Introduction
The word “holy,” in contemporary thinking, has become almost like an offense. How insulting to be thought of as “holy” (“O, aren’t you so holy!”), even in the church. Many want to add God to their lives but with little or no change needed on our parts. Some Christians want to be just like everyone else, they want to fit in, not make waves.
But the Christian life is not for those kinds of people. Because, by its very nature, being a Christian means being holy, being different. The Old Testament prophets, along with John the Baptist and, of course, then Jesus, called for a radical change for those who would trust and obey God. “Believe!” and “repent!” are at the heart of all truly New Testament preaching.
And “repent” means to change, not only our thinking but our actions. When we become disciples of Christ we are saved from the death our old desires and practices are leading us to, and called to live lives of holiness.
This call to holiness comes very early in Peter’s first letter and continues to be stressed throughout…
1 Peter 1:13-2:3 [NLTse]
13 So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. 14 So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. 15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God Who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
17 And remember that the heavenly Father to Whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of Him during your time as “foreigners in the land.” 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom He paid was not mere gold or silver. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose Him as your ransom long before the world began, but He has now revealed Him to you in these last days.
21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because He raised Christ from the dead and gave Him great glory.
22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.
23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living Word of God. 24 As the Scriptures say,
“People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. 25 But the Word of the Lord remains forever.”
And that Word is the Good News that was preached to you.
So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. 2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.
Sermon
We often minimize the gravity of our sin. “It’s no big deal,” we can think to ourselves. “I’m not as bad as others.” And likely you are not. But our standard for holiness as Christians is not “others”. Our Father doesn’t say, “Be holy because others are holy,” He says, “Be holy because I am holy.”
How casually, sometimes, we talk about our holy God and pray for the Holy Spirit: We pray for Him to come into our churches and into our hearts, but what would He find if He should come? Might He not find much that is painful and agonizing to Him?
Evangelist, writer, pastor, and educator R. A. Torrey once wrote, “What would we think if vile women from the lowest den of iniquity in a great city should go to the purest woman in the city and invite her to come and live with them in their disgusting vileness with no intention of changing their evil ways? But that would not be as shocking as for you and me to ask the Holy Spirit to come and dwell in our hearts when we have not thought of giving up our impurity, or our selfishness, or our worldliness, or our sin. It would not be as shocking as it is for us to invite the Holy Spirit to come into our churches when they are full of worldliness and selfishness and contention and envy and pride, and all that is unholy. But if the denizens of the lowest and vilest den of infamy should go to the purest and most Christ-like woman asking her to go and dwell with them with the intention of putting away everything that was vile and evil and giving to this holy and Christ-like woman the entire control of the place, she would go. And as sinful and selfish and imperfect as we may be, the infinitely Holy Spirit is ready to come and take His dwelling in our heart if we will surrender to Him the absolute control of our lives, and allow Him to bring everything in thought and fancy and feeling and purpose and imagination and action into conformity with His will. The infinitely Holy Spirit is ready to come into our churches, however imperfect and worldly they may be now, if we are willing to put the absolute control of everything in His hands.”
…
We are, all of us here, sinners. But we have not all given up our sin. Some of us cling to our sins – our impure thoughts, our gluttony, our sexual perversions and lusts, our hostility, our greed – we cling to our sins, our insecurities, our fears, but they keep us from Christ. So let’s lay them down!
Some of us will not give-over control of our lives to the Holy Spirit, needing and wanting to remain in control ourselves. We’ve always been jealous, proud, angry, unforgiving, ambitious, divisive, and conceited. “What’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong is that Christ has put such things to death in His death on the cross, and He has put them to death in you! So cast them off today!
We don’t understand God’s hatred of sin, nor do we understand how destructive such ways are, so we keep on in our worrying and wild living, in our controlling and our lying and our “me”, “me”, “me” focus, in our quarreling and gossiping and envy… But they are killing you and killing those around you, your sins…
Because some are murderers, idolaters, and drunks, and because some have been involved in demonic activities, and because some are cheaters and adulterers and thieves Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had to be sacrificed, and whipped almost to death! He needed to be mocked and to die shamefully – completely rejected by His family and friends and all humanity because of our sins…
…
In his first letter, John writes, “We are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in [sin]; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 6-7)
Let’s come to the cross…
Matthew 5:13-16 [NLTse]
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18 [NLTse]
How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? 15 What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? 16 And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:
“I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be My people. 17 Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord. Don’t touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you. 18 And I will be your Father, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”