Brethren, I'm going to point
this out because it's bothering me. If anybody's wondering, the
reason that I'm wearing sweaters instead of my suit coats is I
can't fit a suit coat over my calves. So for about a month,
I'm going to be wearing sweaters and vests or whatever. So I'm
just getting that out of the way. All right. Let's go to Exodus
chapter 3. Exodus chapter 3. Our subject
today is Christ made our holiness. Christ made our holiness. Let's read this together. Exodus
3 verse 1. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro,
his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, And he led the flock
to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God,
even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he
looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush
was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn
aside and see this great sight while the bush is not burnt.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called
unto him out of the midst of the bush and he said, Moses,
Moses. And he said, Here am I. He said,
Draw not nigh thither. Put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he
was afraid to look upon God. Now the key to this passage is
found in this phrase, the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground. That's the key to this passage. This passage is about holiness.
It's about holiness. It's about the holiness of Christ
Jesus the Lord. It's about His holiness. It's
about how Christ is the sanctifier and the sanctification of His
people. This is about how Christ makes
His child to be holy. How He sanctifies us and separates
us and purifies us and consecrates us. Those are just all words
to describe holiness. But this is how Christ makes
His child holy. That's what this passage is dealing
with. Here's Moses. He's a shepherd of just natural
sheep. He's a shepherd of natural sheep.
But God's about to do something for him. God's about to take
him and take him from what he's doing and separate him and make
him holy and consecrate him and send him forth for God's holy
use. That's what's happening here
to Moses. It was like when Christ sanctified
David. David was a shepherd. The Scripture
says He chose David also His servant and took him from the
sheepfold. From following the ewes great
with young, he brought him to feed Jacob his people and Israel
his inheritance. So he fed them according to the
integrity of his heart. God sanctified David in his heart. He purified his heart. He made
his heart holy by making Christ his holiness so that he fed God's
people from the integrity of his heart. And this is what happened
to Amos. Amos was a shepherd of sheep.
And the Scripture speaks about Amaziah who was a high priest
and he didn't want Amos preaching the word of the Lord because
what Amos was preaching was against the king. And listen to what
Amos said. Then answered Amos and said to
Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son, but I
was a herdman. And I was a gatherer of sycamore
fruit. I was a shepherd out tending
sheep, gathering sycamore fruit. That was my occupation, just
common. And the Lord took me as I followed
the flock. And the Lord said unto me, Go
prophesy unto my people Israel. Amos said, Now therefore, hear
the word of the Lord. Now you hear what God's got to
say. And this is what happened to Peter and to Andrew. They
were fishers. They were fishermen. They weren't
herdsmen. They were fishermen. But just
like he took Moses from being a shepherd and made him an under-shepherd
of his people, and just like he took David and Amos and made
them from being natural shepherds to under-shepherds of his people,
he took Peter and Andrew from being fishermen and made them
fishers of men. And there they sat with everything
that was their life. Those nets and those boats were
their life. That's how they made their living.
That's how they fed their family. That was their life. You know
the things men used to excuse not following Christ and not
coming to hear the Gospel preached? Because those things are their
life. Well, who's going to make the difference? Who's going to
change that? The Lord Jesus came to them and He said, Follow Me. and I will make you fishers of
men. And you know what happened? Something you can't see happened.
God made Christ sanctification unto them. And you know what
the result was? Straightway they left their nets
and they followed Him. He became their life. That's
what it is to be sanctified. Christ becomes your life. Anything
else you thought was your life and anything you thought was
bringing you to God ceases to be. Christ becomes your life. Now, the opposite of holy is
common. The opposite of holy is common.
You've heard me say, you know, He's not holy, He's unholy. Well,
that's not really the opposite of holy. The opposite of holy
is common. Common. And all the gods of all man-made
religions throughout time, including the so-called Jesus, that's another
Jesus that men preach, Not holy. He's common. He's common. He's common just like every other
God man imagines. He's got all the common attributes
of every God that man has ever imagined in his imagination.
Because their gods are as common as the depraved sinners who imagine
them. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
holy. He's holy. It's so hard for us to grasp
holiness because in our flesh we're common. We're common. It's hard to understand holiness. He's not common at all. Nothing
He does is common. He's holy. He's holy. He has
nothing in common with the gods of men. And what we're going
to see here in this passage is We're going to see that Christ
makes His people holy by revealing His holiness and sanctifying
us unto Himself. This is how you're made holy.
It's by Christ making His people holy by revealing His holiness
and sanctifying us unto Him. Now, first of all, I'm going
to show you this in five ways in this passage. Now, here's
the first way. Christ makes Himself holiness
unto us in the way He appears to us. It says there in verse
2, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him. Now the word angel
is messenger. That's the word. It's messenger.
And Malachi 3 says Christ is the messenger of the covenant. He's the messenger of the covenant. He is the covenant. He is the
message, but He is also the messenger of that message. This is not
an angel. It doesn't say this is an angel.
This is the angel. This is the angel of the Lord.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ. Before He ever came in human
flesh, this is an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
appeared in many different ways before He came in the flesh.
This is one of those appearances. Now Moses is writing this passage.
Don't forget that. All the first five books of the
Bible were wrote by Moses. He's writing it in third person
like he's writing about somebody else. But he's writing about
himself. And what he's showing us here is how God sanctified
him. And that's what he's teaching
here. And he doesn't say that he appeared before the Lord.
He doesn't say he appeared before the angel of the Lord. He says
The messenger of Jehovah appeared unto him. The angel of the Lord
appeared to him. Now what's the significance of
that? The helpless Jesus that most people are preaching in
this world, He don't appear to men. He don't appear to His people.
They beg the sinner to appear to Him by their will. You come
to Him. You come before Him by your will.
That's what they beg the sinner to do that. Because He can't
appear to them unless they appear to Him. He's helpless. He's common. He's common. And they tell sinners
to put off this and put off that, do this thing and the other thing
so that they can make themselves holy. Because their God can't
make them holy. He's common. And such a helpless idol, brethren,
that's not holy God. at all. And men approach, speak
of God and they speak of the Scriptures, they speak so flippantly
of God. God is holy. We're going to see God one day
and even you that are redeemed in Christ, you know what we're
going to do when we see God? We're going to hit our knee.
We're going to hit our face. That's what we're going to do.
Because He's holy. He's holy. Now Christ is that
holy Redeemer because He is the angel of the covenant. He is
the angel of the Lord. He is the minister. He is the
messenger of the covenant. If your holiness began with you,
if your consecration and separation and sanctification began with
you, it is common. What I am getting at is those
that He sanctifies gives Him all the glory at being holy because
He appeared to us. He's got to be the messenger.
He gets all the glory for being the one who first appeared to
us. We weren't seeking Him. We weren't trying to appear to
Him. He appeared to us. He appeared to us. So that's
the first way that He's made holiness unto us, by Him appearing
to us. And then secondly, Christ makes
Himself holiness unto us in the mystery He reveals. When He appears
to us, He makes Himself holiness to us by the mystery He reveals. Now look here at verse 2. And
the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out
of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the
bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Now when
I see this in my mind's eye, you know what my first thought
is? What a mystery! Here is a bush with a flame of
fire in it, and yet that bush is not the one fueling that fire
because the bush is not being burned up. The fire is self-sufficient. It's burning on its own. And
yet they're together. That's a mystery. And without
controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest
in the flesh. The burning bush here is an illustration
of God the Son dwelling in our human nature. That's the first
thing that you're going to be made to see and we're made to
see when Christ is made sanctification of us. We're made to see something
of his person, the glory of his person, who he is. Before then,
all our religion is a doctrine and a system and church attendance
and arguing about this and that. We got to meet the person. That's
where it all began, with the person. God here, the Son of
God here is manifest as God in the flame of fire. It shows that
Christ is God by the flame of fire. Scripture says our God
is a consuming fire. He's a consuming fire. Why is
He a consuming fire? Because He's holy. You know,
you listen to most preaching and what they emphasize is God
is love. And it sounds so sentimental. God loves you and He wants to.
He's got a wonderful plan for your life. He wants to do this
and that for you. Don't believe a second of that.
God's holy. You can't come to God just any
old way. God is holy. And everybody He
loves, He's gonna love them in a way that's holy. Not common. We love in a way that's common.
And our conception of love is common. God don't even love like
we love. We don't even conceive how God
loves. Because God loves in a holy manner. That's His chief attribute. God
is holy. He's holy. His Word is holy.
It's not common. His worship is holy. It's not
common. Everything He does and is, is
holy. So you can't just flippantly...
He's not the man upstairs and He's not the Jesus this and Jesus
that. He's God is who He is. He's holy. And it's consuming fire because
His justice is unbending, it's unyielding towards anybody on
whom sin is found. God can't have anything to do
with sin. And He won't have anything to
do with sin. That has something to do with His holiness. God
is whole. W-H-O-L-E. There is no division
or diminished part in God. He is whole. He is holy. He is
holy. And we are going to have to first
be made to see that that One who walked this earth is God.
He's God. That's who He is. He's God. Come
down. He's God. And that's what we
see in the flame of fire. And then this flame of fire being
in a bush speaks to Christ's humanity. Him coming in our nature. In our nature. Do you know what
the... This was a bramble bush. That's what the word means. It
was a thorn bush. And when you speak of a bramble
bush, you speak of a thorn bush, you go back to Genesis 3 when
after Adam sinned in the garden and plunged the whole human race
into sin, God said the ground is cursed for your sake. He is
going to bring forth thorns now. Thorns. And think of this, that
here is something that looks like sin, and it is sin, is cursed,
human nature, and yet God, holy God, the Shekinah glory, the
flame of fire came down and took the likeness of sinful flesh. He came in our nature. You know,
the Jesus that men are preaching, this is the thing that doesn't
make Him attractive or make a true sanctified child of God not drawn
to that Jesus for this reason. He is common. Nothing holy about
it. You've seen the holiness of God.
You know who Christ is. And so, what was it here? You
know, there was a bunch of these bushes that grew where Moses
was. This wasn't just the only bramble
bush out there. That back side of the desert
was full of thorny bushes. What was it that separated that
bush from all the other bushes? What was it that made that bush
holy to Moses and uncommon from all the others. What was it that
sanctified Him to that bush in the first place? It was the flame
of fire, the Shekinah glory dwelling in the bush. And I'll tell you
this, Christ is going to make holiness to us when He makes
us behold His glorious person. That's the first thing. He makes
us see His glorious person, that He is God in human flesh. That's when He's going to make
And when He makes Himself holiness to us, we're going to be made
to see the Word was made flesh. And just like Moses saw that
flame of fire dwelling in that bush, He's going to make you
behold the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. He's going to make you see that
one is God in human flesh. That's an amazing thing. You
rejoice in His person? When I think about God in human
flesh, the first thing that comes to my mind is We have a great
high priest seated at the right hand of God who has walked where
we walk and been in touch with the feeling of our infirmities
so that he knows what we're going through right here as a man.
And at the same time he's sovereign God so that nothing will stop
him from comforting us in all our trip and all our infirmities.
He's the God-man. But there's something else that
we see here. He's not only going to reveal His person, He's going
to make you behold His glory in His work on the cross. Here
you have this fire in this bush. The Lord Jesus Christ was made
to bear the fire of the sin of His people. He was made to bear
the fire of the sin of His people. He was touched with the feeling
of our sin. He knows something about our
sin. I am not saying he was polluted, corrupted, anything like that.
I am just saying he was made sin for his people. He was made
sin for his people. He had to be made us. He came to manifest the righteousness
of God. And so in order for God to treat
him as me in my place, he has got to be in my place. Really
in my place. It was vital that he be made
flesh because it was vital that he be made sin. And when he was
made sin, then he bore the fire of God imputing sin to him. Now, I wish I could get men to
drop tradition and I wish I could get them to drop preconceived
notions and go to the Word of God and just say, what does God
say? There's been a whole lot of strife
and division over this, but one thing that it's done for me is
it's made me go to God's Word and say, what does God actually
say about how He imputes? Now, to bear this in mind, Christ
came to this earth to manifest that God is righteous. He's righteous. He does nothing that's unjust
whatsoever. Now, if you had a son and you
knew that son was innocent, you know he's innocent, And he goes
before a judge and the judge says, but I am going to impute
sin to him. I am going to charge him with
this crime. I am going to impute guilt to
him. Would you say that judge is manifesting righteousness?
Would you? Would you say that judge is manifesting
what it is to be a just judge? Of course not. And it would hit
home to you because that is your son that he is doing it to. Well, Christ, God's Son, came
to manifest the righteousness of God. And if we don't think
that a judge imputing that way would manifest righteousness,
why would we think it would manifest righteousness for God to impute
sin to Christ when He hadn't been made sin? I know the tradition
is that men, I've always read it, faithful men, and I'm not
saying they're unbelievers, they're faithful men, but they said that
God, Christ, was made sin by imputation. If you'll read the
word of God, you will not find God ever making anybody sin by
imputation. He never said a judge could make
anybody sin by imputing sin to them. He said if a man comes
in and he's righteous, you impute righteousness to him. If a man
comes in and he's committed the crime, you impute sin to him.
He got to be just. Now I know that might come as
difficult for some because people say, well how could he have been
made sin unless it was him? I'm not called on to explain how
it was happened. I'm called on to just believe
God's Word. And what I'm saying to you is Christ was like that
man in, I believe it's Deuteronomy or Leviticus, You know, God said
if you slay an animal, you have to bring him to the altar, and
there you have to offer his blood to the Lord. You have to acknowledge
that God gave you that animal to eat. And He said if He slays
an animal, He doesn't bring it to the altar. God said blood
should be imputed to that man. Why? Because he shed blood. You
see what I'm saying? He didn't impute blood to him
to make him have shed blood. He didn't impute blood to him
to treat him like he was something he wasn't. He imputed blood to
him because he shed blood. By one man, sin entered the world
and death by sin and so death passed the ball upon all men
because in Adam we really did sin. That's why God imputed sin
to him. And the very next verse says,
but God will not impute sin where there is no law. You know what
he's saying there? God does not impute unless the
person has really been made sin by a prior act. And those from Adam all the way
to Moses, they didn't have a law like Moses had, so they couldn't
sin after the similitude that Adam did. He had an express written,
I don't know if it was written, but an express law from God that
said, don't eat that tree, the fruit of that tree. They didn't
have a law from God. And yet, they still had sin imputed
to them and died. How could that be just? Because
they really sinned in Adam. And the good news of that is,
brethren, when God shows you Christ, He bore the fire of our
sin. He bore the fire of God whom
He loved, imputing Him with sin, numbering Him with the transgressors.
But by that, brethren, now when God imputes righteousness to
a believer in the court of our conscience, it's not to treat
us like We're something we're not and it's not God making you
something you're not. He's imputing to you what Christ
really made you by Him laying down His life. I don't want to
see God ever do anything in an attempt to manifest righteousness
and do it in an unrighteous way. Because if He does it that way,
well now He's imputing righteousness to me but He might turn around
and impute sin to me. Because He didn't manifest righteousness
in a just way. But when I look at how God says
He manifests His righteousness, it was dotting the i and crossing
the t's in a just way. So that now I know, because God
says I'm righteous by Christ doing and dying, God won't ever
impute sin to me. He's just. But we've got to be
made to see this, that He's holy. But when He laid down that life,
that fire didn't consume Him, He consumed the fire. Now you
think about this. There is that flame and there
is that bush. And he is looking at this, but
that bush is not burning up. You and I can't start a fire
without having some sort of fuel. A log or a bush or something
has got to be burning. And the more it burns, the more
that bush is diminished until finally it's gone and the flame
goes out. That ain't what happened on the
cross. Because the Son of God being God, being divinity, He is the flame of fire. He is
solitary. He is not getting His fuel from
His human nature. He is God. He is life. And so
His deity supported His humanity so that He could bear that suffering
on the cross and hold up under being forsaken of God until He
satisfied justice and then He died. And then we behold this. You
think about this too. You look at that bush and it's
burning and it's not being consumed. And you think, well, that goes
against all the laws of nature. But Christ is the law of nature.
He upholds all things by the word of His power. And you behold
His glory in this too. No man killed Him. He's the only
man in human history that ever walked this earth. that gave
up His Spirit to God when it pleased Him. When justice was
satisfied, He yielded His Spirit to God. He said, I have power
to lay down my life. And here is what He makes you
see. The glory, the Shekinah glory you see is He said, and
I have power to take it again. And because He satisfied justice,
He arose on the third day and ascended to the Father. And we
in Him, His people in Him. And so He makes you behold this,
what the law could not do in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit. You know what's not being preached?
You know why people in pews around the world are not being sanctified
by God? Because a common Jesus is being
preached. who didn't do anything like what
I just described to you. That's why. God's not going to
sanctify somebody if His Word's not being declared. Because He's the one who's going
to send that Word to be spoken in truth and blessed and sanctified. And He's going to do it through
the message that glorifies His Son. His person, His work, His
ascension, everything about who He is and what He's done. Don't
you love the person and work of Christ? Alright, now let's
move on. Here's the third thing. So the
first thing is the way He appeared to us. He appeared to us. The
second thing is the mystery He reveals. He reveals who He is
and what He accomplished. And then here's the third thing.
Christ is made holy unto us when God commands us how we must approach
God. All this, you know, you talk
about order and chronological, this just happens. I don't know.
God does all this. But you're going to have to be
made to know how you must approach God. This is what's involved
in God making Christ holy to you. Now watch what happened.
Moses said, I'll now turn aside and see this great sight while
the bush is not burned. Now that is just how flippantly
you and I thought we could approach God. That's how flippantly in
our man's depraved nature, that's how flippantly he can approach
God. Oh, that looks like a curious
sight. I'll go to this church and hear what they got to say. And flippantly speak of God and
flippantly talk about, I believe I was born again today. I've
got a good feeling. You know, all these different
things, just flippant, just like a man spotting something and
out of curiosity turn and say, I'm going to go over and see
what... I've never seen anything like that before. And so he tries
to just go over there and approach, just walk up to it. And watch
what happened. Verse 4, And when the Lord saw
that he turned aside to see in such a flippant manner, God called
unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses,
God knows His sheep by name because He named us. Moses, Moses. And He said, Here am I. And He
said, Draw not, neither put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. See, in all this
God is making us to see that Christ is holy and God is holy. In all this. And this is what
we got to... We thought we could approach God like this. We thought
we could come flippantly like this. And we heard preachers
saying, come to God, come to Christ, come to Christ, come
to Christ. Well, I'll tell you, the first thing that's going
to happen is God's going to tell you, you can't come in the way
you think you can come. He said, the first thing he told
him was, don't you come near me. Don't you draw nigh me. Now, that's what we're going
to have to find out first. I encourage you to come to God,
but I encourage you to know this. You can't come just any old way.
Don't you think you can come to Him in yourself? You can't
do it. We are sinners. God is holy.
We can't come to Him. We can't come to Him in ourselves.
We have got to be sanctified by God. That means Christ has
got to be made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification
and redemption. Christ has got to be made everything to us.
Because He is the only one we can approach God in. We have
got to be made to see He is the only mediator between God and
men. He said, I am the way, I am the
truth, I am the life and no man can come to me or can come to
God except by me. You can't come any other way.
That's what we are being taught here in this passage. So, in
this process, when He first said you can't come just any other
way, you know this is a fact. There was some point in your
conversion where you began to realize, I can't come to God
how I thought I could. That's God making Christ's sanctification
to us. We got to first see, I can't
come any old way. And then he tells him this, put
off thy shoes from off thy feet, because the place where you stand
is holy ground. No shoe of man's making can be
worn to approach God. Nothing of our making can be
worn to approach God. Nothing. We can't come with a
shoe we've made. We can't do it. Do you remember
that movie Black Hawk Down? It was a true story about the
U.S. helicopter shot down in Somalia. Do you remember during
that movie how the Somalians held up their shoes, the bottom
of their shoes to the U.S. helicopters? That was a symbol
of irreverence, is what that was. And so what we're seeing
here is just like that. God is saying here by this taking
off of the shoe, it's a symbol of the heart being made holy,
being made purged, Christ being formed in us, so that we put
off all the ways and all the ideas and all the vain works
and all the things we had any confidence in, we put that off
in reverence to Christ. You see, we haven't reverenced
Christ unless He's the only way we can come to God. Unless He's
the only way. The removing of the shoe symbolized
the child of God made holy and sanctified by God, by God giving
you a godly fear. You are not going to fear God
until He starts teaching you these things. God is holy. He has got to appear to you.
He has got to show you what Christ, who Christ is, what He did. And
He is going to tell you now, you can't come in yourself. You
are going to have to put off your shoe and you are going to
have to come in Christ only. Christ only. You know, the sad
thing in a lot of churches, in places where they claim to be
desiring the honor of God's holy law, what they're really doing
is putting Moses and the law in between the sinner and God. That's what they're doing. Their
shoes still on. And they're trying to come in
their shoe and they're showing irreverence to God. Our shoes
have got to be taken off by God, given a godly fear to say, I
can't come except in Christ. He's got to be everything. Everything. Notice here now, watch this.
Moses taking off his shoe, that's not what made the ground holy. You don't make yourself holy
by stopping this or that. That's not how you made holy.
What made the ground holy? Christ was there. God was there. That's what made the ground holy.
And when a man's made holy, when God's there, This building is
a building, but if Christ is here, He promised to meet with
us, where two or three gather together, then what's happening
here is holy. And when He comes into the tabernacle
of the heart, like He came into the tabernacle in the wilderness,
when He comes in, buddy, it's sanctified. His glory fills it. And it's holy. And when he enters
in the heart, he's going to make you understand this. Take off
your shoe, take off everything you have. The only way you can
come is to have your feet shod by another with the preparation
of the gospel of peace. That's the person and work of
Christ himself. That's the only way you can come. He's going to make the shoes
that you can approach him in. So we can't do it ourselves now. Now only Christ can teach us
this. God is going to have to teach
us this. And now here is the next thing,
fourth thing. Christ is made holy unto us by God revealing
in Christ that He is our covenant God, now get this, to whom we
now live. to whom we now live. Now watch
this, verse 6. Moreover, he said, I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of
Jacob. I am thy God. I am the God of your father.
I am the God of my people. And what he is declaring there
is that he is the covenant God. And what is going to happen in
being made holy is God is going to make you see that every promise
God has ever coveted The covenant, every promise He makes to you
is not fulfilled by you. It is yes and amen in Christ
Jesus the Lord. David said, He made with me an
everlasting covenant, ordered it in all things and sure. This
is all my salvation. Christ won't be our salvation
as long as we think there is something else that needs to
be done. But when God makes His promises and says, now they are
all fulfilled in Christ. I am your covenant God. Here
is the covenant. Christ my Son, He fulfilled it. Every promise is yes and amen
in Him. It's all done. It's all accomplished. You're mine. Christ won't be holding this
unto us until God makes us to see Him that way. The covenant
who fulfilled the covenant. And not only the messenger of
it, He's the message, He's the covenant. And look now, we know
the meaning of what he is saying here when he talks about Abraham
and Isaac. Turn to Luke 20. I want you to
see this. Christ Himself gave us the interpretation of this
passage. And what Christ teaches us, He is dealing with the Sadducees
and they denied the resurrection of the dead. They denied the
resurrection of the dead. And verse 37, He says, Now that the
dead are raised, Now concerning this matter of the dead being
raised, Christ said, Even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth
the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob. He said he showed that there
is a resurrection of the dead. Why? Because he is not a God
of the dead, but of the living. For all live unto him. all those that God sanctifies,
all those that God has made Christ's holiness unto. We live now not
unto ourselves, not unto Moses and the law, but we now live
unto God. We live unto God. An unsanctified
man, you can't make him understand what I just said. God has taken
out everything that was between us and him so that now in Christ
we can live unto God. All that He sanctifies live unto
Him. Right now in this life we live unto Him because Christ
freed us from the law and because Christ is formed in us and is
the holiness of our heart now so that now there is nothing
hindering us, not the law and not our impure heart. Now we
are made righteous and holy, so now God can receive us and
we can now live unto God. That is what Paul said. He said,
I through the law am dead to the law. Christ fulfilled it.
That I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. He just said, I
am righteous, I am justified and I am sanctified. by Christ
what He did for me at the cross and because now Christ lives
in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the
faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. You
know why you and I don't come into the fiery trials of trouble
and affliction and the furnace of affliction and the pressures
of men and the adversaries and the world and hearing folks tell
you to go back to the law. Yeah, but you got to do this
work and that work. Why don't you depart from God now and go
back to that? You know why? There's one reason.
Christ lives in you, that's why. It's not to your glory or mine,
it's because Christ lives in us. He has freed us from the
law. He has freed us from the curse.
He has come in and sanctified us and He is sanctification to
us. He is righteousness and holiness to us. We got what we need. When
you got cried, now we can live to God. And that is why you don't
go back. And then when we die, one day
we are going to lay down these bodies just like Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob did. And you know what is going to
happen? A lot of things are going to change. except we're going
to lay off this flesh and then we're going to be living under
God in person. That's right. We live under God in this life
and in the life to come. Martha said, I know Lazarus,
he's going to be raised in the resurrection one day. And you know what our Lord said to
her? Martha, the resurrection is not a doctrine. The resurrection
is not some event that's going to happen. He said, I am the
resurrection. And he tells us what he meant
by that. I'm the life. And the man that believes on
me, he said, though he die, he'll live. When God shows you these things,
that's when Christ has made holiness to you. And you realize, I'm
alive to God now. I can really commune with God,
speak to God, serve God. and He gives you a heart to do
it in the right spirit. Now, you believe this? Do you?
He asked Mark, do you believe this? Do you believe this? Is
He your holiness? Is He everything there? When
we talk about any one thing that Christ is to us, we are talking
about all that Christ is to us. When I talk of holiness, I am
talking of wisdom, righteousness and redemption and everything.
Is He holiness to you? Is He your holiness? Are you
holy in Him? and by Him in you? Is that the
argument? If so, we're going to have a
new spirit. A new spirit. And here it is. Here it is. This is when Christ has made
holiness to us. He always produces this in His
people. Verse 6, And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to
look upon God. This is the goodwill of Him that
dwelt in the bush right here. It's to bring His people away
from everything that made us common, and to sanctify us to
behold God as God, holy, in the person of His Son, so that we
live under Him in godly fear, bowed in reverence and submission
in true godly fear. This is the purpose for which
He's doing it, to bring you to worship Him. That's what you
have here. Him bowed down and he worshipped.
Let me show you something. Isaiah 6. Go there with me real
quick. Hold your place there in Exodus 3. Isaiah 6. Moses hid his face. He was afraid
to look upon God. He had a godly fear now. He saw
God in that flame and that bush united. And we see God in Christ. What happens when God shows you?
when Christ has made holiness to you. Verse 1. In the year
that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a
throne. I saw Him as a king. I saw Him
as the king, not King Uzziah. High and lifted up, and His train
filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims,
each one had six wings. And what did they do? What did
these angels do when they saw the Lord? With two, He covered
His face. What did Moses do? He hid his
face. That's what you're going to do in the presence of Holy
God. You're going to bow. You're going to bow. You're going
to put your face down. You're going to bow. That's what
worship means. We haven't worshipped until we've
bowed in the heart to God. He hid his face. And with two
he covered his feet. It's holy ground. And with two
he did fly. And one cried unto another. And
what was all this showing? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory. And what happened
to Isaiah? The post of the door moved at
the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with
smoke. And then said I, woe is me, I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips because my eyes
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Holy, holy, holy. Christ had been made holy in
his son Isaiah. And when he brings you that part
where you say, woe is me, I'm undone, I'm hiding my face, I
can't even look upon you God. When you become like that publican,
smiling upon your breasts, not even looking upon God, saying,
God have mercy on me, the sinner. What does God do then? Then,
verse 6, then, not until then, flew one of the seraphims unto
me, having a live coal in his hand, that fire, that he had
taken with the tongs from off the altar, and he laid it upon
my mouth, and he said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, thine
iniquity is taken away, thy sin is purged. And also I heard the
voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go
for us? And then, after I had seen the Lord, after I had seen
His... Then, said I, here am I, send
me. Now go back to Exodus 3 real
quick. You see, when is God going to
use a man to preach the gospel? When is God going to use one
of His believing children to bear witness to somebody? Only
when this has happened to us, only when we are made to see
Christ as our holiness, our all, only then. Because only then
will we fear God so as to speak only of Christ. Now is that what
He did with Isaiah? Is that what He did with Moses?
Look at Exodus 3.10. He said, Come now therefore,
I'll send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people,
the children of Israel, out of Egypt. Now he is ready. Now he can go. Why? Christ is
holding this to him. Christ is holding this to him.
Now here is the application. We get it over in Hebrews 12,
28. We hadn't come to Mount Sinai. You notice he was in Mount Horeb.
He was in Mount Sinai, but the mountain wasn't quaking and trembling.
Why? Because He was showing him Christ. And the law was given to be a
schoolmaster until Christ. And then we're not under that
schoolmaster anymore. So there wasn't even fire going on in the mountain.
Now we had come to that fiery mountain. We've come to Mount
Zion. We've come to where Holy Lord Jesus is seated, ruling
everything for His people. And so He says to us, now you
hear Him that speaks from heaven. And here is what he says to us,
verse 28. Wherefore, we receive in a kingdom which cannot be
moved. Oh, I like that, don't you? We
can't be moved. Let us have law. Let us have a judgmental spirit. Let us have a condemning attitude. Let us have grace. Whereby we
may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. We don't want to be found wearing
our own shoes made of the works of the law. We want to be found
in Christ, serving God in reverence and acceptably. Why? Because
our God is a consuming fire. Because our God is holy and we
know it now. That's when you'll serve God.
That's it. All this other junk men talk
about being sanctification ain't even in the ballpark. That's
when God's made Christ holiness to you. Amen.