The Holy God (Psalm 99)

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Good morning, Cityview Community Church. Turn your Bibles with me to Psalm 99. If you don’t own a Bible, there is a pew Bible ahead of you. Please take that. That is our gift to you, and it’s page 484 on the pew Bible. Not too long ago, a college head coach divorced his wife of 26 years. Why? She was apparently a distraction in his process of going into the big leagues. On the college level, she was an asset. She was a person that would help him look like a family man when parents came to send their kids to his program, but in the big leagues, he deemed her useless, and so they split. He said, “Winning football is my number one priority, and family. I don’t have time for that. Tragic, isn’t it? Now I know none of us would ever be that honest and say the way the head coach did, but we all have those things that we value over the people that matter. And by people that matter, I don’t mean your close friends and family. I mean, the holy God that we’re so prone to ignore. We’ve made God a souvenir that we bring out in special moments and ignore most of the time, and we only call Him when we need Him, and we certainly don’t treat Him as the Holy God who deserves our whole hearts. How can we change this reality? How can we exalt God like we’ve been singing and give Him the right place in our hearts? Well, that brings us to Psalm 99. Before we dig into the text, if you are able, please rise as we read the Word of God together, the Lord reigns. Let the nations tremble. He sits enthroned between the cherubim. Let the earth shake. Great is the Lord in Zion. He is exalted over all the nations, let them praise your great and awesome name. He is holy. The king is mighty. He loves justice. You have established equity in Jacob. You have done what is just and right. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool. He is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests; Samuel among those who called on his name. He called on the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them from a pillar of cloud. They kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them. Lord our God, you answered them. You were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds, exalt the Lord our God and worship at His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. I was a wedding this last. I was at a wedding this last weekend, and I wasn’t a wedding; it was that one. And I wanted to test out something. I’m not a singer, so forgive me, but I’m going to give you the starting words through three different choruses, and I want you to complete the lyrics. Ready? Sweet Caroline. Okay, so good. That was great, and we got two more. We got two more easy ones. Country roads. Okay, let’s go. Let’s go. It’s great. We’re good. We got a third one now. This might be a little tricky, but I’ll give you hand signs to help you. It’s fun to stay at the. Okay, three for three. This actually has nothing to do with the sermon. I just no, no. In the same way that the hooks of these songs tie up the main theme of the song, “Good Times Never Seem So Good, “Take Me Home, or “The Place to Be” is the YMCA. In this song, the theme that’s tying everything together is God’s holiness. We see it in verse three, in verse five, in verse nine that God is holy, and we’re going to look at how this holiness impacts us in two different ways, starting with separation from the holy God. Look at verses one to five. The Lord reigns; let the nations tremble. He sits enthroned between the cherubim; let the earth shake. Great is the Lord in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. Let them praise your great and awesome name. He is holy. The King is mighty; he loves justice. You have established equity in Jacob; you have done what is just and right. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool. He is holy.
Across the course of this sermon series, we’ve said and explained many times what it means that the Lord reigns. But it’s worth saying it again. Why? Because it’s been said five times in these past eight psalms, when the psalmist says the Lord reigns, he means that the sovereign God is sovereign over all. He is in control of everything. He is like the name of the series, above all gods. It’s not simply a proclamation of intent; it’s a declaration of reality. It’s not just that God is coming as the King of the world, but that He’s already King of the world. And so, those of other nations who worship other gods, they must tremble. But I don’t know how you feel. But when I look into this world, I’m asking that question: God, where are you? He seems so distant. Are you even there? It doesn’t feel like you’re in control. I don’t know how many of you have been to the District of Columbia, or like normal people call it, Washington D.C. But when I lived in Maryland, I lived just about a half hour away from the White House. That meant every time we had guests, this was my family’s automatic response: “Let’s go to the White House. You come from Dubai? Let’s go to the White House. You come from India? Let’s go to the White House. Oh, you’ve lived here 21 years. Let’s go to the White House. Let’s just all go to D.C. Except what is so unfortunate about that is when you go up to the White House at its gate and you look at the White House, it’s the size of a fly. It really doesn’t feel like we’re at the White House. The distance almost makes this experience seem worthless. Did we all still go to D.C. and stare at it from a distance? Doesn’t that feel like our relationship with God? There seems to be a distance between us and God, and we’re saying, “I can’t reach you, God. Where are you? We see in the second half of verse one that the God that we worship is enthroned between the cherubim. What is it, cherubim? When we look back to Exodus and more specifically the making of the Ark of the Covenant, we see that these cherubim are creatures that make up the make up God’s heavenly throne, and it is on this throne where God is symbolically seated, and it’s here where He meets with the Israelites, or more specifically, the high priest who represents the Israelites. See, meeting with God isn’t like meeting with your average Joe. Sorry, Joe. God is so holy that the tabernacle, the structure in which the Ark of the Covenant was kept, had layers of rooms in it, so that only the high priest could enter into God’s presence. That do after several sacrifices of purification. Let me help you picture this. You have the outer courts where the priests could come and stand. You have the holy place where a few consecrated priests could come and stand, and then you had the most holy place. Only the high priest at the time could go into the most holy place once a year on the Day of Atonement, and perform sacrifices for the Israel for the atonement of Israel’s sins, atonement which just at one meant making you and God one, and to make light of this holiness of God, and try to enter spaces that you’re not allowed to enter would result in death. So the Israelites didn’t take this process lightly. See, these cherubim do something that we fail to do. They exalt God as holy and enthrone Him as their king. And because we fail to do that, we experience that separation, but the cherubim also do something else. They enforce this separation. Look at Genesis 324. After God 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. After Adam and Eve had sinned against the most holy God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the sin that banished humankind from God’s presence, he placed a cherubim at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, why? So that sinful man cannot enter into a holy God’s presence.
Sin separated man from God’s presence, and the cherubim are the enforcers of this reality. They’re like the secret service trying to take down anyone trying to climb the fence of the White House. But more importantly, the fence of the White House is not separating us just from the building, separating us from the person of power. In this case, the cherubimists are not separating us from the president, but from a far, far greater ruler, Yahweh, the God of the universe. The earth shaking replicates the ideas of the nations trembling. The earth shakes because the most exalted, holy, and sovereign King is on the throne. It’s the same feeling that children get when children get when they know that they’ve done something wrong and punishment is impending. Sinful men cannot enter into the presence of this holy King without receiving the wrath of God against sin. See, this might be a scary reality to you, but it was actually a comfort to Israel. Israel, how could this be comforting? Good question. See, this holy God Yahweh is great in Zion. Mount Zion was the place where the temple was established. It’s symbolically the place of God’s resonance. The house of God is in Israel, so the Israelites could take comfort in knowing that the Lord God of the universe has chosen them and is living among them. The Ark of the Covenant that I mentioned earlier was placed inside of the temple once the temple was built, and so this enthroned king is present with them because the house of God is in Israel. That was their comfort. God is with them. Lucas mentioned last week about how the nations around Israel knew that Israel’s God was the God. Rahab, a Canaanite woman, trusted in God and exalted Him when the Israelites were trying to enter the Promised Land because she knew of all the things that God had already done. God has proven Himself to be the one true God, and this one true God is in Israel. Unlike my family who stood at the gate hoping to see the president, Yahweh came up, came forth to them, and decided to live among them. And He is holy. Wait, what? That’s confusing. How is a holy God living among sinful men? Didn’t we just hear that that’s a problem? Hold on to that thought. We’ll come back to that. In verse four, we see that the King is mighty. He loves justice and established equity. In 2009, I was a nine-year-old with access to Facebook. Bad idea, really bad idea. I agreed to the terms and conditions without reading a single word, and I know that I didn’t read a single word because apparently you had to be 14 to have a Facebook account, but what if you haven’t read the terms and conditions of living in a relationship with God? What if there is a call in your life to love justice and establish equity, and you’ve ignored it? You may have come into church with the cultural terms and conditions of what church should be, being very peaceable, and you start living the Christian life that way, avoiding doing the things that God is calling us to do, and then we read texts about how our God loves justice, but we’re very passive about it and don’t really participate in bringing about godly justice. We see texts about equity, which means fairness, where we show partiality to the people that we like. And when we do want to bring about justice, we go on social media and post hateful statements about people. The same people, by the way, were coined as image bearers of God. Let’s be real. That’s not bringing about any awareness. It’s promoting hate. And maybe we need a godly vision of what is just and right. Maybe the terms and conditions of living a faithful Christian life is found in the Word of God, and our call is to align ourselves with the mighty King and act out justice, and not just tweet about it, or ex about it, or I don’t know how that works. He’s the King who has done in Jacob what is just and right. So, what has God done in Israel that is just and right. This might be confusing, but what God does in Israel that’s just and right is that He establishes Himself as their King.
The only completely holy and just King is now Israel’s ruler. Throughout the Bible, kings are infamous for being selfish, including burdening their own people. In the books of in the book of Exodus, we see the Egyptians feeling this big burden because of the plagues that are coming their way. But Pharaoh just wants power instead of caring for his people and doing what God is calling him to do. If you’re following the church’s Bible reading plan, then we’re in First and Second Kings, and we see that all the kings of Israel and majority of the kings of Judah are so selfishly motivated and do not uphold the holy law of God. As we look at the other kings of other nations in the Bible, we see the same repetitive desire for power. Now let’s look into our world. I’m wary of getting political, but I have to say it: when we look at the politics of our nation-red, blue, yellow, green, whatever party you fall under-do you confidently believe that these parties are passionate about bringing about godly justice, or are they just creating a greater divide in the unity of people? Are they hoping to exalt the mighty King who loves justice, or exalt themselves to power? If after looking into the Word of God you have the confidence to align with someone, bring about godly justice, then support them, please do. But if you find yourself compromising on the truth of God to accommodate a political agenda, then hear me: the mighty King who loves justice is coming to judge the world truly for what it is, and he will do what is just and right when he establishes his kingdom forever. In his great holiness, he will judge the world. Are you going to be found as a child of righteousness, eager to do the will of God, or a slave to sin, quick to act out what the culture defines as justice. How can we be children of righteousness? How do we establish godly justice when, for being honest with ourselves, we’re so selfish, and like the world, we prefer what’s convenient rather than confront what is wrong, and when we do confront what’s wrong, it’s either with aggression or apathy, rather than being approachable. How can we have a godly vision of doing what is just and right? Look at verse five. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool. He is holy. When we fail to exalt God, when we fail to worship Him for who He is, when we negate His holiness, we lose the holy vision as well. We treat God like an accessory and live our lives valuing ourselves and our desires, rather than actually honoring the call to holiness. I don’t know about you, but I feel convicted. I don’t always treat God as the center of my life. And by the way, making God the center doesn’t mean just making giving him the number one spot in your life. That I think I can manage to do. I can spend spend some time doing some Christian things and go to journey group or be in Christian community and think, Ah, I put God first, then go about valuing everything else just as much as I valued God, by doing that, I’m diminishing God from being the center of my life to a mere aspect of my life. This is my God time, people say, as if God isn’t the person giving meaning to every single moment of our lives. It’s not about prioritizing God as if I’m placing Him in a ranking system. No, it’s about God being supreme in my life so that I will know how to live my life in the first place. He is the center that impacts everything. The truth is, for whatever reason, whether it’s competing idols or fear of trusting God or selfish inclinations, we’re not the type of people who exalt God. Our sinful hearts know that there is a separation between us and God, and we’re holding onto the gates, and we’re shaking it, hoping that something would change. But the separation still exists, and so we wonder, how can a holy God live among sinful men? That brings us to our next section: mediation with the Holy God. Look at verses six to nine. Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel was among those who called on his name.
They called on the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them from a pillar of cloud. They kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them. Lord or God, you answered them. You are to Israel a forgiving God, though you punish their misdeeds. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy. I’ve never bought a house, but we considered when we were moving out to the suburbs, at least until our pockets and the housing market brought us back into reality, and a helpful person in times like that is a real estate agent. A real estate agent represents both buyers and sellers. He’s a mediator who ensures that an agreement can be made. For Israel, Moses and Aaron were those mediators. They held; they were priests who had this role of mediation, and the same priestly function was shared by Samuel, as he represented Israel before God when the Israelites were doing whatever is right in their own eyes. These men called on the Lord on behalf of Israel, and God answered them. That’s a wow moment. You might have missed what I just said, so I’ll say it again. These men called on the Lord, and the Lord answered them. See, they weren’t at the gate shaking it; they were calling out to the Lord, and He answered them. He spoke to them from the pillar of clouds, as we see. It’s as if the president just walked up to us and said, “What’s up? Knowing my dad, you say, “Let’s take a selfie. But see, it’s one thing to be in the presence of a president who, like us, are sinful. It is sinful. It’s a wholly different thing if we’re in the presence of a pure and holy God. You wouldn’t ask for a selfie. Your phone would not even be able to capture such glory. Something will have to change. And for the Israelites, we see this change in verse seven. They kept his statutes and decrees. See, our sin brought about a great divide between us and God, and so the priests, like Moses and Aaron, would have to sacrifice an animal to enter into God’s presence, and sacrifice more animals for the redemption of Israel. That was the decrees that they had to follow to be in a relationship with God. Similarly, Sam will mediated the requests of the Israelites when they asked for a king, and the Lord provided for them. But He told them, “If you follow your faithless kings rather than follow the one true God. You will be overcome by other nations. The great divide that we were talking about was temporarily fixed, but guess what? Israel would keep on sinning. The result of that was the temple was broken down, and they were exiled from the Promised Land. And that temporary divide, or that temporary bridge, now feels like a permanent divide. These kingly psalms were probably collected during the period of the exile, and that explains something. The psalmist talks about Moses, Aaron, and Samuel in the third person, but in verse eight we see a switch to the first person. Lord our God, you answered them. You were to Israel a forgiving God. Though you punished their misdeeds, do you know what that means? It means that they’re acknowledging the position that they’re in is because of their sin. We are here because of our sin. In the same way, you answered them back then. Answer us now. In the same way you forgave them, even though you punished their misdeeds. Forgive us now, and give us hope amidst our misdeeds. In other words, show us your loving forgiveness and restore the temple, so we can offer sacrifices again, and that way our sins can be forgiven. They were hopeful in God’s character, His love and forgiveness, despite the fact that they knew that they were so sinful, and that their sin was separating them from the Holy God. See, unlike the kings of the world who are distant from their people, the kings who judge in selfishness, the kings who lead their people to sin. Israel knew that Yahweh, their perfect and holy King, draws near when He is called and forgives those who are repentant.
See, the temple was rebuilt by those who returned from exile, and sacrifices were offered again, and sins were being atoned for, but they would have to do that again, and again, and again. There was no perfect sacrifice that could end this gruesome act of redemption. Then we see in John 129. John the Baptist makes a bold proclamation: “Behold, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How did this Lamb of God take away the sins of the world? Just like the sacrifices before him, he was slaughtered for the sins of all, not just the Israelites who sinned again and again, but you and me as well, who daily sin against God and treat Him not the way He’s supposed to be treated. Treat Him like a distraction. Treat Him like He’s just a souvenir. He didn’t die for us because we loved him well. He died for us despite the fact that we’ve hated him. We were apathetic towards him, ignored him, and our misdeeds deserve severe punishment. We didn’t have Moses or Aaron or Samuel to mediate our relationship with God. Our judgment was certain. It’s the death penalty until the perfect mediator finally came. First Timothy two five states, “There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. Wait, I thought Moses and Aaron and Sam were also mediators. They were only a shadow of the one who is to come. See, Jesus is not a man pleading on behalf of sinners to God. No, he is both God and man. In our catechism question today, we asked, “What sort of redeemer is needed to bring us back to God, one who is truly God and truly human? Because our sin, because of our sin, we were unable to come into the presence of God. That was just our reality. So God in Christ Jesus came down from heaven, and He met us at the gate. He opened it, and He He invited us home. We see in Romans eight that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why? For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. Therefore, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us. Jesus represents all of us who sinned against the most holy God by perfectly obeying His holy law and truly loving God where we have failed to. He represents the mediators in that He bridged the great distance between us and God by coming down from heaven and taking on sin. He represented God in that the forgiveness that we sinners don’t deserve, He gives to us freely, and the misdeeds that we did, He paid the price for on the cross at Calvary. It was on the cross where love and justice were perfectly. Revealed. It was there that those who believe in Jesus are united in God forever. When I think about this, I have to quote Hebrews two one to three. We must pay careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through the angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such great a salvation? The salvation which was first announced by the Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard him. If you are heartbroken because of sin in your life, don’t ignore it. Confess it. If you’re struggling to believe who Jesus is, behold him in his word. If you feel like you’re drifting away by treating God as a souvenir, don’t do that anymore. Exalt Him, lift Him up. Don’t just treat Him as a priority. Give Him supremacy of your life. This God humbled Himself so you can be exalted in Christ, what beautiful love! This is the perfectly holy and just God who revealed His forgiveness and justice in Christ Jesus. This God who loves His believer so passionately, far more than anyone or anything will. Why would you treat him anything less than the very center of your hearts? Here’s the big idea: exalt the God who reveals His perfect holiness and justice in Christ Jesus.
Exalt the God who reveals His perfect holiness and justice in Christ Jesus. And by the way, exalting God doesn’t mean you wake up early and just read your Bible and forget Him the rest of the day. Exalting God is acknowledging that you cannot live without Him. He should permeate every part of who you are is inviting him to every single moment of your life. This past week, my wife Ev went to Washington State without me. It was a very, very, very sad time. I forgot how to breathe. I felt so tense, as if something big was missing in my life. That’s the sort of experience you should feel. Except with Jesus, when He isn’t your priority, you should feel it. Why? Because you are away from the deepest form of intimacy you will ever experience. Your center is not central. Quick word to the parents, you know, from my several years of experience. If you don’t embody this sort of forgiveness and exaltation, your kids will grow up thinking of Jesus as a moral stander and not a loving Savior. I remember the day in my senior year of high school where I got suspended for being me. I called my dad and I was fake crying. Couldn’t be faker. I said, “Dad, I did something wrong. I got a suspension, and I was fully ready to hear my dad yell at me. Why did you do this? Or I was ready for it, but he quietly said, “Do you understand what you did was wrong? I was still fake crying, so I said, “Yeah. Then he said, “It’s okay. I forgive you. Something shifted in that moment. I had a big switch in my brain. I started bawling my eyes out, and this was real for this time. And now, when I look back to that moment, I remember not just the forgiveness of my dad, but the forgiveness of our Father in heaven in Christ Jesus. And in doing so, I’m able to exalt him better. For any of you that may not really understand this forgiveness, call on the name of the perfect mediator, Jesus Christ. James four puts it like this: “Come near to God, and He will come near to you, and then he goes on to say, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. In Jesus, God humbled Himself, and He was lifted up, and you are being invited to this great salvation, like all those who called on the Lord. You. Too are invited to do so as well, and know that He is a God who answers. He’s a God who hears you. But in this moment, if you hear His voice now, exalt the Lord our God and worship at His holy mountain. For the Lord our God is holy. See, we don’t need to go to a holy mountain. As you worship today, and as we keep on going singing, as we enter time of communion, know that the Holy Spirit is with us, and as we worship, He is alive and present among us, and He hears us. So exalt the Lord our God in worship here and now, for the Lord our God is holy. May the God who is holy bestow His holiness on all of us who believe in Him, and exalt Him as our King. Pray with me, Son of God and Son of Man. For generations you were prophesied. Only one who is both divine and human could live in perfect obedience and be a fitting sacrifice on our behalf. There is no other way to God but by you, Lord, but through you. In our belief in you, remind us of this truth. Transform us to be eager to enthrone you in our hearts and do what you call us to do. Jesus, you are the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through you. Then this day may be found in you. May our hearts yearn to exalt you and make you our King. We pray all this in your precious and holy name. Amen.