Samuel lives in Nashville, and Samuel has a confession to make today on the podcast before all of us.

He knows that God is holy, entirely pure, sinless, radiantly unstained.

And he also knows as a Christian, he's supposed to love God in his

unspotted holiness. But he doesn't. God's purity feels distant, cold, off-putting.

Today on Ask Pastor John, delighting in a holy God.

Pastor John, I have a confession to make, Samuel writes, I feel like God's holiness is

important, but it also feels very distant from me and totally overwhelming, too.

It's not something I find myself attracted to study, and oh, how I want this to change in me. In Psalm 99, which we just read a

couple days ago, God's holiness is a central theme that underscores his exalted position.

The psalmist declares, the Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble. He dwells between the cherubim.

Let the earth be moved.

That's verse one.

This imagery of God's supreme authority emphasizes his holiness and the awe should inspire.

Additionally, the psalmist boldly proclaims, holy is he, in verse 9, a statement that highlights God's utter set-apartness from anything impure.

Why is God's holiness so essential for us as believers?

And why do I not feel drawn to God's holiness like I know I should be?

Pastor John, what would you say to Samuel?

To answer those last two questions about why God's holiness is essential for us and why we might not be drawn to it,

we need to go straight to the issue of what it is. We need a faithful description of God's holiness.

Pretty much everybody agrees that the very basic meaning of the word in the Bible was separated from what is common,

which means that originally holiness, this will sound strange, could refer to holy prostitutes because they were separated in pagan temples from common prostitutes, or it could mean holy in the sense of exceptionally pure, virtuous, separated from all that is

sinful.

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