I. Introduction

A. Illustration – I want to start this morning by sharing a quote that I found very true for our time and therefore very significant. (NEW SLIDE) Lately there has been much attention given to the small details of worship, but who is looking after the little child – that is, the main duties of Christianity? Was there ever less love, compassion, self-denial, or power of holiness than today? Very relevant for today, isn’t it? Any ideas on which Christian author wrote it? Any guesses? Actually, it was written by a pastor in England by the name of (NEW SLIDE) William Gurnall, who lived from 1616-1679. As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.

B. 1 Peter 1:15-16 from The Message says, (NEW SLIDE) As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.” There are many Christian pastors and authors today who will try to get you to believe that our lack of holiness is a recent thing. But as Gurnall showed us, it was a big problem even back in the 17^th century. But why is holiness such a problem for us?

C. There are a couple of reasons. First, we have a sin nature within us that works with everything it’s got to keep us from being holy. The solution, of course, is to kill it off by the power of the Holy Spirit. But we’ll talk more about that next week. The second reason is that we really don’t understand what holiness is. And that is a problem as old as time.

II. Ethical Holiness?

A. Before we go any further, let’s try to figure out what holiness is. My dictionary defines holy as (NEW SLIDE) “1. Of or associated with a divine power or religious beliefs and traditions. 2. Spiritually pure; saintly. 3. Worthy of special respect or awe.” Our problem is that we buy into those kinds of definitions. From a secular perspective, those are good definitions, and even “spiritually pure isn’t necessarily a bad one. But they just don’t tend to line up with a biblical understanding of what being holy is all about. John Oswalt, in his excellent book Called to Be Holy, writes What God revealed to the Israelites in the context of the covenant was to revolutionize their entire understanding of deity and of the divine nature. Of course God was holy. They did not need the covenant to teach them that… But in the covenant God began to teach His people that He is the only being in existence of whom the term may be justly used… (NEW SLIDE) Only that which is truly “other” has a right to be called holy (pg. 19). To be holy is to be totally other from the world.

B. Don’t feel bad. People have struggled with this concept of holiness for as long as there’ve been people on the earth! Think about it – if God is totally other from this world, and all we see and touch is this world, so how could we begin to comprehend a Being who is totally other? Now plug in what Peter has written about us being holy as God is holy, which is a repeat of an Old Testament command, and how are we as beings totally tied in with this world be totally other like God is? That is a huge problem for mankind, and one that we’ve been trying for centuries to find a solution to that we could fully understand. After all, if we can’t explain it, does it really exist? Of course the answer is a resounding yes, but that still doesn’t stop mankind from trying.

C. I subscribe to Biblical Archeology Review, which has interesting articles to say the least. It reviews archeological discoveries that could somehow connect with the Bible. What makes it really interesting is that most of the articles are contributed by folks who tend to be liberal theologically – they don’t believe in a literal understanding of the Bible and try to explain away what is recorded by showing how it was stolen from other cultures. Weak arguments to say the least! But these authors use a term to describe the standards of the Old Testament – ethical holiness. My dictionary defines ethical as (NEW SLIDE) “1. Of or dealing with ethics. 2. In accordance with accepted principles governing the conduct of a group.” What these authors are doing is reducing the Old Testament to a series or group of moral codes or standards. In a sense, they are right, but they’re only getting half the picture. They are getting the what without addressing the why.

D. Illustration – Jerry L. Walls wrote, (NEW SLIDE) In our age, as in every age, people are longing for happiness, not realizing that what they are looking for is holiness (as cited on PreachingToday.com). People are looking for the what without realizing that they are really looking for the why. We look for the what because it’s a lot easier than looking for the why. But the why is what will truly set us free!

III. Transformational Holiness

A. In commenting on our passage in 1 Peter, Oswalt writes, Why should we be holy? Because of what God has said about himself and those who believe in him in the Old Testament… In a few words, Peter shows the intimate connection between forgiveness and a life of holiness. He says that those who have received the grace of forgiveness through the death of Jesus Christ are expected to live lives that conform to the character of God, a character he defines using the biblical term “holy.”… (NEW SLIDE) So what Peter is doing here is to carefully link the receiving of God’s grace with a radically transformed life (pg. 2). This sounds a bit like ethical holiness, doesn’t it? Throughout his book, and throughout the writings of other holiness authors like John Wesley and Adam Clarke, the truth of a holiness that affects our behavior is very clearly expressed. But there’s so much more they and the Bible authors write about than changed behavior. It didn’t work for the Israelites and it won’t work for us. (NEW SLIDE) There is something more to being holy than being ethical.

B. Oswalt writes If a person constantly reads the New Testament in the light of the Old, which the Church Fathers clearly intended by their joining of the two in one canon, then it becomes unmistakeably clear what the purpose of the Gospel is. It is the same purpose that God has had from Genesis 4 onwards: the transformation of human behavior in this world with the consequent possibility of living with God through all eternity. The Old Testament shows us what the transformation is, and the New Testament shows us what God has done to make the transformation possible. (NEW SLIDE) This means that unless Christians are truly transformed into the character of God, the whole purpose of the Church’s existence becomes blurred and confused (pg. 3). This is an incredibly powerful truth, and one we’ve got to get a grip on and do everything we can to strive for.

C. The religious leaders of Jesus’ time thought that ethical holiness was the most important thing in the world. They really worked at doing all the right things. But they did them for all the wrong reasons. That’s why Jesus saved his harshest words for them. Matthew 15:7-9 – You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said, 8 ‘These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far away. 9 Their worship is a farce, for they replace God’s commands with their own man-made teachings.’ And in Matthew 23:27-28 – “How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside but filled with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. 28 You try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Jesus obviously didn’t read How to Win Friends and Influence People! And this is just a small sample of his commentary about them. (NEW SLIDE) The word hypocrite is a Greek term that means someone who acts in theatre, or someone who pretends to be something they’re not. The religious leaders of Jesus’ time had all the ethical holiness in the world. What went wrong? How did they get so far off track?

D. (NEW SLIDE) The problem with ethical holiness is that it tries to transform a person from the outside in. I have to admit that there are times when changes in behavior can effect changes in thinking or feeling. But if all we have is a set of rules and guidelines to live by, we miss the entire point of the Bible. We become legalists – more concerned with rules than relationship. Over the past several years I’ve had folks come up to me and say something like, “This transformation stuff is okay, but what we really need is to do” and then insert their pet project or behavior. I pray for these folks and even weep for them, because they don’t get the point. Transformation is everything! (NEW SLIDE) From God’s perspective, transformation is everything! He knows that, if all we have is rules, we’ll fall into legalism and doing the right things even while worshipping false gods of our own creation. That’s what the Old Testament so vividly describes! If we don’t allow God to transform our character to be holy like His is, we’ll never be different enough from the world to make any kind of impact.

E.If we don’t work toward the transformation of our character into holiness and allow God to do anything He needs to do to get us there, we’re just like a cartoon by Mary Chambers that appeared in Leadership Journal. Two couples are seated in a living room engaged in Bible study. One of the women is speaking. "Well," she says, "I haven't actually died to sin, but I did feel kind of faint once." That’s generally our attitude about holiness. We think a little holiness is good, just as long as we don’t allow it to change us too much and make us into fanatics for Jesus. Contrast that attitude with Romans 12:2. (NEW SLIDE) Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. God is seeking to build His holy character in us. Sounds like a great offer, doesn’t it? But to get in on God’s great offer we’ve got to change our attitudes about holiness and desire it with everything we are.

F. Illustration – Jonathan Edwards wrote, (NEW SLIDE) A true love of God must begin with a delight in his holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this (as cited on PreachingToday.com). This is the same Jonathan Edwards who sparked the first Great Awakening in our country. He knew it was a matter of what we set our heart’s delight on, and he was right. As Mother Teresa wrote, (NEW SLIDE) Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves--on God's grace and our will to be holy. We must have a real living determination to reach holiness (as cited on PreachingToday.com). That’s what God is calling us to today. He’s calling us to approach the unapproachable and to become the unattainable. (NEW SLIDE) God deeply desires for us to become totally other, even as He is totally other, by the power of His Spirit. We’ll talk much more next week about how the Holy Spirit works in this, but right now God is calling us to allow Him to plant those seeds of the desire to be holy even as God is holy within our hearts.

G. What do we do between now and then? (NEW SLIDE) First, pray. Ask God to give you a holy heart. Tell God that you want His passion for holiness planted in your heart. (NEW SLIDE) Second, confess all your sins and your sinfulness. God can’t work to make us holy if we’re harboring sin in our lives, and He can’t work if we don’t have an adequate sense of our own sinfulness. As long as we think we’re okay and that He doesn’t need to clean us out, He can’t work. (NEW SLIDE) Third, repent of and aggressively get rid of any known sin in your heart and life. Ask His help in doing it. He will help you. (NEW SLIDE) Fourth, thank Him for what He’s going to do in you. Thank Him for the transformation He’s going to bring to your very character. (NEW SLIDE) Fifth, open yourself to anything He wants to do. In other words, if you sense Him asking for a part of your heart or life or to get rid of something in your life, say yes. Don’t obstruct His work. It will be a painful process much of the time, but the joy in the end will be worth it. After all, if we love Jesus, won’t we do whatever it takes for His salvation to transform our world? For that to happen, He’s got to transform our character first.

H. Illustration – A.W. Tozer, in his book Knowledge of the Holy, wrote, The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him—and of her. In all her prayers and labor this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise (as cited on PreachingToday.com).

I. Let’s allow God to make us holy so that our own hearts and lives will be transformed, our world will be transformed, and His name will be glorified. As Peter wrote, (NEW SLIDE) As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”

IV. Conclusion

A. Please bow your heads and close your eyes out of respect for each other’s privacy. Let’s spend a few quiet moments listening to the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts about allowing His holy character to become our character.

B. What has God been speaking to your heart this morning? If you’re willing to surrender this morning to His call on your heart to allow Him to transform your character into a holy character like His, now’s the time to act on that commitment to surrender. If you’re willing to surrender right now to God’s call to be made holy even as He is holy, please come forward to the altars now. For those up at the altars, if you’d like me to pray with you, please raise your hand. Otherwise spend your time at the altars surrendering to Him in prayer. Let’s pray.