“Sanctify the Lord of hosts”!
The words are easy enough to say, but not quite so easy to put into practice. We all recognise that God requires us to do it; but how are we to set about it? How can we heed the Divine command through Isaiah and sanctify the Lord of hosts in practical everyday terms? Do we even understand adequately what it means to “sanctify” God? “Make Him holy” is that what Isaiah means? Surely not! God is holy already: He is holiness personified. We have no choice in this; God is holy whether men recognise it or not. Isaiah himself makes this clear when he shares with us that marvelous vision of God’s holiness in his sixth chapter: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory” (v. 3). “Thrice holy is the Lord”, says the hymn; and nothing we can say or do will ever change that glorious fact. So what did Isaiah mean when he told his contemporaries to “sanctify the Lord of hosts”?
It would be as well, first, to note that the Hebrew word Isaiah uses, translated “sanctify”, is the very prominent Old Testament word qadesh, elsewhere translated “dedicate”, “hallow”, “consecrate”, “purify”, and “keep holy”. Such a variety of translations is itself an indication of the difficulty of putting into English the essential meaning of this important Hebrew term. “Consecrate” is perhaps the rendering that comes nearest to the idea of separation which is basic to the Hebrew. God is holy because He is separate, set apart, special—this is the true meaning of the Hebrew qadesh. Thus, for example, when God says to Jeremiah,
“before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet” (1:5),
He does not mean that He cleansed Jeremiah from uncleanness, or that He made him specially pure in any moral sense, but that He separated him from his fellows, that He set him apart as a prophet, and that He consecrated him to that special position. So ‘sanctifying’ someone has to do with the special position or status we accord to them.
All this, then, suggests that Isaiah’s advice can now be understood more clearly. The prophet is telling us not so much to ‘set the Lord of hosts apart’ or to ‘make Him separate’ (since He is such already), but rather to ‘accord to Him the special position which is His’, that is, to recognise His holiness.
It was in the spirit of this advice that Jesus later taught his disciples to pray. “Hallowed be Thy name” is actually quoted from Isaiah 29:23, where the same word “sanctify” occurs again. The name of God will certainly be given the special status it deserves when God’s will is done “in earth, as it is in heaven”. Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus himself reinforces Isaiah’s exhortation that we should be treating the name and person of God as very special in the ‘here and now’. Giving God pride of place in our lives is the practical outworking of the recognition of His holiness.
The Apostle Peter is also very helpful in bringing us to a clearer understanding of Isaiah’s inspired advice, for in his first epistle he quotes and expounds Isaiah’s words: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but saw* the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Pet. 3:14,15).
A study of the background to Isaiah 8 and 1 Peter 3 reveals the relevance of Peter’s quotation, both Scriptures being written to those in fear for their lives and undergoing severe trials of their faith in God (hence the exhortation in both passages not to be afraid of men). It is perhaps worth noting in passing, too, that the last part of verse 15 quoted above may well be Peter’s commendably honest recollection of his own failure, in the high priest’s courtyard, to own up to being a Christian.
But two things, above all, need to be noted in Peter’s rehearsal of Isaiah’s words. The first is that Isaiah’s “Lord of hosts” is expounded by Peter, under inspiration, as “the Lord God”, or, as the Revised Version and most other versions suggest, “the Lord Jesus Christ”. So in the RV Peter’s advice is: “sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”, while the NIV reads: “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord”. These translations, if correct (and there are many reliable supporting texts), give remarkable confirmation from a quite unexpected quarter to the peculiarly Christadelphian doctrine of God-manifestation in Christ. For here, on the authority of the Spirit through Peter, we are being taught that Jesus is a manifestation of Isaiah’s “Lord of hosts”, and that, as the manifestation of God, the Lord Jesus is to be accorded that same special status as the Father, Whose glory he reveals to men.
And the second thing to notice about Peter’s quotation from Isaiah is that our ‘sanctification’ of God through Christ begins in the heart. It is a question first and foremost of the right mental attitude; humility and reverence (v. 15), and a good conscience (v. 16), are required for us to be able to “sanctify” the Lord. And the phrase “in your hearts” (v. 15) has not been added as mere padding. It is there as a significant detail supplied by the Spirit through Peter to open up the meaning of Isaiah 8.
For if we are to “sanctify” God as Isaiah suggests, to do it acceptably we must do it from the heart, not as a matter of the ritual observance of a set sequence of ceremonial acts, but as the genuine, heartfelt response of the creature to the Creator. For after all, the Creator, by His very gift of life, has every right to a special and separate place in our hearts and affections; and this is what Paul calls our “reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1) the true dedication of our minds and hearts to God.
But there is even more to ‘sanctifying’ God than all this. For, in setting God apart in our hearts, exclusively and separately from every other object of worship, we have to recognise God’s own separateness from us a sobering fact which God Himself emphasised to Isaiah in his prophecy:
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” ( Isa. 55:9).
So to sanctify the Lord acceptably we need to acknowledge the great gulf that separates Him from us because of our sin and our mortality, and because of His holiness. The example of Isaiah’s sense of unworthiness in the presence of God is a living exhortation to us as to what our own reaction should be when we seek to sanctify God: “Woe is me!”, said the prophet, “for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). Here was that necessary recognition of God’s holiness, a genuine and heartfelt admission of God’s unquestionable right to be sanctified in the hearts of His creatures, as He told Moses:
“I will be sanctified in them that come nigh unto Me” (Lev. 10:3).
This is the decree of the Lord Who made heaven and earth, and we argue with it or reject it at our peril.
Sad to say, there were not many in Isaiah’s day who were ready to obey the Divine decree. Very few were prepared to “sanctify the Lord of hosts”. And that was precisely why things were going so wrong for the nation under the misrule of the wicked Ahaz:
“Woe unto them . . . because they have no knowledge . . . Therefore hell hath enlarged herself . . . But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness” (Isa. 5:11-16).
And so the call to the sinful nation, if they wanted to escape God’s judgments, meted out by the king of Assyria, was to “Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself; and let Him be your fear” (Isa. 8:13). This was another way of saying what had been said through Moses so many years before: “ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44).
And it is not just Isaiah’s contemporaries who need to be reminded of God’s holiness and of the importance of living in accordance with Divine standards. The Apostle Paul brings the commandment right up to date for us when, in 2 Corinthians 7:1, he exhorts Christian brethren and sisters in terms very reminiscent of many passages in Isaiah:
“Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God”.
In other words, the enthronement of God in our hearts must have its practical outworking in the kind of people we are; any reverence we may claim to have for God’s holiness is a sham unless we “sanctify” the Lord in the way that we ourselves seek to live. And for those who respond to the Divine command there is the glorious promise of Isaiah 8:14 to sustain their efforts to live according to God’s Word, for the Lord of hosts Himself “shall be for a sanctuary” when “many sons” are brought to the glory of God-manifestation in their own bodies, and when those who have sought to sanctify their God and His Son in this life will live for ever in the presence of God’s holiness.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One