What does it mean to be holy? In Exodus 28, God designs the garments for His priests, each one stamped with the theme of holiness. Dr. Toby Holt explores what it means to be "holy to the Lord." The priestly garments were made to glorify God, not the priest, and on the high priest's forehead was a gold plate engraved "HOLINESS TO THE LORD." "Holy" means "set apart" — God's people are both declared holy and called to live holy lives. Under the new covenant, believers themselves are priests, given bold access to God through the torn veil.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did God care so much about the priests' garments? Because they were to display His holiness and glory, not the priest's status. Everything pointed to God being set apart.

2. What does "holy" mean? It means "set apart" — both declared righteous by God and called to live differently from the world.

3. How are believers "priests" today? Through Christ, the veil is torn and every believer has direct access to God. We are now a royal priesthood, set apart for Him. "You shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet: HOLINESS TO THE LORD." — Exodus 28:36 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In chapters 25 through 40 of Exodus, God gave Moses some specific directions on how to build the tabernacle.

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In today's study, we'll see that the word that was to describe God's plan for the tabernacle and its priest was the word holy.

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You would be just amazed what people think will save them.

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do you have any idea how many people in our country, in our community, in Gulfport think

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they're saved on this basis because they were baptized once long ago? Do you have any idea

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how many people in our culture, community, nation think they're saved because their names are on

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some church membership role somewhere? And as long as those names remain on that membership role,

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they're good. People will yoke their salvation to a lot of things, and usually, almost uniformly,

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the thing that they're yoking their salvation to is some work done long in their past, some action

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that was taken by them or on their behalf. And when that action was taken, it punched their ticket

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and their end. For those who think I did one thing a long time ago, or someone did it to me when I

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was baptized or what have you, and that's sufficient, the author of Hebrews would like a word with you.

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Hebrews 12 says this, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the

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Lord. Today's sermon is about holiness. What role does holiness play in our salvation, if any? And

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while we're on the topic, why did the priests in today's text wear one thing on their forehead and

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one thing only, holiness to the Lord? What's this all about? Let's return to the text and see if we

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can find out. Verses 31 through 35 of today's text say this. It says, you shall make the robe,

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meaning the priest's robe of the ephod, all of blue. That matched the veil. There's a reason why

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it's supposed to be blue. There shall be an opening for his head in the middle of it, and it shall have

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a woven binding all around its opening, like the opening in a coat of mail, so that it does not

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tear. And upon its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet all around its hem,

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bells of gold between them all around, golden bell and a pomegranate, golden bell and a pomegranate

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upon the hem of the robe all around. God seems very specific about what he wants here. I wonder

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if there's a reason why. Verse 35, and it shall be upon Aaron when he ministers, and its sound

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will be heard when he goes into the holy place before the Lord, and when he comes out, that he

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may not die. All right. As we said at the outset this morning, today's passage falls in the middle

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of a large section of chapters that deal with the construction of the tabernacle. Now, for many of

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us, this gets kind of foreign to us. You read page after page of all this specificity, and we don't

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to apply it in our own day and age because there's no tabernacle, there's no temple. So we look at

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that, and some of us are tempted to skip past it. My hope is that you won't, based on what we see

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in just this one text, which is a microcosm of all these chapters. God has a reason why he put

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this in his word, and there's a lot we can extract from it if we'll take the time to study it. So

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today's passage about the robes of the priest, it falls in the middle of a large section of chapters

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dealing with construction of the tabernacle.

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Now, as we said before, the tabernacle was revolutionary in its day.

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And here's the reason why.

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Because the pagan cultures, they all had gods.

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The pagan cultures had all manner of gods.

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And yet these gods were gods far in the distance.

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Loof gods.

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Remember the Greeks, they had Zeus on top of Mount Olympus?

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Well, with the Canaanites and the others, they had gods as well

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that you had to somehow attract their attention.

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You remember on Mount Carmel, the prophets of Baal and Asherah,

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they jumped around all day, they danced, tried to get their God's attention, they even cut themselves

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hoping that would flag him down. But the gods of the pagans historically have always been at arm's

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length, at a distance, and you'd be fortunate, you'd be lucky if they ever deigned to even look

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upon you, let alone to help you. That's different than what we see in the tabernacle. In the

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tabernacle, God says, I'm not content to be far removed from you. But the tabernacle is going to

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be similar to the garden in which I walked with your first parents in the cool of the afternoon.

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Why? Because I love them and I love you. And because good fathers are not absentee, but they

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dwell in the midst of their children. In this way, I will dwell in your midst. You will construct a

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tabernacle, and in this tabernacle, the Shekinah glory of God will dwell with you, will dwell in

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your midst, and you will be unique among all the nations on the face of the earth, because all the

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pagans, if you ask them where their God is, they have to point somewhere, point in the Nile River,

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you know, point in the Euphrates, point over there, point to the mountain, point to the stars.

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You, my Israelites, you, my people, you can point to that tent in the middle of your campsite and

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say, God dwells here. For the Israelites, this was wonderful and amazing. A little scary, too,

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because they'd encountered this God on Sinai, and they knew He was no shrinking violet. They knew

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this is a God of majesty and power, and he says, I'm going to dwell in your midst. Because I'm

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going to dwell in the midst of you, you are going to have my protection along with my presence.

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So in Exodus 25 through 40, he says, let's talk about that tabernacle. Let's talk about it,

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because the tabernacle is a type of heaven. So a lot of the ingredients that we see in the

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materials and the composition, they anticipated greater and bigger things. And so for this reason,

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And God says, let's describe the way this tabernacle is going to build right down to

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the smallest detail, right down to the bells and the pomegranates.

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The golden bells and pomegranates are going to go around the hem of the priests who enter

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in.

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All of it was important to God.

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And if it was important to him, maybe it should be important to us as well.

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So that's why we study this and why we try to extract the details here.

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Now, before we talk about the wardrobe of these priests, let's stop for a minute here.

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And someone tell me, what nation did the Israelites, were they just delivered from?

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What nation had they just escaped from?

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Egypt, right, exactly, Egypt.

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Egypt, I'm glad no one said Moab or something else.

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Egypt, they just came out of Egypt.

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So, with that said, this generation, I don't know, where had they learned how to worship?

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Where had they learned their religious practices from?

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From Egypt.

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So their understanding of religiosity was greatly influenced and impacted

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by the pagans who are now drowned at the bottom of the Red Sea.

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And God says, hey, you my people, because I know you might have developed some bad habits,

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I not only wanted to take you out of Egypt, but I want to take Egypt out of you.

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You're not going to be pagan like you were.

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You're not going to do the things you used to do.

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Now, if you think about the priests in Egypt,

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Remember, they had a lot of weird, sloppy pagan gods.

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They had crocodiles and half animals, half hippopotamus, half man.

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They had all sorts of weird stuff.

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It gets weirder the more you dive into it.

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They had a lot of weird stuff.

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But when you think about the priests,

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to the degree you've ever thought about the priests of Egypt,

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when you think of the priests of Egypt, what do you picture?

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Well, if you look at the hieroglyphics and the like,

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what you'll see in many cases was that they would wear animal heads

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or wolves or crocodile things over their own face at intervals.

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The priest actually routinely dressed in leopard skins.

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And in many cases, the priest entered into their God's presence

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largely naked with just tatters of clothes, if that.

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Now, in fairness, what they were doing was quite refined

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compared to some of their contemporaries.

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If you go look in some of the other pagan cultures,

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the way that the priest dressed, oh, dear heavens,

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animalistic, tribalistic, I don't know another way to describe it,

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just dreadful, just absolutely dreadful.

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And God says, you, my people, are not going to be like them.

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You're not going to be dressed in the animal face paint and the helmets of crocodiles and the like.

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No, you are going to be different.

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Your worship is going to be refined.

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So God is introducing a wardrobe in these verses that had no equivalent at that time that it was introduced.

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And it was a wardrobe that was not intended to flatter the sinful priests that wore it.

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It was a wardrobe that was intended to glorify the God that the priest was showing up to meet.

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That's the objective here.

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Now, if you look closely at all the details, which we don't have the time to do,

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there's a lot of commentaries that will do this for you,

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but if you look closely, every detail, every stitch of fabric

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was specifically designed and decreed by God for a specific purpose,

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and they conveyed specific meanings.

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I'll look at just one, verse 32.

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It tells us that the priest's robe was to be made of a singular fabric.

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In other words, it had a hole cut out, and you would put it on like a poncho.

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You put on the poncho robe, you put on this thing, it's one fabric,

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and your head comes out the middle.

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We see that in verse 32.

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Now, what's the implication of that?

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What's the implication of that?

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The historian Josephus, he said that their coats did not consist of two parts,

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nor was it sewed upon the shoulder, nor on the side,

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but it was one long piece of woven work.

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why does this matter? What does it point to? Well, do you remember the description

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of the clothing that Christ was wearing prior to his crucifixion, the clothing that they cast

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lots to obtain? Do you remember the description of what Jesus was wearing, the great high priest

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was wearing, right before he offered the greatest sacrifice to ever be offered, his own blood?

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We read this in John 19.

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The soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus,

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they took his garments and made four parts,

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to each soldier a part and also the tunic.

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But the tunic was without seam,

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woven from the top in one piece.

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And so they said, therefore, among themselves,

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let us not tear it, but we will cast lots

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for those whose it shall be.

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When the priests approached God in his tabernacle,

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The very clothing they wore typified the clothing that Christ himself would wear

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centuries later when he went to the cross to offer the greatest priestly service that he could,

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the greatest sacrifice that could be offered.

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There's continuity here because God is a God who is consistent.

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There are types, and there are shadows, and then there is fulfillment.

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And that's what we see here.

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Even the small detail way back in Exodus about the one piece of the fabric that the priests

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were to wear, you point forward and you find, aha, I think I know what they were doing.

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I think I know what God was doing here.

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So that's what we see here, the seamless robe.

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The seamless robe, as an aside, one piece of fabric.

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You and I, we need to be clad in what?

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The white robe of Christ's righteousness.

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In order to stand before our God on that one day, we need to be clad in the white robe

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of his righteousness.

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what we see here is that it's a singular, singular righteousness, not bifurcated into

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different parts. So even in clothing, God was teaching. Even in clothing, even in this detail

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long ago, God was trying to point forward to a fulfillment that ultimately his people would be

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able to apprehend, even if they didn't understand it at the moment. Now, I don't know when it was,

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two weeks ago, I talked about the mercy seat. It feels like it's been a little while. Whenever I

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talked about the mercy seat, and whatever Sunday that was, do you remember what the mercy seat is?

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You have the Ark of the Covenant, and on top of the Ark is the mercy seat.

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The mercy seat is made of gold. It's one piece.

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But on either side of the mercy seat is what?

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The cherubim. On either side of the mercy seat.

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And God himself would dwell in the middle of the cherubim on the mercy seat,

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and blood would be sprinkled from sacrifices upon the mercy seat.

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And if you remember right, a couple weeks ago, we considered how even that detail,

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Just like the one-piece tunic, even that detail looked ahead to something significant.

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The mercy seat found its fulfillment when Mary Magdalene looked into the tomb

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and she saw the blood-spattered grave slab on which Christ had now laid on either side of it was what?

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The cherubim. Either side was the angels.

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Mary Magdalene, all those centuries later, saw the fulfillment with her own eyes

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of that which the mercy seat typified.

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We're talking about just the tunic on the robe.

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My point is, if you study the tabernacle, what do you find?

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What you'll find is that repeatedly, consistently,

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there's things that God ordained for the tabernacle

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that find their fulfillment in stuff that might take centuries of time

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for us to fully understand.

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Some of it, some of it we won't understand

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until we're on that side of the veil.

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But at that point, because the tabernacle and the temple

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are a type of heaven just as the garden was,

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when we're on that side, we'll be able to look at the tabernacle

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and look at the temple and understand how every aspect typified what is there.

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So none of this is an accident.

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All of it is important.

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Okay, let's look at verses 36 to 38.

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Verse 36.

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You shall also make a plate of pure gold and a grave upon it,

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like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the Lord.

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And you shall put it on a blue cord, that it may be on the turban.

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It shall be on the front of the turban.

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So it shall be on Aaron's forehead,

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that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things

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with the children of Israel hallow in their holy gifts

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and it shall always be on his forehead

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that they may be accepted

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before the Lord

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let me ask you a question

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if you were to walk around

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Gulfport

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with the word holy tattooed to your forehead

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or wearing a little plate that said it

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do you think you would draw any attention

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I suspect you probably would

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of course you could put anything on your forehead

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you'd probably get some attention

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what would people ask though about that word

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Why that word?

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How would you respond to their questions?

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Well, in order to have any grasp of what it means to put holiness to the Lord on your forehead,

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let's start with a simple question.

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What does holiness mean?

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What does the word holy mean, someone?

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What does the word holy mean?

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Set apart.

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Sometimes we confuse holiness with righteousness.

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They're somewhat different.

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Holiness means that God has set you apart.

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You are called a holy.

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We are a holy people.

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holy priesthood, a holy nation. We are set apart by God for his purposes. We are holy. We are holy.

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In Revelation 7, actually, I think, Gardner, you mentioned aspects of this in last week's sermon,

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but Revelation 7, which describes end times, future events, we read this. After these things,

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I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth,

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that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. Then, then I saw another

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angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. Then he cried with a loud voice

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to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, do not harm the

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earth or the sea or the trees until, until we have sealed the servants of our God upon their

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foreheads, upon their foreheads. And it goes on to talk about the 144,000. It goes on to talk about

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those that God has set apart. That God has set apart who will not endure the same judgment

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that is going to befall the wicked. We see this in Revelation. God sets apart his people. Way

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back here in Exodus, we see that we are holding his floor on their forehead. The same principle

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is applied in a symbolic spiritual sense here in Revelation. This is a way of God saying that these

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people are mine. That these people are mine. They are holy, set apart from all the darkness,

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set apart from all the wicked, set apart for all those consigned to the depths of hell.

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These people are special. These people are holy. These people are mine. That's what's being

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signified here when you put holy on your forehead. There's no greater future or hope we could have

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them to symbolically have this on our forehead. Now, holy, you could say it's being utilized in

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this text as a noun, as a place or thing, a holy man, holy nation, what have you. However, holiness

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is not just a noun, it's also an adjective. You and I should be aspiring to be holy. What does

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that practically look like? If you're called to be set apart, what does that mean? For many of us,

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it means nothing, because the word holy, we don't know what to do with. We just throw that up and

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say, well, God's holy. I don't know how it applies to me. And we don't understand that those that

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God has marked and stamped and sealed as his should act as those who are marked and sealed

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and stamped as his. Being holy is not just a noun referring to a holy man, that holy guy,

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or even a holy nation, or even a holy priesthood. It's also an adjective that is supposed to describe

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you. Does it? What does scripture tell us? Be holy as I am holy is the message God gives to us.

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I am set apart from the gods of the Egyptians.

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I am set apart from the gods of the pagans.

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I am set apart from all of that.

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I am holy.

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You should be too.

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But that means if you want to be holy,

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that means you have to make choices that are in accord with that desire.

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That means fathers, husbands, sons, watch your time on your cell phone.

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Watch your time on your computer.

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Watch what your eyes look at.

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It means mothers, daughters, wives, all of us need to have a reckoning with the word holy

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and say, how can my attitudes, appetites, and affections be more refined this week?

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How can I live as a person who's set apart from this sinful world

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rather than someone that continues to dive headfirst into it with every decision that I make?

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Be holy as I am holy. Be called apart.

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So here we see it as an adjective that is to be aspired towards,

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Not just by priests long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but by you and I as well.

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So holy.

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Now, when we think of holiness in the corporate context as a church, what does that mean for us as a body?

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Well, it means a lot, more than we have time to talk about.

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But at a minimum, it means this.

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If you're a fan of alliteration, you're going to like this.

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Some of you probably are.

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And I never do alliteration, so here you go.

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If you want to be holy, if we as a church want to be holy, we are to be reverent.

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We are to be respectful and we are to be regulated by God's word.

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A holy people is reverent.

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A holy people is respectful to their God.

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And a holy people regulates their practices and the things they do in this corporate body

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on the basis of what God has said in his book.

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He told the Israelites everything he expected them to do.

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And he didn't ask them to be innovators and come up with different ideas as they went.

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Now, we do not have the same directions given to us from the tabernacle

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that applied to first present Gulfport, and yet the principles have not departed.

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I'm not wearing pomegranates as far as I know, but the principles,

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the principles for everything we see in tabernacle worship are to apply.

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Furthermore, the things we are to do when we come into church or when we worship

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or as we lead as officers, we are reverentially approach everything we do

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with him in mind, his glory in mind, and we are to look to his word

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to dictate how that reverence is supposed to be applied in a case-by-case,

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choice-by-choice basis. How do we approach music? How do we approach prayer time? How do we approach

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activities of this church? How do we approach the worship service? All this is to be dictated by him,

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no differently than was dictated centuries ago. Although we have flexibility in terms of the

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parameters, the principles remain, and we are to adhere to those principles. So we see these

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things here. Let's look at the block of our final verses, verses 39 through 43.

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Verse 9, you shall skillfully weave the tunic of fine linen thread.

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You shall make the turban of fine linen.

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You shall make the sash of woven work.

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For Aaron's sons, you shall make tunics.

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You shall make sashes for them.

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You make hats for them, for glory, for beauty.

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You shall put them on Aaron, your brother, and upon his sons with him.

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You shall anoint them, consecrate them, and sanctify them,

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that they may minister to me as priests.

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And you shall make for them linen trousers to cover their nakedness.

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They shall reach from waist to the thighs.

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They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they come into the tabernacle of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, that they should not incur iniquity and die.

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It should be a statute forever, a statute forever, to him and to his descendants after him.

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You know, a few years ago, I heard a quote from a sociologist who was traveling overseas.

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This guy was traveling overseas, and he was studying the religions of the Far East.

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he was studying their leadership and the like now when he came back stateside he did an interview

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with an american journalist the american journalist asked him what did you see what did you learn

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as he studied these foreign religions in the far east what did you learn as you saw these things

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what did you learn as you looked at the leaders in those settings he said well one thing that stood

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out to me was that the leaders of some of these far east mystical religions he said they seemed

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really a holy man. The guy asked him, well, what do you mean by that? He says, well, they live on

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tops of mountaintops. They dress all in white. They couldn't say a word for three years, things

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like that. He saw things that in his mind convinced him that those Far Eastern leaders, because they

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didn't speak for three years, they lived at the top of the mountain or they dressed all in white

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or whatnot. He looked at these things and he said, because they were living differently from all

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their peers, that they must have this special connection with God, that they were therefore

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holy men. Now, the journalist thought about that, and so he asked him a follow-up question.

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He said to the sociologist, he says, you've spent time in the North American church, and the guy

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said, yeah. He said, well, what did you observe in those settings? Specifically, what did you

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observe about the pastors and the leaders in those settings? Would you refer to them as holy men?

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The guy thought about it for a minute and said, no.

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He says, they seem more, more often, like businessmen.

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They seem like the chairman of the board in their local church.

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They seem like CEOs of a franchise or a business of some kind,

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but they don't necessarily seem like holy men.

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I think there's an indictment in there somewhere

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for the way those in my vocation have operated.

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The researcher thought that what made one holy

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was being set apart through practice.

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He had no doctrinal understanding of what really makes one holy,

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but he saw the set-apartness, and that resonated to him,

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whereas he saw that the North American evangelical 21st century pastor

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was content not necessarily on being set apart himself

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or having his church set apart from the world,

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but rather making himself and his church more like the world

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in order to grow and to thrive and be relevant and the like.

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A business approach is what has been taken.

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I don't think he's wrong when he said it.

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One of the failings of the modern evangelical church

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is that we've derived our personal and our corporate,

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meaning our polity, our personal and our corporate practices

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from the business world rather than from Scripture.

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In the process, we've subjugated that which is right beneath that which works.

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Do you understand this?

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This is the great indictment of modern 21st century evangelical American church.

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We've increasingly subjugated that which is right to that which works,

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to that which seems to fill our pews,

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to that which seems to allow us to interact well with our community,

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to that which seems to be being used of God.

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And yet, I suspect he can look down at those approaches

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and utter a single word, Ichabod.

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Why?

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Because the glory has departed.

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God did not call the church to be a Fortune 500 company

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that fits in with everything around us.

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He called us to be set apart.

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He called us to be different.

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He called us to be a light in the darkness,

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not to be just as shadowy as the world around us.

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And so it is an indictment when we look at the North American 21st century evangelical church

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and we don't see holy men or holy people, we see something altogether different.

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Now within that visible body, there is undoubtedly a remnant that is holy.

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Remember the difference between the visible and the invisible church?

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The visible church is the church that you see.

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The visible church is that which wears crosses, has steeples, whatever denominational stripe they have,

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no matter what they really believe, no matter how they live.

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The visible church is whatever looks like Christianity.

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The invisible church is the smaller component within that larger majority,

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the smaller component that actually is of the faith.

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And it's usually a remnant.

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In the time of Israel, that's exactly how it worked.

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In the time of Israel, they were called to be a holy nation set apart.

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Yet how often was those who were holy a small minority within the larger whole?

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Ask Elijah when he was on Mount Carmel

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as he was looking at Ahab and Jezebel

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and all these priests of Israel.

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The leadership of the nation,

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ask him what it feels like to be part of the remnant

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because the remnant, I think, is dominant

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and it has been for centuries.

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With that said, as New Testament believers,

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we're called to something better.

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We're called to something different.

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Now, returning to the tabernacle briefly

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as we look to wrap up,

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you read about the tabernacle,

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you read about the instructions,

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you read about all these things.

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Are we called to follow them to a T?

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Well, no.

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We've said this before.

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We're not called to follow the specifics,

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but we are called to implement the principles.

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If the priesthood was to be holy and set apart,

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you and I should be holy and set apart as well.

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But we need to ask ourselves a question.

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In the Old Testament, we know who the priests were.

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There were the guys in the tall pointy hats.

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There were the guys that had holiness to the Lord.

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There were the guys with the pomegranates and the bells.

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We know who the priests were.

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Let me ask you a question.

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In the New Testament covenant economy,

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in the church, who are the priests?

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I'm looking at them.

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And what a joy and what a privilege this is.

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At one point, God appointed one dude

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to periodically meet with God.

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And even then, he had to be consecrated to the max,

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lest he die and they have to drag him out with a rope.

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But on the cross, when Jesus said,

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it is finished, what happened in the temple?

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What happened to the veil?

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It was ripped in two, rent in two.

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What does that symbolize?

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It symbolizes this, that you and I now have access, unfettered access to our God.

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We don't send one guy in once a year to go meet with him.

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You and I, as the author of Hebrews said, can now boldly approach the throne of grace.

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So much has changed.

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We don't have sacrifices like they did back then.

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Why?

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We don't need them.

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We have one sacrifice offered once and for all, the Lamb of God.

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Jesus Christ himself was the fulfillment of what all those dead animals typified.

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All the things that you see in Old Testament worship, they had principles.

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They were important. This is not irrelevant.

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And yet, they anticipated and looked forward.

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There were shadows and types of a later fulfillment.

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And because of that, no, we don't have the same exact practices,

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and yet we do have the exact same principles.

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You and I are called to approach God corporately in individuals

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and the same motivation of heart.

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Holiness to the Lord that we see in Scripture.

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Let me close with this final exhortation.

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If I may be so bold,

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I think you and I need a reckoning with the word holy.

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I think we need a reckoning with the word holy.

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Again, husbands, fathers, sons,

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we need to understand what it means to be holy and set apart.

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In the example that we're generating to our spouses,

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to our children, to those around us,

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we need to demonstrate what it is to be a holy man

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a culture that knows not holiness. J.C. Ryle said that a holy man walking down the street is a

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walking sermon. Why? Because when we live and act in accordance with what we believe, people notice

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because it's different than them. Husbands, fathers, sons, we're supposed to do this. Wives,

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mothers, daughters, it's no different. It's no different. You and I all need a reckoning with

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the word holy, and then we need to apply that word to the choices that we'll make even this week.

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On the day when we finally stand before God,

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if you could have just one word tattooed to your forehead when you met with Him,

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what word would it be?

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Well, I submit you could do a lot worse than the word holy.

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What word would God desire on your heart and life

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and your actions and your choices this week and for the rest of your days?

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What word would you desire to be known as?

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Successful? Generous? Loving? Kind?

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The world can be all that.

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There's secular lost people that can be generous and loving and kind.

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What are you called to be? What am I called to be?

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holy. That's the word we should aspire to. All the other things are gravy, but you and I are called

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to be holy and set apart. And that means you need to think through our actions, our choices,

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our words, our thoughts now in the days yet to come. Let's pray.