The Real God - The Holiness Of God, Part 2

We all know that even the very best of Christians mess up and sin sometimes. Well, if that's true, how do we obey God's command, be holy, because I am holy?

How does that work? Well, stick around. Chip continues our series, The Real God. We're studying the most important attributes of God's character that define him and affect how we live when we get a clear understanding. You know, a great way to study with Chip is to do a quick download of his message notes.

You'll find them on the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge.org or on the Chip Ingram app under fill in notes. Okay, if you have a Bible, open to the book of Hebrews chapter 12 and let's join Chip for part two of his message, The Holiness of God. Isaiah chapter 6 is the pattern of what happens to a man or a woman who gets a glimpse of the holiness of God. As I read it, I want you to begin thinking about three views. One, an upward view. Two is an inward view.

And three is an outward view. And in the context, I want to suggest that this is a deep, deep crisis in Israel and if you're a prophet in Israel and the world is falling apart and the political situation is unstable, does this sound familiar? And you're not sure what the future is going to be like, does this sound familiar? And everyone's fearful and you have a moral responsibility as a spokesman for God to know what's going on. You go meet with God in the midst of a crisis and I'm going to suggest that your personal crisis or the one that one of your kids have might be the doorway where God leads you to get a glimpse of his holiness.

In the year that King Uzziah died, that's the crisis. I saw the Lord sitting on a throne. He goes into the temple and he gets this vision. High and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple. And above him stood the seraphim.

Each had six wings and with two he covered his eyes and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one called out to another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke and I said, here's the inward look, woe is me. He's the most righteous guy on the planet.

He's the prophet. For I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphs flew to me having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and whom will go for us? And then I said, here am I, send me.

Did you see the pattern? By the way, God always speaks. I think God really speaks to us in ways often that are unique to our personality and how we hear. And this prophet, he's living in a world of kings and the train of his robe. If you were a pretty important king, X amount of armies, X amount of wealth, you might have a train that's four or five feet long. If you were like a super, super powerful king and you were like the big Kahuna king and you had big armies and you were in really big control, you might have a train that's 20 feet long and there might be seven or eight or nine or ten attendants behind you. The length of your train was the evidence of your status and your power. So when we read this, we think the train of his robe filled the temple. It's looping, looping, looping, filling, filling.

In other words, it's overwhelming. What it's doing to Isaiah is, of any king ever, he's ever heard of, in his mind, it's going. What he just realizes, woe is me. He's undone. And he's a righteous man. If we would, here's the thing, Isaiah compared to probably everyone else is here. Compared to God, he's here.

And for some of you with a really sensitive conscience, you have to be careful that in your moments with God you don't just go completely introspective. Because some of you can just, oh yeah, my motives are bad and I'm bad. In fact, I'm really terrible. In fact, I'm a worm. I'm worse than a worm. I don't even know.

Gotcha, right? There was an era of what I call worm theology. And people felt really, really good about feeling really, really bad.

Here's the deal. When the Holy Spirit convicts you, it's for a very specific reason. You are the object of his love, and he will tell you very specifically where you don't measure up so that you can say to him, I am so sorry, and the blood of Christ covers it to restore you to fellowship. When the enemy wants to discourage you, he doesn't convict. It's called condemnation.

And condemnation is vague in general. I mean, when I go through this, I mean everybody does, but when I have my bad condemnation moments, it's like, I'm a terrible dad. I'm a terrible pastor. I'm a terrible husband. I bet 97.3% of all my motives are wrong even when I'm teaching.

And you know what it makes me feel like? I don't want to pray. I don't want to get near God. Condemnation, what's Romans 8 say? There's no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus. So that's when you do spiritual warfare.

You say, I don't believe any of that. This is who I am in Christ. I'm the son. I'm the daughter of a living God. I have his righteousness. I'm robed in righteousness.

I'm accepted by the beloved. Get out of here. But when he says, you were rude to your wife, you kind of left the channel on and you started with, I don't believe that's on prime time TV.

This is terrible. I wonder how much they're going to show. I should probably investigate to make sure. And then one of the kids or someone walks in the room, click.

And then you realize you were sucked in. Or 68%, I don't know where they get these statistics. I hope they're all wrong. But all these people who do these things say 68% of Christian men are on triple X porn sites regularly. I don't know if you saw Time Magazine and Esquire in the epitome of biblical journals, in my opinion, has done research recently on pornography, independent research. Basically said that a man who watches pornography has four times the probability of divorce. When a woman begins watching pornography, it's six times.

And basically what they're discovering is that it's a complete rewiring of the brain that is absolutely akin to cocaine use. When God wants us to be pure and holy, it's not that old thinking of there's probably something really fun and he's like a cosmic killjoy. It's he is a loving father who knows the implications. Every command of scripture is given by an absolutely holy God who in his kindness and tenderheartedness wants to prevent you from being hurt or damaged. Holiness is wholeness. Holiness is for your health. And Isaiah has this picture of upward and then inward. And then notice when that happens, your priorities change and you say, God, what do you want me to do?

It's just the opposite of our day. God, what can you do for me? God, how do you make my life work out? How can I be more fulfilled? How can I get more of this?

How can I do some of that? How will you change? We're always asking God to change everything. Try this one. God, change me.

Just change me. Now, the next place where God reveals is 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and sort of time permitting, all I want to do is read the passage. It's interesting because of what the deep bonds that occur in the realm of sexual activity. He says, flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.

And we now have the evidence in our day and our world long before this was written about what happens. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you receive from God? You are not your own.

You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Now, I just want you to, it's hard, but just pause and I want you to go back to that mountain with the smoke and the lightning and the earth shaking. And then I want you to sort of semi-visualize this temple filled with this train of this robe and these bizarre looking creatures with all these eyes chanting holy, holy, holy as you're face down on the ground. And then I want you to try and even ponder that the temple that God has chosen in the new covenant where he wants his presence manifested is your body. He owns you.

He bought you. You know, we read of these Old Testament characters and David empowered by the Spirit and the prophet empowered by the Spirit and Elijah doing this. Even Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, you know, Transfiguration, we, New Testament believers, have a more intimate relationship and access to the God of the universe than any of them did. Because the Spirit of God would come in the Old Testament at times and anoint with power and manifest his presence. And Jesus that last night said there's a new covenant.

A covenant is an agreement that people make that on the basis we will shed blood to demonstrate that we will give our lives before we will break the covenant. And he said this is my body given for you. And when he shed his blood, when a person repents of their sin, turns and says, oh God, I believe Christ died to pay for my sin and it's my substitute.

Will you come into my life? The Spirit of God literally pulls you out of the kingdom of darkness, places you into the kingdom of light. The Spirit then enters your mortal body. You're sealed with the Spirit. Spiritual gifts are deposited. You're engrafted into a supernatural family called the church. And the Holy Spirit lives in your body. And now God's game plan to take his message to the world is not to get people to come to a temple in Jerusalem to see the glory and the power of God and a nation that's been transformed.

But to take you and I sort of decentralized distribution. And now we go forth and in your home you are the ambassador of the living God with his Spirit living within you and your job is to reveal God to your family. Then you go in your driveway to reveal God to your neighbors. And then you go to work to reveal God. And not only to reveal God but then because you are part of a new kingdom, you bring the kingdom. And you bring the kingdom love and the kingdom life and the kingdom values. And so instead of ego and pride, you champion humility. Instead of who are the powerful people to get close to, you care for the marginalized. And you become this living temple that begins to impact like salt and light or leaven in bread transforming. That's how the world got changed.

And nothing has changed in terms of God's agenda. Have you ever thought, so ask yourself, so what do you put in this temple? What does this temple view? Where do these hands go?

How do you treat this temporary temple? If we would ever grasp that, wouldn't there be a set of very logical implications? And again, it wouldn't be some legalistic, I can never do this, I can't watch this, this is bad, I don't wear lipstick, I don't go to movies and I don't play cards.

I don't think that got us very far. But you like the psalmist would say, oh God, I will put no worthless thing in my mind. You would say, I want only holy thoughts. You wouldn't be asking questions like, I wonder how close to sin can I get without falling in. You would be asking, how close can I get to righteousness and holiness to be pleasing to my God? It's just a completely different paradigm. Well, God's holiness raises a couple questions and we touched on them earlier, but I think it's important that we at least address them here.

If God is so holy that he can't gaze on sin, how can sinful people like us have a relationship with God? Right? This is the greatest news in the world. It's the gospel. It's the gospel. Guess what?

You can't. But Jesus made it possible. Romans chapter 5 verses 6 through 10, for while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Notice it's not when we cleaned up our act, it's not when we got it together, it's not when we got religious, at the right time when we were helpless, when you bring nothing. And then he says, for one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die. And then underline this verse, verse 8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And put a circle around the little word for. There's two words in Greek for for.

This is a word that means on behalf of and in the place of. He's your substitute. Everything that I deserve because of my sin, as the just righteous wrath of God would come toward me, Jesus steps in front, says I got it. And then as we'll learn later, he'll say, I'll take the judgment of God and I will give you the righteousness of Christ. Much more than having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were his enemies we were reconciled, that word just means you become friends. Think of the juxtaposition of what we're talking about, this holy, awesome, God, we're undone. And then over here, we're friends. I mean, if you, don't get over that. If you're just thinking, wow, that's amazing, that's far out, I can't grasp it. Good.

That's not casual. For while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. The second question then is, if trusting God's work on the cross blots out our sin before God, and we're holy in his sight, why do we keep on sinning? And we touched on this, but just write in these notes because it'll be more clear, the three aspects of holiness.

There's a point in time, there's a process, and there's an end. The moment you put your faith in Christ as savior, you are legally declared righteous. So, sin's penalty.

In other words, the penalty for sin. You are forgiven because of Christ's work. And as I said before, I love this picture. I just have this picture in my mind of a computer screen and Jesus and me. And under mine is all the sins and thought, word, and deed, and under Jesus is the very righteousness of God.

And I just love this picture. When I trust in Christ, I'm justified, and it's delete. And then the righteousness of Christ is put into my account.

That's my positional, legal standing. I've been forgiven legally of all my sin, and the power of sin has been broken. But notice then, sanctification is progressive holiness, and so the penalty of sin is gone.

But now I work out. I begin in my practice to become holy. And so I now, before, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to sin or not. Now, I can choose to live righteously, but since the flesh wages war against the soul, and since I live in a world system drawing me away, I can still choose to sin. And when I choose to sin, it breaks fellowship with my Heavenly Father. I don't lose my salvation, but the connection, the line, they're static. And the more I willfully sin, I can over time begin to shut off connection and relationship of His power in my life. So I confess my sins. He's faithful and just to forgive me my sin and keep on cleansing me.

Finally, the day will come when either the Lord returns or I die, and I immediately go into His presence, and when I see Christ, I'll be transformed. Let me give you an illustration. I bought a house in California, which is actually pretty miraculous. So I put X amount of money down, and legally, that house is in my name and my wife's. I own the house.

It's mine. The bank doesn't own it, I own it. However, each month, I'm progressively owning more. I'm beginning to get in reality what is legally true, and it keeps coming down as I pay off each month, right?

This is where, if you really play this out real carefully, it doesn't quite work, but just stay there with me, okay? And then, at some point in time, at least some of you have had the experience, you pay it off. It's fully mine.

It was mine legally because there was a down payment, and I own it. Anybody know what the Spirit of God is called in the book of Ephesians? Your down payment of the Spirit of God coming into your life, the residence of Christ. Then, you live out, and you progressively become more holy, and it requires, like a newborn babe, long for the pure milk of God's Word, so that by it, you might change and be transformed. I have to go through the process of putting off the old, putting on the new. It's a journey.

It's a process. I'm not going to be conformed to this world. I'm going to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, so that my lifestyle could progressively demonstrate God's will, the good, acceptable, perfect will of God, Romans 12.2.

But at some point in time, when I die, that which is true of me legally, and Lord willing, my life has progressively and dramatically changed in the last 35 more years, then I will meet Christ, and I will be transformed once and for all and be holy, glorification. That's the best explanation. By the way, if you can come up with a better illustration or fine-tune that one, email me. Because the middle part doesn't quite work, right?

I mean, because you're making payments, and you could read in works. How must we respond to the holiness of God? First, it's a commitment that we make. Hebrews 12.14, make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. You don't slide into holiness either. I mean, it's a commitment. Scripture says God hates sin.

God hates arrogance. A commitment to holiness is, I want to be holy. Not, I'm doing better than others, or I think I've had this struggle, and I come from this family background, so anger is an issue in our family. Everyone I've known in our family, well, they've always divorced, and it's really hard, and I'll try and do good, but we just don't do relationships well, or I had this problem with my, you know, just stop it.

We all have that stuff. Be holy even if God is holy. Is it impossible?

Of course it's impossible. The Christian life is impossible. Only Jesus can live it, and once He lives in you, that's why surrendering, being in His word, doing life and community together, God causes us to be transformed progressively. But it starts with, you've got to want to be holy. I remember one profound thought from someone I really respected said, you'll be just about as holy as you want to be. Think about it. Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The word is mature. Then the command is in 1 Peter. It's a command to obey.

I love it because he makes it really clear that it was hard for those early Christians. It's hard for us, and it's not about willpower. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace that's to be revealed.

It's that eternal perspective. Set my hope on the grace, the line, not the dot. Be sober.

Understand what life's really all about. I love the King James on this. Did anybody know this in King James? Gird your loins. If you were a Roman soldier, you would have a long robe and you would have a belt. But when you were ready to go into battle, you would gird your loins. So what you'd do is you would take your robe and you would tuck it in your belt so now you're ready for action. So what he's saying is you want to live a holy life, you've got to get your game face on is the way we would say it.

You need to get your mind in gear. You need to realize there's all this stuff coming at you, and you're not going to slide into it, but here's what's going to be hard. You're going to set your hope on the grace, and then, therefore, as obedient children, don't be conformed any longer to the former lust which were yours and your ignorance. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy also in all of your behavior because it is written, be holy, for I am holy, and I love that in all your behavior. Before we go on in the program, I want to stop right now and speak to those of you that are followers of Christ, and as you've heard this message, you realize there's issues in your life that are preventing you from getting God's best. He is holy. He cannot bless your sin.

We can't compromise. You need to repent. You need to tell Him that you're sorry, and He will help you. He wants to forgive you. But I also want to talk to some of you that just find yourself listening to this, and maybe you were channel surfing, and who knows how you got here, but you realize if God is that holy, I'm in big trouble.

I don't know what to do. I want a relationship with God. I want love. I want intimacy, but I have sinned.

I want you to know that today may be, in fact, the most important day of your entire life on this earth, and God is offering you, through the work of His Son, forgiveness and peace. Wherever you're at in your heart of hearts, acknowledge, I have sinned. I have blown it. I've hurt people. I've stolen.

I've lied. We've all done these things. You admit that you've sinned, and you fall short of God's pure holy standard. And in your heart of hearts, even if you're driving right now, God knows and hears. Cry out, Oh dear God, forgive me. Cleanse me. I admit my sin. And in this day, at this moment, I put my faith in Jesus, His work on the cross to cover and pay for my sin once and for all. Lord Jesus, come into my life. Cleanse me.

Forgive me. I believe you died on the cross for me and that you rose from the dead in my place to prove that you're, in fact, God. And you may not have all the answers to this, but pray in your heart right now, cry out to God. Our heart's desire is to see you connected with your Creator who loves you. He's got a great plan for your life, but the next step is yours.

Put your faith in Him today. Welcome to the New Believers tab on our website, LivingOnTheEdge.org. We just want to help you get started and say welcome to the family. Here at Living on the Edge, our mission is to help Christians live like Christians. One of the ways we do that is by providing free resources to as many people as possible, so all of CHIP's MP3 messages are free. There are hundreds of free resources at LivingOnTheEdge.org, and the CHIP and GROM app is a great way to listen and stay connected, getting the latest from Living on the Edge. Well, that wraps up this program. For CHIP and everyone here, this is Dave Drouy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.