Okay, we'll be looking at that
passage that Brother Robert read in 1 Peter chapter 1. Robert,
I do appreciate you reading the scripture for me. I do want to
correct one thing you said. I didn't forget that you had
eye surgery. I just enjoy issuing you a challenge. Sometimes we have to preach and
witness through difficulty. And so that was just good practice
for you. But you did a good job, and I appreciate that. I appreciate
your words. The Lord's really blessed us,
hasn't he? Really has. Well, I want to talk to you about
the call to holiness. The call to holiness. A lot of
times when I used to hear messages that had such a title or something
like that, it used to scare me to death. And I'm hoping that
won't happen this morning as I preach on this. As you know,
you saw there in which Brother Robert read the command of God
in verse 16. It's written, be ye holy, for
I, God, am holy. And we want to talk about that
in a minute. Let me start this way, though. I was in the last
time, I think Debbie and I were in the bookstore out there at
the mall. I always go over to the religious section just to
see the latest, and I hate to be so critical and so negative,
but just see the latest heresy that's being promoted in popular
Christianity, as they call it, which is false Christianity.
And I saw a book, it said this, the title of the book was this,
it said, The Bible Made Easy. And I thought, really? What would
possess any author to think that he or she could make the Bible
easy. Because the Bible is not easy. I can't make it easy for you.
And the first biggest, the biggest problem in the, as far as reading
the Bible, is what the Bible says, is that the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. This Bible's written
by God. This is the Word of God. This
is the prophets and the apostles whom God used to write these
words. The Holy Spirit inspired them
and wrote these down. So this is a spiritual book.
Well, the natural man won't receive the things of the Spirit of God.
Neither can he know them. They're spiritually understood.
So we know that in order to understand any part of the Bible unto salvation,
the Lord has to give us eyes to see. ears to hear, hearts
and minds to know these things. Now, we also know that there
are rules of interpretation. I wrote a book on that, you know,
Rightly Dividing the Word. And obviously, the main rule
of Revelation is the rule of what I call the rule of Jesus
Christ, crucified and risen from the dead. This is a book about
Christ. This is the book of Christ from
Genesis to Revelation. We've been doing Bible studies
in our 10 o'clock hour on Christ in the Old Testament. And if
you don't see Christ in the glory of His person and in the power
of His finished work, this is a closed book as far as your
understanding goes. And it takes the Spirit of God
to reveal the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And
that's what I try to do when I look at the scripture. Obviously,
the New Testament, because there's so much this, you know, Peter
starts out, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And he's talking about
we're redeemed, not with corruptible things, but with the blood of
Christ. But even in the Old Testament, I mean, even in books like the
Song of Solomon and the Book of Esther, they're still books
of Christ. And I know some of my old false
theologians that I studied under in seminary, they'd say, well,
you're just trying to jam Christ in there. No, I'm not. I'm trying
to see what God has for us out of his book. One of the other
rules of interpretation, so important, is the rule of context. We know
what these words mean within their context. And with that
in mind, let me start here just to give you this. There are two
concepts, two words we'll say, in the Bible that most people,
even many who call themselves Christians, do not understand. And these truths are so important. You know, when you read the Bible,
there's important keys. understanding it. I've already
talked about the person and work of Christ, but like for example
the word grace. Now salvation is by grace, but
what does grace mean to you? What does it mean to me? What
does the Bible say it is? And so that's something we need
to know. What most people call grace, I find, is no more than
a cleverly disguised system of work salvation. It's kind of
like what the old false preacher said, which is not in the Bible,
but he said it. A lot of people, when they hear
this, they think it's in the Bible, but it's not. God helps
those who help themselves. Well, if that's the case in salvation,
we all might as well just prepare for eternal damnation. According
to the Bible, God does not help those who help themselves. I'm
not talking about going to work every day. I'm talking about
salvation. and a right relationship with God. God helps the helpless. He lifts the beggar off the dung
heap. He gives us what we don't have
and what we don't earn and what we don't deserve. And everything
in salvation, all of its benefits and blessings, conditioned on
the Lord Jesus Christ, not conditioned on you or me. And that's what
grace is all about. But the two terms, that I'm talking
about are these terms. Number one, righteousness. People
don't understand the concept of righteousness in the Bible.
And number two is holiness. Now what most people think when
they hear the terms righteousness and holiness, and some people
interchange those terms, but if you went back to the original
language, they're different terms. But because of people's muddied
confused thinking, they equate. Now when I say equate, you don't
understand, I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything,
but that means they make equal what they call righteousness
and their works, their good works. And I know the Bible speaks of
works of righteousness and doing righteousness, but that's a different
thing. I preached on that and I'll preach
on it again. But righteousness is not our works. Righteousness is a legal term
or sometimes a business term. It means satisfaction to the
law. The term righteous, right, righteous,
and righteousness is often translated in our King James Version as
just, justness, or being justified. And it is a legal term. Righteousness
is not our moral character and conduct. Righteousness is the
standard of God by which our moral character and conduct is
to be measured. So what is righteousness? It's
the perfection of the law. In the business world, it's paying
equal pay for what something's worth. You see, sin, for example, is
sometimes related in the Bible as running up a debt, a debt
to God's justice. And it's a debt we can't pay.
Why? Because we cannot create, work,
or perform righteousness. We can't measure up to that.
You say, well, I'm trying to do well. You should try to do
well, but it's not gonna be righteousness. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Should I try to be the best? Listen, there's no question about
Christianity as to whether we should try to be the most moral,
most sincere, most dedicated, most loving and charitable people
that God ever put on this earth. That's what we ought to be and
try to be every day. We ought to fight sin. The flesh. But as much as we do that, and
as hard as we try, and as often as we try every day, we still
cannot attain righteousness. Because the Bible tells us that
the perfection of righteousness can only be found in the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nowhere else. And the only way
that we can be righteous in God's sight is by the imputation of
His righteousness to our account, to be found in Him as our surety,
our substitute, our redeemer. That's it. And even that which the Holy
Spirit does in us in the new birth, which is a necessary,
glorious, a miracle, of God's grace, bringing us to faith and
repentance and perseverance. That's not our righteousness
before God, because see, those things, when they come through
us, they're still contaminated with the remaining flesh. That's
why we cannot do what we want to do, Paul wrote in Galatians
chapter six. I wanna be like Christ, perfect,
but I can't. Why? Because I'm in a vile body
of death, and that'll last until I die. and go to meet God in
glory. But I'm righteous in His sight. How? I have Christ's righteousness
laid to my charge. My sins were laid to His charge.
His righteousness laid to mine. So you see, when people talk
about, well, I'm doing acts of righteousness, what do they mean
by that? Doing righteousness is following
Christ. You know that. Resting in Him. as our right believing in him.
But that's what righteousness is. God's gonna judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained and he
has given assurance unto all men that he has raised him from
the dead. There's the measure. But we're sinners. We fall short
of the glory of God in Christ. That's why we need grace. And that's why grace reigns through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Is
that clear? But what about holiness? Now
there's another word. In the Bible, holiness is not our doing good. And that's what most people think.
Well, I gotta be holy. Yeah. Without holiness, no man
will see the Lord. I'm gonna show you that in just
a moment. But what is that holiness? Now the word holy, holiness,
is sometimes translated sanctification, sanctified. Usually they're the
same word, especially in the New Testament. But what is holy? Now again, when I say holiness
is not our morality, Am I teaching that we shouldn't be moral? Absolutely
not. The Bible says that we should
be a people who are zealous of what? Good works. We should be,
again, we should be the best we can be, not only in what we
do, but in our thinking and our attitudes. Our motives, our goals. And I'll say this. The works
of a believer, a sinner saved by grace, that are accepted of
God in Christ are holy not because they're perfect, not because
of any merit in them, but because what is holiness? It means to
be set apart. That's what holy means. It means
separation. Now righteousness is a legal
term, but holiness can be a legal term or a spiritual term. For
example, when was I first set apart according to the Bible? Before the foundation of the
world when God chose me and gave me to Christ. He separated me
out. Now why did he separate me out
or you out? Basically, I don't know. There's
nothing in us, nothing done by us that would cause him to do
that. He didn't look down through a telescope of time and say,
well, now look there, there's Robert Margison, and there's
Charles Thorne, and look at what they're gonna do in the future,
I'll choose them. No, that's not how God did it.
That's a concoction of unbelieving, depraved man. The only answer that the Lord
himself gave us was, it seemed good in thy sight. Sovereign
act of God. Remember he talks about Jacob
and Esau. He separated Jacob out, left
Esau behind. Before they'd done any good or
evil, that the election of grace might stand, because it's not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. That's it. So that's when we were first
made holy, you might say, legally in Christ, based upon the righteousness
that he would come and work at. We were justified in him. Our
sins forgiven and declared righteous in the sight of God. If that's your case, you're separate
from the lost, dying, condemned world. Isn't that right? And
you know what? You're blessed, but you don't
have a thing to be proud of. Isn't that right? You're blessed. God chose us. According to the
Bible now, we're blessed with all spiritual blessings and heavenly
places in Christ. But we don't have a thing to
brag about in ourselves. All we can do is brag about Christ. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross. Don't cry. Oh my Lord, think about that.
Who am I, Lord? Isn't that a humbling truth to
you? Boy, it is to me. And then when
were we separated? We were separated out by God
in the cross of Christ. Isn't that what the Bible teaches?
By one offering, Hebrews 10, 14, he, Christ, hath perfected,
completed, finished forever them that are sanctified, those who
God set apart. And that means this, when he
died, he died for me. I wasn't there in my person.
I was there in the person of Christ. That's a legal matter. He died for my sins. He paid
my debt. He died for me. He was buried
for me. He arose for me. Made holy by the blood of Christ. Separated. The good shepherd
gave his life for the sheep. And then now, that's legal holiness. But what about spiritual holiness?
Well, at one time, in some given time, God sent his spirit into
the world to bring me under the preaching of the gospel. And
he separated me out spiritually, providentially. And He gave me
life and communicated His truth, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
He gave me a new heart, a new mind. You see what that is? That's
sanctification of the Spirit. That's not a progressive thing.
That's the new birth by the Spirit of God. Now from that point on,
we do grow in grace and in knowledge. But our holiness is always the
same. Now look at verse 13 of this
passage. He says, wherefore, for this
reason, talking about our salvation by the grace of God, our complete
salvation, by God's grace, forgiveness, justify, for this reason, gird
up the loins of your mind. You know what he's doing? He's
teaching us, and for Christians, how to think. It's a thinking person's religion.
And it has to do with how we think. We're to have right thoughts
of God. We're to have right thoughts
of ourselves. We're to have right thoughts
of Christ and salvation. And gird up the loins of our
mind. You remember back in Ephesians chapter six when he's talking
about the whole armor of God. And in verse I think it's in
verse 14, he says, "...stand therefore having your loins girt
about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness." We need to girt up the loins
of our mind with truth, not with opinions and lies and suppositions. The truth of God's Gospel, the
truth of who God is, the truth of who we are, sinners, God's
holy and just and righteous. He cannot accept or receive anything
less than perfection as to the ground of attaining or maintaining
salvation. It must be perfect, the scripture
says, or God won't have it. Now how can I, a sinner, come
before God and be received, be accepted? Only by the perfect
blood, the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. There
is a way. It's a way that Christ has accomplished
because he legally kept the law and died for our sins on the
cross. And this is how we're to think.
My whole salvation, all of it is a free gift given to me by
God through the blood of Christ. That's how we're to think. If
God chooses to bless me in this life with physical blessings,
it's not because I earned them or deserved them. It's out of
His sovereign will. If God decides to chastise me
with hard trials, listen, it's to teach me. That's what Peter
said before, that the trial of your faith be much more precious
than of gold. That's how we're to think. It's
to correct me, it's to bring me closer to him, it's to bring
me closer and looking to Christ even more for my righteousness. And so gird up the loins of your
mind, be sober. That means be clear-headed. Be
able to discern good and evil. Study the word, fill your mind
with the word so that you can tell the difference between if
someone is lying to you or someone's telling you the truth. Make right
judgments. Hope to the end for the grace
that is brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. When
Christ comes again, my hope today is the same hope I'll have when
God takes me to glory. built on nothing less than Jesus'
blood and righteousness. Dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus' name, on Christ the solid rock I stand. And then he says in verse 14,
as obedient children, obedient to what? Obedient to the word
of God. When Christ taught his disciples
and commanded them, he wasn't making suggestions. You obey
him, believe in him, rest in him, follow him, seek to be like
him, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lust
in your ignorance. Now, that former lust in your
ignorance, what was that in your case? You say, well, I was a
bank robber and a murderer and a drug pusher and all that. Well,
don't do that anymore. That's what you were. But if you're like me, I was
a religious man. I was opening the Bible trying
to read it, trying to understand it, trying to be the best I could
be. Thinking all the time that my
salvation at some stage in some way to some degree was determined
by me. That's a lust, did you know that?
You know what lust is? It's not just sexuality. Lust
in the Bible, in the book of Romans, I think, in chapter three,
it uses the word evil concupiscence. We don't use that term anymore.
But what it means is the same as lust. It's an unlawful desire. And it's unlawful for any sinner
to desire salvation based upon their works. The gospel is a command to believe
God, to believe in Christ, to submit to his righteousness alone
as the only ground upon which God saves you and keeps you and
brings you to glory and blesses you. It's grace, grace, grace,
grace, and you can't say it enough. So don't fashion your life, he
says, your conversation. according to any facet of activity
or any habit of life that is equal to unbelievers, religiously
or otherwise. And then he says in verse 15,
but as he which hath called you is holy. Now, our God is holy. He's separate. There's no one
like God. When you go into a religious
service, now think about this, and that preacher begins to talk
about God, here's what you gotta ask yourself, is he talking about
the God of this book, this book right here? Now that's a good question. Because if he's not talking about
the God who reveals himself as he is in this book, from Genesis
to Revelation, he's not talking about the one holy and true God. You may say, well, preacher,
you're being too picky. Well, if I am, you're okay. But if I'm not, where does that
leave us? God, I mentioned this this morning,
in 2 Peter 3 and 9, says God's not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance. Preacher stands up and he says,
see God doesn't want anybody in this world, in any way, to
perish. Is that what the Bible says?
And the answer's no. You say, well I don't want a
God like that. Well, the natural man doesn't want a God like that.
God who's sovereign, who saves sinners according to His choice,
based upon His ground, according to His glory. They want a God
that'll come down on their level. They want a God that's likened
to themselves. And they think they're better
than God because they say, no, I wouldn't do something like
that. But as He which hath called you
is whole. He's separate. Don't compare
anything or anyone to God. There's no comparison. Don't
paint a picture of God. That's why even in the Ten Commandments,
he said, make no graven image. Because you can't form God in
your mind. All you can do is bow to what
he says about himself. So as he which hath called you
is separate, so be ye holy. Be separate. in all manner of
conversation. Now this separation is not what
you wear or don't wear, what you eat or don't eat, stuff like
that. This separation has to do with
the gospel. Now there are people all over
this world meeting together on Sunday morning. Why are you here? With the brethren. where the
truth is preached. That's our separation. Now does
that mean that I don't have to worry about what to wear and
what to eat and all that? No, it doesn't mean that at all.
But that's not our separation. The Seventh Day Adventists, they
say their separation is meeting on Saturday instead of Sunday.
That's not in the Bible. That doesn't make you holy. What separates God's people from
the world? Well, number one, our gospel
separates us. It's the gospel of God's grace through the blood
and righteousness of Christ, the God we worship. That separates
us. Now, does that mean if we're
in a crowd and they start taking drugs that I don't have to be
separate there? Yes, be separate there too. Don't
jump in with the unbelieving crowd no matter what they're
doing. I don't care if they're opening up Bibles and reading
out loud or if they're taking drugs. Be not conformed to this
world. But how you wear your hair and
what you wear and all of that and what you eat, it does not
separate you. I guarantee you'll find unbelievers
who are doing the same thing or more. Somebody said, well, we shouldn't
do anything that unbelievers do. Really? You shouldn't go
to work on Monday. We're met here on Sunday. There
are unbelievers all over this town met here on Sunday. What
should we do? Meet on Saturday? That wouldn't
help. That wouldn't separate us. Look at it, verse 15, as
he which hath called you, as God is separate in the glory
of God, in the way he saves sinners, in his commandments to us, so
be ye holy in all manner of conversation, your lifestyle, your walk. And he says in verse 16, because
it's written, be ye holy, for I'm holy. See that? Verse 17, if you call
on the Father who without respect to a person judgeth according
to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here
in fear. Now that's not saying that God's gonna judge us based
on our works. He's gonna judge unbelievers
based on their works and they'll be condemned. This is not the
judgment of our persons. He says, without respect of persons,
judges everybody's work. Here's the point that he's making
there, is the works that God does in us and through us, they
evidence that we're in Christ. So it's not the judgment of God
by our works, the judgment of us by our works, it's the judgment
of our works as they bring glory to God in Christ. Not aimed at
saving us, keeping us saved, or bringing us to glory. Not
meritorious at all. They're just simply fruit unto
God. The works of unbelievers are fruit unto death. That'll
be exposed at the judgment. The works of believers are fruit
unto God. That'll be declared at judgment.
But you know what? As far as I can see in the scripture,
what the Lord said, the last thing that'll be on a true believer's
mind at the judgment is our works. Read Matthew 25, when God says
he'll separate the sheep from the goats. He'll say unto the
goats, I was in jail and you didn't visit me. I was hungry,
you didn't feed me. And what do they say? When did
we not do that? And he'll say to the righteous,
I was in jail and you visited me. I was hungry and you fed
me. And they'll say, Lord, when did we do that? The last thing on our minds at
judgment will be our word. You know what will be on our
minds? Oh, that I may know him and be found in him, not having
mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
is through the faithfulness of Christ. Thank God. Now what's the proof? And he says, past the time of
your soul journey, your pilgrimage here on earth in fear. What does
that mean? In respect and worship to God, believing God. And here's
the proof. Here's the ground of it all.
Verse 18, for as much as you know, you were not redeemed with
corruptible things, a silver and gold from your vain conversation. received by tradition from your
father. He's mainly speaking to Jewish believers here, and
he's telling them that the unbelieving Jews, what they think is false,
it's unholy, corruptible things. You're redeemed, verse 19, with
the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish.
He was sacrificed on the cross as a lamb without blemish. without
spot, but having our sins imputed to him. He was guilty, he was
made a curse, but in himself he was without blemish, without
spot. He was not contaminated with
our sins. Our sins were not transfused
or transferred into him at all. He had no sinful thoughts, no
sinful motives, no sinful goals. It was all holy and perfect and
righteous and just within himself. And yet he cried, my God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me? And this was not something that
God didn't think of all along. He says, verse 20, who verily
was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest
in these last times for you. This is what God's plan all along.
Verse 21, who by him do believe in God that raised him up from
the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and your hope
might be in God, God who is holy. That's the way it is. I'll pick
up there next week on this, but these are the issues. Be ye holy. This is the call to holiness.
Be separate. Don't fall in with the world
morally or religiously. In fact, look at false religion
as being even more dangerous than any of it because that's
the broad road that leads to destruction. Think about that. Be separate, be holy. All right.