This week we turn our attention to the holiness of God from Isaiah 6. Yesterday we saw how God’s holiness overwhelms us. And as a result, has the ability to overcome our problems. Today we see that his holiness strips us of the deceptions of our self-righteousness.

For most people, the holiness of God evokes the idea of an optimal standard. Do your best to live as morally as you can. But when you fall short, there’s grace to cover it, so it’s ok. But is that really what God’s holiness means?

So how are we healed from these fatal attractions? Is there any hope if serving them is inevitable? The beginning of healing comes when we see that you only have two choices in life. Either you will serve God or you will serve something else. But you WILL worship something. And if your heart is finding life in anything besides God, you aer a slave.

So how do the dynamics of idolatry work? How does this process play itself out in our lives? Romans 1 shows us how this works.

We have a problem - a deep problem. Our rebellion has cut off that community. And our hearts are now predisposed to look anywhere and everywhere but to God in order to find the joy and satisfaction of our hearts. And because he designed us for that kind of external worship and intimacy, we can’t “not” look to things outside ourselves for that validation. But when we look to things besides God, they become idols - empty hopes and dreams that can never satisfy the longings of our heart.

Built in the to DNA of the human heart is the capacity to latch on to things outside of ourselves in order to find meaning, purpose, joy and delight. This is a capacity purposely put there by God, because he designed us to find all this in a relationship with him.

A personal relationship has two key aspects: truth and love. In order for a relationship to work, we must listen to the other person and receive truth from them…and we must be willing to speak the truth back to them. But a personal relationship also requires that love flow in both directions as well. And that is what God says he wants with this new covenant that he has established with us.

What distinguishes a genuine Christian from a cultural Christian - or from other good and decent moral people - is that a Christian knows God. And we know that we know God. This ability to know God often rubs skeptics the wrong way when they hear about our relationship with God.

This week we will be starting a new sermon series in the attributes of God. So many of the struggles we face in life come because we don’t know the full extent of who our God really is. And this week we will begin by looking at the knowability of God. He is a God that reveals himself to be known. And we will be looking at a passage in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

This week we are finishing up our series in the book of Jonah. And what we’re learning this week is how God’s love is far different than we often think it to be. Our self-focused hearts tend to hone in on the personal comfort and peace that God brings. And he does! But his love is also a consuming fire that burns away the ugly dross of our lives to purify us to be more like Jesus.