Alright, welcome to our continuing
study in Luke chapter 4 and the last several messages that we've
been working on here. We started in Luke chapter 4
verse 31. And just to kind of refresh your
memories in case you haven't been following along in the sermon
audio, the Lord had been in Nazareth and they kind of kicked Him out.
And so he went down to Capernaum and the city of Galilee and taught
them Sabbath days. And we had a lesson on that true
meaning of that Sabbath days. And then we read in verse 32,
and they were astonished at his doctrines, for his word was with
power. And we said, well, if they were
doing everything right and everything was Jake, it wouldn't have been
astonishing now, would it? What would have been astonishing
to them is, by grace are you saved through faith and that,
not through yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works.
Works is what they live by. Works is the keeping of the law. It would have been astonishing for
them to learn about election and sovereign grace. and all
those doctrines that we spent several weeks looking at each
one of them. And so now he's still in this
synagogue in Capernaum where he's been teaching Sabbath day.
So he was there some time, not just one day. And in the synagogue
in verse 33, there was a man, a man that was there by the determinant
counsel and foreknowledge of God, a man that had an appointment
with destiny. There was a man which had a spirit
of an unclean devil and cried out with a loud voice. And you
may recall one of our pastor's previous lessons regarding that
maniac of Gadara that he mentioned that the Lord took care of that
legion of devils that was in him. And this man had a spirit
of an unclean devil and cried out with a loud voice saying,
let us alone. What have we to do with thee,
thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?
I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked
him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when
the devil had thrown him in the mist, he came out of him and
heard him not. And they were all amazed and spake among themselves,
saying, What word is this? For with authority and power
he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out. And the fame
of him went out into every place of the country round about. not
the spiritual fame, but the fame that, wow, he did a magic trick,
was pretty impressive. So, today's lesson is entitled,
The Holy One of God. And what a display of mercy and
beauty of God in Christ, in having mercy on exhibiting this poor
man who is representative of how, just like that maniac of
Gadara, He was representative of how we are before regeneration,
how we all are by nature. And that maniac, when Christ
got done with him, he was sitting at the feet of Jesus in his right
mind. And he had a different view than
he had had just prior to that. And we find that's the case here. This man that's possessed, let
us alone. It's one of the things that you
just kind of gloss over in this, but he was in a synagogue. What
was he doing in a synagogue in this condition? And it's just
representative that that's how a lot of people are in religion.
There's a lot of people with an unclean spirit that are sitting
every Sunday in an assembly of people saying, well, I'm a Christian
too, and we're all Christians, and we don't all believe the
same thing. They're possessed of an unclean
spirit, as this person is displayed here. Let us alone. We don't
really want anything to do with Christ. And if they preach Christ
as He truly is, if they preach God as He truly is, they wouldn't
want anything to do with Him in those places of assembly either. And that's just the way that
it is. And we're going to examine why
that is in this lesson on the Holy One of God. Fundamentally,
there is a huge misunderstanding of what that means. Holiness
is just, it's just wrong, the way they look at it. So we have
this man that's there by divine appointment in a religious assembly.
He has the spirit of an unclean devil. He's unable to rid himself
of it and doesn't really want to. Let
us alone. I'm kind of happy the way things
are. And I can check my religious
box off because I'm here in the synagogue. I've got it all covered. He's about to experience, though, both the holiness of God and
the mercy of God, though he sought Him not." Even though he was
in this religious assembly, you'd think that he'd be there on his
hands, and he's saying, Lord, help me be rid of this. And yet the word we have is,
let us alone. And this unclean spirit recognized
Jesus as the Holy One of God. He recognized Him as the Sinless
One. And you know, you kind of think
about this. Norm's going to do this Zoom
meeting here, and you just wonder if Satan didn't have Zoom meetings
with all his minions all over the place. You know, earlier
in chapter 4, I tempted him in all points as I did Adam and
Eve, and yet, he didn't go for any of it. He was yet without
sin. The sinless one. And they recognized
him as that. And so he was tempted in all points
like as we were, yet without sin, it says in Hebrews 4.15.
And that was pointed out again in Luke 4.1-13 was we looked
at those areas where he was tempted. And perhaps another astonishing
doctrine that Christ would have been teaching on the Sabbath
days when he was there, when he healed this guy was the issue
of the holiness of God. Man in his unregenerate state
has by nature no concept or understanding of the holy nature of God and
what that represents and what it requires. According to Vine's
Expository Dictionary, which I have a copy of on my shelf,
about that thick, it says, holy fundamentally signifies separated
And hence in scripture, it's in its moral and spiritual significance
separated from sin and therefore consecrated to God and sacred.
It is predicated of God as the absolutely holy one in his purity,
his majesty, his beauty. And that means to affirm as a
quality or attribute, this predicated of God. It means this holiness
is a quality and an attribute that he has that encompasses
all of his attributes. and represents everything he
does. It's so important because our
holiness, our holiness that we have, and you'd be surprised
how many times the names of God's people is translated, if you
looked it up, it would be the same word as holy. Saints, that
kind of thing, that just means holy. Our holiness is based or
predicated on the holiness of God. Without His holiness, we
would have no hope. Without His holiness, we would
just be undone. So in truth, we've been presented
a clear picture of God who's absolutely separated from sin,
pure in righteousness, absolute in his justice. Every attribute,
every action of God is contained in and as a result of his holiness. It's all tied together. They're
all inseparable units of God in his nature. And His holiness,
His complete separation from sin is reflected in everyone. Norm
brought a lesson here the other day, the holiness of the law. The law is right. The law is
holy. And the purpose of giving the
law to man was to show that of yourselves, you can't do that.
I've often said when we were going through Leviticus and stuff,
I was just throwing in the towel. You've got to do this, you've
got to do this, you've got to do this, you've got to do this,
you've got to do this. I couldn't do that for 10 seconds. I'd just
say, I give. I give up God. If you're not
going to have mercy on me, you might as well just incinerate
me right now because I'm not going to be able to do any of
this stuff. And thank God, because of His holiness and because of
Him sending His Son in our place. He says, I've taken care of that.
I did it for you because I know that you can't do it. The point
of it all is to have it revealed to you And that's the only way
you come to know about that. So what does God say about himself
in scripture regarding this holiness? And it's so key to his being.
Man just has a warped view of that holiness. It's just a word
to them. It's just a nothing. It's subject
to change all the time. In Habakkuk 1, verse 13, if you
turn in your Bible to Habakkuk 1, verse 13, it says, Thou art
of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity. That's pretty intense. Wherefore lookest thou upon them
that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked
devour the man that is more righteous than he? The law is holy, as
Norm mentioned Wednesday night from Romans chapter 7, verse
2. And God can't even look on iniquity. It's just the opposite of Him.
In 1 John 1 verse 5, This then is the message which we have
heard of Him, and declare unto you that God is light, And in
him is no darkness at all. And many times we find darkness
a synonym for sin and error and that type of thing. There's none
in God. He's absolute pureness, absolute
purity, absolute righteousness. And sin is the exact opposite
of the holy nature of God. It's just completely opposite
of Him. So what does God say in Scripture
about man's understanding of the holiness of God? Well, we
read a few times in Psalms, there's none that seek God, there's none
that understandeth. None. That's a big number. That pretty much includes everybody. In Psalm chapter 50 verse 21, this is a key verse about how
man views God. Psalm 50 verse 21, These things
hast thou done, and I kept silence. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether
such a one as thyself. But I will reprove thee and set
them in order before thine eyes. That's what happens when God
gives the new birth to someone. He sets things in order in our
eyes and reveals himself to us in his holy nature and what it
took to overcome that. But man in his unregenerate state
thinks that God is some kind of a combination between Gandhi
and Santa Claus. He's just there to grant your
wishes and to say, warm, warm, warm, peace, peace, peace. Get along. Just a moral guide,
you know, and he is not. He is the absolute holy and righteous
and just. And man, his idea of sin changes
daily. I'll be 68 coming up here in
a month or so. Since I've been on the planet,
the definition of sin has changed a lot. The things that are tolerated
now would never have been back when I was in my youth. And my dad probably would have
said the same thing. The things that were tolerated
when he met the Lord in 2015, vastly different than
when he was a youngster. And multiply that times hundreds
of generations. And all the way back to Adam,
it's the same. Man keeps redefining sin. Man
keeps rationalizing activities and behavior until it's just
nothing like it originally was. But God changes not. Sin is still sin. You can redefine it. You can,
as they used to say when we had to do something unpopular, you
can perfume the pig any way you want to, but in the end it's
still a pig. There's no gray area. There's
no variables. The holiness of God is an absolute. Arthur Pink said, God forgives
sinners, but never sin. Every sin is going to be accounted
for. Every sin is going to be paid for by someone. For the
church, they can say, my Savior paid it all. I had nothing. And the ones that believe not,
the ones that reject Him, the ones that go through life without
Him, they have to pay their own bill. And that bill is the second
death, eternal separation. So there's no variables with
God. Every sin is opposed to His holy
nature and therefore it has to meet with His holy justice. There's
no in between. Well, I don't know how many million
times I've heard it. Well, I hope that God is understanding
when I get there, and my good works outweigh my bad works,
and it's all based on whether my behavior was good or my behavior
was bad. It's not one word about, I thank
God that Christ died in my place. There's none of that. It's all
based on works. And it's all based on the fact
that God is an understanding, kindly old man that will wink
at you and say, you did the best you could under the circumstances. It's just not, that's not the criteria. Holiness of God then is pure,
it's free of sin, absolutely righteousness. And it's an expression
of His person in all His attributes and in Scripture. It's called
His gloriousness, His beauty. And we don't get that until we've
been regenerated. That just doesn't even make any
sense. But because it's called His gloriousness
and His beauty because He's upheld His holiness And He has by grace
extended it to the saints. And that word again is one that's
made holy by grace. That's what that word the saints
means, made holy. And it's extended to us through
the sacrificial death of his son in their place for the punishment
and justice for sin that they rightly deserve. And it can only
be recognized after regeneration, after the new birth. Before that,
you're just up to your eyeballs and works. And only after the
rebirth do you say that In mercy, God upheld His holiness, His
separation from sin, and He laid the iniquity of us all on His
Son, and He paid the price. In Hebrews 10, verse 14, it says,
For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Well, there's another word that
means holy. It's the same word as holy, them
that are sanctified. And there was a wonderful quote.
If you ever have a chance to read the attributes of God by
Arthur Pink, there's a, in this chapter on the holiness of God,
there's a wonderful quote in there. He said, that which is holiness
demanded, his grace has provided through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And we are made accepted in the Beloved. Isn't that just wonderful? And we look at that and we say,
that's beautiful. That's just so wonderful. David said, these things are
just high. I cannot even attain to them. I try to meditate on those things
and I just My mind is just too small. Just won't hold it. And we're going to look here
at a verse from Ephesians chapter one, verse six. In the satisfaction of God's
holiness, in the fact that he has got a pure eyes and cannot
even look at iniquity. Ephesians 1.6 says, to the praise
of his glory, of his grace, praise that wherein he hath made
us accepted in the beloved. That's the rest of that from
Arthur Pink's quotation. Man, if you have a highlighter
and you're used to doing that in your Bible, every time you
see a he hath, or a he will, or an I will where it's talking
about God, boy, you just underline those things and it just makes
it plain as day what happens in the regeneration of a sinner.
And it's all the work of God. And we enter into that rest in
Christ that talks about in Hebrews chapter 4. So underline those
he wills, those I wills, these he hath. He hath made us, not
we ourselves. That's so important. And as we've
been examining the Old Testament to see Christ in all the scriptures
as he's revealed, We find a verse over in 1 Samuel 2.9 which kind of seems to fit exactly
with what we're seeing in Luke 4.33-37 regarding this man in
this deplorable condition. that's made whole, that's brought
out of the pit, that's been saved. 1 Samuel 2, verse 9, and here's
another thing that you could underline. He will. He will keep
the feet of his saints. And there's that holiness term
again. And the wicked shall be silent
in darkness, for by strength shall no man prevail. This man,
by strength, could not overcome the issues that he was faced
with. And he told that devil, shut
up. I am the Holy One of God. That's
sure. You can't even talk to me. You shut up. You know, that's
going to be a lot of what people are going to find when they say,
well, when I get up to heaven, I'm going to tell God a thing
or two. I'm going to tell him how the cow eats the cabbage.
I'm going to tell him how I worked hard and did this and did that. They're going to be pretty quiet,
I think, when the time comes. They're not going to have much
to say. A man who could not prevail, by His own strength. A man whom
God foreknew from the foundation of the world. A man who was delivered
from captivity of sin and the silencing of the wicked in darkness.
All there in 1 Samuel 2, verse 9. He will keep the feet of His
saints. He kept that man. He rescued
him. His holiness is described as
beauty and deserving of praise and glory by those whom he has
delivered from the battle against sin and death. This person in
Luke that he delivered. He wanted to tell everybody. Hallelujah. There's a good record here in
2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you'd turn there, I'd like
to read a few verses from 2 Chronicles chapter 20, verse 15. We'll read down through
verse 21. And he said, hearken ye, all
Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou King Jehoshaphat,
thus saith the Lord unto you. Be not afraid nor dismayed by
reason of this great multitude. And here's the part you might
want to underline. The battle is not yours, but
God's. And that just doesn't apply to
these warring tribes that we're going to invade and take care
of. That's a spiritual message here. The battle is not yours,
but God's. Tomorrow, go you down against
them, and you're just going to be a witness to the grace of
God. Go you down against them, Behold,
they come up by the cliff of Ziz, and ye shall find them at
the end of the brook before the wilderness of Jeruel. You shall
not need to fight this battle. Set yourselves. Stand ye still. and see the salvation of the
Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not, nor be dismayed. Tomorrow
go out against them, for the Lord will be with you.' And Jehoshaphat
bowed his head with his face to the ground, and all Judah
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell before the Lord, worshiping
the Lord." Can you imagine? They just felt overwhelmed, and
we're all going to be killed tomorrow. Our world is going
to be disrupted. were doomed, and the Lord says,
the battle's not yours, but God's. Stand you still and see the salvation
of the Lord. And they rose early in the morning,
and they went into the wilderness of Tekoa. And as they went forth,
Jehoshaphat stood and said, hear me, O Judah and you inhabitants
of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God. So shall you be established.
believe his prophets, so shall you prosper. And when he had
consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord
that should praise the beauty of his holiness. Praise the beauty
of his holiness. As they went out before the army
and to say, praise the Lord for his mercy endureth forever. And
they were witnesses of the holiness of God coupled with His mercy
and grace. And it was beautiful. To them
it was a beautiful thing. All of the sovereign attributes
of God are encompassed in this beauty of His holiness. And they're
extended to the church through the gospel of the death, burial,
and resurrection of His Son. Through grace are you saved. And they're extended through
His Son in whom He's well pleased in redeeming the people whom
He gave to the Son, the Holy One of God. that which His holiness
demanded, His grace provided in Christ Jesus our Lord." Satisfaction
of the holy law, satisfaction of righteousness, satisfaction
of justice. In Isaiah, I'm sure you're all
familiar with Isaiah's 53rd chapter, where he says, he shall see the
travail of his soul, that's God speaking about His Son, and he
should be satisfied. He says, my righteous servant
is going to justify many. He's going to take care of them. He said, my holiness is going
to be satisfied. My righteousness is going to
be satisfied. My justice is going to be satisfied
all through the work of Christ. why it's so important for us
to understand this holiness and to understand that we're not
going to be able to come to the God the Father with any works
that are going to be satisfactory when this is what He has determined
is the thing that takes care of His holiness, His righteousness,
and His justices. Somebody has to pay that price,
and the only one that could do it was the Holy One, the sinless
One, the Holy One of God. Ephesians
chapter 5, let's turn there for a quick minute. And again, if
you have your highlighter, you might underline all the things
that God does, which is everything. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter
5, verse 25, where he says, Love your wives even as Christ
also loved the church and gave Himself for it. You might remember
we looked at that verse in our connection with our, for whom
did Christ die? It says He gave His life for
the church here. And in verse 26, that for the
purpose, He gave His life for the church for the purpose that
He Capital H-E, that ought to say in your Bible. Underlined
and highlighted in whatever color. He might sanctify it. And that
means to make holy. That he might make holy and cleanse
it with the washing of water by the word. That, for the purpose
that he, again, might present it to himself a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should
be holy and without blemish. And we're going to look at a
couple of those words in a minute, because in our modern day language,
those words, they're not the same as what
they mean in Scripture. In 1 Peter 1, verse 15, again
emphasizing what God has done in regards to His holiness. But
He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of
conversation, because it is written, be ye holy for I am holy. And that's based on three Old
Testament scriptures. The most prominent one in Leviticus
chapter 19, verse two, where it says, speak unto all the congregation
of the children of Israel and say unto them, and this is very
important in understanding this New Testament things where it
says, be ye holy. It says in Leviticus 19, two
says, you shall be holy because I am holy. Being holy is not something that
we can attain. It's not something we even could
attain by our own devices. But it's the result of the actions
of the Holy One of God. on our behalf. And note all the
he-mights and the he-witches, the he-witch-hath in Ephesians
5, 26, 27, 1 Peter 1, verse 15, 16. And notice the results of
those activities. It's all things that God did
on behalf of the church to make them holy. make them accepted
in the Beloved, make them satisfy His righteousness. And they actually
don't. Christ did it for them and He
just sees them in His Son. Holy, holy. And some examples
of how the term be, it says be holy. It's not a command. to engage in works to attain
holiness. Be ye holy. Well, you should
get right out and get to work. If you want to be holy, you'll
get out there and leave 200 door hangers and stand on the corner
with your sign or do a bunch of things or any kind of work that you can
imagine. Be ye holy. For I am holy. It should be correctly
viewed as an activity of God in your behalf. And this is the
result. It's like in the creation. Be there on earth. And there
was an earth. It's not like, well, the earth
ought to get together and crash a bunch of atoms together and
make itself. He spoke and the earth was. And you can look that up in Genesis
and John chapter 1. But it's not a commandment to
engage in works instead of relying solely on Christ. for salvation
as we determine that's what faith is. And it also, he says, I am
holy. It also displays his eternal
nature in his holiness. He was always eternally engaged
in the sanctification of the church, the making the church
holy. And the cause and effect as they are clearly determined,
this word be means cause to be or to come to pass. It's an interesting
word when we look that up in your Strong's Dictionary and
you key that in on your computer, the number G1096, and it gives
you all the scriptures highlighted where that word is used. It's
translated a multitude of different ways, but it's all very clear
in how it's used. translated, many times it's translated
come to pass. It came to pass as the scripture
said it would come to pass. Many times it's translated is.
When we say the sky is blue, It's not that, well, it should
get up there and get busy to create blueness. It just is blue. It's just a fact. And sometimes
it's translated, we're done. The mighty works of Jesus, which
were done, they were accomplished. And in modern scripture, sometimes
the terms might, like that he might make them this, or that
he might do that. Well, they look at, in our modern
language, they express possible outcomes. Like, oh, I might do
this. I might go shopping after church.
But I might not. It just depends. Or, I should
mow the lawn when I get home, but I'm probably not going to. They describe possible outcomes
in our modern language and in scripture regarding Christ and
the church. They are absolutes. They are absolutes that express
the result of His purpose and will. The Old Testament Hebrew
is very clear. We read that from Leviticus.
You shall be holy because I am holy. Not maybe, or you could
be if you work hard enough at it, but you shall be. In our text verse here in chapter
4 of Luke, verse 33 through 36, this fact is brought to our attention
also in the word amazed. They were amazed there in verse
36. And spake among themselves, saying,
What word is this? For with authority and power
he commandeth. I capitalize that in my speech.
He, he commanded. And the unclean spirits, what
is the result of God saying something? He commandeth. They came out. Lazarus, come forth. He came
out. He came forth. When God speaks, There's a result. Amazed is a
compound word comprised of the word for astonished, the same
word that we were, they were astonished at his doctrine. And
they said because he speaks with power and authority, they were
astonished at it. It's a part of that word and
it's a, part of cause to be, that same word be that we looked
at, be ye holy. It's kind of a compound word
there. And so we looked at a few examples
in Luke where the term be, as in be holy, as a result of the
holiness of Christ is used and it's translated a little bit
more forcefully. And sometimes it's translated
as something which has in fact been accomplished. Luke 4.23,
and he said unto them, You will surely say unto me this proverb,
Physician, heal thyself, whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum,
do also in thy country. This word done, these were things
that had come. He healed a lot of people and
he made the lame to walk, and all
those miracles that he did. They said, we want you to do
some of that here. The stuff that you did, the stuff
that was done there, do it here. Done. That's that word be. It's not as we might like to
think of it here in our modern language. And sometimes it's used as something
which existed. In Luke chapter 1, when we began
this series in Luke many, many long time ago, Luke chapter 1
verse 5, there was, there existed in the days of Herod, the king
of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abia,
and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And what they came up with is
recorded clear back in Malachi, John the Baptist. Those people there existed. These
people existed in that time of Herod. And sometimes it's translated
as something which occurred according to the determinate counsel and
purpose of God. In Luke chapter 2 verse 6 it
says, this word be is translated here, and so it was. that while
they were there, the days were accomplished that she should
be delivered. And what did she deliver? The
Holy One of God in Bethlehem of Judea. So it was, as it was
written. She gave birth to Christ, who
came to save His people from their sins, to deliver them and
present them back to the Father, holy, without spot, wrinkle,
or blemish because of the imputation of His holiness upon Him based
on the merit of His finished work. In Hebrews it says, the
works were finished from before the foundation of the world.
The lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. The
holiness of God satisfied by the Holy One of God. And we went three minutes over.
That's pretty good for a first time out. So we'll stop there
and my friends as always, be free.