Holiness Unto the Lord
Surrender
Scripture: 1 Thess. 4:1-8
Text: 1 Thess. 4:3
Last week I introduced a series called, “Holiness unto the Lord” and I suggested to you that most denominations have a doctrine of holiness. And we were reminded last week that God calls us - God’s will for us - is to BE holy. It’s not God’s will that we just pray a sinner’s prayer - go through some kind of formula - like picking up a “get-out-of-hell-free” card and then that’s it. That kind of thinking reverses and undermines the whole reason for our salvation in the first place. It perverts, to its fullest extent, John 3:16, that God so LOVED the world, that he gave His only son. It was because of God’s love, that we even have salvation in the first place, and God’s love, flows from His main attribute which is holiness. So he has called us to be holy. If we’re not holy, we can’t have the love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, kindness and self-control that the Bible tells us is the fruit of the spirit. God’s will for us, both individually, and as a church, is that we are holy.
Think of it this way. We just had a baby dedication here today. A man and a woman love each other - they get married and have a baby. The baby is born into the family and they give that baby a home and a new name. Are they done? No, of course not. It’s their responsibility to train and nurture that child until it becomes a true family member. One who will grow and eventually get to the point where it will also accept responsibility, grow to love someone, get married, and have babies. And the story has been repeating itself ever since the world began!
Now - it’s exactly the same with God, we are born again, new babies, into the family. We’re saved. God doesn’t look at us and say, “There, that’s done.” and leave it at that. Our text says, “God’s will for us is that we be sanctified.”
And it was with that premise established that we asked the question, “Where do we start.” And last week I suggested to you that we start with the altar and we looked at all that the altar meant, both the altar of our heart, and the physical altar and why it is so significant. Why it is important biblically that we have a good solid understanding of the altar.
Today, we’re going to look at one aspect of Holiness itself. You say, “Well, what really, is holiness.” It’s a great word. We throw it around a lot, but what is it? Holiness, is Christ-like-ness. It is being like Christ. God said, be holy, even as I am holy, and Jesus said, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. Jesus said, I have set you an example that you should follow in my steps. Holiness is being like Jesus. But we can’t be LIKE Jesus, if we don’t KNOW Jesus. We can’t be holy AS God is holy, if we don’t know GOD. But this holiness is not the kind of “Being like Jesus” that was so popular a few years ago, where we just work real hard to figure out What Jesus Would Do. You know, the WWJD - What would Jesus do? And then do it. It is that - but it’s less than that, and it’s more than that. Let me explain what I mean.
It’s less than that because it is not striving in our own efforts, working hard every day to figure out every little detail of what Jesus would do, and then doing it. That’s not holiness, that’s works righteousness and God has not called us to works righteousness. I say it’s less than that, because it is actually letting go of our works, it’s giving up anything and everything that we do to make us LOOK holy. It’s letting go of striving to be.
You’ve heard me say it before, “In Christ, I am, therefore I do not have to appear to be.”
Let me illustrate it this way. How many of you here have ever been on a diet? What’s the one thing you think about all the time, all day long when you’re on a diet? Right - FOOD!! Now - I want you to think about any number except the number 3 - what number are you thinking of right this second. 3!!! Yes - why - because the more we strive, the less we are. The more WE work at it, in our own strength, the more we open ourselves up for failure. The more we think about overcoming some sin in our lives, the more we will be drawn to THAT sin. The more we think about GOD and his holiness, the more we will be drawn to him and God is light - in him is no darkness at all. So as we draw near to the light, that light exposes the sin in our lives that need to be exposed, and when we repent and confess those sins, then he cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
Well, I said it’s less than striving, and more. How is it more. It’s more because what holiness really means, in one word, comes back to what we talked about last week. Holiness is more than just WWJD because it is, in one word,
SURRENDER.
Sacrifice, slaughter. It’s putting everything on the altar. Everything. What addiction are you fighting right now? Put it on the altar. Leave it there and stop striving to overcome it by your own efforts. Make it a sacrifice to God and concentrate instead on, what Paul said in Phillipians 4. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about the things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
I watched a program a week or two ago on the brain and how we literally can mold our memories and get rid of bad ones through confession and forgiveness and covering them over with good memories. Through confession and forgiveness the memory branches in our brain literally become weak, break off and fall into deeper recesses of our brain and we can literally cover those branches with good memories.
It is absolutely amazing how God, our creator has designed us for holiness, for purity, for the good things that scripture and the Holy Spirit are constantly trying to woo us toward.
We’re looking at this in our Tuesday night Bible Study. We were just in the chapter in Romans, chapter 7, where Paul says the good that he wants to do, he doesn’t do, and the things that he doesn’t want to do, those are things he does. He’s struggling with his sin nature. Has he been saved? Absolutely! Does sin still have power over him? Absolutely! Why? Because something inside of Paul, just like something inside of you and I, has not died. We are holding onto something in our lives that is not fully surrendered to Christ.
Let’s watch this:
(Watch “The Marshmallow Test” from Worship House Media - video.)
We all struggle with being a Christian. Some of us seem to struggle more than others.
Why is that? Why do some of us struggle so hard to resist that marshmallow. Why is it that it seems some of us, like Paul, struggle more than others when it comes to being the kind of people Christ calls us to be, and doing the things God calls us to do.
I want to suggest to you this morning, it’s because some of us try “giving up” and what God is calling us to do is “surrender.”
God is not calling us in holiness to “give up,” he is calling us to “surrender.”
Giving up has the suggestion of doing it ourselves. We give up things. We work hard to keep ourselves from indulging in whatever sin has control of us, whether it’s gossip or pornography, or food, or alcohol, or foul language, or money, or family. Whatever it is that has control of us, it is THAT thing that we work so hard to give up. Giving up happens on the outside. But God is calling us to surrender.
Surrender happens on the inside. Surrender, sacrifice, slaughter, means to kill the thing - Surrender it to Christ and you know it will be a sacrifice to him, so we hold on it. Lest you think that’s just one more thing that YOU do. We don’t do it, the Spirit does. The grace of God in your life and in my life, as we fully surrender EVERY part of our life to God, does the work of cleansing the old habits and sinfulness. And you will find as you surrender your life in one area that God is speaking to you about, that some other area that you struggled with, you’re not struggling with anymore. You might surrender the pornography - the desire to look at things you ought not to look at - you might hand that over to Christ - take it to the altar of your heart and say, Lord, with your help and grace in my life, I give it to you, cleanse my eyes - give me holy eyes, so that my desire is to only see those things that I can unashamedly have you watching with me. You may have that altar experience, and a few days later, be sitting in traffic, late for an appointment and find yourself not getting quite so hot under the collar. See, when Christ cleanses us in one area of our life, other areas get cleansed. When one demon is cast out, he takes some friends with him.
The difference is God. The closer we get to God, the less we want to sin, the more we surrender. The closer we get to God, the more we understand that two marshmallows are better than one.
Do you think any of those same kids in that video would have failed the test if they had done it again. Maybe some would, but likely most wouldn’t - why? Because they had the experience of getting that second marshmallow. It was hard to trust before, but now, it’s not quite so hard. That’s how it is with us, when we trust God in one area of our lives, other areas become a little easier.
Next week we’re going to talk about holiness some more - I’m not quite sure what direction we will take - I think maybe the idea of being holy together as a church. Some of my thoughts seem a bit disjointed right now, but I hope as we go along, and I follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in this, we will be able to pull these thoughts together and see more clearly, not only God’s holiness, but how we can be a holy people of God - his church, his body, his bride.
It’s an important doctrine. I don’t want to rush it. And I don’t want us to miss it.
Let me end with this quote from a book by Steve DeNeff called “The Way of Holiness.”
“We need a religion we cannot play at, a Christ we cannot control, a gospel we cannot package, a sacred text we cannot always explain, a church we cannot leave, and a conscience we cannot put down. We need to be mystified again by our ageless faith. In short, we need to repent. Once we do, we will have an obsession with grace that pushes itself into every inch of our overcrowded lives and throws out the competition. We need to move beyond the shallow religion into one that first reveals and then converts the heart, that disciplines the behavior, and that take captive every thought to make it obedient to the lordship of Christ. We need a religion that is demanding without being legalistic, one that focuses on the outcomes of holiness, as much as it does on formulas.
This holy fear of God will save anybody, and it will save us. But don’t mistake it for something like spiritual power or a second blessing. This is not a cry for revival with man at the center, but a vision of God at the center and revival only on the periphery.”
He goes on to say, that if we can get this message out there, if we can get a grasp of the holiness of God, it will afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
We’re going to try to get a good grasp on the holiness of God in the coming messages and our response to what the Lord is telling us through them.
Let’s pray . . .
