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Sep 04, 2016

The Way of Holiness, Pt. 2

The Way of Holiness, Pt. 2

Passage: 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Living in God's Grip of Holiness

Keywords: lost, motives, practical holiness, world, separation from evil

Summary:

This message continues looking at HOW we both separate from the world while engaging in holiness IN the world.

Detail:

The Way of Holiness, Pt. 2

September 4, 2016

INTRO:

How many of you have ever been called or emailed asking if you would participate in a poll about political candidates?  Most of us have probably been the object of political polling at some point.  If you haven’t, count your blessings…and get ready!  With political season in full swing, your luck might just be running out.

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to do a little informal polling here today.  Don’t worry, it’s not about politics. 

  • Raise your hand if you went to public school as a kid? Private Christian School?  Were home schooled?
  • Raise your hand if you went to a secular university? Christian University? 
  • Raise your hand if you’ve lived with secular roommates at some point in your life? In a Christian sorority/fraternity? A monastery/convent? J
  • Raise your hand if you’ve ever been part of a Christian club/league/association of some sort (church sports league, campus CRU or IV group, Chr. Ostrich Racing Association). Secular club/league/association?

All those questions highlight different choices we may or may not make because of our relationship to Jesus Christ.  Either option mentioned along the secular-sacred spectrum may be morally acceptable for a follower of Jesus. 

But we all (hopefully) draw the line between secular/sacred, sinful/holy, right/wrong, evil/righteous at some point.  You might have a problem with your understanding of God’s call to holiness IF…you’re still part of a prostitution ring…or crime syndicate…or drug cartel…or political party??? J

So what’s my point?  Well, we live in a world that is a mixture of good and evil, sinners and saints, demons and angels, moral and immoral activities, etc., etc.  And every one of us makes hundreds if not thousands of choices every week that determine whether we grow in wickedness OR in holiness.

REVIEW: If you’re just joining us today, we’re in a short series on one attribute of God’s character—His holiness.  Two weeks ago, we looked at the connection God makes in His word between holiness and happiness.  In a word, it is absolute!  Holiness will engage us with THE happiest Being (God) in existence in this universe and any other.  So our God-given enjoyment of beauty and happiness should be enough motivation for any breathing person to value and pursue our Holy God.

Last week we started talking about the Way of holiness: actually HOW does this critical, unifying and overarching quality of holiness that God IS become our experience?  And we saw how genuine WORSHIP is one vital way of making holiness our human experience. 

Today I want us to look more into one of the basic truths about holiness, namely SEPARATION from sin/spiritual rebellion, and its relationship to engagement in righteousness or holiness.  Is it like a teeter-totter where when your engagement in sin goes down, your holiness naturally goes up?  OR is it possible to decrease sinning while never really increasing your right-living or righteous holiness? 

 Taken another step, does separation from sinful people automatically mean more engagement with God’s holiness? 

Are there some engagements with sinful people that will almost universally or inevitably lead most or all of us away from holiness?  

These questions about the relationship between actual practical holiness in the life of a Jesus-follower verses actual personal sinfulness have challenged the people of God for millennia.  Whether it was the priests and public officials in Israel OR the peasants and friars of the Middle Ages…or the pastors and politicians in the modern America church, ALL of us struggle with knowing when and how to engage or disengage from the sinful world, sinful activities and sinful people.  Equally, we seem to struggle with knowing how, on the positive side of that coin of holiness, to engage with holiness in a way that makes Christ desirable…or hated…by a world at war with God.  

            The “separation from sin” aspect of holiness has led many a sincere Christian to engage in monastic-type withdrawal from the world of normal pursuits (such as marriage, family, careers and even conversation) so as to engage in “the spiritual life” that often demanded poverty, simplicity, chastity and daily spiritual disciplines of regular meditation, silence, solitude and prayers.

            Who doesn’t feel the pull of wanting to just withdraw from a world gone mad with sin?  Who doesn’t wish you could awake to the sweet sounds of a few monks singing Gregorian chants rather than the buzz of an alarm clock or the crying of a baby?  Who doesn’t get tired of looking at the urban “scenery” of brick walls, run-down buildings, drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual abuse and violent people and wish that you could spend hours each day wandering through Irish-green, rolling, sheep-filled hills contemplating the goodness of God?

            But does that kind of separation necessarily lead to holiness?  Does taking a vow of silence for the rest of your life really make your thoughts more holy?  What about the positive side of holiness that calls us to self-sacrificing love for our neighbor, for the lost and for God’s people?  Surely holiness that leads to happiness must include both separation from sin and engagement with God and people, both saints and sinners.

            So, what are the extremes when it comes to pursuing holiness?

On the one hand we have those who are trying to withdraw from the world of sin and sinners as much as possible.  God’s people, the Hebrews, were told by God to physically separate from the pagan nations around and among them so they would not end up following their pagan gods. But apart from the positive side of holiness—a heart drawn to God himself—that kind of living always failed over time.  

Today people who try to avoid sin by withdrawing from sinners and a sinful world too frequently find the results equally unsatisfying. They may listen only to “Christian radio,” watch no TV/movies (or only ones that agree with a biblical worldview).  They may join only Christian clubs, fill their week as much as possible with church activities, subscribe to only Christian magazines and try to work around Christians as much as possible.  But are they, their children and grandchildren truly more “holy”? 

Holiness can no more be created by “Christian surroundings” than cats can be made into rabbits by putting them in rabbit hutches.  Holiness does create a different way of life.  But a different way of life without a constant and deeply profound work of the Holy Spirit in a human heart can never produce holiness. 

On the other end of the spectrum of withdrawal from sinners and a sinful world is naïve engagement in as much of one’s pagan culture and people as possible in order to “share the Gospel.”  Sincere Christian people just like you and me, find themselves compromising their Spirit-led standards and convictions one friendship at a time, one movie at a time, one date at a time and one business deal at a time.

Holiness is not to be found in either extreme of relational withdrawal or compromise.  Rather, it is lost, stifled, buried and asphyxiated in those extremes.  But vibrant, happy, godly, life-changing holiness must, however, include BOTH a separation from evil and an engagement with good.  Just separation without an accompanying positive righteousness will simply lead to a Pharisaic legalism.  That’s what Jesus battled continually with the religious leaders of his day—loveless legalism that sought holiness through rule-keeping rather than constant, moment-by-moment relationship with the Father. 

Equally evil and dangerous is a spiritualistic humanism that believes a sort of self-redemption can be achieved by simply doing lots of “good” to lots of people.  While this latter extreme may look and feel better than the former, it is just as unhinged from true holiness as legalism because it has lost the absolute standard of God’s holiness as the only true measure of what is “good” or “evil” in this world and for people.    

So where can we go to find a genuine model of holiness that we can actually emulate?  We must come back to God himself, the only true standard, measure and vision of holiness in our universe.  That is why we need Jesus every moment of every day—to model for us how holiness looks and lives in human flesh. His separation from the world and his engagement with the world are THE best living model we will ever see of the HOW of holiness. 

So, is the answer to just make a list or catalogue the things or people from whom Jesus separated himself in order to know what “holy separation” is?  And on the other side of the coin, can we just look at who and what Jesus engaged with to get a fool-proof template for what positive holiness…living righteously… looks like?  I don’t think so. 

ILL:  What would, say, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple money changers look like in the contemporary church?  Crashing every church bake sale and overturning tables of granny’s pies and cakes probably will not produce holiness in modern places of worship.  And what kind of “positive holiness” might we try to create from, say, Jesus’ turning water into wine as his first miracle?   Bringing 150 gallons of wine to the next family wedding you attend might make a lot of people temporarily happy…or drunk…or both.  But it probably won’t bring heart- holiness to you or the newlyweds. J 

But Jesus, led of the Holy Spirit and both doing and saying only those things He saw his Father doing and saying, did lead to a holy turning of tables in the Temple one day just as it led Him to a holy providing of a lot of wine to a poor, embarrassed newlywed couple at their marriage feast. 

My point is, holiness has never come by list-making or list-keeping; it has come by abhorring sin and adoring Christ TOGETHER.  Some of that Christ-adoring will take us into deserts of solitude, self-denial and testing.  Some of it will lead us into banquets of bounty, of abundant celebration and of criticized encounters with sinners.  Living a life of holiness will draw fire from both liberals and conservatives. 

But that fire won’t matter much to those who have tasted the fire of God’s holiness.  God’s holiness will always mean contact without contamination, human connection without unholy compromise.

So HOW do we get this HOLINESS?

  1. Holiness begins with the HEART…just as its antithesis, evil, does. The problem for all of us is that evil comes naturally to our fallen human nature.  But holiness does not.  That is WHY we must have a change of nature IF we are to have a life of holiness.  And that is precisely what Jesus and Jesus alone offers every human being.  We must be “born again” (ala John 3) if we are to enter the holy kingdom of God.  We must embrace Jesus by faith and invite God to give us a “new heart” which delights in the law of God in our inner person (Romans 7:21-8:2).   

Jesus told us plainly that what comes out of a person in their actions is simply a manifestation of what is already in their heart.  When our hearts are filled with the Holy Spirit and the holy life of Christ, our words, facial expressions, actions and desires and thoughts will remind people of Jesus and point them to Him.  But when our hearts are filled with sin and self, not the Holy Spirit, people will simple see US, not the holiness of God.  Compared to everyone else who is unholy, we may actually look reasonably acceptable.  But they will never see God or any of His holy splendor. 

            Godly holiness of life begins and ends with a heart full of the HOLY Spirit.  This is why we must learn to “walk” and “live” in the Spirit as the Scriptures teaches.  Living every moment “in the Holy Spirit” is something we must learn to train our minds, our emotions and our wills to do. 

This is why the early ascetics and monastics were on the right track.  It wasn’t just about NOT getting defiled by the sinful world.  It was just as much or more for them about developing spiritual disciplines that could help them train their minds, emotions and wills to live in the Spirit. 

ILL:  This is why St. Benedict developed along with his Benedictine monks a “Liturgy of Hours” throughout the day when devotees would stop & pray.  It usually corresponded to 3-hour increments beginning at 6:00 a.m. and occurring again at 9, 12 p.m., 3, 6 and 9p.m.  Some added midnight and 3:00a.m… if you liked working “the night shift”. J

Praying ritualistically at those times didn’t necessarily make you holy.  But not praying throughout the day certainly doesn’t make us holy either.  Finding the “prayer prompters” in every day that train our hearts and minds to seek and conform to God’s heart and mind will change our practical holiness just as much as eating 1…or 3…or 6…or 9 meals a day will change our physical condition.

REVIEW:

So, holiness happens with 1.) a new heart in Christ, and 2.) a developing walk in the Holy Spirit. 

Just as walking for exercise every day is a “discipline” that most people don’t do but some disciplined people do (and benefit from greatly), so is walking in the Holy Spirit.  This is why here at Mosaic, we try and return frequently to thinking about and implementing different “spiritual disciplines” into our daily routines.  Without them we simply will not grow in any of the virtues of Jesus Christ…just as without physical disciplines we will not have healthy bodies.  But the Spirit of God in true Christ-followers is always calling and moving and pushing us to develop that fruit of “self-control” or Spirit-discipline that will lead to holiness of life. 

Studies over the last few decades seem to indicate that it takes anywhere from 2.5 weeks to 35 weeks to turn a new activity into an ongoing habit.  Whether it is doing 30 pushups first thing in the morning or talking a walk with God for 15 every evening, our brains are wired toward forming habits. 

APP: (Group responses)—What have you found to be the most helpful daily spiritual disciplines—spiritual practices that have helped you really hear from God and walk with God throughout a day? 

APP:  Listen to God for a moment.  What 1 simple spiritual discipline would the Holy Spirit like you to make a habit over the next month to 6 months?  Just imagine how different our walk with God might be if each of us incorporated just 1 new spiritual practice every 6 months…or even 1 each year!  In a single decade, most of our lives would be radically different. 

ILL:  For example, it’s hard for me to really enjoy Sunday mornings without being with God’s people in worship? Why? Not because Sunday is any more “holy” a day than Monday-Sat.  It’s because, ever since I was a teenager, Sundays have been my day of engagement in the spiritual disciplines of fellowship, worship and Bible study with other Christ-followers.  It truly is a “spiritual discipline” that, when I don’t do it, I feel like I’m missing something valuable in my week. And most of the time, I AM! 

It doesn’t mean I can’t “worship” backpacking or traveling or even staying home if I’m sick.  I can and do.  But I still “miss” what my mind, heart and body have made “habitual” as a spiritual discipline. It’s not the discipline itself; it’s what that discipline does to my weekly walk with Christ.  And other disciplines affect me daily! 

            Learning to “walk in the Holy Spirit” involves, interestingly enough, both disengagement from certain activities & people that can frequently lead us into just distance from God or even sin and engagement in certain activities and/or certain people that can lead us into intimacy with God.

            In all of life, Jesus is to be our mentor and model.  There are times we see him disengaging from fellowship with the disciples and the crowd.  He sends His disciple out onto the Sea of Galilee for the night to row across the lake so that he can spend some uninterrupted time with the Father praying through the night.  That’s called the spiritual practice of “keeping watch” or “a prayer vigil”—disengaging from people, work and even sleep so that we can engage with the Father through prayer. 

            At other times we see Jesus disengaging from the spiritual practices of ministry and service that involved lots of people, but getting away with his disciples, so he can just enjoy a little rest with fellowship with His closest spiritual brothers. 

Jesus’ “disciplines” weren’t so rigid that they happened like clockwork at the same time on set days.  But disciplines did happen.  And when they did is when we see Jesus hearing from the Father about whatever then next move of his life was to be.

There will be no “public holiness” that blesses others and benefits us unless there is “private engagement” with God that others may or may not see or be a part of.

So holiness in personal character must come from ongoing encounters with the holiness of God himself. When God commands “Be holy for I am holy!” he’s not asking us to drum up holiness of heart apart from encounter with Him.  He’s telling us that holiness will only be found IN Him, WITH Him and BY Him.  That is why our worship matters, be it every day in moments of disciplined silence when we turn off the radio in the car or less frequently when we come together as a church for worship services and home groups.  Internal holiness of heart and mind must always precede external holiness of words and actions.

            Since encounter with the holy God can and does change us, it follows that encounter with less than holy or downright unholy humans can and will change us too.  The difference is that we can’t always say which people and which encounters will have a decidedly holy effect on us or a decidedly unholy effect. 

ILL:  An encounter with some wealthy businessperson can have a very unholy effect on any of us IF greed and materialism is a powerful temptation to us.  Spending more and more time with that businessperson, while looking very helpful and positive to just about everyone watching, could sidetrack your entire life from the kind of investment God wants you to make in His Kingdom with both your money and your life.  But for another Christ-follower, spending time with that same businessperson might be the very thing God wants you to do instead of spending that same time at a church prayer meeting.  The REASON or MOTIVE driving us to hang out with a certain businessperson…or any person, for that matter… will probably determine more than anything whether doing so leads to holiness and godly happiness OR to sinfulness and unholy selfishness. 

            This is why David’s prayer in Psalm 139:23-24 should be a prayer frequently on our hearts and lips:  “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  And we know that the “Way of Holiness” is the only “everlasting way.”

Let’s end today by looking at how this balance between separation from evil and engagement with sinful people looked in Jesus’ life.  

After 3 years with his disciples, Jesus could tell the Father in his John 17 prayer that “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”  Three years of seeing and believing in God incarnate…in human flesh…had changed who the disciples were.  Yes, they would still feel the pull of the world and worldliness.  But they had been with Jesus enough to know that this world and its empty promises of sin was not where true life was for them any more. 

Judas Iscariot had seen the same miracles and life transformations that the other disciples had.  But he never chose to value being right/holy with God through faith in Jesus more than he valued the world’s idol of money and the supposed benefits money enticed him with.  And while the other 11 disciples hung around Judas just as much as each other, Jesus never demanded they separate from him to be holy.   

So, first off, for those of us who seek to follow Jesus’ balance of separation from evil itself while still having engagement with sinful people, we will find ourselves relating to BOTH true and holy Christ-followers of Jesus on a regular basis in and around ministry as well as phony and fake “Christians” whose hearts are not and may never be for His Kingdom more than their own personal agendas and idols. 

Phony “Christians” can do as much damage to the holy living of genuine Christ-followers as overtly pagan non-Christians.  But that doesn’t mean we are to be avoiding them even in the normal discipleship settings.  Judas’ presence among the 12, if anything, tested and tried and deepened their holiness   But neither did Jesus invite Judas up to the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James and John nor to accompany Him nearby in the Garden of Gethsemane the night He was betrayed. (Judas was a bit preoccupied with other things that night! J) 

This model is what we see carried out further in the N.T. church life. According to 1st Corinthians 5-6, people claiming to be Christ-followers but living in sexual immorality or engaging in other sinful activities like suing a fellow believer are people we are not to associate with so that they will feel convicted (if they are true believers) and come back to Christ in repentance (which is precisely what happened according to 2 Corinthians). 

Divisive people in the church (Titus 3:10) as well as false teachers/leaders who are self-possessed in the church are the only people we are to have “nothing to do with.”  2 Timothy 3:1-5 gives a list of traits you will see in these kind of people when Paul writes to Timothy and says,  “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.”

But what about outside the church?  What about NON-CHRISTIANS?  Are we ever called to separate from them?  Or is our separation only from the ungodly things they engage in? 

2 Corinthians 6:14ff gives very clear instruction that we are not to be “yoked together with unbelievers.”  Latter in that passage, Paul quotes the O.T. from Ezekiel 37:27 when he reiterates God’s call to His kids to “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord….” 

Again, God doesn’t say, “Don’t have anything to do with them--no friendships, no conversations, no Monday night football and certainly no poker night!”  No, you can have meaningful, relationships with unbelievers and not be “yoked together.” 

But there are some agreements, some contracts and some partnerships that can leave us “unequally yoked.”  Some business partnerships fall into that category.  Some friendships that lead to romantic connections fall into that category.  Marriage between a Christ-follower and a non-Christ-follower certainly falls into that category.  (Note: But if you become a Chr. while you are married and your spouse does not, God makes it clear in I Cor. 7 that you are to remain in that “yoke” as long as your spouse agrees to.)

ILL:  After WWII, my father and mother moved to Spokane.  Dad started what is now one of the major law firms in this town.  And he worked and led in that firm for about 32 years.  In about his 22nd year, he came to faith in Jesus Christ.  And as God grew him up in Christ, he became more and more convinced that the reasons for which he had gone into law and the drive that God was now giving him to help people were at odds with most of the rest of his law firm.  He felt “unequally yoked.”  So he did the good and honorable thing:  he took early retirement and put his skills as an attorney to work for a Bible college in the Northwest… for the next 20+ years until he was in his mid-eighties.  Sometimes being “unequally yoked” means you need to break the yoke in a way that doesn’t do damage to others but sets you free to pursue God’s call upon your life.  (Again, I’m not talking about marriage, as I said before!)

Commitments and connections that obligate us to actions, investments, agreements and partnerships with people whose primary and driving value and vision in life is not Jesus Christ are to be avoided.  What I’ve found through the years is that God’s children become “unequally yoked” when some other driving motive and passion other than a live lived wholly to the glory of God comes in and dominates a person, even for just a season.  A believer’s ability to rationalize why a romance or a partnership or an investment with someone not really passionate about God is just as powerful as an unbeliever’s ability to rationalize sin.  And for the believer in Christ, it IS sin!

Paul ends this passage and theme in 2 Corinthians 6-7 when he says, in 7:1, “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify yourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” 

Just what are “these promises” God is asking us to remember when we are tempted to meld our lives with those of unbelievers?  The preceding verse says,

“I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”  It’s all back to our relationship with our heavenly Father…or our lack of it.  The world, the flesh and the devil can have no hold over our hearts when the fatherhood of God and our sonship/daughtership to Him hold their rightful, proper and supreme place in our affections and our passions. As long as we are “perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” day in and day out, no evil person and no evil deed will hold sway in our hearts, thoughts or actions.  But when we allow our hearts to “revere” something or someone else more than God our Father, we are swimming in dangerous, shark-infested waters.

QUESTIONS about this topic of being separate from sin but not sinners? 

I end with a note of commendation and praise for all of you.  While reading on this subject of practical holiness and relationships with people this week, I came across a chapter in one of Erwin Lutzer’s book entitled, How in the World Can I be Holy?  In it he notes that Jesus went out of his way to have a ministry that was not segregated by racial divisions, social class, educational background or any other man-made barriers and criteria.  He bemoaned the fact that secular social organizations have often been more willing to accept people from various minority groups than many a Christian church.  And then he made this statement:  “Tragically, we frequently live as if God is running a mission only for the middle class.” 

            I feel deeply blessed and privileged to be pastoring a group of people who have not made their decision about what their experience with the body of Christ will be based upon anything but the common grace of God we have all experienced in Jesus Christ.  Some of you who may have resented and been abused by people of a different economic group than you have known come here and join your hearts with people not like you.  And others who could have spent your entire lives avoiding encounters with people different from you because you have the means to do so have instead chosen to grow in your holiness right alongside your brothers and sisters who are very different from you. 

            It isn’t always easy or comfortable.  It doesn’t always feel good.  And it takes a lot of humility, grace and patient longsuffering.  But it is godly…and it is, therefore, good and holy.  As Paul wrote to God’s people in Corinth,

            “Therefore, since we have these promises…[these promises of God being our Father and of us being His sons and daughters]…let us…[all of us]…purify ourselves from everything that contaminates [both our] body and spirit…[and let’s do that in this ongoing process of] perfecting holiness out of [our] reverence for God.”