God's Provision for Holiness — B.H. Clendennen

The Biblical Call to Be Holy

Today, God's provision for being holy. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 1, we read, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our brother, under the church of God, which is at Corinth to them which are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, of all that in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.

Then I'm reading in Philippians, Philippians chapter 1 and verse 1, Philippians chapter 1, verse 1, Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and the deacons.

Then in chapter 4 of this epistle of Philippians, chapter 4 and verse 21, Salute every saint in Christ Jesus, the brethren which are with me greet you. Salute every saint, holy. That's an awesome word when you think about it.

It is a word that religion has outgrown, but it is a word that must be renewed when we deal with the image of Christ. We're dealing with this right here, holy. We're not dealing with working miracles.

They come out of what we are. Miracles are a product of what we are and not just something that we say or something that we say to do, but they are a product of what we are, holy in Christ. You know the two expressions we have in these, in this one expression, holy in Christ, we have perhaps the most wonderful expression in all of the Bible as we dealt and preached this last week on the subject that this is the call of God, the call to be saints.

The same word that's translated saints is translated holy. When it says call to be saints, what he's saying is call to be saints or call to be holy. Paul says to the Corinthians, to those that are called to be saints, says the same thing to the Philippians, those that are called to be holy, holy.

It's an unfathomable word. It's one you can't probe the depths of it. It's a word that fills the pages of the Bible. It's a word that God is more interested in than He is happiness or prosperity or anything else.

It's the whole theme of the Bible for everyone that comes to know Christ. It's a word in which all God's perfections center and of which His glory is coming from. All of the works and perfections of God are bound up in that word, holy.

Holiness in Christ Rather Than Religious Performance

It's a word, as I said, that's been forgotten. The word though itself reveals the purpose which God from eternity thought of man. Peter writing about it said, Be ye holy as He is holy. That's the command of God.

Christ could say no less when He said, Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. He couldn't say any less because there's only one holiness that God will accept. That's the holiness of God Himself.

And so there could be no other in Christ. Holy, holy, that's a word. But when you join it with this thought, holy in Christ, did you know that in one form or another that little phrase in Christ appears over 200 times in the New Testament?

In one form or another. It's difficult in the English language to translate this as it is at all times. It's like the gospel. It means to good news people. And it's difficult. Our language isn't as expressive as the Greek language.

And so it's difficult to say or bring forth the whole of the meaning. But holy in Christ. The word in which all the wisdom and the love of God is unveiled. In Christ. Holy in Christ. Nor the way nor the place.

Religion has strove. It's had its monkery. It's had its monasteries. It's had men trying to earn their way to heaven by being separated unto themselves. But that kind of separation, the Bible said, is earthly, sensual.

It's devilish. There's only one way of holiness. That's the holiness that's in Christ. Now the Father giving His Son to be one with us, the Son dying on the cross to make us one with Himself, and the Holy Spirit of the Father dwelling us to establish and maintain that union is the only way that this can ever come about.

That's the only answer to the holiness of God in Christ. What a summary of redemption that says. We have interested ourselves in salvation and salvation is only the beginning. Regeneration is the beginning of sanctification and sanctification is a continuation of redemption or being born again.

And what a summary of that redemption it is when you think of this thought, holy in Christ. In Christ. The one lesson we have to study on this earth is that there in Christ. A lady gave me a book 16 years ago that totally changed my life.

The title of it was, Union with Christ. I've never read a book outside of the Bible that so profoundly affected my life as I read that book, Union with Christ. That's the whole study of the Word of God.

The whole theme of the Bible is here. In Christ is God's guarantee. It is a guarantee and it is a foretaste of what's coming up, of the eternal glory of God in Christ. What wealth of meaning and blessing when you combine the two words together, holy in Christ.

There's no way that you can fathom that. God sees me in Christ. He said of His Son, with whom I'm well pleased. Never said He was well pleased with anybody else. But He said, in whom I'm well pleased.

And as God sees us in Christ. You know, you and I, God made it possible for us to be in Christ. I can't do anything about getting in there, but believe I'm born in Christ. But then God says to me to abide there.

It is up to me to abide. I must abide in Christ. And as I abide in Christ, then God reckons the experience of Christ to be my experience. Thank God as I abide in Him, God looks at me as what He is, and then He can say, a farmer here, I'm well pleased.

Thank God I'm well pleased. That's what it really means to be one with Christ, is that God sees us in Christ and reckons the experience of Christ to be our experience. I mean, with God, it's like Christ died before the foundation of the world.

Of course, we know that 2 ,000 years ago He died. But in God, it happened long before it ever happened. And when God looks at me in Christ, then as I abide there, as far as God is concerned, the work is already done.

He sees me in that perfected stage. That's what He, when He saw Simon Peter, He said to him, Thou art Simon, but you're going to be Cephas. And as far as God was concerned, He already was. He emerged, the look of granted, on the day of Pentecost.

No longer that fisherman to be tossed to and fro, but a man that had come to be what God said he would be. Here's God's provision for our holiness in Christ. This is God's provision, God's response to our question.

When you read the Bible and you see God saying to you, Be ye holy as I am holy, then the answer to that question that naturally arises, How can I ever be holy like God is holy? The answer is in Christ.

Hallelujah. In Christ. That's the only answer. There is no other answer. There's religions that have set a mold to pour people in and if you come to look like that, they'll say that you're holy. But it doesn't mean God says you're holy.

Amen. It doesn't mean that at all. God's holiness is provided in Christ. Often, as we hear the call, Be ye holy even as I am holy, it is as if there's a God fixed that no human could ever, ever cross.

You know, when you talk about holiness, when you preach and speak on it, this week as I considered the subject, who is worthy to speak upon such a subject? Yet the Bible is filled with it. And the Bible said, This is what we're called unto.

This is the call of God unto this business of holiness. And when you think that there's such a God fixed, but then you see that in Christ, there's a bridge over that gulf. In Christ, that gulf has been bridged.

His fullness has filled that gap. Even in Christ, God and man meet. In Christ, as He walked this earth, He was both God and man, not very, not half God and half man, but very God and very man. It was in Christ that man met God, that they came together.

That's what it is in the real church. His body, it's in there. Let God and man come together in Christ on no other grounds. You cannot be reconciled. It cannot be bridged. It cannot be gulfed on any other grounds except in Christ, His fullness.

Thank God. The holiness of God has found us and made us its own. The human can indeed become his very own and become holy, even as God is holy in Christ. Now, to the heart that cries out from the anxiety that has to come when you see, if you read honestly, the Bible, it's calling you to a place that's impossible for you to occupy.

If you read the Bible and read it with an honest heart, don't try to reduce it down to human thinking. You discover that God, through the Word, is calling you to a place and a position that it is totally impossible for you to attain, for you to attain.

So when to the anxious, hard-crying yearnings of the thirsty who have believed in Jesus and yet don't know how to be holy, don't know how to attain, here is God's answer. You are holy in Christ. That's God's answer.

Thank God you're holy in Christ. It will take a lifetime to work out all of the conformity that God intends to work out in our lives. That's what sanctification is all about. Amen. It is both instantaneous and it is progressive.

Instantaneous because Paul said Christ had been made unto us sanctification, our holiness. That's the word sanctified means to be made holy. Saint comes to the word holy. So when we receive Christ in the new birth, we are sanctified because we received God's sanctification.

But it is progressive because it takes a lifetime to work out God's intent in our life. As we walk with God every day, we become conformed to the image of Christ. I said here, I believe, maybe in the message last week, conformity to Christ to the average church members walking on the water, opening the eyes of the blind, working miracles.

But those are a product of that holiness. They are a product of that holiness. What the conformity to Christ is is to become like Him in character. Thank God when they see us, they see Christ. When He was reviled, He reviled not again.

He could honestly pray for those that despitefully used Him. His life was an example unto men. Love, joy, meekness, temperance, faith was the marks of His life. They must be the marks of our life. And when they are, these other things work out as naturally as breathing.

As naturally as breathing, those things work out when we believe God. But you know, you're holy in Christ. Oh, that if we just hear that and believe that. Thank God, what a place it would put us. If we'd hear and believe, if we'd take those words and say them over, if it need be a thousand times, I'm holy in Christ.

Thank God till we realize that God in Christ has made us holy. And Christ, God's Christ, He's not your Christ, He's God's Christ. But God's Christ in us makes for the holiness of God. And as we then seek to obey Him and walk with Him more and more, the old is laid aside and the new is brought forth.

Revelation, Humility, and the Nature of Holiness

Now, as we said ourselves, to study these wondrous words, holy in Christ, holy, holy, holy. You know, that's what they continually, in heaven, around the throne, there is this singing, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

Amen. And as we set to study these wondrous words, let us remember that only God Himself can reveal to us what holiness really is. Only God. You cannot get caught up with a religion. They've got a thousand answers to what God only has an answer.

And there's only one answer. Can you say amen? There's only one answer. And as we set ourselves to study this, may we always remember that only God can reveal this. Let us fear our own thoughts and crucify our own wisdom.

It is as wicked to interject our own carnal wisdom as it is to commit adultery. There's nothing more the enemy of God than the carnal mind when it sets itself into religion and begins to interpret the things of God.

That's the corruption that you see in the world today. That's the corruption. And the mixture of religion that we have today is because that carnal mind, that Philistine mind has looked into the things of God and would interpret it on the carnal grounds.

But let us fear and crucify our own carnal wisdom. Let us give up ourselves to receive in the power of life of God Himself working in us by the Holy Ghost, that which is deeper and truer than human thought.

Christ Himself as our holiness. Christ Himself as our holiness. Let's give ourselves to this. I honestly believe that the coming of the Lord is upon us. And I believe He's coming after a glorious church, a church that has set itself to be like Christ, a church which is His body that truly represents that Christ.

You know, in this dependence upon the teaching of the Spirit of holiness, we need to simply accept what the Scripture sets before us. Just simply accept it. If you don't like it, then it's God you have to argue with.

Amen. Not man. It's God that we have to deal with. But if we set ourselves to simply accept that which God has said in the Bible, what the Scripture has set before us as the revelation of the Holy One of old, and that it's a very slow and a gradual learning that no human can grasp all of this in a moment's time, but if we set ourselves to receive from God what the Bible reveals about this and then be determined that this may be made good in us, we'll really become the witness God wants us.

We'll have to first study the Word. Now, holy in the Old Testament, we have to first, and I pray God will open our minds to this. Now, in Israel, as the holy people, the type of us who now are holy in Christ, we'll see what fullness of symbol God sought to work in the very constitution of the people, of the people, some apprehension of what He would have them to be, what they were set out to be.

They miserably failed. We know they did, but they were called a holy people, and this was God's intent for them. And as we study the Word and look into it as the word holy in the Old Testament, I believe it'll give us some insight into what God is saying.

The law, we'll see how holy, is a great key to the understanding, a great key to what God would have us understand concerning. And I believe, I believe that you and I will agree that if there ever was a generation that needed to know what holiness means, it must be this one.

When you see the carelessness of the church today, the thing that's allowed in the church as being of God. Amen. The thing, the mixture. Now, the word holy, the law, I believe the word holy is a key word of redemption which it was meant to serve and prepare for.

In the prophets, we'll see how the holiness of God revealed as a source whence the coming redemption should spring out of this. It's not so much holiness as the Holy One they speak of who would in redeeming love and saving righteousness make Himself known as the God of His people.

But to us, in us, you know, when the meaning of the word has been somewhat opened up and the deep need of this blessing made manifest in the Old Testament, then we come to the New to find how that need was fulfilled.

Throughout the Old Testament, I preached here one morning on the fact that the cry of the prophets was to holiness. That was the call. They were seeing that a system was being maintained on this earth and yet it was out of harmony with the inner life of the people.

They had a temple, they had the priests, they had the vestments, they had the ceremony, but yet there was really nothing happening to the heart of the people. This is the reason God swept their sacrifices off the altar though they were doing it just like He told them to do it, yet He wanted nothing of it because there was no heart in it.

It was a mechanical thing all the way through and this was God's hatred for it. And it's possible today that there's being maintained this system used in the Word of God and the terminology of the Bible yet there's nothing really affecting the inner life of the people.

The holiness that we're talking about is not there. Now this was what He was after in the old. Now in Christ, the Holy One of God, divine holiness will be found in human life and human nature. He took upon Himself not the form of an angel but the form of a man and the holiness of God was found in Him and became the answer to it all.

Christ as the Revelation of Divine Holiness

Is that right? You know in His book The Knowledge of the Holy Mr. Tozer sets forth the most marvelous truth that you'll ever read. If you've never read that book, if you can't find it, you ought to buy it.

The Knowledge of the Holy and in it He makes this tremendous statement that you can never know anything about God except what you discover in Christ as He, as the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

In Christ, we find this holiness in human life and human nature. A truly human will being made perfect and growing up through obedience into complete union with the holy will of God. My, my. You see conformity to Christ as that.

We've set it down as miracles because we are so much into the sensational. Our whole theme is people come to church. Are the gifts working here? This is what they're looking for. They're looking for an Elijah to pull fire down out of heaven and the whole thing is geared into the senses.

Something that we can see. But conformity to Christ is that our will be brought into the absolute conformity to the will of God so that God is seen coming through human nature. Jesus can say to a Philippi that has seen Me, has seen the Father.

That's in the human side of Him. He's so in such union with God and His walk in this earth leaving us an example that we walk as He walked, that we move as He moved and it's God's will to perfect that in you and I.

And that's what holiness is all about. It is God's will to perfect this in you and I in the sacrifice of Himself on the cross that holy nature gave itself up to death that like the corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died it might live again.

It might live again through death, live again and reproduce itself millions of times in people like you and I. Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone. But that holy nature that walked this earth gave itself upon that cross that through that death it may reproduce itself in us over and over and over again.

What did they say of those early disciples? They took knowledge that they had been with Christ. Do you know why? Because there was a reproduction of that life in those early Christians. And that's what He's working on today.

That's what holiness is all about. There is no other answer to the word holiness. That's God's provision for holiness. In the gift from the throne of the Spirit of God's holiness representing and revealing and communicating the unseen Christ the holiness of Christ descends and takes possession of His people.

Pentecost and the Evidence of Holy Living

Pentecost means that or it don't have any meaning. Amen. It means that today we have unity among a lot of people based on the fact that they can talk in tongues. This has become far more than God intended as an evidence.

I know that if you're filled with the Holy Spirit you will speak in tongues. And if you really pray and touch the Spirit that Spirit will pray through you. And I do not minimize that at all. That's a marvelous thing.

I'm saying as a sign as an evidence it has come to mean far more than God intended for it to mean. Amen. That is the initial sign that a person has been filled. But if they've really been filled until the real sign of it is they'll begin to act like God.

Because that's the life of God that's come into that individual. And if it doesn't produce a holiness of life and a love for truth then that individual has not been filled with the Holy Spirit because the Bible said He is the Spirit of truth.

He's a Holy Spirit. He's the life of God. And when He comes in He will produce in us that life, that nature that holiness of God. And if He doesn't then we didn't receive Him. Say what you like, talk in tongues all they want you to talk in tongues but you didn't receive the Holy Spirit if it didn't start to make you holy when He come in.

The real evidence of this thing is right there. It is a sign. And everyone feels. You don't get filled today in talking tongues six months later. No, when you're filled then that utterance will come forth.

But with that utterance coming forth there will be in you the life of God that will make you a different person. Amen. Oh my, as the Old Testament had no higher word than holy the New Testament has no deeper word than in Christ.

Has no greater word higher word in the Old Testament than holy. And there's no deeper word in the New Testament than in Christ. Holy in Christ then has to be the greatest expression of the entire Bible.

And that's the only place there is any holiness. The being in Him the abiding in Him, the being rooted in Him the growing up in Him and under Him in all things are the divine expressions in which the wonderful completeness of God and the oneness of God between us, the Father, Christ the Father are brought down into human language and we can see where that which God commands of us can be a reality.

Abiding in Christ and the Work of Sanctification

In that wonderful book by Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life he deals with this thought of abiding in Christ in the most beautiful way ever. There he deals with abiding and as I made the statement a while ago from that book he said, when God sees you in Christ then He reckons the experience of Christ to be your experience.

In other words, that's the way it works out. How can I ever be like Him? He walked this earth as a man and the Bible says that I'm to walk as He walked. I'm to walk as He walked. How can that ever be?

Then I see it. It takes some working out. For as God is concerned it's a finished work. For as you and I are concerned, the mechanics of it have to be worked out. But He proved it so definitely in Jacob.

If there's born in us by the Holy Spirit a desire for the spiritual, God will get us to Peniel. Thank God we'll arrive there one day and see the victory in our lives. All He asks of me is to hunger and thirst after that righteousness.

Amen. We shall be filled. Amen. We shall be filled. I don't know but sometimes we are baptized in the Holy Ghost but it's like we got a cork in us and it don't fill us up. We just get under it. It's like baptized but in the water.

They don't get them full of the water. I'm not sure but we're so full of ourselves it don't take an eyedropper sometime to run us over. Is that right? But as we walk this is the whole thing. They have that hunger and thirst and I'm not so sure that what he's saying there that he's talking about a crisis of being baptized in the Holy Ghost but a lifetime.

You see they were filled with the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost but you come to the fourth chapter and they're filled again. They didn't backslide. They were just brought in to into conflict with the powers that be and they suffered shame for His name.

Is that what He said? Self was crucified. Self was emptied out. The vessel was emptied out and there was room made and if we hunger and thirst no matter we stumble, no matter we fall, no matter like Jacob for twenty years we're in the wrong country.

Amen. God will bring us to denial. We will receive this if we hunger for it. Oh hallelujah. If we thirst, if we hunger. Amen. When the Old and the New Testament both have given their message, the one teaching us what is holy, what holy, the other what in Christ means, we have in the Word of God that which unites the two, the most complete summary of God's redemption that God's love has provided.

Amen. When we see, amen, the everlasting certainty, the wonderful sufficiency, the infinite efficacy of the holiness that God has prepared for us, how? In His Son. Thank God, in His Son, in Christ. You know, there's only one message throughout the Bible which you're saved.

That is death and resurrection. Amen. You come to know Christ. You come to know Christ by dying to what you are and coming alive to what He is. Now we want to come alive to what He is, but we want to conserve and preserve the old too.

But it won't work. John says, I must decrease and He must increase. Now, one way or another, if you increase, He decreases. That is in your life. But if we decrease, something in us becomes that burnt offering, that sacrifice.

Then there can be an increase of Christ. And this is the whole of it, the whole of it. As I am sanctified, it just simply means there's a transition taking place from the natural to the spiritual, from the old to the new, from the image of a man, a natural man, to the image of a man in Christ.

Thank God becoming that, the holy ones in Christ Jesus. That's what Paul said, to the saints that are in Christ Jesus. In Philippians, twice he said that, to the saints that are in Christ Jesus. The word saint is the same word translated holy.

So what he really said, to the holy ones that are in Christ Jesus. He said that to the Corinthians. You only have to read the Corinthian letter to know they're not perfect. There's all kinds of things taking place there in that church that tell you they're not perfect.

But yet the Bible says they're holy ones in Christ. God is on the way. God is working. And as long as we maintain that hunger and that desire, God will work out that holiness in our lives. Someday, someplace, as we seek Him.

Persevering Through Failure Toward Holiness

You know, you can almost despair. There's nobody here that hasn't wrestled with something in your life, and you've repented over it a hundred times, and you've lied to you and God both and said, I'm never going to do it again, only to have it break out again.

But He knew that what you are is what's coming out. You can't act contrary to what you are. Amen. You didn't just do something. Amen. That's what you are. When that broke out again, then that old man come out, and you haven't got him dead yet.

But God says, repent and keep walking. There'll be a day when he's dead. I've overcome a lot. Got a lot to overcome. Amen. I haven't been bothered with a tobacco habit in 30 years. Amen. Hallelujah. I mean, I've got the victory over that.

Just the smell it makes me sick. I've got no problems there. I've overcome a lot of things. There's still a lot of things to overcome. And many times as you fight and you struggle, you want to despair, but God is saying just repent.

Keep going. You'll come to Peniel after a while. That name will be changed totally after a while if we walk with Him, because God sees us holy in Christ. Amen. Oh, holy ones in Christ. Such is the name that God give believers.

That's what we bear in the Scriptures, in the language of the Holy Ghost. Holy ones in Christ. You know, that's a marvelous thing when you say it to yourself. You know, if you just say the Scriptures say that I am a holy one in Christ.

My, my. I look at me. There's nothing holy. I can't see it. But I'm glad that I know I'm in Christ. That's one thing I can tell you this morning. I've been born. I've been born again. I am in Christ, and because I'm there, the Word of God says that we're holy ones in Christ.

That's the language of the Bible. The language of the Holy Spirit. It's no mere statement of doctrine that we're holy in Christ. It's no theological discussion that we're invited to. No, no. Not on your life.

But out of the depths of God's heart has come a voice addressing His own children. Thank God. Addressing His family. It is the name by which God calls His children saints. That's what He calls us, isn't it?

Now, you've got all kinds of things called saints by religion. But when this Bible marks down what a saint is, then if you're a child of God, then you're a saint of God. You're a holy one in Christ. Hallelujah!

That ought to make everybody happy. A holy one in Christ. Oh, the language. Oh, it's a name by which God calls us. That name tells us of His provision for our being holy. Saints in Christ Jesus. That's the provision.

There isn't any other. There isn't any other. Now, a lot of things that religion does, you know, says if you won't smoke and drink and you'll dress decently, you know, that makes you a saint. I saw a lot of saints, I mean a lot of people that were not saints that look like that.

They're mean. Amen. You've seen them. Now, I understand if a person is a saint, they are decent. They don't drink. They don't commit adultery. But they're not saints because they didn't do that. They're saints because they're in Christ.

Holiness Expressed in Love and Faithfulness

Oh, hallelujah! Oh, holy ones in Christ. I don't do those things because I am holy. Because I am in Christ. Because I don't want to insult Him. I've been married to the same girl for 35 years. Some of that time we weren't even saved.

I can tell you that in those 35 years, I never violated those marriage vows. Never. In those 35 years, saved or unsaved. I never violated. You know why? Because I loved her. I didn't want to disgrace her.

I didn't want to do anything against that marriage. I've gone for 23 years until I met the girl that I wanted to take home with me. And I didn't want to make that a cheap thing. I wanted to keep it what it's supposed to be.

And holy in Christ. I'm in Christ. And because I'm in Christ, you don't join the body of Christ to a harlot. Is that what it says? Thank God we walk this way and live this way because we are in Christ and that's what makes us holy.

In Christ. That's it. It's a revelation of what God has given us. Oh, and what we are ready for. And what God waits to work in us. That's what He wants to work in us. The name, gratefully accepted, joyfully confessed, trustfully pleaded, will be the pledge in the power of the attainment of holiness that God has promised us all.

Amen. That's right. That God has promised us all. That's the holiness. Amen. That is promised. And so we'll find as we go along all and study that all God's teaching will be comprised in three great lessons.

The first be a revelation. I am holy. That's the first step. If you look at holiness and the Bible is three steps. The first one being this thought right here. I am holy. The second, a command. Be ye holy.

The third, you are holy in Christ. Glory to God. Oh my. If you didn't have that third one, you'd despair, wouldn't you? God says, I'm holy. I know that Lord. I know that Lord. Be ye holy. How? How can such a thing as me be holy?

How can God reach down such tangled masses of humanity? But listen. I read on. He are holy in Christ. That's what makes you want to run through a troop and jump over a wall. Thank God forever that it isn't.

I've got good enough that God can say I'm holy, but I've got where holiness is. I am in Christ and He's working out. I'm a little better than I was yesterday and I'm going to be better tomorrow. Because I'm going to be more like Jesus.

More like Him. First comes a revelation, I'm holy. Oh, our study must be on bended knee. It must be on bended knee. In the spirit of worship and deep, deep humility. God must reveal to Himself to us if we're to really know He's holy.

The Awe of God and the Need for Revelation

You know, I think sometimes the scientific man has a greater awe of God than the average church member. Eternity is just a word we say. To a man that's looked out there and doesn't know God, but he calls Him by a great first cause or something else and he sees 10 ,000 light years out there, part of what that great first cause brought him to be and then eternity becomes something to him that's awesome.

But to the average church member it really isn't. And the holiness of God I don't think has ever really gripped us. I see folks as they talk about Him like a comedian talks about Him, you know. The man upstairs.

I see young people talk about their father and mother as the old lady or my old man. Oh brother. I wouldn't be allowed to have said that. I would never have said that about my father. I never would have said my old man.

No sir. He was my father. Amen. There was a reverence about that. Amen. And God is not the man upstairs. He's God. He's our Father but He's God. Don't you ever forget it. If you just make Him that you begin to treat Him like your old man.