17 - Lesson 9: Holiness

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship. This is our class on an Introduction to Discipling. We're glad to have you with us. We welcome any new students with us. We're glad you are here.

Hope you are finding these lessons helpful, useful, that they will train you in being able to better disciple other people. And we are using a book that as we've been going through as a means of discipleship, just one of many that are possible.

Principles of discipling are to be one-on-one living, but as we're going through the book Growing in Grace, we have it available for you. You can always pick it up at our store if you need, at store .strivingforeternity .org.

But we're going through this book as just a kind of a, as we've been saying each class, just as a means of facilitating or kind of having a purpose of getting together on a regular basis. The idea of discipling is that it should be regular.

It should be focused on spiritual growth. So, you could be doing many things for that. We're suggesting you use this book as a way of doing a short Bible study with someone, but you could do things like playing tennis together and talking in between sets or knitting or, not that I do that, or anything.

I've lifted with people and in between lifting sets, we would talk spiritual things. We'd play paintball and we would actually use the time in between paintball games where if we had unbelievers with us, we'd use it as a time to evangelize and if we had believers, we'd use it as a time of discipling in between games.

We'd have an extended period where we'd kind of work on the markers and things like that just to be able to have an extended time where you start discussing spiritual things, running, anything, something you enjoy you could do.

We're just suggesting this because it's more targeted. It's something that we are going to provide for you and just help you. If you want to enroll in the Academy and get access to the website, the special area, the website, which is for enrolled students only, you can go to the website right down there and enroll and become an enrolled student, a paid student.

So that is that. Now as we're going through this book, what we want to do is always review what we did last week. So let's put up, oh, that's not last week. That's where we're headed. Okay. So this is the outline of the lessons in the book.

So we are working our way through. We are going to start lesson number nine, but we're still in living by grace. So this is the review sheet for lesson number eight, which is what we looked at last week.

And again, we're trying to review. Always remember the repetition. We're reviewing what we looked at last week to go through that again with a student, bring this back in their mind. They may have new questions with it.

That often happens as you go through a sheet like this. And this will be available for enrolled students on the website. As you have the week after week, you have people that want to go back to a previous lesson and discuss something already discussed.

So this kind of helps facilitate that. So you see at the top, it talks about obedience, gives you the Greek word. This is something we didn't cover in the lesson, but as my friend, Wayne put these together, he, uh, he added some more stuff here, but you see, if we talked about the characteristic of obedience, talked about, as you see there, the points underneath there, we talked to the cost of obedience.

We talked to the criteria of obedience. If I was working with a student, I would review each one of these and go over each point again, asking if they have any more questions since last class. That's good to do.

Just so that, again, one point is the repetition is going to help them remember it. Reinforcing it is going to help them living it out. But the other thing you want to keep in mind is that they may have questions from last week that they thought of afterwards, and it gives an opportunity for further discussion.

It may not be surprising that they may have some questions, especially with the topics of testings and obedience, holiness, when we talk about these things, where suddenly after they understood clearly what was the lesson about, now after a week, they're kind of living life and they have more questions and some things.

Well, what about this? What about that? You may want to get back into those things. So, but you're seeing the progression. We go from testing. How do we deal with testings? Well, we got to be obedient to them.

That's how we pass the test. And then now we're going to get, after we're being obedient, we're going to get into this week's lesson on holiness. And holiness, we're saying, is living like our Lord. It's living like our Lord.

And so, with this, we want to start by saying, what does holy mean? We hear that mentioned. People will say, holy cow. Well, cows are not holy. I understand that some in India believe that they are, but they are not, as we're going to see the word.

Now, I think that phrase actually comes probably more of Aaron in the wilderness with the Israelites. But the thing being is, we will often hear people use the word holy, but not using it in the correct way.

Some people use the word holy as just being something greater, something more superior. That's not the meaning of the word holy. If you have a Growing in Grace book, you see there the word holy means to separate oneself from all that God calls sin.

And we're going to look at two aspects of that today in this class. But in the Bible, there are things where believers are to be separating themselves. Now, God is holy, meaning He's completely separate from anything sinful.

That's why God cannot tempt us and does not cause us to sin, because He is holy. He's separate from sin. So, as we look at this, the first thing that we need to be separate from is we need to separate from the world.

Now, this should cause us immediately to say, if I'm going to be separate from the world, the first question I need to ask is, what is worldliness? That's going to be the first question. Well, let us look at the memory verse that you should have memorized from the last class.

If you can ask your student, you should have already reviewed this with them, actually. This was the homework from last week, was to give you Romans 12, 1 and 2. So, you can ask them to do their memory verse, and then you won't have to review it here.

But let's read this together. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is a reasonable worship. Do not, now look at this, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So, when we look at this, we see that, as we have in our book, worldliness is conforming to the pattern of the world. Some are going to say, well, that may not be all that helpful. The worldly, God's standard for His children is to be holy, to be set apart from the world's standard.

And whenever we deviate from God's standard and conform to the world's standard, that's worldliness. Well, how do you know which standard is which? Very easy. God's standard is explained in the Bible.

We understand God's standard when we read the Bible. In the Bible, we have God's standard. The world's standard is going to be that which appeals to pride, that which appeals to the flesh, that which appeals to lust.

We're going to get to those in a moment. But it is the things that are worldly are going to be those things which appeal to self, self-gratification. Even if it is a form of acting in a false humility to get praise from people, that would still be self.

And that would still be worldly. Seeking the world's means of doing things versus God's standard. We need to be conformed to God's standard. That of the witches of the world is what's going to come natural to us because we have had a sin nature from birth, sorry, from conception.

We had a sin nature, and that is what comes natural to us for some of us a long time before we became believers and were free in Christ. So, that worldliness is going to be natural. It's going to be what we're used to doing.

It's going to be what influences us. So, let us look as we go with this letter A, how does becoming a Christian affect a person's way of living? Let's go to 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17. And in there it says, therefore if anyone is in Christ he is, what's that say?

A new creation. Old things have passed away, the new has come. And so, what you see here is that your blank there to the question, how does becoming a Christian affect us? Okay? The answer is that we become new.

It's a new nature. It's a new being. We're now free in Christ. Any of those things could be, fill in the blanks there because that's not a specific thing. It's going to be, it could be a various, but the idea is the same.

That we become a new creation. All things become new. We have a new nature. We become free. We actually finally have a free will. People often misunderstand that, misuse that. They talk about a will as if it's a free will, but a free will is one that is not influenced by sin.

We only have a free will when we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us and we're free not to sin. Then we have the freedom to sin or not to sin. Before Christ we only do things out of self and we don't have that freedom not to sin.

So, we have a couple questions that you want to ask the person you're discipling. Remember, I said in these lessons we're going to get a little bit more personal with people. This is where you want to dig in, where you're acting as what we call nowadays a counselor.

But a lot of discipling is counseling. You're really trying to pour into someone's life from what God has taught you. So, one of the things you want to ask, and this is going to be, the answer to this is going to be different based on the maturity and how long someone's been a Christian.

Number one, what old things, right, verse 2 Corinthians 5, we said the old things have passed away. So, what old things have been taken away since you received Christ as Savior? By the way, this is a question my wife asked me before we were married when we were just courting to determine whether we would be compatible.

These are the type of questions we asked one another. We looked at this verse and said, what were the things that you sinned? Those sins that you used to do you no longer do. What sins do you still do?

This is basically trying to help us to realize if someone is a brand new believer, maybe it's not a lot. I mean, for me, I was not a Christian for very long. I'm talking a few days maybe before I realized that foul language was wrong and I needed to stop it.

So, that was something I dropped very quickly. There may be things like that that some people drop very quickly. But you don't want to just focus on the old things. Let me give you an example. If you want to stop doing something, you want to put off an old thing, you can't do it very well by thinking of it.

In other words, if I want to quit smoking, I don't say, I got to stop smoking, I got to stop smoking, I got to stop smoking. Because what is it you're actually thinking about? Smoking. I usually play a game with people that come to my office for counseling and I'll ask them this question.

Ask them, for the next 10 seconds, think of the number 7. And they'll sit there and I watch the clock. And then I say, what were you thinking of? Well, 7 of course. I say, okay, for the next 30 seconds, I don't want you to think of 7.

What were you thinking about after 30 seconds? There's one of two answers. Either they were thinking of 7 because they were trying to not think of 7. They were not 7, not 7, not 7. But when they figure out the clue, what do they got to do to not think of 7?

Think of any other number. Think of any other thing. Think pink. Think blue. Think 21. Think John. I mean, anything. You think of anything but 7. In other words, you put off and put on. You replace. It's a key principle that you want to try to instruct when it comes to lessons on holiness to the person you're discipling.

What often people do is they struggle. They become new believers and they come from a worldly background where they've been drinking and they've been smoking and they do these things and they realize, I got to stop it.

I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't smoke. I can't smoke. I can't smoke. I can't smoke. And they're trying to put off these things that they feel they got to stop.

But what are they really thinking of? The very thing they're trying to put off. And so their mind is thinking on that. And by meditating on the thing you shouldn't do, you're actually more likely to feel tempted with that very thing.

That's why we should put off, put on the new. And so the second question is what things have taken their place. Notice you put off the old, something has to take its place. You don't just remove the old.

Something needs to fill that vacuum. This is one of the reasons why most of the men that I counsel who have a drug or alcohol addiction, when I'm working with them, they will try to keep themselves clean.

In other words, they don't have any alcohol, they don't have any drugs, but they suddenly go to something like pornography. Why? Because they weren't replacing it with something good. They were thinking, no drugs, no drugs, no drugs, no drugs.

And they created a vacuum by not having the drugs and some other thing will fill it. Well, we should be filling it with spiritual things. We should be filling it with reading God's Word, meditating on God's Word, praying, memorizing Scripture, fellowshipping with believers.

These are the things we should be doing. So that would be the thing that I would encourage is that you want to show the connection here when you're working with somebody is that it's not just putting off, but it's putting on.

And you see that in many verses, Galatians 5, when it talks of the fruit of the Spirit. Many people think of the fruit of the Spirit, but just look a couple of verses before that, it's the fruit of the flesh.

It's a put off, put on. You don't just stop doing all this gossip and sexual immorality. No, you stop doing that by putting on the fruit of the Spirit. Okay? You'll see that pattern often. So, another part of being separate from the world is that what is the question, the second question there is what happens when a Christian tries to become a friend of the Godless system of the world?

Well, James has an answer for that. Let's look at that in James 4, 4. And he has some pretty strong words here. You adulterous people, wow, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. That is some strong language. That's your blank, by the way, to the question. You become an enemy of God. This is what happens when people try to basically kind of have their cake and eat it, too.

They want to be in the world. They want to live where the world accepts them, but they still want to be Christian. It doesn't work that way. If you want to have the acceptance of the world, then you are going to be an enemy of God.

Posted something on Facebook recently about Joel Osteen. I don't remember what it was I posted. It was an article where someone else basically said that Joel Osteen does not share the full gospel. This is someone that encourages, likes Joel Osteen.

He said he doesn't explain the full gospel when he says you need to believe in Jesus. He never explains what that means. I argue that's because Joel Osteen doesn't know what the biblical gospel is, and someone got very upset with that and basically started calling me all kinds of names.

But the reality is if Joel Osteen is preaching a gospel different than the Bible, which he is because he preaches a gospel of selfishness, that God should submit to you and that you should get everything you want.

Even his wife says that God is all about our happiness. God just wants us to be happy, not for God to be glorified. It's all about us. And that's a different message. Well, if you're going to look to be friends with the world, you're going to be an enemy of God.

And you might say, well, that seems so mean. You should be nice and loving to people. We are loving. The most loving thing I could do is correct someone that's in error. But James makes it quite clear.

If you want to be a friend of the world and you claim to be a Christian, you are in an adulterous relationship with the world. That's strong. He says you are an enemy of God. You can't live by the world system.

We have to be separate from the world. Now, what is true about any person who claims to be saved but still loves the world? Well, John has an answer for that in John 2, 15 and 16. Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life, is not from the Father but from the world.

Well, what you see there is that in verse 15, what is true about any person who claims to be saved and love the world? Well, God says in His Word that the love of the Father is not in him. In other words, if you have a person that is characterized by a pattern of living for the world, that may be evidence that they're not saved, that the love of God is not in them.

So that's your blank there, that the love of the Father is not in him. Letter D lists three categories into which everything that the world offers falls into. Well, verse 16 of that passage tells us, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

Depending on your translation, the translation we just read in ESV is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride of life. The flesh means that living for self-gratification, for that which appeals to yourself.

The lust of the eyes is coveting things, that thought life, thinking things you shouldn't be thinking. Pride of life is basically pride, it's wanting to maybe have the praise of man, be in position. So, that is that.

Those are the three areas we looked at in past lessons. So, that is where we expect to see worldliness is in those three categories. Now, what provides the wrong pattern for Christian use of his body?

How do we use our body? This often comes up. Well, we already saw this in Romans 12 .2 and that is the world. That's the wrong use. We shouldn't be conforming our body to the world. We're to be a living sacrifice to God.

So, the world is a wrong pattern. We don't pattern ourself after the world. Well, there's a second thing we need to be separated from. There's going to be four altogether. But a second thing to be separated from, this may not shock any of you, but is false doctrine.

You need to be separate from false doctrine. What is the standard though of sound doctrine? I mean, that's a good question to ask because if you're going to say something's false, you need to first know what is true.

Here in America, we have the Secret Service and part of their job is to identify counterfeit money. And one of the things they do is they don't study all the different ways to counterfeit the dollar bill.

They focus on the things that are true of true currency. So, there are certain things that are true of a properly made legal money in America. For example, in the threads, it's special paper that has red and blue threads in them and you can see them.

It's special paper. It might have different markings on it. And what they're going to do is study the real thing. And then anything that they have, they can compare to the real thing. It's one of the reasons why I don't encourage especially new believers to go studying Jehovah Witness and Mormon and this cult and that cult and Islam and Roman Catholicism.

You could. Many people do. But study the truth first. You want to first be studying the truth, not the error. When you're studying the true, you can compare everything to it. I don't have this verse in there, but 2 Corinthians 13, 8, you can do nothing against the truth, but by the truth, even though many twist it.

In other words, when you have the truth, you can compare anything to it. This is why I can take Jehovah Witness literature, read what it says and compare it to the Bible and know they're an error. But they won't take my literature.

Why? Because they don't have the truth. And they're afraid that if they read something that I give them, it may cause them to disagree with what their church is telling them or their kingdom hall. So the Scripture is your blank there.

Let's look at 2 Timothy 3, 16. What is the standard for sound doctrine? Scripture is your blank there. All Scripture, do you see that? All Scripture is breathed out. And look, it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

So, when we look at that, we see that the Scripture is our only standard. Many people will really, when you start discussing with them, and this is on really, you want to drive into a new believer quickly, many people will use their experience as the standard.

And so, if it sounds good to them, it must be right. The Christian authority is Scripture alone, rightly interpreted. Now, there becomes the problem because the way most people, unfortunately, interpret the Bible, again, is by their experience.

What they wanted to say, or what they were told it would say, not necessarily what it does say. We have to do the homework and understand what it says. So, let it be there. What do false teachers bring into the church, 2 Peter 2, 1?

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who brought them, who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

So, the answer there is destructive heresies, or false teaching, false doctrine. A destructive heresy, though, is pretty strong language. Not only is it a heresy that is not teaching the truth, it's error, but it's destructive.

This is what a false teacher does. Now, keep in mind, all false teachers teach truth as well. Joel Osteen teaches true things once in a while, but it's just the crucial things, like what it means to be saved, that's where the demons don't want the truth.

They don't care if you believe in legalism and it's based in the Bible and some things are right. They don't care, as long as you're not preaching the gospel. And this is the thing, false teachers want to destroy the salvation message.

That's usually a good sign of figuring out if somebody is a false teacher or not. Ask them what the gospel is. I mentioned I posted on Facebook with Joel Osteen and there was a guy on my Facebook wall that strongly supported Joel Osteen.

Started calling me all kinds of names, saying I was unloving, I was hateful, I was judgmental, and people started pointing out to him that he was judging me. He was saying all kinds of mean, hateful things to me.

All I did was post an article that someone else wrote. But the point being is I asked him, the person said, I don't know the gospel. And I asked that person, could you tell me what the gospel is since you say I have it in error.

Now, the interesting thing was I never explained what the gospel was, wasn't bringing that up so much as the fact that he was trying to make it a point. Well, I was making the point that Joel Osteen doesn't know it, but this person said, I don't know it.

So, I asked him, what is the gospel? He never answered. In fact, his only answer was to start calling me names. Ask a false teacher or someone you're wondering if they're a false teacher, what is the gospel?

Make sure they clearly understand it because you're going to find that a lot of people don't. And if you're not sure yourself, then go back to lesson one of this because that's the first thing we covered, what is salvation?

Alright, letter C, what is the ultimate end to false teachers? What is the ultimate end? Well, we saw that in the same passage, swift destruction. So, not only did they bring destructive heresies, but the end of the false teachers is swift destruction.

That's what they want. They want to bring destruction to the gospel. Alright, what are some of the sources of false doctrine? We understand that human beings can be a source, that someone's doing it for like a Joel Osteen who is worth $50 million and he just got caught in using his church as basically a money laundering racket.

So, that's an issue. But some do it for money. But look at what Paul says to Timothy, now the spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose conscience are seared.

So, what do you see there? The source, the blank there, what is the source of some false teaching or false doctrines? Demons. Some false doctrines are demon inspired. They're doctrines of demons as New King James puts it.

How do we detect a false doctrine? Well, God fortunately didn't just leave us in this world with no way to understand it. But He gives us a way to test it. 1 John 4, 1 and 2, Beloved, do not believe every spirit.

In other words, don't believe every person that says they're a Christian, everyone that's out there. But test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. So, this is what I was saying to you. Go to the Gospel. That's a first test. But how do you know the Gospel?

The Gospel is determined from the Word of God. So, what we'd argue here is that the way to test someone is not by whether it sounds good to me or whether I like what's said, but the way to test it is compare what's being said to the Scriptures.

First, see if the person has a right understanding of the Gospel message. Second, see what they're saying and compare it to Scriptures. This is what we see in Acts 17 when Paul enters into Berea and these Bereans are looking at what the Apostle, an Apostle, someone who wrote much of the New Testament, and they're comparing what he said to the Old Testament to see if the things he said were so.

They're checking him out. That's what you should do with my teaching as well. Look at the Scriptures, examine the Scriptures, and make sure that what I'm saying is accurate. This is why we have a class called the School of Biblical Harmonetics to teach people how to rightly interpret the Bible so that you would get that right and interpret it rightly.

Because if you don't interpret it rightly, you can't use that interpretation as a test against false doctrine. And that's the reason so many fall into false doctrine is because they don't rightly interpret God's Word.

Well, what should be our response when we detect false teaching? I'll give you a bunch of verses there, Galatians 1, 6, and 9. Let's not turn there. If I was working with a student, I would take the time, take as much time.

We're trying to fit this in within our class period, and so for that reason, I'm not going to look up every verse, but when you're working with a student, you should. But the answer is, what should be our response?

We should avoid it. Avoid false teaching. You don't take a little bit of poison with your food just because a little bit won't hurt you too much. No, you avoid it. Just like Joseph did when Potiphar's wife wanted to cause him to sin, he ran away.

And that's what we should do. We shouldn't try to embrace false teachers to, you know, chew on the meat and throw away the bones as some would say. We don't want to give ourselves over to that because the whole purpose of false teaching is to have just enough truth to pull you in to believing the lie.

Avoid the whole thing. Don't look at it to say, well, what truth can we learn from it? You want to learn the truth? Stick to that which is true. Don't accept a little bit of error so that you can find the truth in it.

Avoid a false teacher. All right? Number three, not only do we have the world that we should be separate from, not only from false teaching or doctrine, but also we should be separate from undisciplined believers.

Undisciplined believers. Now, if you have the first version of this book, the first version, there's an extra L in the word undisciplined, so just don't mind that. But those of you, unlike me, who have a newer version, that was corrected.

They don't give me a newer version. I get to have the original one that's, you know, has the problems in it. So, all right. We have to be separate from undisciplined believers. How should we deal with believers who stir up trouble in the church?

Well, Romans 16, 17 -20, and also Titus 3, 9 -10, those are lengthy passages. You can read them. But it says to avoid those people. You should avoid someone who stirs up trouble in the church. You don't befriend them and give an ear to them.

You avoid their foolishness because they're going to be a problem to the truth and the purity of the church. What should be the church's response toward believers who practice worldly habits? This is 1 Corinthians 5.

You look at specifically at 9 -13. The answer there to your blank is do not keep company with them or do not keep fellowship with them. Again, avoid them. You don't give them an ear. You don't give them encouragement to continue with this undisciplined lifestyle, this worldly lifestyle.

Letter C there is, how should we deal with believers whose lives are undisciplined and whose conduct harms their testimony for Christ? 2 Thessalonians 3, 6 -15 would tell us that we withdraw from them.

We still treat them as a brother and that's an important part, but we need to seek to restore them. Can we put that one, 2 Thessalonians, up? And let's read this one because this is an important one. Now, we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and do not keep accord with the tradition that you received, sorry, to the brother who walks in idleness and do not keep in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

For you yourselves know that you ought to imitate us because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.

It is not because we do not have the right, but we give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. As you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed, but do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother, as a brother.

Notice this. This is why I say this is an important verse to look at because when it comes to an undisciplined Christian, this is someone you believe is a believer, but they are living worldly or they are struggling with sin in some way, you avoid them for the purpose of their shame.

You do not give them a listening ear. You avoid them, but notice what it says. You do not treat them as an enemy, but as a brother. When you are doing church discipline, the goal is restoration. You are trying to win them back to come to an obedient lifestyle.

And what you want to do here is instruct a person that they need to avoid people because what happens is false teachers usually pray and undisciplined Christians often pray on new believers because those are the ones that are going to give them an ear.

You often see that in a church where someone that is being a little bit selfish and wants something their way in a church, they will go to the newer believers, the immature believers, so that they will listen to them to get enough people to try to force the leadership to bow to the immaturity.

And that is not right. So, as a new believer, you should be looking to the scriptures and not giving an itching ear to those that may be false teachers or undisciplined. You still treat them as a brother until you get to the final step of church discipline where if they have gone through Matthew 18 and get to that final step where they are put out of the church, you treat them as an unbeliever, not an enemy.

You still love them, but you treat them as an unbeliever. In other words, you assume that they are not saved and they need the gospel. So, we talked about being separate from the world, being separate from false doctrine, and being separate from undisciplined believers, but we are to be separate unto God.