Perfect Holiness

Well, good evening, everybody. I want to thank you all for having me all the way from Florida to come up here and speak to you on this beautiful day. And it's my first time to New York. So you guys, y 'all brought me here.

Y 'all brought me to your great state. What's that?

I'm surprised you're not wearing your cardigan.

Well, I was a little surprised getting off the plane. I mean, I did wear my coat on the plane, not because I needed it to stay warm, but because it's nice to have these extra pockets to put my gum and my headphones in and everything.

It's like a pack mule. I just kind of take everything on the plane with me.

Why are your headphones in your car?

Well, it's a great question. But so as to not incriminate myself, I will not answer that question. And I've been thinking a lot, and I was thinking a lot as I was watching you guys play the game. And sorry I didn't get to participate.

It did look like a lot of fun. I was just thinking through what I was going to say tonight, and once again sort of walking through in my mind what I was going to be saying. And this has been one of those times where I know where I want to go, but it's a little hard to know how to get going to where I want to go.

Because there's so much I want to say and so much we're going to do over the next three sessions. And so I just want to sort of lay out what we're going to do over the next three times together. And hopefully, this will be a good way of bringing you in and giving you the goal of where we're going so that you know from the beginning what the goal of this is.

When I was asked to come up here, and again, thank you for bringing me up here. And to the pastors, to the elders, to those of you who called me and reached out to me, I'm humbled that you would even want me to come.

I'm thankful that you have invited me and brought me up here. And when we first spoke, the idea was that we were going to preach and teach on the subject of holiness. And holiness is not a small subject.

It's not something that can be encapsulated in one sermon, or three sermons, or an entire year of sermons. And so when we said that, I said, OK, holiness is important, but let's narrow that down. What do we want to address?

And they said, well, it really is the idea of sort of a personal holiness. And what might be referred to by some is practical holiness. Now, we're going to see over the next three sessions, we're going to see what I mean by practical.

I am not saying by practical that it is something that is not something that's real, but it's just sort of, it's like the practical everyday thing. That's not my point. But my point is to say that practical holiness is what it means to live the Christian life every day in a real way.

Not a way that's fake. Not that we're shiny plastic peoples under shiny plastic steeples. And that tells you how old I am, if you remember that song. At least Jake is smiling. Us guys have been around worship music for a while.

I know there's a song about that. But what does real holiness look like? What does a life of holiness look like when it's lived out in real life? And what does it look like when we put it into real words?

And so over three sessions here, what we're going to do, we're going to first look today at perfect holiness.

That's our first session.

Because we're going to examine the holiness of God. And we're going to see how when we compare ourselves to the holiness of God, it should be a time of real reflection of how unholy we truly are. We're going to look at some of those moments in the Bible where the holiness of God struck God's people and caused them to be without words and sometimes in great fear.

And so we're going to look at God's perfect holiness tonight. And hopefully, that will lead us into tomorrow morning where we're going to look at positional holiness. Positional holiness is where God has taken you, the sinner, and He has declared you to be saint.

Right?

Saint is not some specific title given to only a few people throughout church history. But the word hagios in the Greek, which means holy one or saint, is a title that is ascribed to every single believer.

And the reason why that title is given to every single believer is because you have been declared righteous because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You have been made a partaker of that. And you are, in fact, adopted into the family of God if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You are holy positionally. And then that hopefully will lead us into the question of, well, how do we distinguish positional holiness, what we have been declared, with practical holiness?

How do we behave?

And that's really going to lead into our third lesson. What does the Bible say. A life of practical holiness.

Looks like?

And what's the model? I mean, obviously, Christ is our ultimate model. But what does that look like in a life of someone like me or like you? And so tonight, we're going to begin and we're going to pray.

But we're going to look simply at one verse. And this is not the verse I'm exegeting. And we're going to exegete a few verses tonight. This is really the thematic verse for this study. And it's Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 14.

So if you have your Bibles open, I encourage you to simply look at Hebrews 12 with me. And after I read this verse, I'm going to pray. The writer of Hebrews gives this in the imperative, meaning this is a command.

This is something he's telling us to do. And it says in chapter 12, verse 14, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the opportunity to study your word with these men. I thank you for the great generosity they showed in bringing me here. And I pray that through the preaching of the word, Lord, that this would be a blessing to them.

I pray that you would keep me from error. For Lord God, you know that I am a fallible man. I am capable of preaching error. I am prone to wander as we sing in our hymn. And so Lord, I pray that you would keep me tied to the post of your word and do not let me stray.

And Lord, as I seek to share tonight these instances of your holiness on display in the Holy Scriptures, Lord, I pray that you would open up the eyes of every man here to see what your text has to tell us.

And I pray for the believer, Lord, that this would be a time where your word will do what only your word can do, and that is reprove, correct and train in righteousness. And Lord, that it would for the unbeliever, Lord, if there be one among us tonight who has not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that tonight they would be in awe of the holiness of God.

And Lord, that that would cause them to recognize their own unholiness and their need for reconciliation with that holy God. I pray this all in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. In 2006, I was sitting in a pastor's conference which was hosted by Ligonier Ministries in Lake Mary, Florida, which is only about two hours from my house.

It's right down near Orlando. And I had been recently at that point introduced to reformed theology. And I was being exposed to preachers that would go on to change my life and impact me in a way that was very profound.

And one of those men was the late Dr. R .C. Sproul. R .C. Sproul, again, lived only two hours from me. I had many times where I had the opportunity to go down, see him in person, meet him, talk with him, wonderful man of God.

And it was at that time that I had the opportunity to hear him preach the one sermon that he was most known for. And if you're familiar with R .C. Sproul's body of work, he was known for a lot, but he was known sort of for one message.

And everywhere he would go, they would ask him to preach this message. He must have preached it 100 times over his lifetime of ministry. And he had preached Isaiah 6 on the holiness of God, on the holiness of God.

And I remember hearing that and the profound impact it had on me. I remember it changed the way I saw God. It changed the way that I understood the God that I was now serving, that I was in ministry pursuing.

And it's funny when you talk about what are some moments like watershed moments in your life where things changed your life. That sermon changed my life. I bought his book, which I think Rick said you had some copies of the holiness of God.

I bought his book, I devoured it. And I began to buy it by the case and give it away to anyone who would take one. It was like a gospel track that was that big, right? I would just hand it to, I'd give it away to people in our church and to everyone else because I wanted people to understand who this holy God was because I had come to realize and I believe that this is true.

One of the things that has been the plague of the modern church is many in the modern church don't recognize that they're dealing with a holy God. And they have reduced God's character. They have reduced their understanding of who he is.

And as a result, you will never rise above the standard that is set. If we reduce the character of God's holiness, what does that do naturally to the practical lived out holiness? It's automatically, it goes hand in hand that it would go down.

Holiness is God's defining attribute out of which all of his other attributes flow. And when you understand the holiness of God or at least have a glimpse of the holiness of God, because I don't think any of us can truly understand it.

But when you have a glimpse of the holiness of God, you will, it will have a profound impact on how you think about God, how you handle his word, how you approach him in worship and how you live your daily life.

There is no way that it can have no impact if you're a believer. And if you are a believer, I believe it will have a profound impact. In fact, if there is an attribute which should profoundly impact how we relate to our God it is recognizing that he is holy.

And as I said, this conference is about holiness. And we're going to talk about our holiness at a certain point, but it's most proper to begin with the holiness of God because he is the source and fountainhead of all holiness.

And I wanna show you four things tonight. And if you are taking notes, please feel free to write this down. I always tell people though, I have these very fancy, colorful notes. I feel like an NFL football coach.

You know, I'm like calling plays up here. If you want, you can just take a snap picture when we're done. If you just want my notes, then you don't have to sit and write. I actually send these out via email to all our church members every week.

That way people don't have to sit and take notes. So if you wanna do that, if you prefer to do a digital note taking at the end, you can do that as well. But four things that are four ways in which the holiness of God should impact us as believers that we're gonna see in the text that we look at tonight.

Number one, it should strike us. The holiness of God should strike us. Number two, the holiness of God should humble us. And we'll see the difference in distinction and what I mean in just a moment. Number three, the holiness of God should comfort us.

And finally, and fourthly, and this will lead into our next session, these really do go hand in hand, is that it should transform us. It should transform us. So to understand how God's holiness strikes us, humbles us, comforts us, and transforms us, we're actually going to look at an Old Testament text and a New Testament text where we see these very things happen to the people of God, both under the administration of the Old Covenant and under the administration of the New Covenant.

And the reason why I've chosen to do two texts, it's dangerous to exegete one text, much less try to exegete two in one sermon. But the reason why I've chosen both is I actually want to point out to you the similarities between the Old Testament text and the New Testament text and how it's the same God.

One of the great misunderstandings that has been throughout church history is that somehow the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. I mean, this is the Marcion heresy.

If you're unfamiliar with the early church, there was a heretic, his name was Marcion. I've done a sermon called The Marcions Are Coming, you know, like the Martians are coming, like the Marcions are coming, because the idea of the Marcions, Marcion, he believed that the Old Testament God was a demiurge, he was a false God, he was a God of hatred and a God of war.

And so he clipped out those portions of the scripture, says, we don't worship that God, we worship the God of Jesus, who's a God of love and a God of mercy. And this guy lived in the second or third century, I forget exactly when, but he lived very early in the church.

This isn't some 20th century, like a modernist idea. This was something that was 2000 years ago. And yet he said, God is love. He's not this God of war, he's not this God of holiness, he's a God of mercy.

And see, the thing is, the Bible presents both. The Bible doesn't allow for us to say, God is all only of this, and he's not of this, but God is both a God of mercy and a God of wrath. And he is the same God who we will see demonstrates his holiness to the Old Testament, saints and to the New Testament saints in very much the same way.

So with your Bibles, please turn with me to Leviticus chapter 10, Leviticus chapter 10. And for the sake of context, I just wanna tell you where we are. Leviticus is one of those books that often is very intimidating.

When you encourage someone to read through the Bible, right, they'll read through Genesis, and boy, they got it. Read through Exodus, they got the stories, the wonderful things of the people being saved out of slavery in Egypt.

And then they get to Leviticus and it's like, what, like the car stops, like the brakes go on. It's like, whoa, wait a minute, I don't understand. And it really is not an easy thing to understand because God is demonstrating and giving to his people these ceremonies that are meant to be a picture of what he's gonna do through Jesus Christ.

We know that now, but at the time, he's giving them these ceremonies that they're going to be doing and practicing and how the priests are going to operate and how the tabernacle is going to be treated and how all these things are going to happen.

And it outlines the laws given by God to the Israelites for holiness, worship, and the role of the priesthood. Chapter eight is really what leads into chapter 10 because in chapter eight, Aaron, who if you'll remember is the brother of Moses, the high priest, Aaron and his two sons, Nadab and Abihu are consecrated and ordained for the priesthood.

They're consecrated, set apart, ordained for this role. In chapter nine, they perform sin offerings. And when they perform these offerings, fire comes out and consumes the offering. I want you to see this.

If you have your Bibles open to Leviticus 10, just go back to chapter nine and look with me at verse 22. It says, then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them. And he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings.

And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting and when they came out, they blessed the people and the glory of God appeared to all the people. First of all, just can you imagine? We read past that like it's nothing.

The glory of God shown to the people and Moses just writes it like nothing,.

Like it just happened.

We've never seen anything like this. And this is what they saw. I'm sorry, I'll stop on one verse if I don't keep going. But just that, the glory of God appeared to all the people and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar.

And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

And wouldn't you?

You ever thought about, I gotta move this because I keep thinking I'm gonna knock it over. You ever think just how amazing what the people of God saw in the Old Testament? I mean, filmmakers have tried to capture it, they can't.

We've all seen the parting of the Red Sea with what was it, Charlton Heston? We've all seen, it's nothing. We can't come close to what it must have really been like to have seen a pillar of fire by night that led the people through the wilderness.

That's the glory of God, we just can't even imagine. But can you imagine that the priest offers up a sacrifice and fire burns the sacrifice in place? And it says the people shouted and fell on their faces.

Well, of course they did. Wouldn't you?

No doubt.

This is very unlike the God of modern evangelicalism. The God who is so winsome as to never offend, so loving as to never judge. And so much separated from His work.

We don't think of God like this,.

But this is the God that Scripture pictures us, is this God who does these amazing things for His people. And then we get to chapter 10. And chapter 10 has one of the most horrific scenes in the Old Testament from the perspective of a father.

Okay, and I bring that up because I am a father of six children. One of my best friends in the world is my fellow elder. He had three boys and two of his boys died. I walked with him through both of those deaths and they were tragic.

They were both young men, both of them died tragically and it was terrible. So when I read this story, I often read, you know, one thing R .C. Sproul would always say, he'd say, read the Bible existentially.

Not as an existentialist, meaning philosophically existentially, he said, but read the Bible. And remember, these are real people who existed at a real place at a real time in history.

This is real life.

The people who saw the fire consumed the sacrifice. This isn't a myth. This isn't Disney.

This is real life.

This really happened. And when you do that, you begin to think, wow, this is amazing. I can't even believe how powerful this is that this happened. Well, I read this from the perspective of Aaron because what's about to happen, if you're unfamiliar with the story, his sons are going to offend God and God is not going to show them mercy.

I mean, that's the simplest way to put it. God is not going to show them mercy in this moment.

Read with me.

It says, now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, remember I said just two chapters earlier, these are the guys that were consecrated to do this very thing, to make this sacrifice, to do these things. It says, Nadab and Abihu each took a censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered, and the ESV says unauthorized, the King James Version I prefer says strange fire, strange fire, means a fire that was not allowed, unauthorized is good as well, but it's not the fire that they were commanded to do,.

Uncommanded fire before the Lord,.

Which he had not commanded them. By the way, and this is just something to consider about reformed worship. I think, didn't you mention to me earlier about the regulative principle? Wasn't that our conversation?

A lot of times when we talk about the regulative principle, we talk about this passage because what is the regulative principle? It says we ought not do in worship that which we have not been commanded because God tells us how he wants to be worshiped.

And here we see where they did what was not commanded before God. They offered up an unauthorized fire before God. And fire came out from before the Lord, same as last time. This just happened one chapter before, the fire came out from before the Lord.

And the last time the fire came out from before the Lord, the fire burnt the offering, but not this time. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them. And they died before the Lord.

Now, before we read on,.

Because we're gonna read on to verse three, I just wanna stop here and just say, this is instant and unmerciful justice, but please do not think that this is injustice. You will receive one of two things from God.

You will either receive mercy or you will receive justice, but you will never receive injustice. God does not operate in the area of injustice. God's mercy is when you don't get what you deserve. And the adverse of that is what we call grace, which is he gives you something you don't deserve, which is his eternal fidelity and love and grace and all those things.

We call that grace because that's unmerited favor. But God gives mercy, but he also gives justice, but no one gets injustice. Remember, go back to chapter eight, I encourage you at some point, go back and read chapter eight.

Go back and read what these men were commanded to do. They knew what they were commanded to do. They knew that this was not something that they were supposed to do. They understood it was unauthorized fire.

I think many people read this.

And they think Nadab and Abihu were ignorant children. No, these were grown men who had received commands from God to do this a very specific way. And they told God, you know what, I'm gonna do it my way.

As much as I sympathize with the sinner because I are one, that's my Southern coming out of me. As much as I sympathize with the sinner because I am a sinner, I must also realize that as a sinner, my wage from God is what?

For the wages of sin is death. That's what we are owed from God. That's right, perfect justice. And you might say, but wait a minute, people do crazy things all the time. I mean, why isn't Kenneth Copeland burning at the stake?

Now, if you get mad about that, if you really wanna know, come talk to me about Kenneth Copeland.

Oh, he named names.

I'll name a few names because some guys are just dangerous false teachers. And you say, well, why is he getting away? Why is he, why did Nadab and Abihu, they did it one time and that's it, but then we have these other guys who do it.

I'm gonna talk about that later because that actually is a decent question. Like why do we not see every day false teachers being consumed by the fire of God? What is common grace? Who said common grace?

High five, I like that, I like that. It is common grace, but there's also something else that we don't wanna miss in this part of the text. What we're seeing here is God is laying the foundation for his covenant people and he is establishing a principle about himself.

And it's what we're fixing to read in the text because notice what it goes on to say. It says, then Moses said to Aaron, remember Aaron is the guy who just watched his sons burn to death. Aaron is the guy who just watched his sons die.

Right before him.

Moses is their uncle. He has also just seen what has happened. And Moses says to Aaron, I'm sorry, man. I know that must've hurt. No, Moses says to Aaron, this is what the Lord has said. Among those who draw near to me, I will be sanctified.

And the word sanctified means I will be counted holy. The one who draws near to me must recognize that I am holy. And before all the people, I will be glorified. And notice the next word, and Aaron held his peace.

He just watched his sons burn to death in front of him. You don't think his heart was broken? I think his heart was mush. I think his heart was destroyed. How could it not be? I mean, he's not an uncaring dad.

He's a loving father. And he just saw his sons die before him. But Moses turns to him and said, this is an object lesson for the people of God that those who approach God must recognize that he is holy.

Your sons were given a very specific requirement that when they approach God, they are to be the representatives of God's people. And they are to demonstrate that he is holy by doing only what God has commanded.

They did more than God had commanded. They did not what God had commanded. And God has demonstrated a principle in their death. And the principle is this, God's people must recognize that he is holy. For if the priest won't even recognize that God is holy, how will the people?

If the priest don't understand the holiness of God, how will the people bow down and understand the holiness of God? Now, a lot of people at this point, but that's the Old Testament God. That's the God before Jesus.

Jesus softened God's heart. All kinds of crazy things you'll hear people say. In fact, I have pretty active social media. It's kind of how you guys met me, right? It was through my online stuff. And I had posted I was coming here.

And I said I was going to be preaching on holiness. And I said, I forget exactly how I worded it, but something to the effect that the same holy God of the Old Testament is the same holy God of the New Testament.

And we often want to compare the love of God in the New Testament and forget about the holiness of God in the Old Testament. And somebody came up and just started really attacking me and saying, you don't understand.

God's holiness is his love. That's what makes God holy is that he's a loving God. And I said, well, I don't dare say God is not a loving God. He is a loving God. And we're going to see that throughout our study.

But the argument this person was making was that if we encourage people to fear the holiness of God, then we have misunderstood because we are simply to love God and never to fear God. And yet the Bible tells us what?

Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And people say, oh, well, that just means reverence. Do you think this story resulted in mere reverence? Or do you think the people recognize this is a God who is not to be trifled with?

Again, I didn't write the story. This is a true event that Moses records for us to tell us one thing the text tells us. This is what the Lord has said. Those who draw near me must recognize that I am holy.

And here's the example of the danger of not recognizing the holiness of God. You say, well, that's the Old Testament God. Turn with me to Acts chapter five.

I had a big, heavy Bible.

I'm wearing music stands. Some of you know where we're going, but I want you, now that you've heard that narrative, now that you've heard me talk about Nadab and Abihu, I want you to, for a moment, look at this narrative with fresh eyes.

As in Acts chapter five, we have the story of a couple. Their names are Ananias and Sapphira. Now, one thing people don't often realize is the story of Ananias and Sapphira actually is preceded by another story.

And so for just a moment, I want you to notice, go back up to chapter four and look at verse 32. It says, now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace came upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas,.

You all know Barnabas,.

He is known as the son of encouragement, he was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. Okay, now a lot of people forget that part.

A lot of people jump right into the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and they forget what the context is. Because some people use this, there's all kinds of ways Ananias and Sapphira are misused.

You're not giving your tithe,.

You're gonna die at the feet of the apostles kind of thing, right, like that's not the story. The narrative is this, you've got a early church that is dedicated to caring for itself, caring for one another.

We're gonna talk about this in class three in this series, because I'm gonna talk about one of the ways that we demonstrate practical holiness is our love for one another and our love for the church, right, that's part of practical holiness.

And that's what they did. Many of these people had lost jobs, had been excommunicated from the synagogue, had been put out of their families, they were living lives sometimes very poor and meager because of the persecution that they were facing for following Jesus Christ.

And so the church, which had people of all different means, people are very poor and people are very rich, and they would pull and bring their funds together, lay them at the feet of the apostles so that the apostles would use that money to prepare and provide for the people.

We know about this later when in the story it says that the widows weren't getting the food.

That they needed,.

And so that they assigned the first deacons to take care of that job and make sure that that was happening. This is all practical Christian living happening in the first century. And it says that people sold things and gave the money to the apostles.

And for some reason, Luke, who wrote Acts, for some reason, Luke chooses to tell us that there's a man named Barnabas who sold a piece of land, a field, and he brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

Now, I have a idea why Luke included that story. And you can argue with me later if you think I'm wrong. I'm always up for a spirited discussion. But I think the reason, and it's right here, because remember, the Bible wasn't written with chapter and number divisions, right?

This was all just one narrative. This is the story leading into the next story. And the story is you got this guy who in a great act of generosity sells a piece of land, gives the money to the apostles, do with it what you need, give the money to the people, do what needs to be done.

So you got a guy here who's demonstrating love and holiness and grace among the people. And he himself is a godly man. And we see him in other places doing many wonderful things, Barnabas. And then you got this couple, Ananias and Sapphira.

They see that. They see what Joseph did, what Barnabas did. And they probably see that he was respected and approved of by the people for being so generous. And so seeing that leads to the next part of the story.

We are gonna participate too, but we're gonna do it our way. We're gonna do it our way. So it says, "'But a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira "'sold a piece of property.'". Same thing Barnabas did, sold a piece of property.

"'And with his wife's knowledge, "'he kept back for himself some of the proceeds "'and brought only a part of it "'and laid it at the apostles' feet.'". Now, right away, I want you to know two things.

One, the early church was not communistic. You say, but wait a minute, they were selling their property, giving it to one another and using it to provide. That's not communism because there was not a government with a gun.

Telling you, you must do this, right?

And socialism is just communism with less guns. No, but it wasn't demanded. It wasn't commanded. It was something that was done willingly. There's only two types of giving in scripture. There is compulsory giving and voluntary giving.

And everything in the book of Acts is voluntary. Nobody is commanded to do anything. And we know that because the very thing Peter is about to say, the very thing he's about to say is nobody told you to do this.

Nobody told you you had to do this, but you lied to the Holy Spirit.

Read it with me.

It says in verse three,.

But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?

And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? That's the key right there. He said, one, nobody told you to sell it. And number two, when you sold it, you could have told us, hey, I'm giving you half.

And we would have still appreciated half. I mean, brothers, if somebody sold a house and they said, hey, I'm gonna give you half of what I made on the house,.

You'd say, praise the Lord.

You wouldn't say, where's the other half, right? And certainly Peter is telling him it was yours. You didn't have to sell it. And when you sold it, you didn't have to give it. But what you cannot do is lie to God.

And that is what you have done. Notice what he says. And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man, but to God.