Father God, thank you again for bringing us here. Thank you for the opportunity to study these great hymns of the faith, and I ask that you would open our eyes to see the biblical truths that are contained in these awesome hymns. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so in recognition of Father's Day, happy Father's Day to all you guys who are fathers. We have a great privilege that as dads we get to imitate God and how we love our kids the way that he loves us. So what a great privilege. For those who are wondering about gifts for Father's Day, I stole this from a Babylon bee. This is what we get on Father's Day. This is really what we want. You may have to explain it for the room. That's right. So we have socks, that's what they're given for Father's Day, and then a battleship, what they really want. Yeah, it can be smaller. You know, guns, any kind of guns work fine on Father's Day. Or tools, you know, anything that's got a motor on it, as long as it's not electric, because that's for wimps. But yeah, this is it. So anyway, so happy Father's Day for everybody. So we're going to follow the same outline we did last week. We're going to look at the hymn itself. Then we're going to talk about the writer and the composer. look a little bit about the story behind the hymn, which all these hymns have great stories behind them. Then we're going to dive into the theological truths, and then we'll talk a little bit about the application experiences that each one of us may have with the hymn. So let's look at the hymn right now. This is Holy, Holy, Holy. The interesting note about this hymn is if you look at any of the denominations that are out there in any of their hymnals, you'll probably find this hymn. It's kind of rare in that it kind of goes across all the hymns. And it's been, ever since it was written, it's been a very popular hymn with all sorts of denominations. And I think we'll see the theological and biblical truths that are in it that make it so popular. So let's look at it. So this is the hymn. And so it's holy, holy, holy. And again, the three emphasis of these words, we know that from the Bible, this is how we for a millennium have been looking at how to emphasize something. So holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints adore Thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee, which work and art and evermore shall be. Fourth one, holy, holy, or third one, holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see, only thou art holy, there is none beside thee, perfect in power and love and purity. And the last stanza, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, all thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea, holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity, So that's our hymn, again one of the most iconic hymns in Christendom, and we're going to look at some of the big truths that are contained in that in a second. So let's take a look at Reginald Heber, and I go Heber because of Heber Springs, that's how it's spelled. It might be Heber. I don't know. Anybody can jump in. But this was the guy. He's a guy named Reginald Heber. And he was born in 1783. He was a pastor's kid in a small English village. And he enrolled in Oxford. He was trained at home, well trained, and then went to Oxford. And he excelled in poetry, of all things. And after graduation, what was interesting, his story brings him back to his hometown, where he takes over from his father, who's the minister in that hometown, and he becomes the vicar. He becomes the minister. And usually, there was only one church in that time period. And so he takes over this church. It's still standing today, terrible picture. But he takes over that church, big old stone church. You can still go over there today and see it. And he served there for 16 years. So his bent on poetry naturally gave him a keen interest in this hymnology. And so his desire was to write formal hymns. But unfortunately, the way that the church of the day, the Anglican church, they were pushing back on hymns. They didn't want the church to sing hymns. And so even though he was trying to get these hymns out there, His Anglican leader said we're not interested in that we don't want we don't want you to be singing hymns they were struggling with a lot of things and one of them was they were worried about the fact that they were thinking that the church was moving to a place that was not reverent and but he was in his desire to write really good hymns and He was attempting to do this, and they told him no. And his goal was to create hymns that celebrated different seasons within the Christian life. And so he wrote many hymns. And even though they told him he couldn't publish them, he continued to write these hymns for his local parish. And he produced about 57 hymns in all that he wrote. So a very fascinating guy in writing all these hymns. So one of his most famous hymns from Greenland's icy mountains showed his desire to spread the gospel to foreign nations. And so after he served so many years with his parish, you could see his desire was to become a missionary. He wanted to take the gospel out. And so that desire was fulfilled in 1822 when the church appointed him to oversee the Church of England's ministry to India, of all places. And so this ended up being a great thing, but also a tragic thing for him. So he traveled exclusively while serving in India. He felt it was very important to get out and see all of India. So he traveled all over it. And this was in the early 1800s that he was doing this. And they were going around establishing local churches. Not a terrible picture, but that was a picture of some of the cities in India at the time. And so on one of these trips, unfortunately, It was a super hot day, and he's preaching all day, and he becomes very sweaty and super hot, and he took a cold bath, and he died of a heart attack. So he only served over in India for about three years. And so what's interesting, you remember last week, after the one guy died in the fire, his wife found hymns in a trunk. This heber's wife also found his 57 hymns contained in a trunk. And she brought them out and actually had them published in 1827 in what was called Hymns Written and Adopted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year. So she actually fulfilled his desire of having these weekly hymns that could be sung all through the year commemorating certain things about Christian truths and orthodoxy and theology and celebrations. So it's very fascinating. So like I said, this hymnal was one of the first to group their hymns together in a liturgical occasion within the church year. So we have the same kind of thing. You'll see that we have certain hymns that we sing during the year that happen to go with Easter hymns. We all know what those are. We know what the Christmas hymns are. And so you can see that this was one of the early occasions of doing that. So this was in the early part of the church history after they published it. This was what they called the great Trinitarian hymn. And so when you look at this, holy, holy, holy is among these hymns. So there are a lot of hymns that celebrated the Trinity, but this is probably the most famous one. All right, so what about the music? The music was written by a man named John Bacchus Dykes. And he has an interesting story as well. He was an English clergyman and hymn writer. He composed over 300 tunes, so if you look in our hymnal, you'll see that Dykes shows up in many of them. So in 1860, he submitted music to support William Monk's work, and this was many years after the death of Heber, but in 1860 they were again trying to produce hymnals, and he produced a lot of music for William Monk's work, which was the hymns Ancient and Modern, and it featured Holy, Holy, Holy as one of those hymns, and he wrote the tune called Nicaea. So why do you think he named this music Nicaea? What happened at the Council of Nicaea that relates to this hymn particularly? Yep, the Nicene Creed, which was what? What did they? Yeah, think about it. That's where they really came and said it's Trinitarianism. We believe in a triune God. And the Council of Nicaea was fighting against these guys that were believing that Christ was not God. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that later, but he named it Nicaea. And so that has been the tune that has been associated mostly with holy, holy, holy since that time. And so again, it was a tribute toward the Council of Nicaea about the doctrine of the Trinity. So the music and hymn composed one of the rare hymns that printed in just about every hymnal out there, as I said. So what's interesting is, and we don't celebrate this, but over in the Anglican Church at the time and some of these other churches, they have what was called Trinity Sunday. And it was the first Sunday after Pentecost. And so they celebrated the doctrine of the Trinity and really they were working on combating this Aryan heresy that Jesus is not co-eternal with God. And so what's interesting is we still have this today, and I'll talk about that in a little bit when we get to the theology part of it. But it was sung traditionally on this Trinity Sunday, which was the first Sunday after Pentecost to celebrate the Trinity. Any questions or thoughts on our writer and our composer here? It's interesting that, was that the first publication? I knew she printed it, but was it kind of the first time it became a hymn? Yeah, that's where it really got accepted and got out there, because that hymnal went wide. Yeah, that was the same hymnal that Abide With Me first appeared in. There you go. And so, because it was the most popular hymnal of all time, it kind of shows the received tradition of important moments like that. Yeah, because you can see it's almost 20, 35 years after his death, we see this showing up with the music of Nicaea. So pretty interesting how these things come to us. So let's look at the theological significance of this thing. So if you look at our Trinity Hymnal, it's listed under the Holy Trinity. And so even though we see holy, holy, holy, it's listed under the Trinity, or the Holy Trinity as the Trinity Hymnal calls it. And so when we look at that, what that is pointing to is we see two major theological truths that are jumping out at us, and both have to do with the character and nature of God himself. So the first one is that God is holy. That's the one that stands out, right? Holy, holy, holy, right? But amen. And so when we look at this, You know, you can look at some of the scripture that talks about God being holy, and this is probably His overarching attribute, His holiness, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that characteristic of God and why it's so significant, especially as it relates to things like our salvation and God's plan of salvation. So Isaiah 6-3, And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. So remember this is when Isaiah is brought into the presence of heaven and he's looking into it and what does he see? He sees these angels calling holy, holy, holy to one another. And John sees the same thing when he writes in Revelation 4.8. And the four living creatures, each of them had six wings with full eyes all around and within. And day and night, they never ceased to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. So you can see that that hymn was directly pulls from Revelations 4.8. And then we see in Psalm 145, the Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. So again, we're seeing the Bible pushing the attribute of God's holiness, His righteousness, that He is otherworldly from us, very different from us, He is holy. So the second big characteristic trait that we're seeing there is we have God in three persons, the Blessed Trinity. That's why they sung on Trinity Sunday. And so as we look at these things, we see that the scripture not only talks about God being holy, but God is one and three at the same time. So let's look at the one God things that we see. And mostly in the Old Testament, we see a proclamation that God is one. We also see it repeated in the New Testament, but then we see the Trinitarian piece of God flesh more out, or flesh out more in the New Testament. So let's look at Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 5. Hero Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your might. You'll see Jesus repeat that in the New Testament when they come and ask him about what the greatest commandment is. So we see in Isaiah 44, 6, and the chapter, verse of this is, besides me there is no God, and the scripture says, thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, The Lord of hosts, I am the first, I am the last, besides me there is no God. Okay, so now we jump over to the New Testament, Mark 12, 29. And so what this is, is Jesus is answering the questions of the scribe that said, what's the most important commandment? They were arguing among themselves. So they turned to Jesus and said, what's the most important commandment? Jesus says this. He says, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. So you see Jesus repeating back what Isaiah said as he's coming forward and saying, this is the most important commandment. And it starts out with the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So again, this accusation that we worship three gods is not right. We have one God, but he is revealed in three different people. And so that's one of the mysteries that we have about the Godhead. So when we look at 1 Corinthians, we see again, therefore, As to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. Again, if you look at that Corinthians, you'll see that it's in parentheses, showing that, again, you have the Apostle Paul quoting the Old Testament. And in Ephesians 4.6, Paul writes, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. And then we see 1 Timothy, Paul writes, for there is one God There's one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. So you can see he's kind of combining Christ and God together here, and this is where the Arians went so badly wrong. And so we'll talk about that in just a little bit again. But the New Testament then starts moving about to speaking in God in three persons. And we start to see the revelation about God's salvation plan for us in the Godhead, the three people that come out. We start seeing it more and more. If you look at Romans 8, and you study it, and I won't read the whole chapter, but all through Romans 8 you see that Paul is talking about the work of the Spirit in regenerating the Christian, and he's talking about Christ, and he calls Him Lord, and he talks about the Father. So all through Romans 8 you see that he's speaking of God in three different people, three different persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And so we see more Specific examples when we get into some of these other ones say look at Ephesians and we'll read all this This is the spiritual blessings in Christ Listen to how Paul in Ephesians 1 3 through 14 how he's how he's talking about Christ as Lord But he also talks about God the Father and he talks about the Spirit. So you see he's inner He's he's using all three of the persons as he's talking about the one God. Remember we've looked at those other of those other scriptures up here that talk about a one God, but here he is, listen to what he says. This is Ephesians 1, 3-14. It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So you see right away, he's distinguishing God the Father and the Lord Christ. So there's not two gods there, it's the same God. And he says, so God the Father who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved, Beloved being capitalized. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the richness of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose. You've got to love these massive run-on sentences. which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things to him, things in heaven and things on earth. So you see how he's pulling Christ into this plan. He says, this is the plan. Christ is the one that pulls us back. He pulls it all together, unites himself with us. And he says, in Him we've obtained all inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things to the counsel of His will, talking about God the Father. So that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with what? We're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So now we have the third portion of the Trinity showing up, who is our guarantee and our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. So you see in this one long chapter or paragraph, you see Paul specifically talking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So 2 Thessalonians 2.13-14, We see again, this is Paul, he says, but we ought to always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved through the sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. This is he who called you through the gospel so that you may attain glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, we see all three persons of the Trinity showing up in this letter. Paul's not the only one, we have Peter, in his epistle, he says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, so he's identifying again, there's God the Father, then he says, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience in Jesus Christ, and for the sprinkling of His blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. So again, we see all three persons of the Godhead showing up in this epistle to the Christians of his day. And then lastly, we look at 1 John 5, 7, and he talks about that there are three that testify. He's talking about the Godhead testifying to Christ. And so when we look at this, we see that not only do we have God's holiness being portrayed in this hymn, but we also see the three persons of the Trinity. So it's interesting to note here in 2022, there was a survey done by Ligonier Ministries, that was R.C. Spoles' old ministry. They did a survey of the church and about certain doctrines and orthodoxy within the church and what people believed. 73% of those people that were polled believed that Jesus was created by God. So here we go. What heresy have we slipped back into? 73% of evangelicals were right back to the Arian heresy. that said Jesus was a created being. So it only took us 1,700 years to completely dump the Nicene Creed, but we did it. So the majority of Christians actually believe that Jesus is a created being, that he's a human. That's it. They don't actually believe that Jesus is God. And so we have this bizarreness of the fact that we're bringing back these heresies. One of the other odd heresies that's out there that 53% of the church believe that there's no inherent sin nature in mankind. Which heresy does that go back to? Pelagianism. And so what Pelagius taught was that man's not inherently corrupt, that his sin nature has not made it so he can, you know, that he is completely alienated from God. And so we see a church that's moving back to these early heresies and moving away from the true gospel of Christ. You know, the cross is central to us in the fact that the cross is the only way that we're united back to Christ. So why is that? We're about to talk about this when we get into the holiness of God. And so chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession is interesting. What's chapter 1 all about? Scripture. Chapter 2 goes into the character of God, and it's titled, Of God and the Holy Trinity. And so you can see, all through the Westminster Confession, They are speaking these truths about God's character and His Trinity is so important in that character. Because remember when we talked about salvation, we looked and said, each person of the Trinity has a function in our salvation. You see God the Father, He sends the Son, He accepts the Son's work, the Son goes on our behalf, He dies on the cross for our sins, God accepts that, and then God the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to make it efficacious. So all three of them are working in this salvific effort that we see that God does for our salvation. And so overall, this thing is a very interesting hymn, and the fact that this hymn is a song of praise to this awesome God that we worship. And it's focusing, you see, on these two main character traits, one of his holiness and in recognition of his three-person nature. So if we look at this holiness trait, though, and this is what I want to emphasize this morning, why is the holiness of God so important? The holiness of God is important because it, above all the rest of his traits, is what really drives, if you think about it, his plan of salvation. We have a big problem, don't we? And it's our sin nature. And so when we look at the holiness of God, we can see that particular character trait is what really is driving the entire plan of salvation. You know, if you look at Hebrews 12, 14 it says this it says strive for peace with everyone and for holiness, and then it says this Without which no one will see the Lord So you can see God is holy we are not and in Hebrews He's saying you're not going to be reconciled to God unless you are holy. That's a massive problem, isn't it? But the problem is being driven by the fact that we are not holy and God is. And he would not be holy if he accepted us as we are. This idea that somehow God doesn't care about your sin is ludicrous. It is the scourge of our meaningism that is driving a lot of the bereftness that we see within the church. And so this idea that somehow we're contributing to our salvation, or that we have an ability to choose God, and that God just made our salvation basically available to us as long as we move toward Him, this is ludicrous. And so anytime that we place ourselves in this position where we have a say in our salvation, then we're putting ourselves in the place of God's glory, and we're saying that we can accept and we can move in holiness. We're denying the fact that we are, in our sin nature, unable to do that. And so we must understand God's sovereignty, and related to that is this holiness of God. He is holy, we are not, and there's no way we can become holy, but yet we see this thing, it says, unless you're holy, you're not gonna see God. So what does that mean? Let's go through some of these other scriptures. So Matthew 5, 8, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. This is Jesus' own words. Pure in heart, well, who's pure in heart? Not us. So who's he talking about? So we'll get into that. 1st Peter 1, 15 through 16. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all of your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. Go back to the Old Testament, Leviticus. The Lord says to his people, for I am the Lord your God, consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am holy. So we see this trait is showing up where God is saying, I'm holy and you must be holy. That puts us in a big bind, doesn't it? Because we're not holy, so what does God do? You see his plan of salvation coming beautifully forward, and I'll talk here in about a second, I'll make our conclusion. In 1 John, he says, beloved, we are God's children now. and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." So now we're starting to see the mystery resolved here. We have a holy God that's calling us to be holy, and how do we get there? It's not through our works, is it? It's not through anything we do. We're connected to Christ and He is holy. That's what John is talking about here. He's saying your holiness is through your connection to Christ. When we're regenerated, when the Holy Spirit comes in and changes our hearts, We are declared justified before God because of what Jesus did, but that's not all. We're now connected to the nature of Christ, and therefore His holiness is imputed to us, just like His works of perfect works are imputed to us for righteousness, His holiness comes to us too. And this is the only way we stand before God. And so we see this holiness trait that's sitting up here that says, you cannot come to me unless you are holy. Look at the tabernacle. Look at what God did. Look at in Israel. You see it over and over again that the people of Israel can't just approach God. This isn't hippie Jesus on the beach. It's not happening that way. Remember the mountain? God calls him forth and speaks the Ten Commandments to him, and he warns Moses, do not let them touch the mountain. Why? Because it's holy. And if they touched it, they were dead. So you see this God that says, I'm holy and you must be holy too. And so his whole plan of salvation is to do that. And you become holy through your connection to Christ by your faith in him, in him alone. And so again, that's why I love this hymn. It hits that main character trait that drives everything within Christianity as far as our salvation goes. So Romans 12 1 through 2, I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercy of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. You see how he's driving you that way? Sanctification, when you finally reach heaven, you're fully sanctified and you're connected fully to God through Christ, and therefore you are fully holy before him. It's an amazing plan of salvation that God has, knowing that he is holy and anything that comes near him must be holy. That was very clear in the Old Testament, wasn't it? And we see how he solves that problem that we have, our sin problem and our holiness problem is solved. So we see in Leviticus, he again, speak to all the congregation, Say to them, you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Remember, he gave all those laws to Israel, but he also gave them what? He gave them a sacrificial system, because he knew they weren't going to be able to do it. Why did they present sacrifices? If they were God's people, who cared? Because they kept singing. And God made provision for that and said, you're my people, but you must be holy. In order to come to me, you must have a sacrifice. And I'll declare that holy before you. And so we see that all pointing toward, it's all types and shadows toward Christ as the ultimate sacrifice on which we are completely holy before God through Christ. First Thessalonians for God who has not called us for impurity but to holiness. So we can see that this is the conclusion of the matter. We're declared holy in Christ. We're righteous before a holy God who had to cleanse his own people with his blood, capital H, so that they can stand in his presence and be like him. What an awesome plan of salvation God has. He doesn't deny his character in his effort to change us or to bring us into his presence and fellowship. This is the love of God. This is the essence of John 3.16, that this blood of the Savior is what makes us righteous before God. It's what God considers to be the holiness. And we're not just declared righteous, he actually changes us. And we become righteous through Christ. And in heaven, we will all share in that holiness of Christ's perfect nature. So any thoughts on that when you look at this hymn and that character trait of holiness and why it's so important that we focus on it like we did? Come on, Baby Jones, I got something from you. All right, so practical application of this hymn. If you look at the hymn as we sing it this morning, think about these things as you go through it and you're looking at the words. So we see that God is almighty and he's full of mercy. Again, he doesn't have to come to us and create a plan of salvation. God is perfect in himself, he had perfect unity within the Godhead. And yet he creates us, and not only does he create us, but he says I want to be in fellowship with you. But then we sin, big problem. God says I'm holy, but I'm still going to fix that problem too. You'll be holy through Christ. So he's full of mercy. He alone is holy, there's none like him. What's interesting is they mention the angels in this hymn. And we in the angels owe him our worship. We cast our crowns before him, falling down before him. It is important for us to recognize that we are not God's equals. He is the Creator God, and we are His creation. And therefore, because of that, we owe allegiance to Him. We owe obedience to Him. He's the Creator. He gets to do what He wants. We have to follow His will. And you see this in the angels as they bow down before God. And this hymn calls us to do the same thing. God's eternal. He's perfect in power, love, and purity. Again, you see these great attributes being assigned in this that go along with His holiness. And of course, The essence of his nature is his trinity. So what we need to recognize, this is first and foremost a praise song, and it should show our adoration for our holy king. And that's why it's so beloved among most Christian denominations. And it speaks to this perfect character of God and his love for his people, and what our response needs to be back to him as worshipers. You know, you see God, this beautiful plan He has that costs Him so much to pull us into it, to make us holy before Him, and it shows that love of His people. And then what should be our response? It should be exactly this song, this worship. So this is what's due to God, by the way, by His creation. You know, when we don't worship God, it is pure rebellion. You know, we see so much in our culture today that people have discounted God. They don't believe in Him. It's pure rebellion against Him. We live in a Romans 1 world. We've exchanged the truth for a lie. We're worshiping the creation instead of the Creator. And why does Paul say that? Because he is the Creator. And therefore, we have a due to God. We owe Him as our Creator. The Westminster Confession says this, To him is due from angels and men and every other creature whatsoever worship, service, or obedience that he is pleased to require of them. So the Bible calls us to worship God and that is our due because he is the God creator. Sproul puts it this way and I'll end it here. Sproul says this, by the nature of his perfection and holiness, I already owe him everything. So let's say that again, by the nature of his perfection and holiness, I already owe him everything. I have an inherent obligation to obey, worship, honor, and glorify God because exaltation from the lips of his creature is his due. So you look at that. What is due? Exaltation from the lips of his creature. That's our due to God. And so when we sing that song today, when we sing this hymn, this is what we're doing. We're lifting up our praise and worship before God. We're repeating back his beautiful character traits to him that are due our worship because we are his creatures. And what's amazing about it is we're rebellious creatures. And yet God has come and said, I'm gonna fix that problem too. And it's gonna cost me everything. But because he loves you so much, he's bringing us to it. And so therefore, it's not just that he's our creator, he's also our redeemer. And so awesome, awesome hymn, and that's why it's one of the most popular that's probably ever been written. And I hope as you sing it this morning, you think about these things and think about the beauty and the holiness of God and his trinity and what we owe him as his people. All right, thoughts, experiences with the hymn. Any thoughts about it? I'm going to take a drink. water for those who are listening. Yeah, that's a great that's a great way to put it You know that a lot of the praise songs we have today are making us feel good You know our praise should be to to make God see that we love him. And it's about him. And we know who he is. It's not some ethereal, undescribed concept. Oh, we love you, lover of me. OK. OK. I'm so special. Yeah. Wow. It's really, yeah. But there's a bunch of those that are like that, but we see it here. And I think your point is right. The more we understand the character of God, by the way, that's what the Puritans did probably more than anybody else in Christendom. They understood the character of God and their lives reflected it. That's why they were called Puritans because they wanted to live in holiness and imitation of God. You know, that is what we're called to do as Christians, to imitate God, to do the things that are like God, and his main attribute is this holiness. Doesn't save us, Christ already did that, but we're saved unto being like Christ, which means we move in holiness toward God. And so, these praise songs that worship ourselves, not so good, you see praise songs like this that are worshiping God, that's really what we're after. Any other thoughts? I have a question. Did you recognize any of the other 57 or whatever? Yeah, there's a bunch. And of course, I can't remember them off the top of my head. But yeah, he's got a lot of good hymns. And I think I'd go through there. And I was reading some of his other ones that he wrote. And they're just as rich. And he seemed to understand the nature of God well. And it reflects in it, in his hymn. Especially this one. It's just holy, holy, holy. It's just one of the best. Any other thoughts? Just think about, again, don't tell him I'm mad. We have hundreds of thousands of years of the best musical minds coming up with 300 songs of which we're familiar with one. I mean, we have a treasure trove where we get to pick and choose the best. It's really incredible what we have been given in terms of our worship and knowledge and theology and so forth. Yeah, we stand on the shoulders of giants as we worship. And what will we leave to our children and our grandchildren? Will they be able to stand on our shoulders? Will we point them back to Christ? Will we point to the richness that's contained in the truths of these scriptures? That's our real challenge, especially in a society today that's pushing so hard against God and trying to run away from him. The answer is not in politics. The answer is in the gospel. People's hearts change not because who we elect. They change because of who we worship. They change because who changes us. And that's the Holy Spirit coming and making us a people that is worthy of the liberty that we so grasp in our nation. But the true liberty is the fact that we're freed from sin. and that for eternity we're gonna be with God and we will be holy like He is holy. What an awesome thought. Think about your life without sin, just for a second. What would that be like? It'd be great, because everything that's screwed up in this world goes back to sin, every bit of it. And to be holy, to not sin, what a thought. I mean, it just kind of boggles your mind. And then think about the effects of sin, the disease, the death, the suffering that we see. You know, we're on the edge of World War III right now. You're like, what the heck? And so we pray, you know, come Lord Jesus, because we know that all ends when he comes back and that we are going to be holy like him. So anyway, great, great thoughts. Keep it in mind as we sing it this morning. Let me close this up in prayer. Father God, you are holy, holy, holy. And Father, we are just so grateful as we look at your character, we look at your essence of the Trinity, we see the work that you've done on our behalf. And what astounds us is we owe you, you don't owe us anything, and yet you loved us so much that you and the Godhead moved in such a way as to redeem a people for yourselves. And Father, we're just so grateful. for the salvific work of Christ and the plan of salvation from, like it said in Ephesians, before time began, you put together this plan, this glorious covenant of salvation and redemption for your people. And Father, we're so grateful for that. We ask now as we get ready to go to worship that you would help our hearts. Help us to turn away from the thoughts of this world, Help us to turn our focus toward a holy and awesome God who loves us so much that he gave his own son for us. Help us to focus on that so that we may lift up this praise to you of which you are certainly worthy. And we pray this in Christ's holy name, amen.