“The Pursuit of Holiness” – FBC Morning Light (12/3/2024)

Faith Baptist Church

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Well a good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your week got off to a great start yesterday, and today

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I hope your morning got off to a good start with the reading of the Word. And if you're following along in the

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Bible reading plan as we're winding that down for the year, today we're reading in 2

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Corinthians chapters 5 through 8. I want to focus on the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7.

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You know, God has given us, if we're in Christ Jesus, if you are a believer in Christ, God has given you a wonderful promise of being a father to you.

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I hope that doesn't create kind of horror stories in your mind.

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God is a perfect father, and we are his adopted children. That's how he describes us in verse 18 of chapter 6.

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He says, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the

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Lord Almighty. So here is the Lord Almighty, Almighty God, who says to us,

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I will be a father to you, and I will treat you as my children.

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And you think about all of the, think about any good experiences that you had from your own father, how he treated you with love, how he treated you with kindness, how he disciplined you when you needed to be disciplined for your benefit, and maybe in your life those occasions weren't consistent.

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Understand that. We're fallen human beings, and our fathers were. But God is not like that.

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We read earlier in 2 Corinthians that God is the Father of mercies and the

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God of all comfort. So what a great blessing it is that God would promise to be to us a father, a perfect father, and to treat us as his children.

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But we are to respond to that, not in a sense of, or with an attitude of, you know, entitlement or any of that kind of thing.

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No, we're to respond to that, as this passage indicates, in the active, ongoing, earnest pursuit of holiness.

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You see this in the beginning of chapter 7. Paul says, therefore, because God says,

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I will be a father to you and you will be my sons and daughters, therefore, having these promises beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

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Is this your pursuit? Is it my pursuit? Is it the passion of our hearts and our lives that we cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit with the goal of perfecting holiness in the fear of God?

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I suggest that ought to be the main drive of our Christian life.

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Not in a, again, not in a slavish sort of legalistic thing, but out of a response to God's love to us.

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Now, what does that look like on a practical level? Well, you look back in chapter 6, and the end of chapter 6, the

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Lord says, or Paul says to the Corinthians, he says, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

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What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? So we're talking about the pursuit of holiness, and perfecting holiness in the fear of God, and cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, then there needs to be a purity in our walk where we don't obligate ourselves, we don't link ourselves up in some kind of obligation with unbelievers, where that obligation is going to force us in a position of compromising our faith, or compromising a walk of holiness.

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He says, what communion does light have with darkness? What accord does Christ have with Belial, or Belial?

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What part does a believer have with an unbeliever? You see, we're not to be pursuing those things that are promoted by that which is evil.

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It shouldn't be a part of our lives. What agreement has the Temple of God with idols? Are we holding on to idols in our own hearts?

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We need to be examining our hearts constantly, and thinking about what are the things, or the people, or the movements, or the groups, or whatever, that I look to as a source of satisfaction and fulfillment, that are robbing me of relying upon and looking to my

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Father, my Heavenly Father, to God. Well, those idols, I need to cleanse myself of those idols.

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So in verse 17, the Lord says through Paul, come out from among them and be separate, says the

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Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. This is what it looks like, to pursue holiness, the perfecting of holiness in the fear of God, cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.

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Let's be conscious, let's be sensitive to what we allow into our hearts, into our minds, into our lives as practices that are taking us away from a life of holiness.

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Let's be sensitive to that. Why? Because of this wonderful promise that God is to us a

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Father, and we are to him his children. Our Father and our God, we do thank you this morning for this glorious truth that you graciously are a

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Father to us, and you treat us as your children in a perfect, perfect way.

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Now Father, I pray we respond with a pursuit of holiness. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen.