Open, if you will, up to 1 Peter
chapter 1. The subject matter I want to have
us examine here this morning is on the subject of holy living. So I think you may find by the
end of our study here this morning that it may not be exactly what
you thought it was. And we're gonna look to the word
of God to find out what that is. Preachers everywhere are
trying to make people walk an aisle, repeat a confession, dedicate
service, their money, their lives, all in the name of salvation.
They want to make people act a certain way, talk a certain
way, tell you what to do to conform to something that you're not
by nature. Why else would they have to tell
you to do it if you were that already? The scripture says,
can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? When those things can happen,
then may you also do good who are accustomed to doing evil."
That's what the scripture has to say about you and I. Christ's
ministry was not to create theologians or to restrain passions. Yet,
this is many preachers' goal because they do not understand
the condition of dead men. The scripture says that we are
dead in our trespasses and sins. That means that you have no ability
to see God, to love God, to believe the gospel, to do anything, to
have faith. You are a dead man. What can
a dead man do? Nothing. Yet the Scripture describes
us as just this. So in 1 Peter 1, I want to read
a few verses here to lead up to where we're going to stay.
In verse 13 of chapter 1, he says, Wherefore, gird up the
loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace
that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former
lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is
holy, so be ye holy in all matter of conversation, because it is
written, be ye holy, for I am holy. And this scripture is drawn from
the book of Leviticus, where three times he says, Be ye holy,
for I am holy, saith your God. My question here this morning
is, what does that mean? Who is issuing this commandment
to you and to me? Be ye holy. Well, first, it's
a call for you to be as God is, because he says, be ye holy as
I am holy. Now, when we consider this idea
of the holiness of God, what are the first things that come
to mind? Well, the first in my mind is absolute perfection. Always doing what is right. Never sinning. Be ye holy as
I am holy." How are you doing with this? Not too well, I would
say. Men say, well, nobody can do
this. Nobody can be perfect. Well,
wait a minute. God is, and He can be, and the
commandment to you is be ye holy, for I am holy, saith your God."
So what do we do then after we find that I can't measure up
to what it is to being holy? We lower the bar to something
more achievable, something that we can do. And we call this holy
living. Now first of all, this word is
not even in the Bible. And the idea of this word completely
goes against what God says holiness is. So where this was come forth
out of the scriptures, I'm not sure. But this idea of be ye
holy, is it the notion of outwardly living in a way where it would
seem to others that I am resisting my passions and my sinful desires
and things that I would do by nature? restraining my sinful desires."
Is this really who the God of the Bible is? Look at Brother
Jeff over here. He got cut off in traffic and
he didn't cuss that guy out. I know he was as mad as he could
be, but isn't he being holy by practicing holy living by not
doing that? And Sister Betty, she abstained from drinking a
wine in public. I know she wanted it, but she
didn't do it because she was trying to set a good example.
Is this who the God of the Bible is? when he says, I'm holy? It's a series of do's and don'ts. Well, maybe you're doing this
outwardly. How are you dealing with this
in your heart? Turn with me over to Matthew chapter 15. And in verse 10 he says, and
he called the multitude and said unto them, hear and understand,
not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that
which cometh out of the mouth, this defiles the man. and look
over in verse 16. And Jesus said, For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man. But to eat with unwashing hands
defileth not a man." Turn over to Matthew 23, verse 25. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you make clean the outside of the cup and of
the platter, but within they're full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the
cup and the platter, that the outside may be clean also. The Lord says in his scriptures
in 1 Samuel 16 verse 7, the Lord seeth not as man seeth. For man looketh upon the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart. So what is this
idea of be ye holy has something to do with the heart, doesn't
it? Turn over to Romans chapter 7 if you would. In verse 1, he says, "'Know you
not, brethren? For I speak to them that know
the law, how that the law hath dominion over man as long as
he lives. For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the
law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if the husband
be dead, she's loosed from the law of her husband. So then,
if while her husband liveth, she be married to another man,
she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she
is free from that law, so that she is no longer an adulteress,
though she be buried to another man. Wherefore, my brethren,
you also are become dead to the law. by the body of Christ, that
you should be married to another, even to him that is raised from
the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Now you
consider for a moment, based on what was said here, Lazarus. Lazarus, the man who died, and
the Lord came, and he raised him from the dead. When Lazarus
came out of that, was given life, and came out of that tomb, what
did he do? He took off his grave clothes,
didn't he? This idea of trying to live a way that the world
would call holy living is putting those grave clothes back on.
We're told that we are free from the law through the body of Christ. Now there's a great misunderstanding
and misrepresentation of what holiness is. The scripture says,
be ye holy. Holy, this idea of holiness is
not something that you do. It's not a way of living. It
is not a manner of conduct. This degrades what holiness is,
what God is. God is holy. This degrades it
to distill it down to a series of do's and don'ts. Holiness
speaks of one's nature. There are no degrees of holiness. The only time holiness is ever
spoken of in a degree is when he's speaking of somebody saying
holier than thou in a negative way. You either are or you are
not holy. God's nature is holy, therefore
he can only be holy. Now the subtlety of works is
intermingled in with the gospel of Christ. When we start how
to tell men and women how to live, and this is what holy living
is, to act a certain way, to do this, to not do that, this
is what this idea of holy living speaks of. Holiness, the word,
means other. That means not like you and not
like me, because in our experience, we have nothing about us that's
holy. Holiness also speaks of that which is sanctified, set
apart for holy purposes, is all that means. This is more than
an issue that you and I may agree that we just disagree upon. That
is the message of a false prophet because that is a message of
compromise. That is always what a false prophet seeks to do.
The sins of Jeroboam didn't say don't go to God, didn't say don't
sacrifice. He said just come another way.
You can still do that. We're still going to the same
place. But yet the sins of Jeroboam are spoken throughout the scriptures
as one of the greatest sins that Israel is caused to be drawn
into. This is the message of compromise for someone who does
not see holiness as not their nature and is something that
you do. This is central to the work of
God on the behalf of His children, this idea of being made holy. Turn with me over to Hebrews
chapter 10. Keep your finger there in Romans 7. We're going
to come back. Hebrews 10.10, by the witch will we are sanctified,
made to be holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. It says by the witch will. Whose
will is that? That's God the Father. By His
will, what? We. Who's the we? Is this speaking
to everyone everywhere? No, because not everybody's made
holy, are they? Not everybody believes in Jesus
Christ. Not everybody is one of His people.
We speaks of all those whom God chose before the foundation of
the earth in eternal election. Scripture teaches this. Those
people, His will, are made perfect, sanctified, made holy, made acceptable
before God. How? How are they made? Well,
it tells us in this verse. Through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. What's an offering? An offering
is a sacrifice. Why do you have to have a sacrifice?
You have to have a sacrifice to purge your sins. Without the
shedding of the blood, there is no remission of sins. So there
has to be a sacrifice. By whose body? By the body of
Jesus Christ, the body that all those people whom the Father
chose, His elect, are united to. So if Christ is accepted,
then all those who are united to Him are accepted as well.
How often must this occur? Once. It's done. There's no sacrifice
required of you of your life to be saved. Christ gave that
already for His people. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? You can't be charged again for
what you've done. Christ died for that. It's God
that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that died. So what does this tell us? In
verse 19 it says, "...having therefore, based on what He just
told us, Brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the
blood of Jesus. Why do we have boldness? Because
the work of the Son has been accepted. There's nothing more
to do, and this is evidenced by Him being given life after
He died. His accepted works. This is where
my confidence and my assurance comes from. I have nothing when
I look to me. I can look to me and only find
a reason to find frustration and no hope but assurance of
salvation. But when I look to Him, I am
sure that He is accepted of His Father. And I pray that I might
be found in Him. God does not need your help in
confirming the work of His Son. If He has done anything for you,
you will do good works. And there is no need for anyone
to tell you to do so. This is baggage from Reformed
religion. Back in Romans 7, look at verse
5 and we'll see why. For when we were in the flesh,
the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members
to bring forth fruit unto death, But now, right now, we are delivered
from the law. That being dead, when we were
held by the law because of what it said to us, our guilt, that
we should serve now in newness of spirit, not in the oldness
of the letter. So this tells us two things.
First, is you're delivered from the law. The law said, this do
and live. You are delivered from that now.
That's no longer applicable. And it tells us secondly that
we should serve in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of
letter. The desire for holy living is
an old error repeated. Cain brought the fruit of the
ground. Holy living is nothing more than saying, look at what
I've done, I've done this. Cain brought the fruit of the
ground. Cain was rejected. Cain was angry when his sacrifice
was said, you can't bring this. It's of no saving efficacy to
you at all. How do you feel about your holy
living now? Does this make you angry? It should if you're trusting
in it. Your sacrifice will be rejected
if you come to Christ through holy living. The sacrifices of
God, because he tells us what will be accepted. The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit. He said also a broken and a contrite
heart will not be despised. So he lets us know this has something
to do with our spirit and has something to do with our heart.
Now I want you to listen very carefully about what I have to
say about this. What I'm not saying is that you can just live
any way you want to and sin that grace may abound. I'm not saying
that in any way. That is evil and that is a reaction
of an unregenerated person who has never seen Christ. If that's
what you get out of the message of grace in the Scriptures, that
you don't have to keep the law anymore, that that'll lead people
to sin, you've never seen Christ. Now, I'm not saying that there's
anything wrong with not drinking or dancing or whatever people
think holy living has got to be, whatever that is. There's
nothing wrong with that. But that's up to you. Don't bring
God in the middle of this. That's fine for you to do that.
Don't put that on somebody else. Paul used this idea, he speaks
about this later in Romans, where he talks about sacrificing meat
to idols. For some people, it was, there's
nothing wrong with it. That idol is a rock, or it's
a piece of wood. It doesn't mean anything. So
eating that meat that was sacrificed to idols, it does nothing for
me or against me. But to some people, they're offended
by it. I couldn't eat meat sacrificed to an idol. He said it doesn't
mean anything. Whether you do or whether you don't, it doesn't
mean anything. Don't put that on somebody else, is basically
what I'm saying here. This notion, I'm keying in on
this, this notion of holy living falls so far beneath and so far
short of what is honoring to God. It spits on the work of
Christ. 1 John 2 1 says, My little children, These things write unto you that
you sin less and keep on fighting the good fight. Is that what
it says? No. It says, I write unto you that
you sin not. This is holy living, nothing
less. Your aim and my aim is to never
sin again. There is never an excuse for
sin. Consider what it took to pay
for one of your sins. God's Son had to endure the humiliation
of being made a man, and assuredly it was a humiliation for Him
to condescend to do so. He was reviled. He was doubted. The Scripture says we esteemed
Him not. He was laughed at. You consider this, men and women
laughing at the Son of God? Religious people wanted to kill
Him because of His message that you couldn't be saved by what
you did. He had to live perfectly before God, something you and
I can't do for one second. He had to endure being spit on,
having his beard pulled out, punched in the face, being nailed
to a pole to bleed out and die, to be made sin, to have all the
sins of all the elect put on him, and he became guilty for
their sin. The Father forsook him. The father
had nothing to do with him at this time. He poured out his
wrath on his son unto death, and he experienced hell, all
for just one sin, one of your sins. Now, for you or me to not
care or deal callously with the idea of our sin and be one of
his elect, that's a crime against love, and that's wrong on all
levels. Now, this notion of holy living
is far too low view of holiness as if we could even attain unto
it. And in turn, a far too low view of the Lord Jesus Christ
and His work as if anything else would be needed. What hope do I have then? Romans
7, 6 tells us to serve in newness of spirit. What spirit is He
talking about? It's the same spirit that the
Lord talked to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, you must be born again. A spirit that we lost in the
garden. When our father Adam ate of the
fruit, it says he died. Now Adam didn't die, he still
lived on, you know, 900 years or whatever. So he didn't die,
so what died? His spiritual nature died. What
did he lose then? Communion with God? God couldn't
have anything to do with him. He was a sinner, and God hates
sin. He lost his ability to see. to
hear and to believe God. There was nothing that he could
have in and of himself where he could come into God's presence
or know him apart from God giving a revelation of himself. He was
dead. He had no life and we were dead
through the breaking of the law, something you and I do every
time we breathe. Every thought in my head, Every
action, every motive, even if it comes from a good attitude
on my end, it's sinful because I did it. The law, it tells us,
has been put away. He tells us that in verse 5.
That's been put away and we're not subject to it anymore. The
idea of you have to do this or that to live if we're in Christ. We're to serve in newness of
spirit. What is that? It's to believe
the gospel. Serving in newness in spirit
is trusting His Son, that what He requires of me for my salvation
to stand clean before God, that's been accomplished in His Son.
When He lived here, He lived the life I couldn't, and that's
my life. When He died, I was punished
in Him because of what I did, and I died with Him. And as He
was raised, I was raised again with Him because of the power
that indwells in Him in His person. Now, how real is this idea of
be ye holy for I am holy. We'll turn with me over to 1
John chapter 3. I think this explains it quite
well. 1 John chapter 3, be ye holy for
I am holy, verse 9, whosoever is born of God, has this new
spirit indwelling in them, doth not commit sin. For his seed,
the seed of God, remaineth in him. and he cannot sin because
he's born of God. It says he doesn't commit it
and neither can he even do it. So you think about that. This
new nature born in me, it does not sin because it's holy. In Romans, well, we don't have
time for that. In Romans 7, Paul talks about
the new man and the old man in him. He's saying the things that
I would do, those are the things that I can't do. The things that
I don't want to do, those are the things that I do. So you
can see there's something going on inside of him. There's these
two natures who are at war with each other. Now to look for an
outward show of holy living, is nothing but pure self-righteousness.
You want to say, look at what I'm doing and what somebody else
is not. Now God, show favor upon me because I did that. I want
to give you right now three evidences from the scripture regarding
the work of a believer. The first is going to be found
in Matthew chapter 8. In verse 1, when he was come
down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And
behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth
his hand and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said unto him, See
that thou tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to the
priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony
unto them. Now, you consider this. The leper
came to the Lord looking like what? A leper. Scars and disease,
wrapped up probably. He couldn't be near people. You
could see outwardly this guy's got a lot wrong with him. He's
got a death sentence in his day. Leprosy was a death sentence.
But yet he comes to the Lord looking like he did. Now, when
the Lord told him, be ye clean, how did he look? He didn't look
any different, did he? He was still scarred with the
disease because it tells us in the book of Leviticus how a priest
could proclaim someone who was a leper to be clean. You know
how he could? He had to look at their body
and he would see the disease. He'd look at it. Are there red
spots and white spots? Look at the spots in the flesh.
when he could find no more clean flesh, no more new flesh, non-diseased
flesh, then you were proclaimed clean. The Lord proclaimed this
man to be clean, but yet on the outside, if you saw him, you
would still think that he was a leper, because that's why the
Lord told him, you need to go show yourself to the priest.
We're going to do this, but it's going to be by the law. He's
not going to bypass the law. The Lord can't fulfill the law.
So he said, you go and you show yourself to the priest. So if
you saw him, you would still think that he was a leper. And
if you see me, you still see I'm a sinner. I don't look on
the outside any differently than I did before. Yet the Lord said
this leper was clean, and so he was. The Lord said my new
nature can't sin. I see it now. I couldn't see
it before, because my new nature can see what I am, and I hate
myself for what I am. I hate my flesh. I hate my sin. I can't control myself from stopping
from doing it. It's in everything that I do
and touch, but yet the Lord said my new nature is holy, and it
cannot sin. It believes His Word. Now Paul,
Paul the Apostle, if he couldn't conquer his old nature, rest
assured, you can't either. So this idea of holy living is
a joke. So that's the first one. This
is a work that is done on the inside. The second is found in
Luke chapter 19. This is a very familiar story.
This is the story of Zacchaeus, climbed up a tree to see the
Lord passing by the way. And the Lord came, in verse 5,
Jesus came to the place, looked up, and he saw him, and he said
unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, come down. For today I must abide
at thy house. And he made haste, and he came
down, and he received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all
murmured, saying that he was gone to be the guest with a man
that's a sinner. These are the Pharisees. And
Zacchaeus stood and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, half
of my goods I give to the poor. And if I've taken anything from
any man by false accusation, I'm gonna restore unto him fourfold.
And Jesus said unto him, This day his salvation come to this
house, for so as much he's the son of Abraham. Now, if you look
in verse 8, did the Lord tell him to do anything? Not one thing. Why did he do it? He did it because
it was what was right. This idea of works and the believer,
this is what we want to do. I want to do what is right. He wasn't seeking some kind of
pat on the back or recognition for what he did. Wow, Zacchaeus,
you're redeeming yourself of being a thief and a crook, giving
all your money back. Isn't that great? No. He wasn't bringing that to the
Lord to say, look at what I've done. His new nature in Him said,
that's what's right to do. You're not to steal. You're not
to lie. You're not to cheat. You're not to kill people. You
know that. And His new nature is doing that because He wanted
to. And this is one of the problems with unregenerate religious people,
is they always want to call attention to what they're doing. But the
Lord said unto them, and the Pharisees especially who did
this, they have their reward. It's a reward of men. They want
to be seen out in public doing what they do. You've got your
reward. You're not going to stop them from doing it. Their reward
is to receive the praise of men, not the praise of God. Paul said
it best, things that I would do, those are the things I don't
do. And that which I hate, that's what I do. This is the evidence
of grace in you, a hatred for what you are by your nature.
You can look at all your works. You can't tell any difference
between the good and the bad ones. They all look bad. Because
even when I look at my good works, I know I've got a motive in here.
I think that was pretty good that I did that. Well, that in
itself just negated whatever good work came out of that. There's
no law for the new man. He only does what's right. He
is holy. He lacks the ability to sin.
And that's why I had John read the verses to you out of Romans
7, that last one, with the mind. Paul said, I myself serve the
law of God with the mind. That's the inward man. But with
the flesh, the things that you can look at me, that I would
do outwardly, that other people can see, I serve the law of sin. So, if you can do it outwardly
and you can see it, then it's sin. But yet, God says in the
heart, we're serving the law of God. And lastly, Matthew chapter
25. In verse 34, Then shall the king say unto
them on his right hand, come ye blessed of my father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was an hungered, and you gave me meat. I was thirsty,
and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you took
me in. I was naked, and you clothed
me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you
came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer
him, saying, Lord, when we saw thee and hungered, and fed thee,
or thirsty, or gave you to drink? Or when did we see you as a stranger,
and took you in, or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we
sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And then the king
shall answer unto them, and say, Verily I say unto you, Insomuch
as you have done an end to one of the least of these, my brethren,
you've done it unto me. Now His children will do good
works, but there's one discriminating fact here in this passage that
lets us know something. They are utterly unaware that
they're doing them. If you're aware that you're doing
it, you are glorying in it. God will not have it, and this
defiles the work. Very clear from this passage,
because if you go and read on, all these other people said,
you know, start talking about what they did. We've done many
wonderful works. We preached in your name. We
prophesied in your name. He says, I never knew you. Depart
from me, you workers of iniquity. So those who did know works had
all the ones in the world to present to him. Those who did
the works were utterly unaware that they had ever even done
them. Those servants, and you remember
this parable the Lord gave about some servants. He said, if your
servant goes out in the field and works all day for you, are
you to thank him? Are you to give him a reward
for this? Those servants that did that, were they deserving
of thanks, recognition, respect? What did those servants say?
They said, no, we are unprofitable servants and we have done that
which was our duty to do. This is the response of a child
to God with regard to his works. If I'm called to do, I'm an unprofitable
servant. There's never been a worse servant
and there's never been a better master. But if I am called to
do work on His behalf, it's through His will. He tells us over in
Ephesians that it's been foreordained that you should walk in those
works. How in are you going to glory in it then if He's foreordained
from the foundation of the work that you do the work anyway?
You've got nothing to glory in. He's the one who foreordained
it in you. We are unprofitable servants
and we've done that which is our duty to do. We have nothing
to glory in. And there's all for one reason.
This is all about one reason. Who gets the glory? In your salvation,
who gets the glory? Did you do something except the
work that he did and then therefore he saved you because you do that?
Who's saving who? He did the work. He's not completely
a Savior. He's called Savior. He saved
His people from their sins. That means He did it. And He
calls us, as we talked about in the beginning, we're dead
men and women. You can't get up unless He calls
you. You didn't sit up and choose
anything. He chose us. He chose us in Christ, not for
anything that we had done. All my hope rests in what He
did. My hope is that He is satisfied
with His Son and all those who are in His Son. And I pray that
I'm one of those in Him and that I cannot be separated from Him
because He put me there. Now a call to holy living is
nothing but flesh. And one day all flesh will rot.
Wood, hay, and stubble, all these works will be burned up and they're
gonna be shown that they're absolutely nothing before God. I want to
have that gold and that silver that's been tried in the fire,
that which won't go away and all the impurities have been
burned out of it. All the flesh in this world will be gone. Some
will be raised into life eternal. Some will be burned up, will
be cast off. The scripture says, be ye holy
as I am holy, saith your God. And remember, holiness is not
what you do, it's what you are. Holiness is your nature. The
evidence is what? It's a belief in the son, isn't
it? The only evidence we have at all that we're holy, that
we have this nature, is we believe him and we believe his word.
And the scripture said, he that believeth on the son hath life. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we pray
to you in the high and holy name of Christ Jesus, our Lord. And
Lord, we thank you for your word. We're thankful that you're holy. And Lord, we wouldn't dare come
before you with any works of our own to represent that they're
holy. Lord, deliver us from this and
cause us to see our sufficiency is in Christ, in Christ alone.
It's in his name that we pray, amen.