We've been looking at the main covenants in the Bible. We've talked about already the Edenic, the Adenic, the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant. We're in the midst of the Mosaic Covenant and actually we're We've been looking at Moses' life in preparation to go into the Mosaic Covenant. We came to the burning bush, and we mentioned several things that happened at the place where the burning bush was. Exodus 3.1 says, Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the backside of the desert. Anybody remember what the backside of the desert is? That's the what side? the west side, because in the Jewish mind, east is always forward, and so the back side of the desert would be the west side. And it says, "...and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb." Now in the Bible, when you see the word Horeb, and then you see the word Sinai, it's one and the same. God uses it interchangeably. So he's come to the mountain of God, even to Horeb, or Mount Sinai. And verse 2 says, And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And so we looked last week briefly at some different highlights that happened at Mount Sinai, or Mount Horeb, as far as in connection with Moses himself. That became a special place for Moses. First off, he meets God at the burning bush, like we read, and then Moses in the rock at Horeb. Remember when they showed a visual complaining because they were thirsty, and God had them go out and strike that rock? Well, that happened at Horeb, Exodus 17, 6. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb. and now shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel." So he met God at that burning bush at Horeb. Moses and the rock, when the water came forth, that was at Horeb. And of course, he went up into the mount to get the law, Exodus 19, 17. and Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount, and Mount Sinai was altogether on the smoke." I like the way it says that the mountain was having a smoke, you know, so, you know, you could use that. Well, the mountain was smoking. But anyway, the mount was on a smoke, and thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down unto Mount Sinai, and the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount, and Moses went up." So, Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai, was a special place in Moses' life. But today we want to look a little bit at something else. We're going to move into a specific phase, or a specific phrase, if you will, of what's going on in Exodus chapter 3. And you can see it in verse 2, it says, And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. But we go a little bit further, verse 4 says, And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, here am I, that would be a good thing to answer God. But verse 5 says, and he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place wherein thou standest is holy ground. It's holy ground. So, when Moses went up to this bush that was on fire, and God told him to take his shoes off, and he said the reason he wanted to take his shoes off is because the place he was approaching was holy ground. Holy ground. It was holy. Now, by the way, in the King James Bible, the first time the word holy is used is right here. I mean, it's not used in Genesis at all. You won't find the word holy in Genesis at all, at least not in the King James Bible. Now there are some passages that allude to holiness in fact if you Look up the first mention of holy in the Bible And if you if you google it you may come up with something that goes along with in Genesis chapter 2 in Genesis 2 2 It says on the seventh day, you know after God had created everything On the seventh day ended his work which he had made and he rested on the seventh day from all his work Which he had made and God blessed the seventh day and then here's a word and sanctified it He sanctified it because that in it he hath rested from all his work which God created and made." The Strong's Concordance. Ever know what a Strong's Concordance is? That's a good concordance to have. But the Strong's Concordance, they did us a great favor. What they did is they numbered all the words, all the Hebrew and the Greek words, so we wouldn't have to learn Greek. and learn Hebrew. They numbered them all. So we can just go to the numbers, you know. You just go to the number and, oh yeah, there's that word. You don't know what it says, because if you're not, if you can't read Greek and you can't read Hebrew, you have no idea what the word is. But you can find it, because they're all numbered. It's a good system. Anyway, the number for the word holy in the Old Testament is 6944. So there's 8,000 and some, I forget exactly, but it's 8,000 and something words in Hebrew. And then sanctified is 6942. I mean, it's right next to it, very, very close. And so it's a very close word, but the word holy, the word holy, the first time you find the word holy in the King James Bible is in Exodus 3. It's not used in Genesis at all. I was kind of surprised by that when I was looking it up. I looked up the word, and when I usually look up words, I look at it from the Hebrew word, and then go look, because oftentimes in English, the same Hebrew word is translated into a whole bunch of different words. So I usually look at the Hebrew word, and I said, wow, really? So I started looking at it, and sure enough, the first time, The first time the word holy is found in the King James Bible, at least if you start in Genesis 1-1 and start pushing through, the first time you find it is in Exodus 3 verse 5. So, and if you stick with the King James Bible, and I think you ought to, that would be the first time the word holy shows up. So, all that said, here's the crux, here's the root, here's the bottom line, if you will. The ground was holy. The ground was holy and the reason the ground was holy is because God was there You got to get that in mind the reason how come the the ground was holy because God was there And while we're here, I want to explore the holiness of God for a bit. And some of this is going to be kind of old hat for some of you. But if you'll just keep with me through the end, maybe we'll show you something at the end that maybe you hadn't quite thought of before. But God's very presence, God's very attendance to this event, God's very proximity to what's going on here makes this place, makes this plot of ground, makes this parcel of land, it's holy because God's there. God's presence shows up and it becomes holy. Now, there's not anything innately holy or intrinsically holy or inherently holy about this particular ground. I mean, it's ground. It's land. So there's nothing particularly holy about that land, but God's presence is there. And because God's presence is there, it becomes a holy ground. So, Think with me a little bit. Holy versus unholy. If we look in the Bible, and we'll use some other illustrations as well, but if we look in the Bible, it takes great pains to show that there's a difference between holy and unholy. It takes great pains. It goes in quite a detail. And we can just look at a few verses to show the opposite position, or the opposing sides, or the otherwise view, if you will, of holiness versus unholiness. In Leviticus 10.10, it's one of the clearest ones, it says that, and that ye may put difference. The word difference there sometimes is translated separated. Thank you. At least one person was watching. Amen. So, sometimes that word means separated, and so God is trying to put a division, a separation. He's trying to put some space. He says that ye may put difference between holy and unholy. and between unclean and clean. So he's talking about putting a difference, putting the dividing line, putting a difference between holy and unholy. And notice it also connects clean and unclean. between holy and unholy and between unclean and clean. Leviticus 22.4 says, "...what man soever of the seed of Aaron is a leper or hath a running issue, he shall not eat of the holy things until he be clean." and whoso toucheth anything that is unclean by the dead, or a man whose seed goeth from him." And God is showing that there's this difference between holy and unholy and clean and unclean. If a clean person touches an unclean person or something that's unclean, then that person becomes unclean. There's this difference, and really God takes great pains to show the difference between holy and unholy and clean and unclean. And I can read dozens of verses that show this, but we'll be satisfied with a few that we read. In fact, in the days of Israel, particularly later on in the king's ages, lepers, they had to cry, in Israel, they had to cry, unclean! unclean Unclean when they're going through where there was people there because everybody had back away. They weren't touching because they were contagious They were catchy they had cooties And they didn't want to get none, you know, so they're unclean, unclean. Because it would pass from the unclean to the clean if you did. So, again, there's this difference between holy and unholy and clean and unclean. Here's a couple earthy examples, if you will. How about influenza? That's been big these days. I had the flu a month ago or so. I believe my wife did, too. Let me ask you this, when a person has the flu, and they did a swab on me and everything, and they said, oh yeah, you got flu A, whatever that is. So, let me ask you this, when you got a person with the flu, do you take them and put them in a room full of healthy people so that the person with the flu can get healthy? No. In fact, what they try to do is they try to, you know, They diagnosed me with the flu on Tuesday, so I went home and I started taking my Tamiflu like I was supposed to. And by Thursday, I was feeling pretty good, so I went back to work. My doctor saw me and said, what are you doing here? Go home. They ran me off. I mean, they dissed me and sent me home. I couldn't come back till the following week. They sent me home. They didn't want me around people. Why? Because I could contaminate somebody. I was contagious. They wanted me quarantined. So when a person gets the flu, not only do we not put them around healthy people, we try to keep them away from healthy people so the healthy people won't get it. Because it's catchy. You follow so far? How about a dog with a mange? I mean, they look bad. But let me ask you this. If you see another dog with a mange, do you take your dog over there to meet up with that dog with a mange so that your healthy dog can make that unhealthy dog healthy? Call the parents and say, we've got this dog over here with a mange. I don't want my dog to be getting it now. Come and get this thing. Because it's contagious. You treat the mange, but you separate the dog from the healthy dogs. Because it's catchy. Communicable diseases. Years ago, it must have been 30 years ago now, Brother Joe West, he sponsored a protest, if you will. Joe West, by the way, is Larry West's father. And Larry got diagnosed with stomach cancer this past week. He had a PET scan done Friday. He's supposed to meet with a physician sometime this week to decide how they're going to proceed. But anyway, he had this protest, a downtown gathering, an educational assembly. And what he was trying to do, his idea was to educate folks. You say, what was he educating about? You see, the news media and the government, even city officials, were trying to make AIDS, AIDS, a social issue. AIDS is not a social issue. AIDS is a health issue. Because it's contagious. And we don't want other people to get it now from what they tell me I've done some reading about it and and I work with folks and so Had to do some reading about it and evidently it's not a very strong virus Now if you get it you're in trouble But it's not a very strong virus and people that have it the the health professionals They teach them how to clean all their stuff and use a lot of bleach. I clean all that stuff off to kill all of that virus. But he had this big meeting down there and he was trying to raise awareness that AIDS was a medical problem. It's a contagious problem. It's a transmittable disease. It's not a social issue. It's not a minority issue. It's a disease. And we need to protect ourselves. That was the whole thing. It was funny there, I forget how many people were down there, but there was about a handful of folks on the other side, you know, and I stayed away from them because I'm afraid they might have AIDS. But the news media, they gave them just about as much time as they gave the big gathering down there. But he was trying to raise awareness to this idea that it's a health issue, not a social issue. When we do what they call bronchoscopies, they take a flexible, lighted scope and go down in a person's lung, and one of the problems with AIDS people is they get pneumonias. And so they want to find out what type of pneumonia it exactly is and how to treat it, so they go down there and take samples. But anyway, you should see folks when they go in there. I mean, they got booties on. protect their feet, they got long gowns on to protect themselves, and they're impermeable gowns, so that the person's stuff won't get on them. They wear not only masks, but they have shields. Years ago, we were in a bronchoscopy, the guy didn't wear a shield, and he was looking in the scope, and some saliva came back up in his eye. I said, oh Lord, you better go get some, you better go get some bleach. He didn't go wash his eye out and he didn't have any issues. But, but, you know, hmm, wow. But, so we wear shields, I mean, and we wear caps, I mean, gloves, I mean, we're, I mean, from top to bottom. Because it's a disease and it's communicable and we don't want to get it. So you getting the idea of this unclean and clean? When clean and unclean are put together, the clean does not make the unclean clean. Did you get that? When the clean does not make the unclean clean, rather, the unclean makes the clean unclean. Doesn't that make sense? 1 Corinthians 1533 says it this way, be not deceived, evil communications, that means who you run with, evil communications corrupt good manners. You need to stay away from folks that don't have good character, because some of their stuff will jump off on you, and you don't want that to happen. the associations. We need to make sure our associations are right. So, so anyway, so the holy versus unholy. Second off, now let's go to God's holiness. God is holy. He says that a number of times. Isaiah 57 15, the first part of that verse says, for thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity. What a phrase. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place. God's holy. Isaiah 43, 15, I am the Lord, your holy one, the creator of Israel, your king. Leviticus 22, 32, neither shall you profane my holy name. And again, I can read dozens of verses that say similar things or comparable things or related things, but the idea is God is holy. He's hallowed. He's the high and lofty one. He's the pure one. But there's a difference. See, God tells us to be holy as well. But we can't be holy like He is. He tells us to be holy. 1 Peter 1, 16 says, because it is written, be holy for I am holy. Now, we can't be as holy as God is. By the way, that's a quote from the Old Testament, Leviticus 11. But God is totally holy. Now, He wants us to be holy, He wants us to live righteously, He wants us to live a good life, but we can never be where He is. There's three words in the Bible that essentially mean the same thing, holy, sanctified, and saint. And it's more so in the New Testament, even in the Old Testament, holy and sanctified are used interchangeably, and saint is in there, well, even in the Old Testament, Psalm 34, sing unto the Lord, O ye saints. of His and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. So, even in the Old Testament, but the words holy, sanctified, and saint, they essentially mean the same thing. And it means to be set apart. And you've heard this before. During the summertime, we oftentimes play softball on Sunday night. And teams are chosen, but there's at least one position that's set apart from everybody else. Brother Block, you didn't know Brother Block. He's always the pitcher. He sets himself apart as the pitcher. He's the pitcher for one team. He's the pitcher for the other team. He likes to be in the middle of everything so he can control the pace and control everything that's going on. And so he likes to be in the middle of it. And so he sets himself apart from the other teams. He's by himself. He sets himself apart from all the other folks there as being the only pitcher. So he set apart. Well, that's essentially what that word means that holy being set apart You know when we get saved or we're going the world's way and and we repent We change and to change your mind about stuff and and look to Jesus and start going now. We're going his way so it's this change this setting apart and When we get saved, at that moment that we get saved, God declares us holy, He deems us holy, He decrees us holy, but we're still not holy like He is. In His sight we're holy. And He wants us to be holy, personally righteous, but we're still not like He is. Paul said this in Romans 7, for we know that the law is spiritual. But I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that is good, and so on and so forth. But Paul had issues with this. He said there's some things he wanted to do he didn't do, and things he didn't want to do he did. And he says it's because of sin that resided in him. Well, if the great apostle Paul struggled to be perfect, I believe we probably have maybe the same struggle. So we can never be totally pure, at least not this side of heaven. God tells us to keep ourselves unspotted and separated from the world and separated from bad influences, but we can never be like God. But God, He's holy in a special sense, in a special way, in a special manner. You see, God cannot be influenced or changed or tarnished with sin or tarnished with unrighteousness. While one of his characteristics is holy, there's another characteristic we mentioned a little bit ago, immutable. God doesn't change. He's the same from one day to the next, immutable. That word immutable means unchanging, invariable, unwavering, constant. He's always the same. One of the hymns we sing, Abide With Me, I like one of the verses, it says, Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. Earth's joy grow dim as glories pass away. Change and decay in all around I see." It's about change and decay. Everything's changing. Everything's, as we go, you know, we're getting older. My father's 90 years old. He's got issues now that he didn't used to have when he was younger. Because we change. We all kind of slow down. We all kind of decay. The world, all the world decay. But then the next line says, O thou who changest not. O thou who changest not, abide with me." God, He never changes. So God is holy and He's immutable, so He can never be changed, or altered, or amended by sin. In fact, He did interact with mankind, and He did intermingle with mankind, and He did intermix with mankind, and still remained holy. Hebrews 4 15 for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities But was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin So God doesn't and he walked amongst us. He traveled amongst us. He tabernacled amongst us if you will still without sin without transgression without iniquity And by the way, that's why He can be our ransom and our redeemer and our reclaimer. But God's holiness even goes beyond that. He can't change. So He can stay holy, but it even goes beyond that. So we talked about holy versus unholy, and we talked about God's holiness. Now let me mention this. Holiness transmitted. And this is what's really important. Holiness transmitted. Not only is God holy and immutable and unchanging and unwavering, He's so holy that He can transfer some of His holiness to something else. He can transfer it to someone else. He can make us holy. He can make us sanctified. He can make us acceptable before God. The actual word for it, there's a doctrinal term, a Bible expression. It's called imputation. Imputation, here's the definition, is used to designate any action or word or thing as reckoned to a person, thus in doctrinal language, the sin of Adam is imputed to all of his descendants. It is reckoned as theirs and they are dealt with therefore as guilty. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to them that believe in him, or so attributed to them as to be considered their own. And our sins are imputed to Christ. He assumed our law place undertook to answer the demands of justice for our sins. In all these cases, the nature of imputation is the same. So you see all that? Adam's sin was transferred unto us, all our sin was transferred unto Jesus, and then He transferred His righteousness to us. He's so holy. He's so holy, not only can not iniquity change Him, He can actually make other things around Him and other people around Him holy. His presence makes us holy. you know 2 Corinthians 5 20 says now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ did be reconciled to God for he have now that he is God have made him Jesus to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him there's all that imputation stuff going on So God is so holy that he can transfer that holiness to somebody or something else. John Gill, he's one of the old time Bible folks And it says for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground not that there was any inherent holiness in the spot of ground More than in any other which ground is not capable of but a relative holiness on account of the presence of God here at this time and was not permanent only while a pure and holy God was there Now here's the real blessing You see, God transfers His holiness. Now, in our passage there, talking about taking your shoes off because the ground's holy, He was transferring His holiness to that ground at that moment. But when a person gets saved, God moves in. Colossians 127, to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. When we get saved, He moves in. And His presence makes us holy, acceptable unto God. He transfers, He imputes His righteousness unto us so that we look righteous before God. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, and the very God of peace, sanctify, set you apart, make you holy, sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 John 3, 9, here's an interesting verse, whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. For the seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." There's a place inside of us where God resides that never sins. Ever. Because it's holy. God made it that way. Because he moved inside. I got this stuff you've been wondering what this is out here for. We'll say this is sin. Brother Smith knows exactly what I'm going to do. I was going to have him do this today. I called him, he didn't return my call. So I had to go on the internet and find out how to do it by myself. So here's sin, you see, and this is me. Nice and clean, alright? So if I put a little in there, what happens is I'm not so clean anymore. A minute ago I would have been glad to take a drink out of that cup. I don't think so anymore because it's no good. But now here's Jesus. Here's Jesus and when Jesus comes, look at there, not only does he take our sin away, he makes us holy. He transfers His holiness to us and anywhere that God resides becomes that way. So God's holiness is not just that He's holy and He's unchanging and that He's immutable and all that stuff. He's so holy that He has a little bit extra and He passes it on to us. He's able to pass that holiness onto us. So the ground where Moses was, it wasn't holy necessarily because it was just a piece of ground. It was holy because God was there. God was there and He transferred His holiness temporarily to that place. And thank God, God imputes His righteousness to us at salvation. And if you ain't never been saved yet, you need to get that way so you can be like that. Stand before God without sin. So we're finishing up a little bit early. My wife says, that's okay, you finish up late all the time. So it'd be good for them to get out early once in a while. I got other stuff about the motivation behind the commission that Moses gets from God, but we'll save that for next time. And I hope you got something out of that. The holiness of God. It's not just that he's holy. He's so holy, he has extra. And he can pass it off to somebody else, and he does us through the doctrine of imputation. So, let's pray and we'll be done. Father, I ask that you bless what's been said. Help us to appreciate and be in amazement of your holiness and how you've given it to us through salvation. If there's someone here that's not saved, I pray that you'd bring them to you today. Bless these folks. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.