excellency, but
that isn’t adequate. To be
morally excellent is to exceed
someone else in moral
character. But when we say
that God is morally excellent,
who is it that He exceeds? The
angels, the seraphim? Surely
He does — but that still isn’t
enough. We mean rectitude; we
mean honor; we mean truth
and righteousness; we mean all
of these — uncreated and
eternal. God is not now any
holier than He ever was. For
He, being unchanging and
unchangeable, can never
become holier than He is. And
He never was holier than He is,
and He’ll never be any holier
than now. His moral excellence
implies self-existence, for He
did not get His holiness from
anyone nor from anywhere. He
did not go off into some vast,
infinitely distant realm and
there absorb His holiness; He
is Himself the Holiness. He is
the All-Holy, the Holy One; He
is holiness itself, beyond the
power of thought to grasp or of
word to express, beyond the
power of all praise. Language
cannot express the holy, so God
resorts to association and
suggestion. He cannot say it
outright because He would have
to use words for which we know
no meaning. He would have to
translate it down into our
unholiness. If He were to tell
us how white He is, we would
understand it in terms of only
dingy gray. God cannot tell us
by language, so He uses
association and suggestion and
shows how holiness affects the
unholy.

Knowledge of the Holy

by A. W. Tozer