Be Holy As I Am Holy - 1 Peter 1:13-23 - December 30, 2012
Series: Communion Sunday
Someone once wrote these words, “God makes us miserable through conviction to make us happy through confession.” “God makes us miserable through conviction to make us happy through confession.” And I think there is some truth to those words for when we come to a conviction of sin in our lives it lies heavy on our hearts. It fills our thoughts and wears away at us. In Psalm 51 King David wrote, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” [Psalm 51:3] He could not escape an awareness of his sin any more than we can, and while he may have been able to hide it from others for a while, in his inner heart, he knew, that what he had done was wrong in God’s eyes, and because of that he had no sense of inner peace. He writes, “When I kept silent, [that is, when “I did not confess my sins,”] my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night [the hand of God] was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” [Psalm 32:3-4] Sin eats away at us. It leads to feelings of shame and failure, frustration and despair. It hinders our communion with God, leads to powerlessness in prayer, and threatens the fellowship of believers. When sin lies heavy on our hearts, peace flees and turmoil ensues.
And it is far better that we do feel miserable under conviction then it is that we live unaffected by our sins. For if our sins do not bother us, if they do not strike within us a chord of remorse, a glimmering of awareness that through our sins we have grieved a Holy God, then we have quenched the Spirit of God that lives within us and silenced our conscience. A lot of people live that way today. We have hardened ourselves to those things which are pleasing to God and reveled in those which are offensive to Him. And for the most part we don’t think of it as any big deal. We think of our own sin as small but the sin of others as being much bigger.
Let me ask you a question: Which is the bigger sin – homosexuality, theft, drunkenness, or the tongue that gossips and slanders others? The truth is that in our hearts we tend to rank them because we see some sins as being worse than others. And in a way it’s true. Murder seems infinitely worse than gossiping over a cup of coffee with your friends. But that’s a very human perspective on sin. That’s seeing sin in the context of our relationships with other people, when what we should be doing, is seeking to see it against the holiness of God. When we only see the human dimension, of sin we fail to see the complete depravity of sin, and began tolerating sin in our lives - because in that light it doesn’t seem to be such a big deal after all. But listen to what Paul writes to the church in Corinth …
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? [That’s Paul’s nice way of saying, “Not everyone is going to heaven.” What that really means, is that some are going to find themselves in Hell – they will face the terrible outpouring of God’s wrath, and judgement on the day when all sin is brought into the light. On that day we will not be able to stand before God in our sin. Our own acts will condemn us. How much better for us to be miserable now, under conviction of sin for a time, that we might have an awareness of sin, a heart to turn from it and to seek God, and to know His healing and forgiveness in this day!
Without that conviction of sin we will continue in our guilt, blind to it all the while. And while we protest our innocence now, while we deny the sin we live with is really something to be put to death and turned away from, in that day every excuse that we use to justify our sin, will be revealed to be empty and hollow and useless, as every motive of our hearts is laid bare before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In the end we will not be able to protest our innocence – for every tongue will be stilled – and we will realize that God is just and right in His judgment. And so Paul writes to the Corinthian church and says to them …] Do not be deceived: [For sin is deceitful – it promises life but brings death] Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10, NIV84)
“Don’t be deceived,” he says. “Don’t be fooled.” Don’t be fooled by what? By the deceitfulness of sin; by believing that you can continue to practice sexual immorality, gossip, greed or whatever it is, and be right with God and be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven. God did not save you, so that you could continue in sin, but rather to deliver you from bondage to it.
Open your Bibles with me this morning please to the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter, chapter 1, beginning in verse 13. Peter has been speaking of the salvation that was proclaimed through the prophets long ago and which is realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. And what he is writing about is our response to that salvation, because when a man or a woman truly meets with God, does business with God in the brokenness of sin and darkness of life, they emerge transformed. They are changed. In the book of Acts we read how the people of their day noted that something was different about the first disciples. In many cases they were unlearned, unschooled men, ordinary people, but in light of the hope they proclaimed, and the stand they took, and the lives they lived, Scripture says that the people around them were “astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13)
When you’ve been with Jesus, you’re no longer the same! When you spend time in His presence, you’re changed – and it shows in your life and I want to ask you this morning: Are you spending time with Jesus and does it show in your life? Because friends, it ought to be. It ought to be showing. We do no greater harm to the faith, no higher injustice to our God, than when we act like a Pharisee, worshipping God with our lips, yet in our hearts being far from Him. It’s called hypocrisy – and when people see it in our lives it turns the heart away from God. Living one way Sunday morning, and living another the rest of the week – that’s a recipe for spiritual bankruptcy, a lack lustre witness, and a powerless faith.
Friends, there is a battle being waged in our homes, in our schools, in our communities and in our places of work. It is being waged in our relationships and in our churches. But most of all it is a battle that is being waged in our hearts. Yet not only is it a battle being waged in your heart – but it’s a battle being waged for your heart. And Christians are becoming casualties in great numbers. Losing the battle results in prayerlessness, fruitlessness, hopelessness, emptiness, powerlessness, and ineffectiveness in our Christian witness and service. What is the battle for? It is a battle for holiness.
So, in light of the salvation offered us by God, let us hear what Peter has written, beginning in verse 13. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:13–23, NIV84)
“Be holy, because I am holy,” says the Lord. Folks, what does it mean to be holy? That word might evoke a whole bunch of different images in our minds. It might bring to mind pictures of monks locked away in their monasteries. Perhaps images of old paintings where the disciples are shown with a godly glow wreathing their heads. Maybe when you hear the word “holy” you think of “super saints” – Christians who seem to be head and shoulders above the rest of us in their faith, and the way they live it out. But what does it mean to be holy?
God says that He Himself is holy. To understand holiness then is to understand the character of God. What does it mean for God to be holy? Holiness is a word that means “to be set apart.” God is set apart from sin. There is no sin in Him. There is no sin in His presence. He is perfect in all His ways, all His thoughts, all His actions – none of them are tainted by sin. He is also perfect in love and in justice and in mercy. As these flow forth from the essence of who God is, there is no stain of sin upon them either. He is over and above all creation, He is set apart, He is holy.
And as we begin to understand the character of God we begin to understand what it means for us to be holy. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1–2, NIV84) Those words come to us from the book of Ephesians and they help us to understand the life that God is calling us to, what it is that He desires to see in our lives. They help fill in our understanding of what it means for us to be holy. To be holy is to be an imitator of God. Not in the sense of God’s all encompassing power and authority, but in the sense of God’s character. To be holy is to be Christ-like. We will only be as holy in so much as we are Christ like. The more we allow the Holy Spirit to shape in us the character of Christ and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit – the holier we will be.
Holiness consists of thinking as God thinks – seeing the things of this life through the lens of His word. Holiness consists of living in accordance with His will. You will never grow in holiness, you will never be holy as God is holy, if you allow sin to go unchecked in your life.
And we have a problem in the Christian church today because we tolerate sin. We accept it in our lives. Because of that our faith is often weak. Prayers often powerless. Our witness watered down. You can’t speak to the world of having freedom from sin in Christ when your own sin is evident for all to see. The message will fall on deaf ears. That’s why Paul goes on to say in his letter to the Ephesians, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:15–20, NIV84)
Be careful – be very careful – how you live. Life is short – you get one shot at it. One shot to live for God. One shot to make your life count for something in God’s economy. One shot to store up treasures for yourself in Heaven. One shot to honor God in word, thought and deed. One shot to make a difference for God in your world. And because you never know which day will be your last, which day you will be called to stand before the Lord your God, you need to make each day count.
This past week we were at the funeral service for the daughter of some friends of ours. Anna was just 24 years old. By any human measure a life ended far too short. When she got into the car that afternoon she had no idea that in just a few moments she was going to be transported from all the hopes and dreams of this life – which is here today and gone tomorrow – and into the presence of her Lord and Savior. She had one shot at a life lived for God. And she hit the mark. She did well. She finished strongly. Her life brought forth much fruit. She pursued holiness and people took note that she had been with Jesus.
There is a song, which you may be familiar with, entitled, “Holiness.” The opening verse and chorus go like this: “Holiness, holiness is what I long for. Holiness is what I need. Holiness, holiness is what You want from me. So take my heart and form it. Take my mind and transform it. Take my will and conform it. To Yours, to Yours, oh, Lord.”
And I like that song because it gets to the heart of holiness. Holiness consists in surrendering the things of self, submitting the will, hungering after God and seeking the things of His kingdom. It means granting the Spirit free reign to transform the heart, to change the way we view the world in which we live, to bring our desires into conformity with the desires of God Himself. Holiness is allowing the Spirit of God to live in us, to direct us, guide us, to fill us, transform us and renew us in the image of Christ Jesus our Lord.
In the pages of Scripture we are called to be filled with the Spirit of God on a daily basis. When Paul writes, “be filled with the Spirit,” the Greek is clear in denoting, not a one time filling, but a continuous, on-going, life-long, filling with the Spirit of God. We can never have too much of the Holy Spirit in our lives but we will never have more of the Holy Spirit than on the day of our salvation. That is the day when God sends His Spirit to dwell within us. So we will never have more of the Spirit then on that day, but as someone once said, with each passing day, the Spirit should have more of us! More of what? More of my mind, more of my heart, more of my will so that at the end of the day there is less of me and more of Christ shining through.
We’re always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. When I was a kid there were some days when I wanted to grow up to be a cowboy, other days when I wanted to be an Indian, other days when I wanted to be an artist and still others when I wanted to be a pilot. As a child you had your own dreams of what you wanted to be when you grew up and maybe you became that and maybe you did not. Perhaps your dream changed somewhere along the way. I know that mine has.
But what if we were to ask a child what his, or her dream was, and the child’s response was this: “My dream is to be holy.” We would be completely taken aback, and we would be humbled, because we would see that that child is dreaming bigger than we ever did. And the dreams of that child would bring forth a harvest of righteousness in that life as they pursued holiness, not for holiness’s sake, but for the sake of the Lord their God.
And the dreams of such a child should be the dreams of our own hearts. We begin our journey of faith as spiritual babes, infants in the things of God, but for the one that dreams and desires holiness as a child of faith, they will grow and become a mature man or woman in God’s grace, and they will be holy as God is holy.
And that holiness is what we ought to be seeking. In the book of Hebrews we read this: that we are to “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14, NIV84) You want to see God in this life and the next? It won’t happen without holiness. If we’re not seeking holiness, if we’re not desiring the things of God and approaching Him full of faith and with consciences cleansed by the blood of Christ, if we’re not coming to Him in light of Christ’s sacrificial death for our sin, we’re not really coming to Him at all. We’re playing at our faith, we’re playing at church, we’re going through the motions but the life of Christ is not in us.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes this: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified … For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you His Holy Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 4:3,7-8) When we knowingly choose sin over the holiness that God is calling us to we are rejecting God Himself. We are scorning the death of Jesus who gave His life that we might have life with God.
Friends, we are called to be holy as God is holy. We are called to be set apart – living as strangers here in this world with reverent fear. Many in the Christian Church today have lost their fear of God. There is no trembling before Him, there is no awe of His being, there is no fear of His judgment, there is no love of His holiness – and so we go our own way and do our own thing and call ourselves by Christ’s name. To our shame we both tolerate and revel in sin and the world cries out, “Those Christians are no different than me – why should I want what they say they have? Why do I need their Jesus?”
There are many today who live as those whom Paul writes about in his letter to Titus saying, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” (Titus 1:16, NIV84)
Friends, let that not be true of you! Holiness is God’s desire for you and me. But there is a battle being waged for your heart, for as much as God desires holiness for you, as much as we ought to be desiring holiness for ourselves, our flesh wrestles against it. Therefore, as it says in the 2nd chapter of the book of Philippians, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” (Philippians 2:12b-13)
In his letter to Timothy, Paul says it this way … “In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”
To be holy, means to be cleansed. And there are two parts to that. First you need the cleansing that comes through salvation. Our lives are mired in sin, our very nature rebels against God from the day we are born. We are sinners through and through – maybe not as bad as we could possibly be at all times – maybe even living good, moral, upstanding lives from the world’s point of view - but our very natures do not desire the things of God, and so Scripture says that we live as enemies of God. Even the best of us is living as an enemy of God, day in and day out, because our sin has separated us from the Lord our God, for God Himself is holy, and that which is sinful cannot dwell in His presence. If that sin is not atoned for – and no man or woman can ever atone for their own sin – you have no part with God. Without holiness no one will see the Lord.
That’s why, in Peter’s words this morning, he speaks of our redemption through Christ, saying, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1 Peter 1:18–19, NIV84) To be “redeemed” means to be “bought back, purchased at a price.” In just a few minutes more we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. In doing so we will share the bread and the cup with one another and what we’re remembering, celebrating, giving thanks for, and proclaiming as we do these things, is that when Jesus, who was without sin, died on the cross, He was doing so that we who are covered in sin, would have our sin atoned, for that we might no longer live as enemies of God, but be reconciled to Him; that we might be redeemed.
So to be holy, we first must experience the cleansing of our sin through the atonement of Christ Jesus. For as it says in God’s own word, “I am the Lord, who makes you holy.” (Leviticus 22:32) Apart from the grace of God we cannot know holiness at all.
But there is a second part to our holiness that the first makes possible. That is the practical working out of our salvation in fear and trembling as we seek to be holy as the Lord is holy. Paul wrote to Timothy telling him that if a man cleanses himself from the ignoble things of life – the sinful things – the things not in accordance with God’s word and will and heart – then he – or she – becomes useful to God, made holy, and prepared to do any good work. It’s a cleansing made possible by the blood of Christ but lived out in fear and trembling and love, as we humble ourselves before the Lord, and seek His ways.
To Timothy, Paul puts it this way … Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:20–26, NIV84) Peter, in our passage this morning, speaks of having “purified yourselves by obeying the truth.” He’s speaking of putting to death the sinful things that we fill our lives with. He’s speaking about walking in humble obedience to God’s revealed will – that is the truth we find in the pages of God’s word. He’s calling us, in those places where our lives are out of line with God’s testimony, not to reshape God in our image to enable us to live however it is we want, but to bend the knee, bow the head, surrender the will and be renewed by the transforming of both mind and heart, that we may be holy as God is holy.
There is another song that comes to mind, that would be an appropriate prayer for those who seek the holiness we are called to. It’s called “Give Us Clean Hands” and it goes like this: We bow our hearts / we bend our knees / Oh Spirit come make us humble. / We turn our eyes / From evil things / Oh Lord we cast down our idols. / So give us clean hands / And give us pure hearts. / Let us not lift our souls to another. Oh give us clean hands / And give us pure hearts / Let us not lift our souls to another. / Oh God let us be / A generation that seeks / Who seeks your face / Oh God of Jacob. / We bow our hearts / We bend our knees / Oh Spirit come make us humble. / We turn our eyes / From evil things / Oh Lord we cast down our idols.
And it may be that the Spirit of God is laying on your heart today, the fact that you need to do business with God. That it’s you, not your spouse, not your neighbor, not your friend, not the person sitting next to you this morning, but it’s you, who has to bow the heart, bend the knee, humble the soul, flee from evil, and turn from sin. That’s it you who needs to be holy as the Lord is holy. If that’s the case then let these moments to come be moments of brokenness for you before a Holy God. Do whatever it takes, but get right with Him. Confess, repent, reconcile with your neighbor and seek the things of God. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind and the healing of your soul.
I’ll ask those who are helping serve this morning to come forward at this time. And we’re going to have a few moments of prayer where we can cry out to God together, and then the bread and the cup will be passed to you, and as that is taking place, Lorraine will be playing quietly and I encourage you to respond to whatever God has been speaking to you during this service. Please hang on to your bread and the cup and we will take them together when all have been served.
Let’s spend some time in prayer …
Serve. “God has called us to be holy. Let us remember at what cost that holiness is made possible. And let us not despise it but come to God with great gratitude and humbleness, desiring clean hand and clean hearts that our lives may be, not just pleasing to Him, but useful as well.”
Response in song …
