May 17th 2020 - What is Holiness? - Pastor Jeff

2 Corinthians chapter 6, and to be honest with you, as Cary can attest, this is not what

I prepped last week for today. As our people on the camera, the witness space will know, that we're going back to the study of Israel.

But I've decided, with only half of us being here, with so many visual aids, looking at that comprehensive history of Israel, we needed to wait until we were all back, so I wouldn't have to just keep repeating stuff.

And so, some things have happened and transpired in my own life, and some in the lives of our family, that I thought that this was something that we may need to hear.

Okay? We're going to talk about holiness. Now, listen to me for a second.

What is holiness? Is it you have a shirt, a tie, you have the biggest

King James Bible, you don't smoke, cuss, drink, or have tattoos? Is that holiness?

Is that what holiness is? Now, what's the definition of holiness? What is holiness?

Say it together. Set apart. To be set apart. Guys, remember,

I can make this microphone holy right now. You ready? Somebody stole my

Hyundai. Be healed! It is now holy, right?

No. No, no, no. Here's what it means for separation. Every time in the Old Testament, you see

God saying, sanctify, make these vessels holy, it meant they couldn't be used for anything else.

Okay? The syringe that the doctor takes out of the plastic container and puts a shot in you and then throws it away, it's holy.

It was separated from everything else to be used specifically for that purpose, specifically on you.

That's what holiness is. And we have so absolutely jacked that up.

We have sat there and looked and said, well, this is holy, this is not holy. I had a preacher once tell me, me wearing sunglasses was unholy because it was a sign of rebellion.

Trust me. That gentleman did not have a good rest of the day because he and I theologically went through a systematic study of sunglasses and it was a really quick conversation ending with, you're an idiot.

Guys, holiness is being set apart. Let's read. Everyone in this room, if you've got your

Bible, some of y 'all are still looking at me, come on, where's your

Bible? It's on your phone, it's on your lap. Hey, guys, just a quick check.

When you come to Bible study or you come to learn about God's Word, quick, quick thing that might help you, bring a

Bible, okay? I mean, just right away that might really help you out, okay? So, let's read 2

Corinthians 6, starting in verse 14. 2

Corinthians 6, starting in verse 14. It says this, do not be mismatched with unbelievers.

For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

What agreement does Christ have on Milton? Nevermind, some of you don't get that.

Belal, what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? And what agreement does

God's sanctuary have with idols? For we are the sanctuary of the living God, as God said.

And every time you read that, know that he's fixing to quote something in the Old Testament. This right here comes from Isaiah 52, but it says,

I will dwell among them and walk among them. I will be their God and they will be my people.

Therefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, sayeth the Lord. Sorry, went

King James there. Do not touch any unclean thing and I will welcome you. I will be a father to you and you will be my sons and daughters to me, says the

Lord Almighty. We want to talk a little bit here. I'm going to give you three points this morning about holiness.

Number one, holiness is defined by a contrast. Yes, separation is separation, but by implication, there has to be a contrast for there to be a separation.

Number two, holiness is a command. It's not a suggestion. It's not a denominational standard.

It is a commandment by God Almighty. And number three, holiness should be a constant.

Let's look at the first one. Holiness is a contrast. It should be a contrast.

It's unfortunate today. Many people come to church and this is what they're looking for.

They're looking for inspiration and they're looking for encouragement. And there's nothing wrong with that, okay?

That just doesn't happen to be my gift. But there's nothing wrong with being inspired and being encouraged.

Unfortunately, the Word of God, as it's written, is written on not inspiration and encouragement, it's written for how we should live.

Think about this. I've heard Baptist preachers say, every sermon I preach ends up at Calvary.

Well, unfortunately for you, you don't have a lot of text to glean your sermon notes from. Because to be honest with you,

Calvary is but a small part of the overall understanding of what we are to live like post -Calvary.

Most of the Gospels, even as it talks about the crucifixion, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, it's telling us how we should live as a holy and separated people.

But people don't want to hear about conviction. People don't want to know, this is what

I need to do. We want to say that we are holy people because we attend a stupid church service, but we're really not holy in our thoughts, our hearts, and in our actions.

So we have to understand that there has to be a contrast. Look here at verse 14 and 15.

And I'm not going to read them all again, but it gives you a clear understanding that light and darkness can't have fellowship.

So that means this. You cannot, as a white person, marry a black person, a

Mexicanese, a Filipino. See, you can't be unequally... You're awesome,

Carrie. You can't be unequally... And the worst one about it is, you, as a white person, can't marry a

Cajun. They're the lowest of the low. Like black,

Puerto Rican, Cajun, right there. Do you know that there are churches that actually teach that garbage?

When it says, don't be unequally yoked, church, do you actually believe in any height of arrogance?

I don't care what your grandmammy taught you. I don't care what the church taught you 50 years ago. Do you actually believe that the separation

God is calling to you is about melatonin in the skin? Or is

God calling you not to walk with sin? Which one do you think it is?

Any spirit -led person knows what the Word of God is talking about.

And it goes on for two verses talking about defining that separation.

Our holiness should be a contrast in how we walk, not according to the world or by cultural delineations, but by the

Word of the living God is the standard of how we should walk. Guys, our walk should be holy.

Now, what's that mean? Now, I'm going to prove this to you in just a second. But it does not mean this.

I've heard people over the last 27 years... I've only been a

Christian 27 -28 years, ok? Well, that's not true.

Maybe 29 years. 1988, whenever that was. But I have been told my whole life, if you dress a certain way, you're not proclaiming

Jesus Christ. Now, that usually what they're talking about is if you're wearing black, like our goth section back there.

Guys, listen. Listen to me. If your dress code, listen, if your dress code is defining your

Christianity, you have a lot of work to do. Oh my gosh!

If that is the height of your spiritual testimony and witness, you are a plebe of the lowest degree.

Now, let me also say this though, especially to you girls, especially some of you that are talking and not looking right here and need to listen to me.

You dress like a hoe? You advertise as a hoe?

Guess what you're going to get treated as? And then you're going to be a drama queen, and it's like, I can't believe he treated me like that.

Really? On the first date? And you wonder why they treat you like that? Guys, some of you girls need to quit dressing with a paint roller.

It looks like someone painted your pants on you, ok? If you had a tattoo on your rear end, we'd be able to tell what it is, right?

Guys, holiness is about in here, but the effects of it over the matriculation of your spiritual maturing process should be reflected in certain things, ok?

If you show too much rear end or too much boobie, you are doing a disservice to you, and you are just doing a disservice to your

Christian testimony, ok? But here's the other thing, it ain't just teenage girls.

You know what I'm saying? It ain't just teenage girls. Guys, we don't need to have a standard of GQ magazine to know what holiness is.

You know what it looks like, and it's based upon God's Word, not a subjective cultural opinion, ok?

Second thing, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.

Well, brother Jeff, you shake chicks' hands and give them hugs all day long. Guys, do I really need to go back to 9th grade biology to tell you what the

Bible is teaching about? Listen to me, our walk should be reflective of the standards that God put on us and not our cultural.

Let me keep going here, verse 16, look at this, it says this, and I yell about this all the time and people ask me, why are you so hung up on this?

It's because God's hung up on it. Verse 16, and what agreement does

God's sanctuary have with idols? For we are the sanctuary of the living

God. It is amazing to me, and it's usually the senior adults that are like this.

Not all of them are idiots. In fact, most of our senior adults are really cool. But there are a lot of them that are just stupid, and they're just as immature and stupid as young people are.

Because here's what they say, children in here should not play because this is a sanctuary.

Go read it again. I mean, do I really need to comment on that? What did it say the sanctuary was?

It's not rhetorical, Farley. We are the sanctuary of God. This is a gymnasium with chairs, tables, and tile in it.

We have more respect for a building than we do the very sanctuary and temple of God.

We want this to look good, but we don't care what our body looks good. You want to know why

I can say that? Because churches don't practice church discipline anymore. They don't.

They'll let people continue to live an outward sin and not get involved in a level which mediates a repentant nature of that individual back into the family of God, but more importantly, back into the fold of Jesus Christ.

Guys, we have got to come to a point where the contrast between us and the world isn't the standard by which we measure buildings, but it's why we measure the maturity of a church by the actions that they have on a day -to -day basis.

Guys, I love Witten. You know why? Because you people will allow my kind of people to come up in him.

Guys, we will let whatever walk in the door, but not without a level of accountability.

You see, people love going to big churches because they can hide. They can hide. You can't hide up in him, right?

You're going to get called out. All right, now watch this. Understand this, that holiness is a command.

Look at verse 17. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate.

Guys, I believe we need to segregate. I believe in segregation. I really do, 100%.

You know why? Because God believes in segregation. Now, here's the funny thing. Some of you people my age, or actually a little bit older than me, actually just started busing, right?

That ain't the segregation. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, say to the

Lord. Now, here's what a lot of churches teach. Don't talk with the world.

Don't walk with the world. Don't eat with the world. Don't have any fellowship with the world whatsoever.

Can I ask you a question? How is that compatible with, Go ye therefore and teach all men?

Does that make sense to y 'all? Has that been a question in your mind? I can't talk with people in the world who are not

Christians, but I'm supposed to witness to them? How does that work? Well, if you read all of the scripture, it becomes crystal clear.

Look at 1 Corinthians 5. It says this, 1 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 9.

It says this, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

Now listen, listen to what God's Word says. I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.

Otherwise, you would have to leave the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, verbally abusive, a drunken, or a swindler.

Do not even eat with these people. Does it really mean, as we have been taught in churches for generations, don't talk to lost people, but go witness to them?

My gosh, that'll make you insane, right? What God's talking about, the judgment of God falls on His people.

Guys, understand this. Lost people have already been judged. They're already going to hell.

You can't go to hell 2 .0. You're already there, right? That's where you're headed.

Our job is to intervene, like Jude says, help snatch them out of the fire, right?

The people that we're supposed to judge is not the world. It's us in this room.

Well, he's in church, so he can date my daughter. Really? Because he shows up at 10 .30

on a Sunday morning? Yeah, well, that's called teenage pregnancy ready to happen.

Well, he showed up to church, that means he's trying. You dork. Really? He claims to be a

Christian, but because he shows up to a building at 10 .30, he's good to go? Have you lost your mind?

What we have to judge, what we have to hold accountable is each other.

You remember when the Southern Baptist Convention boycotted Walt Disney because they let homosexuals in?

Wow, there's a shocker. Look at Walt Disney films. Half the dudes in the films are gay, right?

I mean, you know, they're singing to Little Robins and Birdies, you know, and everything's in pastel colors.

Well, there's a shock. Gay guys are attracted to that. But here's my problem. Why are we gonna boycott

Disney for acting like the world and accepting the world? That is just about stupid.

Just about stupid. There's nothing glorifying God to that. Oh, but to get an errant brother, a brother and sister in Christ who's trapped in sin, to repent and then give testimony of the grace of God even in their failure to the power of repentance, which one's

God glorified him more? I hate thugs or I was struggling with sin and God's grace found me again.

Right. See, it's not that difficult. If you'll quit listening to religion and start listening to the word of God and what holiness really is.

And here's the cool thing. This is not my opinion. I'm reading from scripture. That word

I held in my heart that I'm not saying against thee you know, that one that you memorized in little Bible school when you were five, actually apply it to your life.

All right, watch this. Holiness should be a contrast. Holiness is a command. Now listen to this.

Holiness is a constant. Look at chapter seven, verse one. Therefore, dear friends, since we have such promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity of flesh and spirit, completing our sanctification in the fear of God.

Now, some of you who are doctrinally educated should suddenly go, what? Perfected sanctification is when

I'm at home, glorified the absence of my sin nature. Now, if you know that, can you help me understand this verse then?

Because what that's supposed to mean is I'm gotta be dead and glorified? Listen, since we have such promises, complete our sanctification.

Watch this. Christian, what if I told you that by next month you were gonna be a three -star general?

Is that possible? No, no. What if I told you one day,

Christian, that there's not gonna be any cancer, not gonna be any sin, we're not gonna have to mourn it at another grave of another believer gone home, that we're gonna be absolutely perfected in the glory and righteousness of God?

Is that possible? If that's possible, then

I can start living in that reality. In other words, hope is not wishful thinking.

It's waiting for a promise that I live by now to be fulfilled somewhere in the future.

Guys, if you live in a constant state, if I can live in a state of being in which

I can quit playing church and really surrender my selfish will, you can actually live in a completed sanctification that you will actually stop developing scar tissue on your life.

Parents, listen to me. Quit blaming everything else in the world for your children's slash grandchildren's failure.

Quit blaming everybody else. The reality is, if you're not reflecting that completed work of Jesus Christ in your life as an image for them to emulate, do not be shocked and dismayed when they don't.

It's amazing, I watch parents demand holiness out of their kids that they are not reflecting in their own lives.

And then with the height of arrogance, stand aghast when their children follow the same heathen way as their parents.

And then you'll come and look me in the eye and say this, well, we raised them up in church.

Where did I go wrong? What do you mean, where'd you go wrong? You drunken, self -centered, hypocritical liar.

You stand amazed that you produced another of the same? And then here's what your response is.

Well, I feel guilty, I feel bad, I feel defeated. Well, that's gonna help out a lot.

Why don't you repent publicly to the kid and start manifesting that repentance in a changed life today?

One of them's gonna bring a result, the other one's just gonna continue the cycle until,

I don't know, the fourth and fifth generation. You got my reference there, right? Notice this, flesh and spirit.

Flesh and spirit. Now I'm gonna talk about two things. You legalistic, holy people over here, you are so concerned about the flesh, about looking right, acting right, doing right.

Those same parents, usually the ones that use their kids as an object of a litmus test on how holy they are.

They can live godless lives as long as their kids don't embarrass them, right? Yes, it is.

Yes, it is. Listen to me, you're so focused on the flesh and the outward appearance, but it's kind of like, let me find an analogy.

Oh, like you're a white tomb full of dead men's bones. Okay? Then you have the other side.

Then you have the other side that you're filled with the spirit. You just love

Jesus. And I just love Jesus. Oh, you don't have to worry about sin,

God will forgive you. I just don't worry, God loves you. Or here's my favorite line.

Well, pastor, we all sin. Okay. But see, the conjunction between those two isn't or, it's and.

You can't live a life, purity in the flesh, unless you first have purity in the

Spirit. Some of you drunks out there, say amen. Try to quit cocaine without the power of the

Holy Spirit of God. It's a lot more difficult. Trust me, right? You want to clean the outside up first, and then you wonder why it doesn't work, and you keep walking down the aisle crying to your pastor.

Until you repent of your spirit, until you submit to the power of the

Holy Spirit in your life, you're not going to have the power to live out in the flesh the sanctified holy life that God wants you to have.

Because you're going to keep giving in to your codependency daddy issues and keep dating bums.

You're going to keep giving in to the cultural insecurities manifested in some of the way you chicks want to present yourself.

Listen, and if you're trying to understand what I'm saying, let me put it to you in a really crystal clear way.

Girls, if you're doing this in the mirror and this right here before you go out, guess what you need to change?

Some of you little girls are going, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you can't do that, you are searching for love in all the wrong places.

No, that's not it. Looking for love in all the wrong places. Looking for... who wrote that?

Looking for love... some of you hicks just shook your head. Paul, who wrote that? There you go.

You're looking for love in all the wrong places because you're using an attractant that's going to attract a certain guarantee.

Where's Tyler? When you fish for catfish, do you use a synthetic lure?

What do you use? Stink bait. You know why? Because catfish love stink bait.

Some of you chicks are attracted to stink bait and there are certain dudes that are attracted to stink bait.

Quit fishing with stink bait. Alright? Stop it! What you advertise for is what's going to get up on the hook.

If you want to... I had a lady sit there and one of the most godly young men I have ever known was attracted to her and was trying to reach out to her and she didn't like him.

She didn't like him. And then a few months later, I actually heard on her

Facebook page this. Well, just because I have a kid doesn't mean you can't love me.

It's because you're going back to the same rotten barrel to get the same rotten apple.

The dudes that you're dating ain't interested in your kid, they're interested in making another one.

And your ignorance, arrogance, and codependency is going to ruin your life and the life of your child.

But I'm going to get back into church. Get back into Jesus first. Then, get back into church.

I'll close with this and I'm done. It says this. Every impurity of the flesh and of the spirit completing our sanctification, last thing, in the fear of the

Lord. When we were singing, what was that third song? Where's my music minister?

Yeah, 10 ,000 Reasons. Were y 'all fearing God? I mean, some of y 'all were just like, well, this song's so old and you're still an immature brat, spoiled brat wanting to get your way, so you're never going to learn what worship truly is because you think it's emotions.

But, for the rest of you, who were really praising God during that song, right?

Were you afraid of God? Or were you like loving God? We had five people worshiping, cool.

Guys, what does it mean that we should fear God? What does that mean?

Who said awe? Wow, the blonde got it. Who said respect? God, Jackie got it.

It means common denominator, everyone should get it. Guys, watch this. The fear of the

Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's what Scripture tells us. Fear is not when

I walk up on May May. Well, it's hilarious. If I am on the voice text, the video text, yeah,

Marco Polo, and Jake is talking to me on Marco Polo, May May comes in, zap, zap, zap, zap.

She's saying, zap, zap. She comes in, she's so excited. She's like, hi, guys. It's funny, but when we get in person,

I walk up and go, hey, May May. That's what I think she hears because I'm still going, hi,

May May. She's like, yeah. She's afraid, right? Don't laugh that hard.

Guys, it's because of this. Listen to me. It's because of this. It's because you get fear and respect confused.

You see, respect and awe, meaning, man, how awesome

God's holiness is and how pathetically unable I am to reach it.

See, that's the respect and awe it's talking about. Fear is not

God's going to beat you up, okay? God didn't send you to hell. Your sins send you to hell.

God just opened the door for you, all right? Listen to me. Respecting God means respecting

His Word. You want to show respect to God? It isn't, well,

I didn't wear a hat in church. That ain't got nothing to do with God. That usually has to do with some crusty, bitter old hag on the back row.

Respecting God is living out your life by the grace and peace of Almighty God.