Holiness Is Not An Option

Psalm 19 and John 14 as the Scripture Readings

The Old Testament reading this morning is in Psalm chapter 19, starting in verse seven. Please stand. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and the drippings of honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping them there is great reward.

Today's New Testament reading is in John 14, verses 15 through 17, and 25 through 31. It's on page 901 in the Pew Bible. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever.

Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.

But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to you remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I will leave with you. My peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you. If you love me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, and the Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.

Rise, let us go from here. Please remain standing.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come to you this day, praising you for your goodness and your grace. Praising you, you have saved a people that were contrary, God, to your laws and to your rules, a people running away from you.

And yet, God, you called us through your Son and his work on the cross to be holy and blameless before you. So, God, we thank just how much you have done for us. How much you gave to us through your Son, and how disobedient we can be at times to be faithful to live our lives as we should.

So, God, just speak to us today through your word that we would be conformed more to the image of God, that we would live our lives to please you and honor you. Thanking you and praising you for what you have done for us.

Through your Son.

We pray these things in his name.

Amen.

Living Hope, Trials, and the Call to Holiness in 1 Peter 1

Turn your Bibles to 1 Peter 1, starting in verse 3.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. Our main emphasis today are gonna be on those last two verses, some you're probably glad or I'm not gonna try to preach one through 15, so am I for that matter, but today we're gonna concentrate on holiness, our responsibility to holiness.

This past year our morning flock, a little bit, maybe a little bit more than a year, took us to go through the Jerry Bridges book, Pursuing Holiness. It was a great book, we learned a lot and I'm gonna take a few minutes this morning just to kind of hit the highlights of what we talked about this past year.

And I won't do the whole book, I think it's 17 chapters, I'm gonna try to cover about half of it today. It took us a year to do 17 chapters, so I can't cover that all in one message and hard to tell how many.

But today we're going to look at what God expects of us. He expects all Christians to live a holy life. We saw this first in Leviticus 11, 44, for I'm the Lord your God, consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.

What's it mean to be holy? We're set apart for God, we're morally blameless. He desires and demands for us a continued pursuit of holiness in our lives. We need to be a reflection of his own holiness, conforming to the moral statutes of the Bible in contrast to the world's sinful ways.

So we are declared holy, yet we are called to be holy. How does that work? Yes, we are declared holy, but he calls us to be holy in our lives, in our everyday actions, our work, our school, whatever we're doing each day.

You know, it's easy to be holy when we're here. For an hour, two hours, being around brothers and sisters in Christ and Sunday school, flock meetings, church gatherings. What are we doing when we're not here?

God calls us to be holy in everything that we do. I like what, remember Charlie Fry, one of his favorite phrases was be who you are. We are in Christ. We are to be his example on this earth, no matter where we're at, no matter what we're doing.

Be who you are in Christ. We also find out this pursuing holiness is a joint venture between God and between us. He's made it possible for us to walk in holiness that he commands, but we have to do the walking.

We have that responsibility to walk in the light of Christ. Jerry Bridges gives a real nice little illustration of this. I'd like to read to you, it's really short, but it kind of explains it really well.

It's about a farmer. A farmer plows his field, sows the seed, fertilizes it, cultivates it, all the while knowing that in the final analysis, he's utterly dependent on forces outside of himself. He knows he cannot cause a seed to germinate, nor can he produce the rain and sunshine for growing and harvesting the crop for a successful harvest.

He's dependent on these things from God. Yet the farmer knows that unless he diligently pursues his responsibilities to plow, plant, fertilize, and cultivate, he cannot expect a harvest at the end of the season.

In a sense, he is in partnership with God and he will reap its benefits only when he has fulfilled his own responsibilities. Farming is a joint venture between God and the farmer. The farmer cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what the farmer should do.

I thought that was a pretty good illustration of our responsibility to live up to what God has purposed for us to do in our lives. So we are responsible to pursue holiness. Ephesians 1 .4 tells us, so continue to live in sin as a believer is contrary to God's purpose for our salvation, to be holy and blameless for him.

That is our reason we need to follow Christ. We need to be holy and blameless before him. But what about holiness? We have a holy God, don't we? Let's look at these a few attributes or a few scripture verses that tells us about God's holiness.

If you notice some of the songs we just sang, they're in there, tells about his holiness. He's all knowing, he's all wise. Just as he cannot but know what is right, so he cannot but do what is right. He always does what is right without hesitation.

And that's not us, is it? We have to think about things. God knows what's right without hesitation. He never changes. He's immutable, which means never changing. He's perfect from all evil. Aren't you glad we have a God that doesn't change?

That does what he says he's going to do, that fulfills all the prophecy that's been, you know, that's in God's word. He does what he says he's going to do. 1 John 1 .5, also this is a message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness.

He is light, okay? He is the essence of moral purity. And in Psalm 145 .17, the Lord is righteous in all his ways and in all his works. I found a couple more a few minutes ago,.

I'll share with you.

Exodus 15 .11, who is like you? Majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. 1 Samuel 2 .2, there is none holy like the Lord. There is none besides you. There is no rock like our God.

Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you for your righteous acts have been revealed. So he's all knowing, he is without sin. He's perfect in all of his ways.

You know, I wanna bring this up, maybe I shouldn't, but we're talking about he knows all things, okay? He knows everything. I brought this up to the flock last week. There was a preacher I listened to the other day, maybe for one minute.

He said, God, ask me for my advice. What God is he serving, you know? And he's not the only one, you know? People wanna make God who they want him to be. They'll worship the God they want to, not the God of the Bible.

I thought that was a pretty blasphemous thing to say in a real popular evangelist on TV. God knows everything. He don't need advice from us. My goodness, I wouldn't wanna give you guys advice on my life.

God is in, he knows it all. That just blew my mind when I heard that guy say that. But anyway, God is who he is, he's holy. And his holiness is shown at the cross above all places. The atonement displays wondrously, yet solemnly, God's infinite holiness and hatred of sin.

How abhorrent must sin be to him to punish it to its utmost deserts when he imputed it on his son? He cannot overlook sin. That's a perfect picture of God's holiness. He could not bear to see his son suffer the shame of the whole world.

We can't justify our sin. Even the smallest deviation from his perfect will, he can't pass over or turn a blind eye to it. He cannot, for one moment, relax his perfect standard of holiness. At times we may think it's just too hard to live up to what he expects from us.

We make excuses when we mess up in our pursuing of holiness. We might say, oh, I've always had a problem with this or that sin. I guess that's just the way I am and I'll always be. I just have to learn to live with it and hope that God understands.

No.

He hates sin, no matter how small, how big, whatever it is, if it's sin, he hates it. We think we just can't live through it. We can't do what he commands. His commandments are too hard. What's 1 John 5, 3 tell us?

For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments. And what? His commandments are not burdensome. So we can't escape the fact that God hates sin. Therefore, when we do, when we do sin, we're doing something that he hates.

We need to cultivate that same attitude towards sin,.

That God hates it.

The Holiness of Christ and Our New Kingdom in Him

Let's look at the holiness of Christ. Hebrews 4, 15. Well, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

First Peter 2, 22. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Isaiah tells us, out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge, shall the righteous servant make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

He's called the righteous servant. John, 1 John 3, 5, in him there is no sin. So Christ is holy. We know that. Why is that important to us? Because the life of Christ is meant to be an example to us to live a holy life, to be holy.

Paul tells the Corinthians church to imitate me as I imitate Christ. Jesus always did what pleased his father. He came to do his father's will. We must strive to do no less. That's in John 6, 38, by the way, I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

So do we look at the things in our lives, such as our daily routines, our activities, our thoughts, our actions, our desires, our plans, whatever, do we look at them in the context of am I doing this to please God and to pursue holiness?

Are we desiring to follow Jesus' example of doing God's will? He always did his father's will.

Now, as believers, well, before we do that,.

So everything I've said so far sounds well and good. We know God's holy. We know Jesus is holy. We know we fall short. God demands holiness because he's holy. Christ is example to us as well. And in order for us to pursue this holiness, we must realize as believers, there's a change of kingdoms.

As believers, we no longer live in the kingdom where we're under sin's dominion and control. Romans 6, 6 and 7 says, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we could no longer be enslaved to sin.

For one who has died has been set free from sin. So we no longer live in a kingdom where we're under sin's dominion and control. We need to realize that. We're no longer under that. We're in a new kingdom, a kingdom that's no longer enslaved to sin or controlled by it.

Romans 6, 11 says, we must consider or reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ. And one thing that really hit home to me when we was doing this study, pursuing holiness, is that when we lived in a kingdom of sin, sin didn't really bother us all much.

When we sin as a believer, we do not sin as slaves to it, but as individuals with a freedom of choice. If we sin now, it's because we choose to do it as a new kingdom, living in a new kingdom where we're no longer dominated by sin.

We don't have to commit sin. I know that might sound radical, but we can say no to it, but we don't really, so much of the time we give into it. But it's our responsibility to fight that. If we are dead to sin's dominion, we can say no to it.

That's our responsibility. So Paul explains to us in the first 12 verses of Romans 6 why we confide this battle up against sin. We still struggle, we know. We struggle with pride or jealousy, materialism, how we criticize one another, gossip, we shade the truth a little bit.

Then we begin to hate ourselves for doing those things. That's what's so great about the Holy Spirit. We can realize our sin through the Holy Spirit. We know when we sin now. We recognize our need to repent and ask forgiveness.

First John 1 .9, if we confess our sin, he is faithful to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There's a need to repent when we do fail. Sin against our God. He will forgive us.

But that doesn't give us the license to do it whenever we want. We need to pursue holiness. Before we were saved, regardless of how good or moral or decent we had been, we still lived in the kingdom of sin.

But now through God's grace of our union with Christ and his death to sin, we have been placed in a kingdom and realm of righteousness. And then we realize how precious our union with Christ is to be in Christ and Christ in us.

You know, it's our only hope. It's our reason to strive for holiness. In our battle for holiness, even as believers in Christ, the sin nature still remains. We all know that. Romans 7, 21, so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

Don't we find that? We're always struggling. I like what the New Living Translation, how they do this verse.

They say,.

I have discovered this principle of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I think we can all attest to that at some times in our lives. That we've been delivered from the rule of sin.

We've not been delivered from the attacks of sin. We may still have the indwelling propensity to sin, but we also have the Holy Spirit who maintains with us the desire for holiness. You know, in Ezekiel 36, one of our favorite verses, chapter 36, verse 27, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. Be careful to obey my rules.

Pursuing holiness, obey God's law. And we can do that. We have the help of the Holy Spirit. We have his word to guide us. So we can rely on the Holy Spirit. He opens our hearts and enable us to see our sin compared to God's standards of holiness, creating in us the desire to be holy.

You know, what is the description of the Holy Spirit? What's the scriptures say? He's our helper, right? He's our comforter. We have the Holy Spirit to rely upon. To interpret the word for us. So many things.

So what's one way we can fight this battle and take responsibility to pursue holiness? Simple, read the scriptures. A daily consistent intake of God's word. Feeding our minds with God's truth. We heard earlier in Psalm 19.

Let's see if I can turn back there. The law of the Lord is what? Perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. Making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure. Enlightening the eyes. If you keep them at the ends, if you keep them, there is great reward. So we need a constant, daily constant intake of God's word. It's hard to do, isn't it?

Set time. Every day. To spend 20, 15, 20 minutes in God's word. But it would sure help in our pursuit of holiness. Especially when we're going through a tough week. Nancy and I had a really tough week this past week.

We had to stop and realize, we're still commanded to do God's will. To read His word. No matter the situation in our lives. We can't put that on the back burner when everything else is going wrong. Or going against us.

Remember who we are in Christ. We need to grow. We need to learn. We need to study His word. So as Christians, we need to face up to our responsibilities for holiness. Many times, we think that we're defeated by sin.

Something that just seems to continue to eat at us. Why can't I beat this thing? Instead of looking and hoping to have victory over that sin, maybe we just need to be obedient to God's word. By saying I'm defeated by this sin means we're really slipping out of our responsibility.

We may in fact be defeated, but the reason is we haven't been obedient. Maybe we have been reading God's word. Maybe we have not been with God's people. Maybe we let other things take priority in our walk.

We've chosen to disobey. Jesus always did His Father's bidding. He always did His will. Always obedient. Think of that. Christ, always obedient. Never doing what was wrong. Never sinning. Always obedient.

Even as Paul tells us in Philippians, Jesus humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. Even death on a cross. Remember, friends, that death is for us. Christ's obedience to do His Father's will was accomplished so that He could present us holy and blameless before His Father's throne.

Our salvation alone should encourage us to live lives pursuing holiness. I think Andrew might have mentioned last week our inheritance in Christ. What we have laid up for us, the future, the hope, the Holy Spirit.

You know, we're, I can't think of the word. Our inheritance is sealed by the Holy Spirit. We're looking forward to that. That alone should drive us to live lives that God wants us to live, to pursue His holiness.

Putting Sin to Death by Conviction and Commitment

The last part of this message has to do with putting sin to death. You know, that's really what we need to do. Colossians 3, 5. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is greed or idolatry.

King James says, instead of putting it to death, mortify, which means to destroy. Destroy the strength of something or vitality of something. How do we do that? First, we must have conviction. We need to be persuaded that God's will is for every believer to live a life of holiness.

And again, how are these convictions developed? Reading God's word. Even as believers, you know, were bombarded by the world to conform to its way, to its values, you know, nowadays, it's all around us.

TV, news, you know, schools, whatever. They try to ridicule our beliefs and standards of morality. They're set out by God. There's as old-fashioned, out-of-date, not acceptable in this day and age, but remember what Paul says, Romans 12, 2.

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. That kind of transformation can only occur as the Holy Spirit changes our thinking through constant study and meditation and prayer.

You remember in Deuteronomy, in 17, when God instructed the future kings of Israel that a copy of his law shall be with them, reading it every day of their lives, that they may learn to fear the Lord, their God, by carefully observing the laws and statutes.

And Jesus himself tells us in John 14, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. So, God's Word, study it, read it, live it. It's what we need to do to pursue the holiness that God has commanded us to do.

Memorizing Scripture is one of the most effective ways of influencing our minds. And of course, if you can memorize, the purpose of that is to apply it to your life. You'd be surprised how often, if you've memorized a verse really well, know where it's at, what it says, how often it pops up in discussion or in Bible study or whatever.

And you know it, you can share it. It's to know God's Word is really a goal that we need to work on, memorizing it, being able to live it. Secondly, after conviction, his commitment, are we willing to give up whatever the Holy Spirit convicts us of to live a life of holiness?

Is there anything that we're doing, any certain habit we have or certain activity we do, we think we have to do it every week or every month, whenever, we have to do that, and it keeps us in our goal to pursue holiness.

Do we prefer to play with sin just a little bit? Can you do that? Can you play with sin just a little bit? You can't do that without totally giving into it. Sin is sin, and if you think about it, it's sin.

Think about what we watch on television or the movies or internet videos, et cetera. There's Satan's using these, I'm sure he's using these ways of communication to try to influence our minds to deceive us and to keep us going back into desiring them, drawing us away from who we need to be.

If we really look at our hearts as our real aim, not to sin very much, now, that never works. Again, sin is sin in the eyes of God.

James 1 .15 tells us, my little children,.

Maybe it's John 2, I might have mixed up. My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin, okay? Not just a little bit, but not to sin. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and don't practice the truth.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and our truth is not in us. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his words are not in us. So we must make a personal commitment. It's our responsibility to say no to sin.

Realize that God hates sin because he is a holy God. Got a few minutes. I'd like to share, you may be asking me or thinking, maybe you're a new believer, maybe not. Maybe you've been a believer for a long time, but maybe you still don't know what is God's will for me?

What does he want from me? You know, we've already talked about a lot of it. But I want to give you a few more.

If I can find my book, that's not the right one.

Four ideas here that tells us what God's will is for our lives. First Thessalonians 4 .3, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. In other words, God's will for us is that we live holy, set apart lives.

Set apart from the world, living for him, okay? That's one. Second, we are always to rejoice, to pray and give thanks. That's in First Thessalonians 5 .15 and 16, where it says, rejoice always without ceasing.

Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ for you. How can you know God's will for you? Right here. Rejoice, pray without ceasing, give thanks in everything. That's God's will for you.

Third, Colossians 1 .9,.

And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with a knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So we are to know God's will so we can bear fruit and know him better.

I like what he also says here, being filled with the knowledge of God's will doesn't mean getting divine messages about where to take our vacation. It doesn't mean that. It means we bear fruit, grow in understanding of God, are strengthened with power, and joyfully give thanks to the Father.

The fourth one, Ephesians 5 .17, therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And it says a little bit further down in Ephesians 5 that the Lord's will is that we don't get drunk and that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, so his will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

There's four of them. If you wanna know what God's will for your life is, there's many more. But it brings us to a point, are we pursuing God's will? Everything that he has proclaimed in his word to follow him, to be the kind of believer, a Christian example that we need to be, are we doing that?

Are we putting sin to death? Have we declared our place in the kingdom of God but not the kingdom of this world? We're so hooked to this world. And guess what? It's passing away. Everything will eventually pass away.

Only what's done for God, only God, only his people will be forever. You know, there's an old hymn, speaking of holiness. I don't think we've sung it in a long time, but I think it was written in 1882, called Take Time to Be Holy.

I think you've probably all heard of it. The only part I don't like is it says take time to be holy. You don't take five minutes, say I'm gonna be holy for five minutes today. You know, holiness is a lifelong process, but the words are still good.

And if you'll notice, most of them we've already hit on a little bit here this morning. Take time to be holy. Speak off with thy Lord.

In other words, pray.

Abide in him always and feed on his word. Make friends of God's children, helping those who are weak, forgetting in nothing his blessings to seek. Take time to be holy and the world rushes on. And this was 1882 when he wrote this and he said the world rushes on.

So much time in secret. Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. By looking to Jesus, like him thou shall be a friend in thy contact, his likeness to see. In other words, your friends, the people you meet should see Christ's likeness in us.

Take time to be holy. Let him be our guide and run not before him whatever be tied. In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord. And looking to Jesus, still trust in his word. Last verse. Take time to be holy.

Be calm in thy soul. Each thought and each motive beneath his control. Thus led by his spirit to fountains of love. Thou soon shall be fitted for service above. Great words to that old hymn.

The Gospel Call to the Unbelieving and the Closing Prayer

Now in closing, to those of you who have never come.

To Christ in faith, believing in his death, I know they're probably here today, these words probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you. But by believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord, you can be declared holy and righteous in his eyes and live a life of holiness and service to God who offers you his saving grace and full assurance of life of purpose and eternity with him.

So you need to consider that this morning. If you're here, you've never come to Christ. You can have all the riches and glory that we need. You can have salvation freely given by the finished work of Jesus Christ who died for your sin and mine.

Address to him. Remember, the wages of sin is death. The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

My Lord, let's pray.

Father, we're thankful today for the clarity of your word that pierces our hearts,. Father, when we look at the truth that you have laid out before us, how far short we fall.

Forgive us, Father.

Cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Help us to keep our minds, Father, on what it means to do your will to pursue the holiness, God, that you have laid out for us. So thankful to know, God, that you already have declared us holy in your sight, but yet we still need to live like it, to be who we are in Christ.

God, you have given us so much. We give you so little, but we do thank you and praise you that we can come before you now and to hear our prayers and our supplications, that you are a forgiving God, a God who also hates sin.

God, help us to put that to death. We pray these things in his name, amen.