Jehovah Mekadesh: The Lord Who Sanctifies

Worldliness is not first a place you go. Worldliness is adopting the worldview of a society that leaves God out. Dr. Tony Evans explains why sanctified Christians can't just blend into the culture around them. You are to not let their standards become your standards. You are not to let their perspective become your perspective. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. God's people are supposed to be just that, God's people, special, unique, set apart, or to use the Bible's term, sanctified. Dr. Evans will help us unpack the meaning of that word today as he talks about why God is called Jehovah Makedesh.

Let's join him. We have all been to buildings or land or homes where we have seen no trespassing signs. The no trespassing sign is signifying that unauthorized people should not enter here. A no trespassing sign says this is off limits unless you have been duly authorized to enter. You're not to make an illegal or illegitimate or unauthorized entry into this sphere or area or place or building or property.

It is a legal protection of a boundary. The book of Leviticus is God's no trespassing sign. It is one of the most important books of the Bible. It is probably the one least read because Leviticus seems so out of touch with the real world that we live in.

The people of Israel have exited Egypt in the book of Exodus. The people of God are headed toward their promise, Canaan, in the book of Numbers. Sandwiched between Exodus and Numbers is Leviticus.

Leviticus is often called the book of life. God is preparing His people to enter into His promise, the book of Numbers, the promised land, having delivered them from Egypt in the book of Exodus. He wants to prepare them for this new environment that they are headed toward.

He wants to get them ready. The purpose of the book of Leviticus was to tell God's people how they were to worship and how they were to walk as they entered into this new destiny. It was the book of worship and walk, of liturgy and life. It was designed to explain to them the expectations of God when they got to the place of blessing. They were to learn it on their way there so that when they got there, they would have it down. Three phrases that will help you, or three words that will help you to understand the book and the reason why I'm going through this.

One is so that perhaps you will appreciate the book a little bit more, but also that's where our name for God is found for today. The three words are common, profane, and sacred. Common, profane, and sacred. That which was common was that which God had created that was regular or ordinary or common to all. It was the general welfare, the general good, nothing special about it. It was just normal.

It was common. That which was profane was that which was polluted or defiled or contaminated. So if you hear about profane, you're hearing about polluted, defiled, or contaminated. When we talk about profanity, we're talking about speech that is polluted or defiled or destructive in nature. So the book talks about that which was profane. Then the book talks about that which is sacred, that which was special to God, that which had been made unique to God's person, God's presence, and God's purpose.

When you have the common, the ordinary, the regular, it's regular until you make it either profane or sacred. It just stands in—I'll call it, for want of a better word, in this neutral zone. It's not bad.

It's not exceptionally good. It's just there. But what was there could be made profane, it could be polluted, or it could be made sacred. It could be made or set apart for the unique purposes of God. For example, the New Testament says in 1 Timothy 4 that everything in the first five verses, everything God created is good.

But then he goes on—let's just call that normal, good, regular. But then he says it becomes sanctified when it is set apart by the reading of the Word and prayer. So everything God made is good, but it can be made sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. When God created the days of the week, he created Sunday it was good, Monday it was good, Tuesday it was good, Wednesday it was good, Thursday it was good, Friday it was good. But then on Saturday he rested, and he sanctified the day. Does that mean Monday through Friday were bad days? No, because he already said those were good days. But they were not sanctified days.

He only sanctified the Sabbath and made it holy. That does not mean Sunday through Friday were bad. It means Saturday was special. It was different than the other days, although it was just a day. Because God did something special on that day that he did not do the other days. And he told his people in the law, remember the Sabbath, and he told them to remember the sabbatical year, to remember the year of Jubilee and sanctify it.

Don't treat it as common, ordinary, or just regular, because it's special. Today, the name for God that we want to look at is given to us in verse 8. Let me read verse 7 and 8. You shall consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.

You shall keep my statutes and practice them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Jehovah Makedesh. The Lord who sanctifies. The Lord who sanctifies. Our discussion today is about the name of God that he really does want you to know, and the reason he wants you to know it is because you want to live. You want to have life, or as Jesus would say, I've come to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly. He wants you to know this name because this name goes beyond existence, going through the motions.

This was a life-giving name. He is the Lord who sanctifies. So the question is, what do we mean by sanctification?

This is a term used throughout the Old Testament and used throughout the New Testament. It is an abiding name for God, the one who sanctifies. The word sanctify means to set apart or to separate. It is referenced in a number of other words, holy, consecrate, sacred. All of those are either synonyms of or derivatives of the concept of sanctification, that is, to be made separate or set apart as special.

Something becomes sanctified when it is set apart, separated from the common, the ordinary, and the regular, and made special, unique, one of a kind. Many of us have sanctified places in our homes. I don't know about you, but when I grew up, the living room was sanctified, you know, with the plastic on the furniture. That was sanctified. We were not allowed to play in the living room.

Anybody raised like that? You couldn't play in the living room. It was a sanctified room. That was for special times or special guests. It was in the house. It was just a room, but it wasn't treated like just a room.

We were not allowed to roam in and out of the living room because it had been set apart. I've mentioned this before. Many of you in your dining room have sanctified china. In other words, that's not common. You don't eat every day on that china.

That china is not for—most of the time it's not even for your family. Because it's been set apart. Your regular dishes are in a wooden cupboard, and maybe it's got some glass on it. But the sanctified place is in a much more expensive piece of furniture. Those dishes, those forks and spoons, they're sterling silver, not plastic. In the sanctified china, that's not china. Silver costly because they have been separated as special or unique, so they are treated differently.

Trust me. Your kid breaking a regular plate is not the same as breaking one of those plates. Because those plates have a value to them because they have been set apart.

That is, they have been made from a human eating standpoint, sanctified or unique. Dr. Evans will come back in a moment with a look at what happens when we follow Christ instead of the crowd. First, though, you can dig even deeper into today's subject and put the principles to work with the help of Tony's popular devotional, Experience the Power of God's Names.

As we're discovering, those titles tell us a lot about God's nature and character. This life-giving devotional can provide you a daily dose of direction when you're lost and deliverance when you find yourself stuck. Request it today, and it's yours with our thanks, when you make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. If you do that right away, we'll add a special bonus, all 14 full-length messages from Tony's current two-volume series, Knowing God's Names, on both CD and digital download.

The complete collection includes some messages we won't have time to present on the air, so there's no other way to hear some of this powerful material. Visit us before time runs out this week at tonyevans.org, where you can get the details and make your request. Or call 1-800-800-3222, where members of our resource team are standing by 24-7 to help you in person.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that contact information after part two of today's lesson and this. Coming to theaters this November. I'm here in Bethany, the place where Lazarus was raised from the dead. I'm here in the place where it's believed was the tomb from which he walked when Jesus raised him from the dead.

Dr. Tony Evans brings the New Testament Gospels to life as he visits the locations of Jesus' earthly ministry, connecting them to their significance for humankind today. What do you think has died in your life? Maybe hope has died. Your relationships have died. Maybe your dreams have died.

Guess what? Jesus is still the resurrection. He can take things that are dead and bring them back to life again. November 15th, 16th, and 17th. Travel with Dr. Tony Evans on a life-changing, eye-opening journey with Jesus.

Find theaters, showtimes, and learn more at TonyEvans.org. All through the Bible, God calls His holy things to be set apart. Sometimes you'll read about them being under the ban, under this protective covering and authorization of God.

God would often take things that were used for evil and bring them over to the ban and put them under His authority, making them sanctified, set apart, unique, special. That's why God says when He begins in the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt have no other God before Me. You are to set Me apart. I am not to be part of the crowd.

I'm not to be one among many. I am to be sanctified. Why did He want them to know as they made their way out of Egypt, redemption, and to the Promised Land, destiny? Why did He want them to know about worship and walk as they were proceeding to the Promised Land? Look at verse 22 of Leviticus 20. You are therefore to keep all My statutes and My ordinances and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out.

Watch this now. I'm bringing you to the Promised Land, but I don't want My Promised Land to spit you out. So evidently, you can get to your destiny and your destiny can spit you out. Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things and therefore I have abhorred them. Hence I say to you, you are to possess the land and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the people. Verse 26, thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, separate, sanctified, and I have set you apart, sanctified, from the people to be Mine.

Now, there's a whole bunch here. When you go to the Promised Land, there are going to be people who live there, Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Jebusites. There are going to be folk there who don't function by my standards, who don't believe in my instruction, who don't operate by my worldview. When you get to the destiny I have for you, you're going to be surrounded by people who think differently, look differently, walk differently, talk differently, believe differently, they will have their own rules.

So before you ever get there, I'm giving you my rules. So when you get there, you are to not let their standards become your standards. You are not to let their perspective become your perspective. You are not to let their worldview become your worldview. Because even though you're going to be surrounded by them, you don't belong to them.

You belong to me, for I have redeemed you. So don't when you get into the land be co-opted by them. He spells out throughout the book of Leviticus, but here in chapter 20, he spells out a whole bunch of stuff they were going to run into. They were going to run into people reading horoscopes. They were going to run into people listening to the spiritus. They were going to run into people doing mediums, he says. They were going to run into people sleeping with everybody, their grandmother, their mother, the incest. You were going to run into people sleeping with animals, he says.

You were going to run into people with women sleeping with women and men sleeping with men, you're going to run into all of that in the place of destiny. Because those people don't hold my standards. What I don't want you to do, when you get into this place of blessing, is I don't want you to buy into that, and I don't want you to buy into them. Because if you buy into them, they will spit you out. If you wanna be popular, if you want everybody to like you, if you want everybody to agree with you, if you want everybody to vote for you, they will spit you out. He says, but if you will maintain your uniqueness to me, I will spit them out.

That's what he says. He says, I will drive them out from you. But if you join them, they will spit you out. You will lose.

You will be defeated because you will have lost your uniqueness. Sanctification is that process, doesn't happen in a day, but is that process where God sets his people apart from sin and unrighteousness to his person and his purpose? Sanctification is that process where God sets you apart to be unique or special or not one of a kind.

The New Testament scripture has a word for the same concern that is being illustrated here about what's gonna happen when they get into the promised land. And the New Testament word for this is found in a lot of places, St. John 15, 1 John 2, it's worldliness. Everybody in here struggles with worldliness at some level. Worldliness is not first a place you go. Worldliness is adopting the worldview of a society that leaves God out. What we have become today, the redeemed people, are reflections of the world. You hear it in the talk.

You hear it in the walk. In other words, we don't buy God's standards. We try to make God's things adapt to the society in which we live. And then we wonder why we don't have power, why we don't have victory, why we aren't seeing miracles, why we don't see the Holy Spirit rule, why we don't hear from God, because God says, if you adopt them, you lose me because I am separate. I am holy. I'm separate, but you wanna be part of the crowd.

If you wanna be part of the crowd, let the crowd take care of you, because I am distinct, I am unique. Dr. Tony Evans, talking about what happens when the Lord sets us apart for his divine purpose. If you've never allowed him to do that, but are ready now to experience what God has in store for you, it starts by realizing none of us is perfect enough to qualify for heaven on our own. But that's not the end of the story.

Here's Dr. Evans to explain why. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Guess what? God is gonna let you go to heaven on credit. He will credit to your account the righteousness of Christ, because God has credited to Jesus Christ your sin. So, your credit score can be 100 if you go to Jesus Christ for salvation right now.

How do you do that? Well, Tony would be happy to explain it to you. Just visit tonyevans.org and click on the link that says Jesus. He has a short, powerful video that explains what real Christianity is about, along with some free follow-up resources.

Check it out today and discover the amazing difference it can make in your life. Once again, that's at tonyevans.org. And that's the same place to go to get an audio copy of today's message, to review again on your own, or to pass along to a friend. Just look for Tony's current teaching series, Knowing God's Names. You can get all 14 messages in this powerful two-volume series as our gift, including some lessons we won't have time to present on the air. And as an added bonus, for just a few more days, we'll also include that companion daily devotional I mentioned earlier, Experience the Power of God's Names. Just visit us at tonyevans.org, make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station, and we'll send you both of these powerful resources as our way of saying thanks. Remember, we depend completely on your support to continue this important work. Again, you'll find us at tonyevans.org. Or reach out to our resource center by calling 1-800-800-3222.

Team members are standing by around the clock to help with your resource request. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. You know, life can be pretty bitter sometimes. So who wouldn't want to sweeten things up by finding a way to heal the hurts in our lives? Well, that's Dr. Evans' subject tomorrow. I hope you'll be back with us. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.