Sermon Cloud

What assures our hearts?  It is grace.  What calms our fears? It is grace.  Truth, yes it is true and truth is a power ally which we must yield to, but it is grace that is the anchor which holds us to truth.

For example we are commanded to “be holy for I am holy.”  I now ask you, how can we be holy?  It is only by grace that we can be holy.  Our own righteousness is not sufficient.  Our obedience is at best imperfect.  If we spend our days looking inward at sins to be repented of we will miss grace and become self absorbed and useless in the kingdom of God .  So how do we find holiness? By grace. 

Let me give you some characteristics of holiness from scripture so we have no confusion as to what is being asked. 

Holiness is to be like God in those attributes that are communicable to people.  It is in a word to be like Jesus in his humanity.  Or in the words of Micah to : “do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.”  God is never satisfied with simply religious observance.  Holiness is not found in Church attendance or coming to prayer meeting or filling up the offering plate.  Listen at Micah’s words:

Micah 6:6-8 (ESV)
⁶ “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” ⁸ He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

He does not seek here to abolish the temple or destroy the sacrifices that point to the need for a savior.  But what he does do is push us back to a more basic understanding of what God requires.  God commanded the temple worship as he has commanded us not to forsake assembling ourselves together, but those things are NOT the substance of holiness.  They are much too easy to perform and then simply live our lives the way we want.  Here God is concerned with Justice, Kindness, and Humility before God.  Religious observance, going to church, giving, taking communion, these things can either help or hinder us in the pursuit of genuine holiness.  They hinder us when we make them the substance of holiness instead of the help toward holiness that they can be. 

We must be extremely careful to let scripture define holiness instead of our present cultural expression of Christianity.  In fact we talk more of being “spiritual” than of being holy because we are afraid in our present culture of being “holier than thou.”  I believe that this comes from the constant experience in our world that those out side the church experience of “Christians” that they simply condemn and look down their collective nose at society in general.  The only time we are heard from is when we condemn a movie or a politician or a song or each other.  The other time they hear from us is in scandal when one of our own in a high place proves that they are right about us all along by falling into the same sin he or she ahs been condemning others for participating in.  By the way, just so you will know, it is not simply the liberal media trying to destroy us.  We are the ones responsible for these things.  Even if they delight in reporting them, we must take our own lumps. 

We constantly do two things that shoot us in the foot as a church:  We overestimate the transformation that believing in Jesus brings in a fallen world and we underestimate our own capacity for self-righteousness.   Part of the problem is Christian writing.  Paul Heaven and I were discussing this particular dilemma that faces Christian authors.  They face an audience that will not accept Christian characters with deep flaws.  Most of them end up with a Pollyannaish view of the world that has no relation to reality.  Notice that the bible does not do this.  It does not present characters without flaws.  The closest we come to this is Daniel and Joseph.  It is hard to find a flaw in either of them.  The rest of them have doubts, sins, flaws, laugh at God, question God, disagree with each other, have hypocrisy in their behaviors and just generally look like real people.  I am sorry if I offend you but most of the fiction written by Christians today teaches a worldview that has very little to do with the Bible.  In the worst case scenario, young Christians are led to expect a world where serving God leads to a perfect live.  Many of them simple leave you with the impression that your life is certainly not what God intended.  Again we have at the root of the problem a flawed view of holiness. 

To be holy at its most basic meaning is to be set apart, different.  This is the Hebrew words קֹדֶשׁ קָדֹושׁ the idea when applied to people is dedicated or devoted to God.  Our overuse of these words for lesser things makes it hard for us to grasp.  It is not a philosophical or a mental game or attitude.  It is being in action for God in the whole of our lives.  God is looking for undivided loyalty.

[James] 1:6 gives a vivid description of the man of prayer who is a διακρινÏŒμενος. He does not stand firm on the promise of God but moves restlessly like a wave of the sea. He is double-minded and inconstant in all his conduct, v. 8. The δίψυχος brings out very clearly the inner cleavage.[1]

This is not so much the doubting of the outcome as it is doubting the truth of God’s word and therefore God himself.  This doubting is not just inward questioning but is outward action as well

[James] 2:4 διακριθῆναι is to go to the assembly and thus to demonstrate one’s faith, and yet at the same time to despise the poor, acting according to the standards of the world and not according to the promise which God has given the poor (v. 5). The inconsistency of this is sin.[2]

3. There is doubt so long as there is faith. Nevertheless, attention to doubt, and the condemnation of it, are later.

In the OT there is much reference to the rejection of God’s Word (Gn. 18:12; Is. 7:1–25 etc.), but not to doubt, i.e., to half affirmation which is also half negation. This arises in the OT only in the form of a deliberate attitude, of hypocrisy, not as a failure to reach consistency in the personal affirmation of God’s Word. Job is not called a doubter; he is a fighter. There is no cleavage in his attitude. It is consistently directed against God. ^[3]

So back to our original issue, holiness.  God looks for consistent devoted undivided living out his truth.  What that looks like is most clearly spelled out for us in the Sermon on the Mount.  How then can any of us be holy?  As I first stated it is by grace alone.  Since holiness is not religious observance, not a set of culturally defined dos and don’ts, we are holy only by God’s immeasurable grace.

Isaiah 55 (ESV)
¹ “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. ² Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. ³ Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. ⁴ Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. ⁵ Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. ⁶ “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; ⁷ let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. ⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. ⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. ¹⁰ “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹ so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. ¹² “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. ¹³ Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”^[4]

Is that then not a license to sin, to live as we wish, to ignore the moral teaching of Scripture?  The answer is decidedly yes if we look at this from a purely human perspective.  The only thing that makes it not so is the transforming nature of grace in relationship to God.  Yes, I still sin and oddly enough it is not about sinning less.  It is about helplessness on my part before God.  Desire to change my behavior is in direct proportion to my awareness of my need for grace.  Fear of punishment or even fear of consequences is not enough to change me.