Being Different

I've seen printed on t-shirts and I think on bumper stickers. It's been a little while. That's why I'm not as clear. But I'm saying that I've always found to be very amusing. It says, yeah, you're unique, just like everyone else. I laugh at that. It does make me think, and it might you, too, of the type of person, everybody knows at least one of those, who goes out of their way to dress or to behave in a way that really stands out. And sometimes you stop and think, well, how necessary is that? Every person is unique. No two people are exactly alike. And it's funny, the fact that we're all different and unique is something that we all have in common. But we can consider it from the other perspective. Almost everybody at some point in their life goes through a phase of very much not wanting to stand out. And it's normal. I think God created us as social creatures. We all feel a need to fit in. We want to have our place. And that not wanting to stand out is often strongest in our teen years. You know, at that time, being marked as different can seem to be the worst thing ever. I think to being 15 years old, when you're 15, you're very conscious to wear the jeans that are in the current style. You know, bell bottoms, tight legs, high waist, low waist. You've got to wear what's current. Dance the dances that are currently popular. Listen to, and at least pretend to like, whatever music all the cool kids are listening to. You can go at home and listen to what you really like some other time. You know, it's just a human trait. We all want to be appreciated as special. Yet, we fear being too different. And discussing this, I don't mean to present myself as some expert on psychology or human behavior. But today, I do want to talk about being different. Because, face it, our calling is something different from the experience of most people. God calls us to a different lifestyle. He calls us to be different people. He calls us to be holy. That's a word that can make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. It's easy to talk about God being holy. But, you know, us being holy, and yet the Bible does say that. If you'll turn with me to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1 will begin in verse 15. I'm going to spend a lot of time in the Old Testament actually coming up, but I wanted to go here first. So, in 1 Peter 1 and verse 15, it says, As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it's written, Be holy, for I am holy. As I said, it's easy to think of God as holy. We know he's holy. He certainly is. How can we be holy? How could I possibly be holy? You know me, but you might look at yourself and say, how can I be holy? Well, there's a hint here. It says, Be holy in all your conduct. Let's talk first about what it means to be holy. The Greek word here and throughout the New Testament for holy is hajos. You might translate it into English as h-a-g-i-o-s. It's from a root word, hagnos, which sounds a lot like haggis to me, but it's not anything. Hagnos means separated. And probably many of us who have been around a few years have heard holiness defined as set aside for God's purpose. That's pretty accurate. I'm not going to say, oh, we were close, but that wasn't right. That's very appropriate for describing how you and I can be holy. Set apart. Something that God does.

Now, when the Bible says that God is holy, it's mostly representing His purity. The fact that He is separate from anything sinful, from any contamination, that's not a part of what God is. And there are variations of hajos. Just like in English, there are words related to holy, such as hallowed, sanctified, sacred. These all come from the same root Greek word. There's a similar meaning in Hebrew. So the Hebrew word that's translated as holy usually is kadash. I kind of like saying that. Kadash. You could spell it with a Q. I've seen it as a Q-A-D-A-S-H or with a K-A-D-A-S-H. And if you see it in Hebrew, it looks like a bunch of squiggles that we have no idea what they mean.

But what they mean is holy, consecrated, sanctified, just like hajos does in Greek. But I wanted to point out that kadash comes from a root word that in the Hebrew the root word means different. Which is back to where I started. Different. Not the normal. Not the ordinary. But being holy involves being different. I think God expressed the idea of making a difference and knowing the difference when He spoke to the priest in Ezekiel 44. I'd like to turn there. Ezekiel 44 and verse 23. He's somewhat taking the priest to task because He's saying they should have been making a difference when often they didn't. Ezekiel 44 and verse 23 says, They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the unholy, cause them to discern between the clean and the unclean. Now, it's worth us noting something isn't holy just because it's different. You can be different in a bad way. But to be holy, generally, there is a difference. A demarcation, a separation from things that aren't. So a person who is holy will be different. And why do we do that? Just remember, God said, Be holy because He is holy. I saw it there even as I was writing this and preparing it, I said, God is different? What has He got to be different from? Well, then again, He is different from everything else because He is the only God there is. That alone is pretty different from everyone else. And I thought, when God was revealing Himself to the ancient Israelites, He was revealing Himself in a culture, in a society, when most people on the planet believed there were many gods. And He was saying, you know, that's not so. I'm different from all those ideas of what you think are God. I'm the only God. So when He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, of course He worked great miracles to get Pharaoh to say, Get out of here, we don't want you here anymore. And He brought the children of Israel out to make a covenant with them. He taught them His ways. He made it very clear to them that He was different. He was different from those idols and false gods that they'd been familiar with back in Egypt. And He wanted them to realize, hey, you're going to come into this land of Canaan, and they've got a lot of false things they do. A lot of pagan practices. Don't be like that. Be different. And so we'll see. There's a lot of instruction. And I'll confess here, I think I've got it actually written in my notes later. I was inspired to write the sermon based on preparing to teach the book of Leviticus in class. Because as I was delving into it, I thought, you know, there's a lot of things that seem arcane, but so much of it is just, don't do things the way they do it. I'm calling you to do it a different way, a right way. And when He brought these plagues on Egypt, destroyed their economic and their military power, He also was at the same time showing that those things that they worship had no power to save them. You worship the Nile River, I'll turn it to blood. You worship the sun, I'll make it dark. You're worshiping things that aren't God. He made sure that everyone knew that a he was God. And then He brought out the children of Israel, brought them across the Red Sea, which alone was astounding, and brought them eventually to the foot of Mount Sinai, where He wanted to show you, I'll show you what a God is. He comes down in power, and there's thunder and a mountain shaking, and there's smoke, and then, you know, He speaks the Ten Commandments in person. I don't know how many times I've tried to describe this, but I always get excited when I do. You know, I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me.

And He goes on speaking those words, and the people are shaking in their shoes so much, they beg Moses, they say, okay, enough, enough. From now on, you go talk to God and hear what He has to say and come back and tell us. Don't let Him talk to us, lest we die. But in the process of doing that, though, it's worth noting God proposed a covenant. It's almost like a young man asking a young woman to marry him.

God said, look, I brought you out here. I want to be your God, and I'll provide you all these blessings. I'll make you a special people to me if you agree to honor and obey me and live the way I say. And they said, all that the Lord says will do. So He proposed a covenant. They agreed to it. And then, you know, they set out all the rest of the terms. Among the many instructions that God would give to Moses, and it's funny in studying this, I always assumed that I knew when and where this happened and some of the things we don't. I'm still not sure all that we read in the book of Leviticus, and I'd like to turn to Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 20.

Among the many instructions that He gave them, it becomes clear that He's making the statement that He was different.

And I got off in a sidetrack. So I wonder all these instructions about the tabernacle and the sacrifices. We know Moses went up on Mount Sinai for two 40-day periods. And the first one, he gets all the instruction about how to build the tabernacle and such. And God says, get down there, your people have corrupted themselves, and He finds them worshiping a gold calf. So Moses breaks the tent that the stone tablets grinds up the calf and makes them drink it, and has the ringleaders at least executed. And he goes back up for another 40 days.

And I wondered, the Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot of what they talked about then, but it was 40 whole days. Did He give them much of the instruction that we find in the book of Leviticus? Some scholars say, no, it was after He came down while they were in the process of building that tabernacle. It took them almost a year to get the materials. And God gave special gifts of ability to some men to create artistic works. At the same time that was going on, was Moses meeting with God and writing down all that we find in the book of Leviticus? Or perhaps another time, it had to be pretty soon. But among the themes that we come out here are some clear statements that God is different. He's holy. We see that here in Leviticus chapter 20 and verse 6.

And this is partly the distinction of what they left behind. He says, I see this as God saying, don't look to those false gods. I just prove to you that they're nothing. Don't look to demons. God says, I am God. I'm different from them.

And God says that He can make people holy. No other gods can do that. No wizards or mediums or whatever.

And a big part of how God makes people holy is by having them keep His statutes. Living by His law. A certain way of life. And there I'd say, it's not a coincidence that I would go to the book of Leviticus. I guess I got ahead of myself saying that I was inspired from this. We could say that the whole theme of the book of Leviticus is, Be you holy, for God is holy.

That's what I see in there. Some people might say, Leviticus is just about how to do this sacrifice. Hens of oil and ephas of wheat and burnt offerings. And it's a muddle of all these instructions. And there is some of that. I imagine training to be a priest was quite a bit of a job. Kind of like going to college to learn to be an electromechanical engineer. There's a lot of stuff you've got to learn and get straight in your head. Being a priest took a lot of stuff. We don't have to learn all that. It's funny, I laughed because when we were getting into it with the ABC students, I told them, I'm going to teach this at a freshman level because we don't have to learn to do all that stuff.

I want you to know, be holy for God is holy. But I said, if this were like a graduate level, you'd come out of it knowing how to do the sacrifices. Maybe we'd have a lab set up where we're cutting up the animals. I was just saying that to show the difference. One of the girls came up to me afterwards and said, Did you say that we're going to get a lab and cut up animals? No, we're not going to do that. She was a little alarmed. I could tell she didn't want any part of that. But we see this, as I mentioned, I was inspired to want to speak on that.

Being special, being different, being holy, that wasn't just a ritualistic idea for the priesthood. That's one of the things I saw in Leviticus. It's for us, for Christians. We're also to be holy. That's why I wanted to read that scripture in 1 Peter, before we come back to the Old Testament. Peter wrote that, saying, Be you holy, for God is holy. Peter knew the value of the book of Leviticus for Christians in his era, and we want to know it for ours.

Our Bibles are open to a section of the book of Leviticus that is very instructive on this. As I say, the book has all that instruction for the priests, how to do particular offerings. But a lot of the book is for the people, the nation in general, about how to be holy, about how to be different from the other nations.

I found in teaching the class, we very quickly ran through the types of offerings, and then there's a lot of things for the people in general. How do you live in a way different from the other nations? Let's turn back to chapter 19. We'll see at the beginning of this. Chapter 19 has a lot in it that pertains to this. 19, verse 1, The Eternal spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal, your God, am holy.

Again, we could say that this is like God telling them, I'm not like those other so-called gods, and you need to not be like other people. You're special. You're different. And throughout this chapter, I think there's a shorthand phrase that means this. Instead of over and over again saying, You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal, your God, am holy, and said, he says, I am the Lord. I often say Eternal, but when you say it over and over again, I like Lord because it's one syllable.

We all know that's the tetragrammaton, the YHWH, that might have been pronounced Yahweh or some other way. It means the self-existing one, the great I am. Sorry, I'm doing what I do in class. I know the bell's going to ring, so I've got to speed up. I don't have any coffee with me here. It's amazing how much the question comes up when I walk into the room of whether there's coffee in my mug or water, because I've got one of those travel mugs with a lid closed, and they say, if it's coffee, watch out.

I will mention, though, it's funny, just yesterday, we covered the book of Obadiah in one class session. I'd covered some of the introduction to class before, though, but I was talking too fast. And some of them could say, you'll have time to spend on it and not have to rush so much. But what I'm saying is, when we see this phrase over and over again, I am the Lord, think of it as reminding him, hey, I'm holy, so I want you to be holy.

So let's read in verse 3 of chapter 19. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and keep my Sabbath. I'm the Lord your God. God's people are to have a different family relationships, not a different family relationships, than is common in the world. You treat your mother and father properly with the right respect. And God's people need to keep the Sabbath, both weekly and annual.

That's something most people don't do. And that makes God's people holy. It makes us separate and different. Of course, verse 4 says what we read in the other chapter, don't turn to idols and make yourself molded gods. I'm the Lord your God. Now, I want to move ahead, and I'm going to skip over some of the things in this chapter, because we could spend a whole hour describing the explanation of each and every thing.

But let's look at verse 11. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. And you shall not swear by my name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

Because God is holy, and because he wants his people to be different and special, they need to be honest and fair. Be the type of person that is honest and doesn't ever try to take advantage of someone else in a business deal. And God's people need to use clean and pure language. Be the one that people in a classroom or in a job setting know that, hey, that person's different.

They don't say a lot of these same words that are common everywhere else. Let's look at verse 14. You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God. I am the Lord. Being a person that's holy to God means being a person who doesn't hurt or doesn't take advantage of others, even when it could be done with impunity, even when you could do it without anyone else knowing about it.

He does want us to treat properly those who can't see or hear, but it's sort of like saying, if you put a stumbling block in front of the blind person, that person, they can't see you do it. So they're going to trip over something, and they have no idea who did it, but he's saying, don't do something just because you can get away with it, and no one will ever know it was you.

A holy people are people who do what's right because it is right, not doing what's right to avoid being punished for doing what's wrong. And that's a standard we have to build up within ourselves. And by the way, I'm not saying it as though I think people here haven't. I'm just saying what the Bible teaches. Let's go on to verse 17. You shall not hate your brother in your heart.

Now you shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the eternal. Jesus said that this was the second greatest commandment. The first was, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. And this is second.

And that's something that will make you stand out. Just imagine someone that you know at work saying, you don't hold any grudges? Wow! Or you really do get along with your neighbors and you love them? And as I said, we could spend a whole sermon discussing how exactly we do that.

But it does make you different than the run-of-the-mill person who's like, I'm going to get what I can. Do unto others before they can do unto you. Remember that version of the Golden Rule? I don't know if that was invented in the 70s, but I saw that on t-shirts too. Let's skip ahead a little bit further down to verse 26.

I wanted to read all those together because our understanding from historical study and archaeology is that all of the things there mentioned were aspects of how the pagan religions of Canaan worshiped false gods. They attempted to contact or gain favor from what they thought were gods by a lot of various means. And that even included how they cut their hair, shaving certain shapes in or shaving a bald spot on the top of their head, carving their beard in a certain way, or printing marks on themselves.

All of these, they think, were tied into worshiping pagan gods. I wonder how God might have phrased some of this if he were speaking to a group in our age. You know, I wrote down he might say something like, Don't go consulting horoscopes and Ouija boards. Don't celebrate those pagan holidays. And don't go around looking like a freak. Don't make a bunch of piercings on your body, or make your hair weird. And don't treat your skin like a coloring book. You're to be different. Be clean. Be pure looking.

You know, I wonder, I've seen some people, I haven't seen this as much lately, so I'm hoping it's out of fad. Or out of fad? Is that a out of favor? It's not a fad anymore? But, you know, when the goth thing was on, I could see God putting in here, Don't dye your hair jet black and wear black lipstick and nail polish with white makeup so that you look like what you think is a vampire.

Don't do that kind of stuff. It's not real. You say, I made you different. Don't be like the deluded people around you. Instead, there's other things we should focus on. Look at verse 32. You shall rise before the gray-headed. I still want to say hoary-headed. I like the old King James just the way it sounds. But, rise before the gray-headed and honor the presence of an old man. And fear your God. I am the Lord. Oh, I want to go down to... And the stranger that dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be as one born among you.

You shall love him as yourselves, for you are strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. I could sum this up as saying, Treat people nice. Respect the elderly. Don't take advantage of people. Don't neglect people in need. Stand out as the one who will always take action when there's someone needy, and who will never take advantage of someone that shouldn't be.

That shouldn't be different, but in this world it is. Treating people this way will make us stand out. So we look on in verse 35. You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hymn. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

Be honest and fair in all of your business dealings. Again, it's sad that that's what's different. But we all know, and I've been privileged to meet people in the church who, you know, have started their own businesses and run them. And it's funny, they stand out in the business community because they're honest and fair. And, you know, they honor their contracts. It's sad that that's so different, but God's people are to be different, to be holy. And so far, what we've seen, this shows ways that are very concrete and practical.

There are things we could do to be holy. It's not just exuding righteousness. You know, see how bright your halo can be, so people see, oh, you know. No, it's stuff you do standing out. I thought I had something else in here. Maybe it's in my notes later. It's terrible when your memory gets bad, too.

I'm losing my vision and I'm losing my memory. But both of those were bad before I started. If we think about what most people, or what people most readily notice about us that is different, two things come up first. And I'll bet you they're already in your mind.

We keep the Sabbath and we follow the dietary guidelines of the Bible. How many of us early committed to memory, Leviticus, or that Leviticus 11, is the clean and unclean meats chapter? And for most of my life, I've thought, yeah, God created those laws to keep us healthy. So that He showed us which animals He made to be food and which ones He didn't. And so He didn't give that to everyone else, but that's what it's there for.

So we don't get sick. And you know what? That purpose is true. But it struck me as I was going through Leviticus that that's not the reason God says He gave those laws. Let's look here in Leviticus 20 over to verse 24. And again, I'm not saying that the health isn't a good reason, but God says, here's the reason I told you these things.

Leviticus chapter 20, starting in verse 24, I've said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I'll give it to you to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the people. So I set you apart from everyone else.

You shall therefore, therefore, because I've separated you, distinguish between clean animals and unclean, between unclean birds and clean. And you shall not make yourself abominable by beast or by bird, or by any kind of living thing that creeps on the ground, which I've separated from you as unclean. Now you shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.

This seems to be God saying that over and above any physical or scientific reasons for obeying His dietary laws is the clear statement that this is a way that God designated to show which people are His, which people are different and holy. You know, all the other people can eat just any old thing, or maybe they do, but not God's people. They're holy to God. They're separated from everyone else.

What we don't eat makes us stand out, can make us different.

And it strikes me, all of us have times where that makes us uncomfortable. It can be inconvenient.

But we also want to remember the blessings that come from obedience. Blessings come from being holy. So I thought it might be worth revisiting that famous story, or the most famous story, of people who decided to do that. We're pretty familiar with the story of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. Or we usually think of them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If you want to turn to Daniel chapter 1, I'd like to visit it briefly.

Because these were young men, and they might have, and probably were, still teenagers.

When they were among the captives taken from their homeland in Judea, all the way to Babylon.

And then, you know, when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, made it a vassal state.

And the first wave of captives were from the wealthy upper society. They were the people with some money and probably some education.

And perhaps because of that, the Babylonians said, hey, let's take some of them who are young enough and train them. Prepare them for service to the state. So we can begin reading in Daniel 1, verse 3.

Now, from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

So we could say they're going to a residential college-level training program.

Which would sound pretty good, except they didn't apply to it or ask for it. You know, they're kind of forced into it.

But let's see something that happened.

In verse 8, Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine with which he drank.

Therefore, he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.

Now, God brought Daniel into favor in good will of the chief of the eunuchs.

The chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my Lord the king, who's appointed your food and drink. Why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age?

Then you would endanger my head before the king.

So he's saying, look, you want to make a difference, but that difference might turn out to be a bad one.

I don't want to get myself in trouble because of what you don't want to eat.

Of course, then they're going to propose, well, let's give it a little test.

Let's see, because we really want to stand out. We want to be different. I'm not sure if they said it in those terms, but what they were asking for certainly did make them stand out.

So in verse 11, Daniel said to the steward, whom the chief of the eunuchs had said over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Well, please test your servants for ten days. Let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Then let our appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the king's delicacies. And as you see fit, so deal with your servants.

Put it to the test, see how we look, and then you do what you think is best.

So we consented with them in the matter, tested them ten days.

At the end of ten days, their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king's delicacies.

So the steward took away their portion of the delicacies and the wine that they were to drink and gave them vegetables.

We know this was just the beginning of famous and distinguished careers.

We see Hananiah, Azariah, and Michiel show up again later, especially the incident of the great statue that Nebuchadnezzar made, and he wanted everybody to bow down, and they ended up throwing in the fire.

And then we read a lot more about Daniel. It makes sense Daniel wrote the book, so he knew his story.

As I said, they were distinguished careers. They stood out doing important things. They had important positions within the government.

So they did stand out. But the first way that they stood out was that observable behavior of obeying God's dietary laws.

There are many other ways, I'm sure. All those things we read in Leviticus about being nice to people, being honest and fair in business dealings, and all of that. But it's worth noting that it started with the other, or maybe it didn't start, but that's what people noticed.

I guess I wanted to dwell on that. It reminds me because how many of us have been in a position where someone invites you over that's not in the church, and you think, oh, I don't want to embarrass them. They fixed the special meal, whatever it is, roast ham.

I guess I've been set apart so long, but they made this, and I don't want to embarrass them.

I distinctly remember once when I was 10 years old, a friend of mine invited me over, and I was there, and his mom made pork chops.

I was young enough to say, I don't want to embarrass them. I don't want to stand out.

I look back with regret because that's the time I didn't stand out. I said, well, I'll go ahead and eat it.

I think God's forgiven me since then, I hope.

But there's times when it's easy, I don't want to stand out.

Maybe if we remember why it is God wants us to stand out, it'll just be a little easier.

I don't think for most of us it's not going to be a life-or-death situation the way it was with these men.

But it's worth saying I'm willing to put up with some embarrassment.

And of course, we never try to embarrass someone. That's not the point.

But it's okay to show that we're different, as a way of showing that we're holy, trying to be holy, the way God is.

Now, moving to that other thing, there's lots of ways we could say about how being holy affects the way we use our time.

It affects how we relate to other people.

As I said, the two of the most obvious ways we stand out are the dietary laws and keeping the Sabbath.

God made the Sabbath holy. So it's not that we make it holy, but we can either treat it as holy, as different, or not treat it that way.

And of course, how much we honor the Sabbath will or won't make us stand out, depending on if we do.

I want to turn to the book of Ezekiel. We're actually not far away from there. In Ezekiel 20, in verse 16, God makes a statement about ancient Israel that reminds us of what He expects of us. Here He says, Because they despised My judgments, and did not walk in My statutes, but profaned My Sabbath, for their heart went after their idols. He's talking about, they're going after idols, and they're profaning My Sabbath. Profaning the Sabbath means treating it as common. Profaning doesn't have to mean evil or vile, but it's the opposite of holy. It's common and normal.

The Sabbath should be the opposite of that. And this chapter, which I'm not going to go through all of it, repeatedly makes that point.

Most Israelites, the normal, ordinary ones, profaned God's Sabbath.

There's an example, though, of one who really stands out as doing something different. He was striving to be holy because God is holy, and that made Nehemiah, who became governor of Judah, to really stand out.

If you will, let's turn over to Nehemiah chapter 13, and notice Him being different from everyone else. Now, it's much more noticeable because He was the governor. He had a certain amount of power to exercise, but it doesn't change how much it's an example for us.

Nehemiah 13 will begin in verse 15. The whole book of Nehemiah is fascinating, of Him going back and helping to rebuild the walls and trying to set people on the right track of obeying God. But here, He points out, and actually, as the story goes, He was there, oversaw rebuilding the walls, had to leave for a time, and then was able to come back to resume that assignment. And He notices they didn't keep up all the standards while He was gone. And this is one of the things He notices. So Nehemiah 13 and verse 15.

In those days, I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaths and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. And men of Tyre dwelt there also, and Tyre was a great trading center, a commercial center.

Men of Tyre also, who brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day? You're not keeping it holy. Did not your fathers do thus, and did not our God bring all this disaster upon us and on this city? Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. So he decides, they haven't been treating it as different.

I'm going to push the issue. So it was at the gates of Jerusalem, as it began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded the gates to be shut and charged that they must not be opened till after the Sabbath. So I'm going to shut the gates of the city for the full 24 hours. And I posted some of my servants at the gate, so that no burdens could be brought in on the Sabbath. Now the merchants and the sellers of all kinds of wares, not whales, that's different, lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.

I guess they brought their stuff up. No, I can't get in, so they pitched their tents. He said after that happened a couple of times, I guess maybe a couple of Sabbaths in a row, says in verse 21, Then I warned them, said to them, Why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. Which, I just love the phrasing of that. And I don't think he meant that he was going to anoint them for being sick or ordain them to office. That's a different kind of laying on of hands.

From that time they came no more on the Sabbath. And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves, and they should go and guard the gates to sanctify the Sabbath. Treat it as holy. Make sure it's special. We don't have the responsibility to make a city or a whole province keep the Sabbath. But we can strive to make our own lives holy by respecting that day of the week. And of course, take this as a reminder of what I'm sure we're all doing.

And we know, and many of you have been doing it for so many years, it's easy to take for granted. That's where sometimes we need to wake up and say, Remember, I'm doing this for a reason, not just out of habit. And I don't think that we'll drastically stand out from the other people in this room for that reason. So don't think I have to be different from my fellow Christians.

But we might be different from the other people who live around us. Our neighbors, our co-workers, who God hasn't revealed in their minds what the Sabbath is. We should seem as different to them as Nehemiah did to those merchants. I imagine they looked at him thinking, What a weird guy this is! What's up with him? He's different. Hopefully, like I said, our neighbors and co-workers won't think that we're just oddballs because they'll say, Yeah, they're different, but boy, they're really great.

I don't understand that they won't work on the Sabbath. Let's consider another pretty drastic example of a man who stood out from the norm. Because he was trying to keep something holy that God made holy. We'll find that in John 2. In John 2, beginning in verse 13, and you might guess, if we're starting this early in John, it's either John the Baptist or Jesus Christ, and it's Jesus Christ as the one of whom I'm speaking. Here, it's not the Sabbath day, but I'm going to tie it into the people whom we spend time with on the Sabbath.

John 2, beginning in verse 13. No wonder I'm in John 1. Let's get to the right chapter. Now the Passover of the...let me slow down. Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and money-changers doing business. Now when he made a whip out of cords, he drove them all out of the temple.

He gave them the sheep and the oxen. He poured out the changers' money, overturned the tables. So he was pretty heated. He's driving off these animals, he's dumping over their tables. And he said to those who sold doves, take these things away. Don't make my father's house a merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house has eaten me up. I'll stop there, but...it's amazing. He was different. A lot of people came to visit the temple, but nobody else said, Hey, it's not supposed to be this way. Now of course he was the Son of God. He was different in a lot of ways for a very important reason.

And we're not going to be like that. I mean, none of us, I think, will ever have that opportunity. I mean, there's not a physical temple somewhere that we can go and run people out of. But it's worth us remembering that the people of God, the Church, is now the spiritual temple.

1 Peter 2 and verse 5 reminds us of that. I'm not going to turn there, but it reminds us that we're each living stones, and built all together a temple. We have God's Holy Spirit. Now I'm not going to suggest that it's the job of most individual Christians to go knocking tables over and chasing people out or anything like that. But it is the job of each of us to distinguish that this group of people is different. When we come here, we're coming amongst the temple of God, which we're a part of. Our meeting together, especially on a holy convocation like the Sabbath, is something that's different. It's not holy because we can make it holy, but God can make it holy. And it's good for us to remember that. We can make a difference of how we treat each other and how we react when we're together. Do we steer our conversations towards the subjects that are out of the ordinary? Isaiah 58 provides guidance on that, and I know I've spoken on that, and probably Mr. Call has as well, and we've studied it. So I'm not going to turn there, but not speaking our own words might include not talking about the same old things that we discuss with other groups of people on other days of the week. Treating God's Sabbath as different and as holy, and treating God's people as different, as holy. That should be part of making ourselves different. That's part of what makes us holy. Of course, and overriding all of that is, remember, God's Spirit dwelling within us is the one thing we can't make ourselves holy any more than we can make the Sabbath holy. But we can treat the Sabbath as holy. We can treat the people of God as holy. So we need to do what's different to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. Again, I wasn't looking down on my notes. I've got it in red ink right here. Be holy for I am holy. That's the overall purpose I wanted to remind us of.

But I'm not done yet, which is good. I've gotten used to 90-minute services too easily. There is one more thing I wanted to mention, because I could see, especially with any group of people discussing this and talking about Nehemiah scolding those merchants, saying, You come here again, I'm going to lay hands on you. And Jesus is making that whip of cords and turning over the money changers. There's going to be some of us who say, Yeah, I appreciate that.

But that's not me. I'm not the type to jump up and make a bunch of noise and fuss. I'm willing to be different and do the right thing. But does being holy mean you have to jump up and take action? Does it mean you have to be like Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, whip out that sword and start swinging and cut off the high-preservant's ear? Well, if you're the one that says, No, that's not me, you might look in the Bible, you might look through Leviticus and say, Does it say I have to jump up and do those things?

The things it tells us to do don't require standing out in that way. And that's something I think it's good, because I've often been one of those types of people. Now, since responsibility has been put on me at times, like at summer camp or things like that, you jump up and take action. But a lot of times I'm among the group saying, Okay, you know, I'm cool. So it's worth us remembering what the Bible says and what it doesn't. I've got a quote here in Matthew, it's only a few pages away, Matthew 19.

Because I like to quote this in order to remind people that we want to be aware of what the Bible says we need to do and not pretend that it says something that it doesn't. Now, I usually use this to address a different subject, but I want to at least set the stage with it. Matthew 19, if we go in verse 16.

Behold, one came and said to him, that is to Jesus Christ, Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? What are you calling me good for? No one is good but one. That's God. But if you want to enter life, keep the commandments. Which ones? And he goes on and talks about, you shall not murder, commit adultery or steal. He lists several of the Ten Commandments.

And of course, we know from what Jesus also said that the greatest, all the commandments can be summed up by those two great ones. Love the Lord your God with all you got. Love your neighbor as yourself. And I often refer to things like people get focused or attention on some things that are not this. Jesus, when he said, what do I have to do to have eternal life? Jesus didn't say, well, you need to understand the intricacies of the 70 weeks prophecy.

And you'd better know what the identity is of the seven church eras of Revelation 2 and 3. Oh, and by the way, you've got to understand Ezekiel's prophecy and what it means when he was laying on his side. He doesn't say that. He says, keep the commandments. And by the way, it doesn't mean that studying those prophecies and understanding what they mean is bad.

I'd love to understand all those. I spend more time than I ever envisioned I would doing some of those so we can discuss them in classes. He also didn't say, you've got to command the attention of crowds. You've got to stand out so everyone knows you're the one in the crowd that's holy. Now, if we're doing what God teaches us, we'll stand out to him.

He'll notice. But Jesus, when he says, what do I have to do to have a life? He didn't say, carry around a whip of cords so you can drive the animals out of the temple. Jesus took care of that. So with that in mind, I want to look at one more example of a man who is different. And one who gives us an example of how, in some circumstances, being holy, that is, being different, can be done through calm, quiet perseverance in living God's way of life and doing what's right. There's a story that can be found two places in the Bible.

It's in 2 Samuel, and it's also in 1 Chronicles. And 1 Chronicles 21 is the one where I want to go, so you might be turning there. And I'm going to abbreviate the first part of the story. Well, it's not that lengthy, but it's the story of some point in King David's reign that he decided he needed a military census of his kingdom. And he told Joab, go out and number the people. And the account doesn't tell us why it was such a sin, so we presume it's because David was relying on his military might and was losing sight of trusting in God.

Because even Joab, the commander who wasn't exactly always the best Christian, said, what do you want to do this for? But David's word prevailed. So Joab had to go out and take this census. He comes back and gives the numbers. And by that point, David realized that he was in the wrong. And he appealed to God for forgiveness, but... And here, there's part of the story perhaps missing.

Because we don't know why God was willing to forgive, but said there's going to be punishment. And he did one of the worst things. If you're ever being punished, don't you hate when... I'm thinking back to when I was a kid, and Mom would say, okay, you choose between this or that.

Why don't you choose for me? You know, God told him, okay, I'm going to give you three choices. And it's funny, they each involve threes. You can have three years of famine, or three months of fleeing before your enemies, or three days of a plague with God punishing you.

And David was smart. He said, my enemies aren't going to be merciful, and famines are indiscriminate, so I'll choose having God punish me. So he chose the three days of plague, thinking hopefully God will be merciful. He'll cut it short. And it turned out he was right. God sent an angel to cause a plague, killing 70,000 people. So it wasn't... it might have been merciful, but it killed a lot of people. And God had sent an angel. It shows it... I thought about bringing one of my prop swords, because I like it.

It shows the angel going forth with a sword, and apparently at some point it becomes visible. But before it gets to Jerusalem, where it's right on the edge of Jerusalem, God says, enough. Matter of fact, let's turn to... if you're at 1 Chronicles 21, it's in verse 15. God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. And as he was destroying, the eternal looked and relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who was destroying, It's enough.

Now restrain your hand. And the angel of the eternal stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. We're going to come back to that. Well, I'll just mention... So he stops, and the sword is visible to human eyes. He's near the threshing floor of this man called Ornan. The version of the story that's in 2 Samuel, I'm not sure why the spelling is different. It calls him Arowna. And Ornan is much easier to say. That's one of the reasons I like this version.

But... so the angel stopped there, and God sends a message to David, ordering him to go make a special sacrifice. And besides the fact that I like saying Ornan better than Arowna, there's a detail in this version of the story that 2 Samuel doesn't have that I think is amazingly...

Well, it's amazingly interesting to me, and maybe significant. And we'll pick up in verse 16.

So we'll move on to verse 18. Therefore the angel of the eternal commanded Gad, so Gad is a prophet, that says, Say to David that David should go and erect an altar to the eternal on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. So he gets this message, go to the threshing floor that belongs to Ornan the Jebusite. And it's worth remembering that Jebusites were one of the Canaanite people, and they had had control of Jerusalem before it was called Jerusalem. It was called Jabus, which is related to Jebusites. The Israelites conquered the city, and it seems that those who were willing to accept the true God and worship Him were allowed to live. And I believe that's Ornan must have been descended from them, partly because he's still there. And from what we'll see, it seems he recognizes and knows who the true God is, probably worships him. And not only does Ornan probably know who God is, from what we just read, God knows who Ornan is. He mentioned him by name in his message to David. So, as I said, it's clear that God knows Ornan. I believe Ornan knows God.

And I think it's interesting now, we get sort of a backtrack to see Ornan's point of view when this angel shows up. Because David goes up at the word of the Lord in verse 20. Now, Ornan turned and saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves, but Ornan continued threshing wheat.

So, can you imagine this? An angel floating in the air with a drawn-out sword, and people are falling down dead. That's a sight that probably would have made a lot of people faint dead away, or wet their pants, or do what Ornan's sons did. They're probably, at least teenagers, have not grown men, and they saw it, and they ran for their lives and hid. But Ornan, imagine he's there threshing his wheat. He looks up, and I imagine maybe he says, huh. And he goes back to doing his work. He doesn't run off and hide. He doesn't do the duck and cover or anything.

We can speculate why. It doesn't tell us. As a matter of fact, the other version of the story in 1 Samuel, or 2 Samuel, doesn't say it. And I've got to give Sue credit. She was studying her Bible, and she asked me, and I said, Frank, have you ever noticed it says that? And I looked, and I said, well, what do you know? That's kind of significant. That's different. Not different in the way of Nehemiah, saying, I'm going to lay hands on you. Not different in the way of Christ running the people out of the temple.

But different in that it seems Ornan knew who he was. Knew God's way, and said, I'm comfortable. That angel's not coming for me, because I'm obeying God. And he goes about his business. Sometimes being calm and quiet and doing your job as God has given you to do is being holy as God is holy. I believe. That's my interpretation on this story. He wasn't flustered. He wasn't embarrassed, even when the king showed up and wanted to buy his land.

And we see Ornan knows how to show proper respect. So he wasn't just dumb and didn't know what to do. Oh, there's an angel. But when the king shows up, he shows obeisance. He offers to participate in the sacrifice. Let's read in verse 21. David came to Ornan, and Ornan looked and saw David, and he went out from the threshing floor and bowed before David with his face to the ground. David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar on it to the eternal. You shall grant it to me at the full price that the plague may be withdrawn.

Now Ornan's going to show his generosity. He wants to worship God. He said, Take it to yourself. Let my lord the king do what's good in his eyes. Look, I give you the oxen for the burnt offering, the threshing implements for the wood, the grain for the wheat offering. I give it all. And King David said to Ornan, No, I'll surely buy it at full price. I won't take what's yours for the eternal, nor offer burnt offerings of that which cost me nothing.

So David gave Ornan 600 shekels of gold by weight. David built there an altar to the eternal and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings and called on the Lord. And he, that is God, answered him from heaven by fire on the altar. It's interesting, I did a study recently, there's about five places in the Bible where God sends fire to devour an offering.

And this is one of them. Interestingly, two of the other places are when the tabernacle was devoted and when the temple was devoted. And that's probably not a coincidence because scholars believe this very place is where Solomon would build the temple. And it goes on in the next chapter to show that they had been using the altar at Gibeah, at a high place there, the tabernacle was there. But now David realized God has consecrated this place.

He not only told me to build an altar, he sent the fire to build it. And it's the place that used to belong to Ornan. I'm not sure that that pertain, the fact that it becomes the site of the temple is that important. But we usually focus on David's action in the story, or that this is the spot of the temple. It's worth noting Ornan's role. He served God in what we could call a support role.

He's not the king, he's not the prophet, he's not front and foremost getting a lot of attention. But he does his part with quiet, calm confidence. And as I said, that's a way to be different in a society.

He was willing to give what was needed, perhaps he was willing to do what ever was needed, but he was willing to quietly go about his normal work without fear or worry. And as I said, that's something very special. That's something very different. I see it as a valid way of being holy as God is holy. And that might be the way that most of us, most of the time, have opportunity to be holy as God is holy. As I said at the start, we're all unique.

And ironically, we're all alike in that we're all unique. But we are all called to be holy to God. That's pretty unusual in this world. To be holy means to be different, to be separate from the common or the profane. We should be different in what we eat, in the way we dress, in what we think, what we say and what we do. And people should notice that we're different because we're God's people.

As I said, only God can make something holy, and he called you for his own reasons. God makes you holy, so let's all strive to be holy as God is holy.