Psalm 99

Psalm 99

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 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 his footstool; he is holy.

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 the pillar of cloud; they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.

Lord our God, you answer 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.

Between high school and university I worked for a year building houses with my uncle. For the next 5 years or so I would work each summer building houses and doing custom renovations. When I first started, I borrowed tools and relieved the tool trailer of a framing tool belt. Over the next couple weeks (after my first pay cheque) I slowly bought my own tools and tool belt. The last thing I bought for myself was a hammer. Now, since I was framing it might sound counter-intuitive to buy your hammer last, but I had found an old hammer of my dad’s in the garage and that seemed to do the job just fine.

Until it didn’t. Eventually I was forced by circumstances (and probably a little job-site pressure) to get a “real” hammer. The 16oz carpenters hammer just wasn’t enough for the heavy work required for 3 ½” framing spikes. And so, I went and got a purpose built, 22oz framing hammer with an oversized head and a straighter claw design. 

It was built for a purpose and functioned best in line with that purpose. And I treated that hammer as such: it was set apart for a purpose, it belonged to me, and no one else could use it. I loved that hammer.

Fast forward almost 20 years later and I still have that hammer. But, it no longer has a special purpose – it’s use has become mundane and, to be honest, irregular. While it was built for a specific purpose, now, if something needs to be hit, I hit it with that hammer. If I’m doing fine woodworking and furniture building, I just choke up on the handle a little. If my 7-year-old son needs to smash something, I give him that hammer – I’m not as particular or as peculiar with the use of that hammer anymore.

And perhaps that’s just the process of normalization and taking for granted; perhaps the new and special always becomes mundane and even mediocre. The old saying is “familiarity breeds contempt” but I think it might be more apt to say, “familiarity breeds apathy.” People don’t often end up hating the mundane, just ignoring it.

While being cognizant of the risk of hyperbolic contrast I think many of us do the same thing with God and with what it exactly means to be a Christian in the midst of a secular and post-Christian age.

Psalm 99 is a mediation on the holiness of God. The Psalm is structured around the repetition of the phrase: “he is holy,” culminating in the declaration, “For the Lord our God is holy.” (vs. 9).

The holiness of God is connected to his sovereign reign over all the earth and the nations of the earth; the holiness of God is similarly revealed in his great and awesome name (vs. 3). This is something of the attribute of God as holy. This is part of what we mean when we say that the holiness of God is his being wholly other. There is none like him; it is the difference between the infinite and the finite; between the creature and the Creator.

And further, the holiness of God is connected to the exercise of his might, his acts of justice, and his establishing of equity (vs. 4,5). The holiness of God is a moral quality of his character that sets him apart from human beings in his perfection.

Holiness for God is his being set apart – his Being as wholly other; holiness for God means there is none like him; and holiness for God means he is perfect in goodness. 

Holiness as an attribute of God is why we worship him; why in the same breath the psalmist calls God holy and tells us to praise, exalt, and worship him (vs. 3, 5, 9). The holiness of God means it is also his action that bridges the gap of creature and Creator. God must move to draw us to himself; God must make a way for his chosen people to come to him (vs. 6-7).

But for how many of us has God simply become mundane? How easy is it for us – especially for those of us who have never not known a time when we considered ourselves Christian – to take the person and being of God for granted? How often do we consider the “ordinary means of grace” (preaching and the sacraments) as merely ordinary – instead of the original meaning of that phrase being “regular”? When the worshiping life of the church is considered as merely ordinary; or when the devotional life of the believer is viewed as mundane, you can be sure that apathy isn’t far behind.

As God calls us to himself this understanding of holiness works its way down to his people. If holiness for God means being set apart – both in form and function (in being and doing) – does it not also for those who believe in him, who are called according to his purpose; we who are being conformed to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:28-29)? This is the very purpose you are being saved! As Paul writes in Ephesians, “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Eph. 1:4, ESV) This is the identity of Christians declared in 1 Peter, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Pt. 2:9) The older translation of this verse once titled believers as “God’s peculiar possession.” And while at the time that meant “unique” or “special” without the connotations of “strange” or “weird” that peculiar now carries, I think there is something worthwhile about merging those meanings together. In our increasingly post-Christian, secular, and even neo-pagan world, Christians shouldn’t be afraid of looking weird or out of place in that culture.

The early church understood this powerfully: in their attitudes towards and ethics around sex, in their concern for the poor and marginalized, in their willingness to endure death for the truth of the gospel as well as for the serving of cities and communities ravaged by illness (the Antonine plague of the 2nd century is a good example), in their community structures and raising up of leaders from previously unheard segments of society (viz. women and slaves become leaders and influencers). What they did made no sense to the world around them, and yet it makes perfect sense when you know the gospel of Jesus (cf. Gal. 3:27).

And sure, there is a right reaction against what has happened as a consequence of the so-called culture wars and the equating of Christian legalism (crassly – but not incorrectly – labeled as ‘holier-than-thou’ attitudes) with Christian identity. But when Christians look, talk, and act exactly the same as the rest of our culture and sub-cultures; when we consume the same media (or are consumed by it); when our expressed goals and felt needs are no (or only a little) different; when the substance of our faith is a little sprinkling of Christian terminology, maybe some Sunday worship, and possibly a routine prayer before a meal; has our holiness become mundane? 

Have we forgotten our first love and become luke-warm (cf. Rev. 2:4 & 3:16)?

You belong to a holy God; you have been set apart for a purpose; you are a new creation. Don’t let this truth become merely ordinary. The holiness of God demands his people be holy as he is holy (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pt. 1:15-16) but “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:57); we now have a “righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” (Phil. 3:9); and so, “whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Rom. 14:8).

I know that’s what we believe – imagine if we lived it?

Prayer
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty! You are worthy to receive glory and honour and power and praise! Help me to see you holiness as reason for my holiness; help me to live the sort of peculiar life that marks me out as your child – regardless of the cost. Help me to know that whatever that cost may yet be, it is worth it – because you are worth it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.