SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Text is the Minute Julia Church of Crime, where we encourage and equip people to interact with the typical text. We are your host, Tim Martin from the Master.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

We're continuing our series that we've entitled Decoded, where we're looking at different words that I would say are Bible words that we hear, but it may not be words that we use just in our everyday language. So we want to kind of break these down, make sure the ideas that come to our mind are actually based on how these words are used in scripture and the meaning of them and fully hopefully get a better understanding of what that is. Today we are going to be looking at the word holy and especially the idea of a holy God. And next week we will look at a holy people. So, Tim, let's just start with some definitions. The word holy is a word people maybe they know like the Holy Bible or uh maybe some Christmas songs where we use the word holy. Like I'm sure it's a word people hear a lot, but how is it defined in maybe the Hebrew and Greek?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, in Hebrew, there's a word called Kadesh uh Kodesh that is uh my Hebrew pronunciation is not fantastic, but it's a a family of words that is generally. Well, none of us know whether or not you're not some of our listeners do. Um, you know, it it's just three letters in Hebrew. But it it that that that family of words there uh is what we see translated holy. And then in the New Testament, there's a family of words associated uh with Hagias, uh which uh is is translated holy, and there's a whole f holiness, you know, different words that are associated with that. There's some other words that are translated that way, but those are kind of the main ones that mean something. And there's a a pretty big difference between holy uh a difference between Old Testament representation and meaning of holy uh that is pretty congruent with what I would call their contemporary uh the other societies around them and cognate languages such as Sumerian or Akkadian or Ugaritic, that there is there is a conception of things that are holy outside of Israel, uh and there is uh a little bit of that also in the Greco-Roman world, but not really a lot, not nearly as much as there is compared to the Jews and then eventually uh the Christian faith.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Aaron Ross Powell Is it safe to assume those usage is tied to a deity?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

In which in the Old Testament or New Testament? Yeah, both. Both are dealing with things that are divine. Uh in the Old Testament, there's a really different sphere of thought uh and and a realm type orientation of things that are divine that kind of emanate from a temple of a god, and certainly in in the Israelite religion, uh from the tabernacle or from eventually the Jerusalem temple, uh, and and things that are in contained in that. So you have holy places, holy people, holy objects that that are defined as being this sacred or divine or a sign of that versus what would be called profane or common outside of that. Like, for example, uh some of the dishes and utensils that we would see and the vessels in the temple. They're holy. The table of the bread of the presence, that's a holy object. They're not going to take that out of the temple and have a cookout on it. It's gonna be in there. But a priest, for example, has to live in both worlds. He enters the realm of the divine, he's holy, but he also lives in the world where he has to go out and work, you know, and be amongst human beings in the world of the profane, outside of the temple. And so there are very much a realm or spheres of uh of divinity in that ancient thought. Uh, and it's a very, very, very complex uh subject. Sometimes there could be animals that are holy because they're set as part for sacrifice in that nature.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

So in their world, it would be holy, not because it's something that they worshipped or saw as deity, but it was associated with a god, and that's what made it holy.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, in some cases, I did read somewhere where in Ugaritic, which is probably the closest thing uh that we have found that's very close to the Canaanite religion, where we see Baal and El and other Canaanite gods. I do believe I read somewhere where like the Canaanite god El, uh where we that that word comes into Hebrew a lot, like Israel means struggles with God. El, the Canaanite god, is uh Elohim is another example that uh is referred to as holy, as like sacred or divine. But like Baal, the storm god, his actions are considered divine, but he's not ever referred to as divine in those particular tablets. We uncovered thousands of tablets at a lotion location called Ugarit, uh that's very close. But mainly in like Sumerian uh language, based on what I researched in Akkadian, which are which are Mesopotamian languages, and Akkadian was kind of like the lingua franca of the ancient world or the ancient Near East. There really is about places, people, things that are associated with the divine realm, but not necessarily like we think about holy. We directly associate that with God, and He is holy. I don't know that they would have thought about that in the same way. But now that's a that's I don't want to say that with absolute certainty because that that that requires a lot more research than what I went into. But they I did see one where he may have divine body parts, like the divine hand of so-and-so God or something along that nature.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Uh can you walk us through or give us some examples of maybe some English words that can be an English definition of holy? Like I've heard set apart before.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Sacred. Consecrated would be a good word uh that I think let me look through and think about. Uh do we say sanctified? No, that would be something that we do say set apart, but it's made divine, it's devoted uh to that thing. I'm trying to think about pure, uh clean. We see a lot of association with things that are clean versus things that are polluted. That's a heavy emphasis in the New Testament, you know, uh in Judaism of that. And so I think when I think about consecrated, sanctified, um, that that right there comes comes would be synonyms, if you will, for holy, uh and carry sacred, set apart is a good way of saying that. Dedicated. Dedicated may be a way to say that. Um we can use dedicated in a couple of different ways. Something that's dedicated me meaning it's assigned to something, but we can say we're also dedicated to something, meaning we're committed to something. But it's something there's there's definitely a separateness, if that's even a word, separateness between what's holy and divine and common and what's common. And it really kind of I I don't know if this parallels or not, but we think about how there was such a struggle in early Christianity between how can this Jesus be holy and divine and also be profane and common and a human, a materialistic view that those two things can't overlap. And so I don't know if that's a product of that. That would be somebody who knows more about Greek philosophy and Roman philosophy than I would ever do. But that that's what I I think that would have it. It certainly could be a quality or characteristic of a divine being. Um and that's kind of how we look at it a lot. We think about God being holy, which is what we're focused on today.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

You know, sometimes in scripture, concepts get developed over the course of scripture. Is that similar to what we see with holiness or the idea of holy? Does it kind of develop as scripture goes on or is it just kind of understood?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Aaron Powell That's an interesting thought. You know, if we think about if we go from, let's just say we start where we get really we start getting holy places, holy objects, is really about the time of Moses. We see the tabernacle in the book of Leviticus. Yeah, the holiness code in the book of Leviticus, which describes how people can be holy, which is what we'll talk about uh in the next episode. But I really have to go to Torah, start thinking about that. I'm not saying that like that when A Abraham sacrificed something on an altar that wasn't holy or divine or sacred, but I wonder if it from that time which we're thinking about the 15th century BCE, and we fast forward to the end of the Old Testament historical narrative in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century. We're a thousand years different, and cultures changed. We've gone from the Israelites and the Canaanites and the ancient Near East and the Hittites and all that. So well, now we've had uh, you know, Babylonian influence, we've had Persian influence, and so I wonder if it has. We don't understand the concept of like this this holiness emanating from a holy place like the temple. And if we even think about it, though, even in the time of the Jews, this is an idea maybe how it progressed. You ever think about when we read about the temple? There's the holy of holies, only one guy can go in there one time a year. Then we kind of have a most holy place, and only the priests can go in there. And then I'm talking about the Herodian temple of of the first century of Jesus' time. And then we've got this court of people, we've got this court that only Jews can go into, and then there's a court that only Gentiles can go into or women can go into, and they're all a distance away from the center of the temple. And so it'd be interesting to think about do we have this sphere of influence of holiness that emanates from where God's presence supposedly is and his glory is. The further you get away from that, the less holy things can be. I don't know. I never have that'd be interesting to think about temple theology, but I do think that it probably changed a little bit from the time of Moses to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. Um think about the destruction of the temple, how did that affect their thinking about sacred space? But they had a real concept of sacred space that that does exist in in Christian traditions today, not necessarily in the Restorationist tradition. Well well, we won't admit that it does, but it does. For example, some churches who who just look at an auditorium as a box. But they wouldn't allow somebody to play a musical instrument in there on a on a Tuesday afternoon, much less during a worship service. Why not? Well, maybe there's a lot of political reasons for that, but there's still a little bit of view of a sacred space. I think you and I kind of talked about the other day. I I think we're a little bit more rambunctious and uh in a in our sacred space, in our in our auditorium, than maybe our grandparents would have been. You know, that there's a little bit a little bit of reverence for that space, um, even though we may not think about it in that way. But whereas some Christian traditions really look at that space, well, they refer to it as a sanctuary or whatever that may be, almost in the same sense as this is like a temple of God's presence, and there's something special about this location. And so um, but I think as we go through the Bible to the time, if you're saying, hey, how do we go from like the time of Torah, the time of Moses and Sinai all the way to the time of Jesus, yeah, there'd be a lot to think about because there's a very different or more subdued and spiritual concept of holiness than I think we see in the Old Testament when we think about a holy God?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah. And your your comment about Jesus and how that would be hard for them to see something holy versus common was very interesting. And I wonder is there is the idea of God being holy, when I also think of other perspectives of the New Testament, is it talked more about in the Old Testament versus the New Testament? Is it about equal?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Like, there's not a lot of references to God as holy in the New Testament. The predominant adjective is wound up associated with the Holy Spirit and the Holy One of Israel, Jesus. And then we we see in the New Testament that there's no longer really, at least within Christianity, there there certainly is within Judaism. But the idea of a sacred space and sacred objects and sacred locations like the land, for example, or the temple uh or sacred precincts, if you will, is gone. But there's still a concept of a holy people. You think about the priesthood. This is really prevalent in the book of Hebrews, more probably so than anywhere else in the New Testament, I would guess. Is there is a concept still of a sacred set apart priesthood. But now that's not because they're segregated in one location performing duties only in the temple. Now the priest, the holiness can be everywhere. And it's more associated with the spirit. Tied to the Spirit of God and his work and the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, is that that realm has greatly expanded. And that would be pretty tough for people to think about. Uh even for Gentiles, maybe to a certain extent. You know, there's the Temple of Jupiter or the Temple of Zeus or the Temple of Artemis, like we see in Acts. And that's a real special place. And things go on inside that space that that don't go on down at the marketplace. And so I wonder if it was really tough, too, for Gentiles to think about the concepts of a pervasive holiness that that travels with God's people to wherever they are, and even in their individual lives, uh, versus things that are associated with God. Um certainly God's viewed as holy in the New Testament. I'm not saying that, but it's not something that's talked about as much, I think, as we say.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Yeah, that's a good thought. We'll definitely pursue that more next week as we're gonna be able to do that. Yeah, next week talking about holy people when we look at what we need to go too far as well. Oh no, no, that was it was good. Let me ask you this question. When we think more about holy and what it need like especially tied to God or especially tied to God, is being holy about ethics or something broader? Like is is it is holy just the absence of sin, or is there more to that idea there?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

You know, would we roll all of God's attributes into the bucket of holy? Like we thought about uh ethic ethics and morals, behavior, you know, promise keeping, um, love, mercy. But also would we lump in justice, uh compassion, all those things make God holy. Well, what should he say? They make God holy. God makes those things holy because he is those things. And and uh that's what I tried to think about when we thought about the title of this episode. It's even careful how you word it. You know, God does holy things. Well, okay, why are they holy? Because they're divine. Because he is holy. You know, it be holy for I am holy. That's what he tells I think that's in Leviticus, as a matter of fact. What does that mean? Well, God's holy. Okay, then tell me how God's holy. Okay, well, because he's just, because he's merciful, because he's loving, uh because he's God. I don't know if holy doesn't just wrap all those things because it means he's sacred sacred, he's set apart, he's divine, he's special, uh, he's consecrated, uh, but not by actions of us, but just because he's God. And it's hard for me to fathom that philosophically. But he is the embodiment, if you will. I don't know, he's the the very he's the one who sets the definition and standard for holiness uh just because of who he is.

unknown 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

I'm glad you mentioned that because that was a follow-up question I have is is the idea of holiness similar or different from other attributes when you think of like love, justice, mercy, etc. And I think it is. You know, God can show mercy and he can show justice and all but like I don't think that he can stop being holy. You know what I'm saying? Like it is it is who he is. Yeah. Like those are the beginning of the definition of everything else, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

No, I think it is are those are those distinctives within the broader concept of holiness? Is love a component of holiness? Do all those things add up to the sum of God's sacredness? Um And I don't know how the ancients, the Israelites, I say ancients, that would include to us both the the ancient first century people as well as the Israelites, did they conceive of it that way? This is definitely something that I'm sure a systematic theology book works through better than I can in my head. But um how did they think about that? Did they consider that mercy and love, loving kindness, whatever you when they devoted things to God, whatever that it was because God was sacred, or was it just so intertwined it was hard to separate? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

I think this idea and this concept's important to wrestle with because I've talked to people before that when you think about sin and God's justice and how strict he is sometimes, even when you think about the holy of holies, that you know, if if different priests broke different things, like there was major consequences for it. And when they think about sin, it's like, well, why why can why can't God just care less? You know, like the concept of like holy and that you can't have sin, and you know, like these different concepts tied to holy. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Like it's like, well, well, why can't just God overlook that? And to me, it's not I don't know that it's like a choice to be holy. Like he is. Yeah, I think that's a good way of saying it.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

I don't think God chooses to be holy. I think he can't be unholy. And we're getting real deep into it.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

I know you hate theology.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

It's too much. I'm not smart enough. It's kind of like I'm not smart enough to be an astronaut. I can't smart enough to do that. Is yeah, i and it's uncon it's inconceivable for us to be unable to scent.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

And so that may be why it's so hard to get around that is that all of our characteristics we believe are changeable. Yes. Like of love, we mostly think we're profane.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, we mostly lean towards the fact that we're profane. Not not that we're saying I wish we would think otherwise, but um but we really more see ourselves as being unacceptable and common and profane and corrupted versus us seeing ourselves as as being holy individually in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

And so um maybe another way to wrestle with this is to think about the relationship between God and the law. And the question is like, which is the car and which is the horse? Like, is God holy because he doesn't break any of the law, or does the law exist because it's capturing who God is? Are you gonna call God a horse?

unknown 19:22

No.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

We've gotta be real careful here. It's not it's not cloudy outside, there's no lightning. Yeah. I I think the law is uh one of the reasons I think God is merciful is because he is I know there's no other deities, but I'm gonna say this in a way that it sounds like I do. There weren't any other deities that gave their instructions and expectations to their people, like God does. And I think because he's holy, he says, Okay, I'm gonna give you what you need to be holy, to be acceptable to me, to be my people. And he gives it to them. And they fail miserably at it, but he gives it to them. They're given the rules, and like we talked about, there's even a holiness code.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

And when we talked about covenant last week, you know, like this is all wrapped up in that.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So I think the law is I'm not gonna call God a horse. You almost want to be calling God a horse. Maybe it's a bad analogy. The law comes from God and His holiness makes the law holy. I mean, we refer to it holy scriptures, holy Bible, uh, because it comes from God uh and from his Holy Spirit and its inspiration, and it's sacred to us. It it's something special, and it is something very unique. Something very unique that the only other really religious group we share too much with that's not like an Eastern religion per se is Islam, is that we have a book that we believe are are the direct verbal instructions of our our deity uh to us. That's something Romans and the Greeks didn't have, Jews had it. So I think that we have that I think it would be the cart that the law is is pulled along, governed by God, and it comes from God, and without God it means nothing. But it it's a gracious gift that we've been given. Like Jesus is our gracious gift, the Torah was the gracious gift to the people of Israel, because he said, Here is the avenue to me.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Yeah, and to me, hope well, my hope is that that helps people to appreciate Scripture and the laws, that they're not just these random rules that God is throwing out to people. Yeah. Like it's based on who he is and his desire to be in relationship with us and to share that covenant and for us to have the blessings and you know the hope and all those different things that can come from, which we'll talk about more next week of us being holy and being in relationship with him. Um we touched on this a little bit when you talked about like the auditorium and stuff like that. But before we close, I want us to to wrestle with a little bit about just how we perceive God, um, our perspective of him. When we think about him being holy and the sacredness of of who he is, um, when we think about we didn't go down this this path too far, but when you think about everything the priest and high priest had to do to be in his presence, but now Christ has changed that relationship. But what are appropriate, I guess, thoughts or emotions to the concept of God being holy? Like do we correctly portray this like in our worship? Do you think people grasp that in the way that they pray to God personally or the way that they view scripture or how we speak about God? How we sing about God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

I am guilty of this, so I'm going to say we here. I think we throw that word around a lot and and we don't do it incorrectly. But I don't think we stop and think about it. And I'm not sure that we have we we don't have the same concept of sacredness and consecration and things of that nature that the Israelites had and and maybe to some extent even that the Jews and eventually the Greeks and Romans in Christianity had. But do we ever stop and think about that word and what we mean we say holy holy holy Lord God Almighty and we sing to him what does that mean? We almost think it's like a word of praise like we're ascribing holiness to God. I don't think we can ascribe holiness to God I think we recognize that God is holy. I think it's recognition not an ascribing of saying okay God's holy well we may like we may say that's a holy Bible there laying in front of you. We ascribe holiness to it because we know it comes from the Holy Spirit of God and it's sacred and it's inspired and all that but do we even really have the authority to ascribe that to it is it not holy just simply because it came from God and so when I think about the word ascribe I may even be thinking about that word incorrectly I mean that we assign something to it or we denote something as being holy it's God has denoted his word as being holy. We just recognize that it's holy. And so when I think about God I hope that our praise of him or our references to him even we throw around the Holy Spirit like it's a first and last name. But really it's an adjective and a noun uh and it's it's describing a particular spirit that is holy. Well it's holy because it's part of God's divine nature. And so we don't have to ascribe it to that it is whether we want it to be or not it it's holy. And so I think when we think about holy do we we we recognize things are holy. Like there's a reason that a priest wouldn't go into a certain space or that he wouldn't use um one of the utensils that are designed in in the temple for something to go out and eat his lunch with. You know you know we we we Paul talks about that you know there's certain vessels that are made for honorable use and some vessels that are not made for honorable use and ones that are honorable and not going to be used for dishonorable purposes and and vice versa those have been assigned it and scribed it but God's holy without us even saying that he is so for me it's recognizing God's holiness and being awe of it or or learning from it or realizing that that's what I've got to be like Yeah the two words that come to my mind is I think as a people we've lost awe and reverence of God.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Um that and maybe our desire for God not to seem distant or irrelevant to our lives like just became very personal and and almost too common sometimes. And I just I just wonder if we are missing out on a little bit of underplaying the true reverence in all of who he is.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I think we are we were talking about this in the Wednesday afternoon class this week we were studying Romans 9 where Paul says he's essentially saying his argument is that God can decide to do whatever God wants to decide to do. He decided to make Isaac the the heir not Ishmael he decided it was Jacob not Esau. He decided to use Pharaoh as his instrument and harden his heart and he decided to let the Gentiles be part of the family of God. And so he heard mercy, compassion on who gives compassion we talked about this very thing in that class we said sometimes I think we try to put boundaries and parameters on God and say, well no you can't go outside this box because I have decided you can't go outside this box. And I think it may be because when we talked about it have we taken God down from his throne and his in a way that we try to recognize him and make him very personal and make him our friend and he's you know and we've lost the case that he is the creator of the universe an unimaginable deity an unimaginable person. I don't even think the word person is correct. I mean an unimaginable being that we can't even fathom that is in absolute charge and absolute authority and it really doesn't matter what we think. Yeah I think we've lost some of that. I don't think the ancient people would have lost that every time the ground shook every time the rains came every time there was a comet in the sky every time there was a famine you know I think they recognize that there is somebody who in it they're absolutely in charge and hold it and so I do think that maybe we have taken away some of that awe and reverence for God not because God's not personal to us. I'm not saying that but we're very careful that we don't take him down off his throne too much.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

It takes intentionality and maybe people are doing a better job than what I am because it it's a heart issue. You know like but when I think of things like Exodus three when Moses is told to like take off his sandals and when I think about all the washing and the things that the priest had to do before they could enter into the holy place and then the most holy place and and all these different things. And now we're blessed with the sacrifice of Jesus and the salvation grace that we have in him we don't have to do all those physical things but I still I still wonder we believe in washing and I mean we think about it much more spiritually on a Sunday morning we're not having to do that. But to where I still think you know what I mean. Oh gross but where our heart gets there. And one example that I think of is like my mom did some mission work in Belarus and one thing that I remember as a kid her talking about was they never put their Bibles on the floor like just because it was a precious thing to them and then their mind something sacred. You know it just wasn't a common book. And I just in our culture there's not really anything that we treat as sacred and I just wonder if that impacts our heart as well.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

You've got me thinking if I've ever put my Bible on the floor and I don't know but I don't know that I would ever think about that. Yeah it's kind of like when we think about some of the copyist in scripture when it was still being copied by hand, how ornate and decorative they would make some of the first words or the pages but I don't think they did that for attention themselves. I think they did that because they would treat it as something very very special. We're going to travel this summer to Notre Dame in Paris and go tour that I've been there before of course now it's you know had fire damage and been rebuilt but I remember being in awe that people would construct a facility like this with with hand tools and no modern equipment unless you've seen something like that, you really can't fathom it the National Cathedral in Washington can't touch it. Think about people did that because that space was sacred to them and just the attention to detail and the magnitude and the magnificence of that thing. I'm not saying I think that that place is a holy facility. I'm just saying that that's what those people thought and the dedication and respect that they gave to that work it reflects that. Sort of like you said that's very interesting not putting the Bible on the floor yeah not very many of us would would burn a Bible. Yeah yeah yeah I mean we wouldn't we wouldn't tear the pages out the you know now people in jail will take Bible papers and make rolling papers out of them. So you have to be very careful the type of paper that goes in the jail but um yeah that that's it's impressive that they thought that. And even though we may not say that's a rule, it's it I think it's honorable that they think that.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah. My takeaway this week is I'm going to try to lean a little bit more into the words of respect, reverence and awe of God. Okay, well you do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

You got next week final thoughts for us Tim No no I I think it's uh I think it's good for us every once in a while to think about how the ancients viewed the concept of holiness and especially God. And then next week we'll talk a lot about holy people. And so I think we can touch on holy people in the Old Testament and then kind of that concept in the New Testament.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Make sure to join us next week check out the description below for additional ways to connect with us to our fellow students of Scripture thank you for joining us for tech support.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

This is a podcast of the Mount Juliet Church of Christ you can find more personal growth resources like this one at mountjuat.org slash resources. The Mount Juliet Church of Christ exists to glorify God and make disciples by helping people grow in Christ, love one another and serve others