KNOWING GOD - #6
God is Holy
1 Peter 1:15-16
Introduction
I like white shirts. I like them a lot. Part of the reason is that they go with everything. No matter what color of pants you are wearing, no matter what color tie, no matter what color shoes (I go for black most of the time), a white shirt will work.
But you know what I don’t like? Stains on my white shirts. Especially spaghetti sauce. Getting that stuff on my white shirt just bugs me to no end.
I have taken to wearing an apron over my white shirts when I am having spaghetti. Don’t worry guys, it’s not one of them real frilly ones.
In fact, it’s got a guy smoking a cigar and say’s “Kiss the Cook” or something like that.
I don’t know where I got it, but it works just fine.
Another thing that bothers me is when I cut myself shaving, and the blood gets on my collars. And it really burns my toast when I don’t notice it until I get to work. Then what can you do?
When I get a new white shirt, I iron it and hang it up next to my other white shirts, and you know what I notice? My other white shirts aren’t as white as my new one.
The brightness has faded a bit. It almost makes me embarrassed for my new shirt. “Sorry, buddy, I’ll try harder to make sure only really white shirts go in here from now on, okay?”
But you know something? Each shirt by itself looks white enough. It’s when you put it next to something that is really white that you see how gray and dingy it really is.
That’s kind of what holiness is like. We think we are pretty good about living lives that will please God.
Maybe we go to church every Sunday. Maybe we tithe a whole 10% of our income. Maybe we teach a Sunday School class. Maybe we cry out against injustice. Maybe we vote for candidates who espouse Biblical values.
Maybe we pray and read Scripture every day. Maybe we are “better” at being a Christian than the next guy.
Maybe. But Scripture is clear that we are not to compare ourselves with others. We are to compare ourselves with none other than God Himself.
Listen to 1 Peter 1:15-16. It will form the basis of our time this morning.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
There you go. The standard is the holy God of Scripture. Not the fallible standard of human example.
I want to show you today that God is holy and how we can share in that holiness.
Let’s begin by taking a look at…
I. His Holiness – Revealing Him
A. Definitions
1. “Apartness” or “otherness.”
To be holy literally means to be separate. When we say God is holy, we are recognizing that He is profoundly different from His creation.
He has a transcendent majesty, a superiority, which merits our honor, reverence, and worship.
Listen to Isaiah 57:15 –
For this is what the high and lofty One says--
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
"I live in a high and holy place,
but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
He is high and lofty. Not too lofty to care for us, thank God, but He is high and lofty. And holy.
His holiness sets Him apart from all that is not holy.
And our sinfulness sets us apart from Him. Isaiah 59:2 says that our sins have separated us from our God.
Interesting, huh? His holiness sets Him apart from us, but our sinfulness sets apart from Him.
The next meaning of “holy” is…
2. “Purity” and “righteousness.”
God can do no wrong. He is completely separated from sin and evil.
God is absolutely from any moral evil. He is the very essence of moral purity.
James 1:13-14 says that God cannot sin, can’t be tempted to sin, and cannot tempt someone else to sin.
In this sense, God is holy and we are not. Unlike with us, there is no evil mixed with His goodness.
Somebody has said that the concept of God’s holiness is the single best argument against the notion that human beings just made up the concept of God.
Humans might very well imagine a sort of deity who is loving, merciful, forgiving, and all-powerful, but mistake-prone human beings would surely stop short of inventing an absolutely holy God who would hold them accountable to His own exacting standard of holiness.
God’s holiness is defined as His “apartness” or “otherness,” as well as His purity and righteousness.
Next, I want to flesh this out a bit, by looking at some specific aspects of His holiness.
B. God is holy.
Pastor and author Tony Evans says this about God: “Holiness is the centerpiece of God’s attributes. Of all the things God is, at the center of His being, God is holy. Never in the Bible is God called, ‘love, love, love,’ or ‘eternal, eternal, eternal,’ or ‘truth, truth, truth.’ On this aspect of His character, God has laid the most stress.”
1. God’s holiness is perfect freedom from evil.
We say a garment is clean if it is free from any spot, or that gold or silver is pure when all the dross has been removed.
In this manner we can think of the holiness of God as the absolute absence of any evil in Him.
2. It includes His perfect conformity to His character.
That is, all of His thoughts and actions are consistent with His holy character.
Contrast that to us here today. I would venture to guess that the vast majority of us here today want to develop a certain degree of Christian character. We grow in such areas as truthfulness, purity, and humility.
But we do not always act consistently with our character.
You will disappoint or hurt somebody who was counting on you for something.
Well God is never like that. He is perfectly consistent.
And this consistency leads us to the fact that His holiness…
3. It should give us perfect comfort and assurance.
If God is perfectly holy, then we can be confident that His actions toward us are always perfect and just.
And that is good news.
Let’s move on to…
II. Our Holiness – Reflecting Him
Our text for today says that we are to be holy, because God is holy. Our holiness is supposed to reflect His. It will not be the absolute perfect holiness only God has, but we are to reflect Him in holiness.
We are going to be spending the next few weeks during this Lenten season to ask God to give us a heart for holiness.
I believe that when holiness becomes a priority, two things happens:
The first is revival. God awakens His people to a new love for Him.
The second is the spread of the gospel. One of my dreams here is that God would use this church as a beacon of light and hope to the lost in our area.
And as we fall more deeply in love with Christ, His Holy Spirit begins to have free reign in us we see people in terms of their need for God. And He empowers us to act on their behalf.
But we need holiness to see these things happen. There are two aspects to the issue of our holiness. The first is…
A. The Problem.
The problem is that we don’t love the Lord with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength.
I am guilty. And it makes me sick.
We come to church and do all the things others expect from us. And pretty soon, if we lose the focus of Christ, we can become like the hypocritical Pharisees, whom Jesus described as nothing more than whitewashed tombs filled with dead men’s bones.
We need a renewal from God. Jesus’ complaint in the book of Revelation against the church in Ephesus was that they had forsaken their first love.
We have forsaken a relationship for the trappings of religion.
And oh, how we need a fresh glimpse of Him, maybe now more than ever.
But there’s a solution. Here’s…
B. The Proposal.
The proposal has two parts. The first is…
1. Our Part – Consecration.
Listen as I read Romans 12:1 –
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.
When we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, we are consecrating ourselves to Him.
We are saying, “Okay God, I’ve been trying it my way long enough, and look where it’s got me. I struggle to find meaning in life, and I can’t seem to win the battle over sin. You take over. I am committing everything in my life, big and small, known and unknown, to You.
Help me to surrender everything, holding nothing back. Take this imperfect sacrifice of all that I am and can be and make it useful for You.”
That’s not easy, by the way. It takes tremendous courage to give away control of your life.
But remember who you are giving the control to – God Almighty. He created you, remember? He knows what to do with the life you give Him.
This leads us to…
2. His Part – Sanctification.
To be sanctified means to be set apart, especially as it relates to our relationship and service to Christ.
When you came to Christ as your personal Savior, you received the Holy Spirit, who immediately indwelled you, sealing your inheritance in heaven as a child of God.
But there comes a time when you get to the point we just talked about. You sense the need to finally surrender it all. And so you do.
God at that point works a means of grace called “entire sanctification.” In this act, God perfects our hearts in love and empowers us for effective service.
It’s followed by lifelong growth in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The life of holiness continues through faith in the sanctifying blood of Christ and evidences itself by loving obedience to God’s revealed will.
I don’t entirely understand everything involved, but I do understand this: if I hope to be able to love the Lord my God will all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, I need His help to do it.
And He is ready to give it right now.
He takes your sacrifice, and He makes it holy unto Him.
As we finish this section, let me read 1 Thess. 5:23-24 –
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
Come to Him on the altar of your heart, and consecrate yourself to Him, and let Him sanctify you through and through.
Conclusion
Remember when I talked about my white shirts?
I don’t know about you, but when I look at the holiness of God, I feel like a dirty shirt.
And not just one that’s a bit dingy or gray. I feel like one that’s been drug through the sewer.
It’s times like that when I reflect that I have an Advocate in heaven who prays for me, and I can rest.
This morning you have an opportunity to respond to God’s invitation to consecrate yourself to Him.
I am going to pray in just a few moments, and you will be able to pray along with me.
Also, on the back table you will see a bunch of brochures like this one.
I invite each of you to take one of these. It is a 40-day prayer guide intended to usher you into a greater hunger for holiness.
It contains a daily Scripture and prayer focus. You can begin anytime, but it is designed to be used for the 40-days prior to Easter, starting this Tuesday, and going through April 14.
This is a tool in our effort to develop a heart for holiness. Take it seriously, and watch God’s Spirit work in ways you never thought possible.
But before we pray about that, I want to make a special invitation to anyone here who may not have the assurance of eternal life in heaven.
As we enter the Lenten season, we begin to shift our focus to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He came down so that you could have eternal life, shedding His blood so that your sins could be forgiven, so that you could be presented to God as pure and blameless.
If you have not done so before, I urge you with everything in me to call on Christ, admitting your sins and turning from them with His help. Confess Him as Lord and call on Him to save you and give you a place in heaven. He will do it. He promises. And you can leave here today knowing for sure you will spend eternity in heaven when you leave this earth.
I would like every head bowed and every eye closed. I am going to pray two prayers.
The first will be for those who want to take Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. Then I will pray for those who wish to consecrate themselves totally to Christ, allowing Him to entirely sanctify them to Himself.
After we pray, I want you to remain with your heads bowed and eyes closed for a few more moments.
Let’s pray.
