Isaiah 6:3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Today’s name is not a name, but an attribute. We are looking at how holy He is. Yes, the verse does say that He is the Lord Almighty, and we could probably spend time exploring what it means to be Almighty. But today we are focusing on His holiness and what that means to us.
The term “Holy, holy, holy” only appears twice in the Bible – once in the Old Testament *Isaiah 6:3) and once in the New Testament (Revelation 4:8). In both instances, the phrase is spoken or sung by heavenly creatures or angels. It is revealed to Isaiah in the Old Testament and to John in the New Testament in the book of Revelation.
Holiness itself is something that we struggle to understand. We know it means perfection, sinless purity, and righteousness. But while we KNOW that, can we truly UNDERSTAND it? We are humans and have the minds of humans, limited and broken, influenced by sin. We strive to be holy, but we can never be on our own. We need a Savior to make us holy, to be that holiness FOR us, because we are failures by ourselves.
What does it mean that the phrase is a repetition of the same word three times? This is called a trihagion (meaning thrice holy) and the triple repetition use is a common occurrence by the Jewish people in their writings. It is a way of emphasizing the words. Think of how we write words we want to emphasize. We may use bold or we may use italics or we may underline them. Using one by itself conveys emphasis, but when you combine the different styles, the emphasis becomes greater. In speech patterns, repetition of words was the same. It was a means of emphasizing the words and expressing something more passionate. In this case, we are seeing the phrase in a trihagion to affirm the ultimate holiness of God. We don’t see it said of Him that He is love, love, love, or good, good, good. Only holy, holy, holy. And both times it is found, it is only in regard to a vision of the heavenly throne room of God.
And thanks to this holiness, we can find hope in Him for our lives. We can have the hope of salvation, the hope for forgiveness, and hope for our eternity spent with Him. But it all begins with Him being holy, holy, holy.
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