Holiness

I forgot to announce the Teen Bible study and activities tonight at the Thompson's Ranch. They arrive around 6 and food is at 6.30. Then there are other activities for the evening. I guess everybody got an email on that and everybody is up to date on that, but that's at 6 o'clock this evening at the Thompson's Ranch.

You and I live in a society where there's little thought to the word holy. It would be interesting just to ask somebody what they think holy means. What does it mean to be holy? I suppose most people would tie it into a feeling they get when they walk into a church. You walk into these big cathedrals or you walk into a church building and there's a certain feeling they're even designed to create sometimes some of these big cathedrals and so forth.

Probably some people would say, well, that's what it means to be holy. You feel something. Some people say, well, I don't know, Christmas is holy. Maybe that one day where they say it's a holy day. Others might say, well, my priest is holy if they come from a Catholic background. But what is holiness? We live in a secular society where holy actually does the word actually has very little meaning.

Holiness doesn't mean a lot. It's interesting that after the first resurrection, and we need to know what holiness means because after the first resurrection all those resurrected saints who go to meet the Father are going to sing a song. Let's go to Revelation chapter 15. Revelation chapter 15. I'm going to talk about holiness here for a minute, but in a few minutes I'm going to tie this into our children, the children that have been here at Sabbath school and the teenagers that are here and what holiness means to you.

But first we have to define it and see how important it is and why it's important. Revelation chapter 15 verse 2. John says he's seeing a vision actually of the throne of God. So you can imagine, he describes it earlier where there's this you can see God and he's like shining like this sun and Jesus Christ is there with him and there's thunder and lightning, there's a huge rainbow and there's angels coming back and forth and in front of it it looks like a sea of glass, just this shining sparkling sea of glass.

There's all this light and all this noise and all this and there's singing going on, there's angels singing, there's angels praising God. And he says here in verse 2, and I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name standing on the sea of glass having harps of God. So here are the resurrected saints. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. Now you can go into the Old Testament and you can see the song of Moses. But they also sing the song of the Lamb saying, Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the saints, who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name.

For you alone are holy, for all nations shall come and worship before you, and your judgments have been manifested. You alone are holy. Holiness has to do directly with God, who God is. And so here we have a song that the resurrected saints will sing in which we proclaim the holiness of God. So it is very important, only He is holy. Now I stress that because there are those, especially in the Protestant world, and well in the Catholic world too, who claim that human beings make something holy. We can declare something holy through a ritual or through a rite or through just a declaration.

But only God is holy, only God can make something holy. And when you look in the Scripture, God declares things to be holy. God declares nations, like the nation of Israel, He declared them to be holy. God declares people to be holy. God declares time to be holy. Only He can do that. What does it mean when God declares something holy? What does it mean? Well, we obviously know, and if you look up the word in English, if you look it up in Hebrew, if you look it up in Greek, it's to be separated.

God separates something. But when you read the whole context of the Bible, when you put it all together, it means something more than that. When God says something is holy, He takes an object or a person or a time and He says, this is mine. This belongs to me, and He actually imparts something about Himself into it. It is holy because God is holy. It is holy because God is holy.

And He imparts something of Himself into that very thing. It's interesting that holy at times has been translated in the Bible as God-likeness, something that is like God. There's an element of something about God, and God is revealing something about Himself and what He declares holy.

And He takes it very serious. Now, we know that when God calls someone out of the world today to become His child, that we become a holy people. 1 Peter 2. This is part of the premise we're going to set here. 1 Peter 2. So we go to a Scripture that has been read over and over and over again, but we have to understand the importance of this and what's going to come later as we talk through this, especially when we talk to the children here.

1 Peter 2. Verse 9.

Here Peter is writing to the church, and he says, But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a holy group of people, individually made holy by the calling of God and brought together to be a holy people, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. That calling from God, that declaration of holiness, is based entirely on God's mercy.

God didn't call us because we were holy. God called us to make us holy. Now, when God says, I call you to be holy, he means I call you to be separate, to become separate from the world around us, to become totally different than the society that we live in, and in order to make that possible, he gives us what? He could have just called it his spirit. It would have been accurate to call it the Spirit of God. In fact, there's places where it's just called the Spirit of God. He deliberately says, I gave you the Holy Spirit. God gave us something from himself that we did not have, that we could not get, and by giving it to us, he imparts into us the ability to become holy, to truly become separate.

The problem with so many ideas about holiness in Christianity is that it's thought of as magic. A waving of a hand, a little ritual, and suddenly this thing takes on these qualities, but it really doesn't happen. There's no qualities there, it's just the object. Holiness is to take on qualities of the one who is holy. And so, if we take on the qualities of one who is holy, then we receive the Holy Spirit, we must truly become holy. Last week, when I talked about how this is the day of salvation on the church, that's because of the point we're talking about today. To be declared holy and to be given holiness and to shun that is an eternal judgment. And as we went through last week to show, there are people who we went through Scripture after Scripture, all in the New Testament, never went to the Old Testament to show that there are people who are called of God, chosen of God, received God's Spirit, and will end up in the Lake of Fire. Holiness is serious to God. And we have to understand why. It's because the Creator of the universe selects a person, a thing.

He selects a time, and He said, this is mine, and I impart some of who I am into this. We are literally interacting with the very holiness of God. Look at 1 Peter 1 here, just over one chapter, because this whole context of the first couple chapters of 1 Peter is about holiness. So let's read this 1 Peter 1, verse 13.

And this will give us the whole context that led up to his statements about how the church is a holy people. Verse 13 says, Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be prepared. Don't live life in sort of a haphazard way, half asleep. We have to be spiritually prepared. We have to be spiritually clothed. Be sober, be serious, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So we're looking forward to and preparing for the return of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lust as in your ignorance, before you were called to be holy, we lived a certain way. He says, we can't go back to that because, He's going to tell us in a minute why, we can't go back to what that was, to go back to that, as we went through last time, last week, is to face the possibility of losing salvation.

So he says, verse 15, because this is also part of the same sentence, that as He who called you is holy, He who called you is holiness. He is holy. He is separate from anything. God the Father, Jesus Christ at His right hand. You know, you look at that powerful picture, that amazing vision, the John God of God's throne. There is nothing like that. There is nothing like God the Father. There is nothing like Jesus Christ. That is holiness. That is separateness, purity.

When you get into holiness and you read it through the Bible, you'll see the word sanctification tied into it a lot. And the reason why is sanctification is what it is to become holy. It is the process by which you become holy. Sanctification is the lifestyle of holiness. When God sanctifies something, He says, I'm putting some purity into this, because only God is pure. Only God is pure. Everything else is impure in one way or another. So let's go back here, verse 15, that as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in your conduct.

Act pure in everything you do. Holiness is, and sanctification is a desire for purity in everything that we do. Now, none of us are pure, are we? We know that. That's why we keep throwing ourselves on the mercy of God. But it is what we are striving to do. There is no person that is holy, holy on the face of the earth, but holy in us has been given to us in the Holy Spirit. And therefore we must become holy. And notice what it says in verse 16, because it is written, Be holy for I am holy. You do this because I am this. And we're going to go back to Leviticus and see the context in which this was said in a minute.

He's quoting right from Leviticus. So Peter says, Remember what God has said, what God has taught. We are to be separate and different and pure because He is separate and different and pure. And because of our relationship with Him, that's what we want to become. And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's works, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear. We're back to a little bit of what we talked about last week. Not that we have to be afraid that God is going to give us up. God is going to abandon us. God doesn't love us. All God wants to do is punish us.

That's a wrong viewpoint of what God wants to do. But the realization of what it means to give up what God has given to us should cause us fear because we realize the eternal consequences of it. Knowing that you were not redeemed, and He takes us back to the realization that we've been talking a lot about since right before the Passover, that you were not redeemed with corruptible things.

This realization that we have to go back to remembering how the price that was paid, both by Christ and by the Father, the enormous price that was paid for us, and what it means to cheapen that price. Redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition of your fathers. But with the precious blood of Christ as a land without blemish and without spot, He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.

Who through Him believed in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Now notice verse 22. Since you have purified your souls, since you are becoming pure in your lives, you are becoming pure. You're being purified, sanctified. You're being actually made holy. It's not just a matter of God says, I picked you to be holy, but you don't have to become holy.

You can just stay corrupt. I don't care. But I'll just make you holy. You're a magic act. Now we must become holy. We must become holy. So He says, since you have purified your souls, you're becoming pure in obeying the truth through the Spirit and sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.

There's two ways, two aspects of how we become holy. One is, the first one He says here, is that we must obey the truth through the Spirit. Our minds are open to the Scripture only through the Holy Spirit. You and I didn't come up with this truth ourselves. We didn't understand the Ten Commandments ourselves. We didn't give up idolatry to ourselves. We didn't change our lifestyles ourselves and give up drinking and all the other things that people do in their lives.

You didn't give up Easter, Christmas, because you discovered it by yourself. God brought you to this, and now we must obey the truth. So the first step in being holy is obeying the truth. The next step is a sincere love for the brethren. There are two things involved here in holiness. Obeying the truth and a sincere love for the brethren. To be holy we must become both. We must become both to be holy.

Holiness is a very serious thing to God. How serious is holiness to God? Before I answer that question, I want to go to 1 Corinthians and look at a Scripture. This is for all the children and teenagers in the audience. 1 Corinthians chapter 7. We understand that God makes something holy.

That it literally must be pure. Holiness isn't just something you just wake up one day and you're holy. You learn holiness by obeying the truth and by learning sincere love for the brethren. Those two things have to happen. 1 Corinthians 7 verse 12. I want to read verse 12 to give the context here. Verse 12 and 13. He says, But to the rest, not the Lord say, if any brother has a wife who does not believe and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her.

And if a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. So this is the context. He's saying, if you're married to someone that's not of the faith, then strive to make that marriage work. Try to make that marriage work. Verse 14 says, Why? For if the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, in other words, the unbelieving husband can learn a certain amount of purity from the wife. When your sanctification is due with holiness, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.

Now I want you to understand this. If you're eight years old, or you're twelve years old, or you're fifteen years old, and you think, well, I've got to come to church because I have to, and that's what my parents do, and you start to come and play church, you have to understand why you're here. Now you cannot choose to do this, but this is why you're here. You're here because God says you are holy.

What God says is, I choose you so that I can give to you aspects of who He is. That's what it says. Because of the person who has received God's Spirit, your children are holy. Now you don't have God's Spirit yet. You still have to choose that. But you have to understand something. There's a lot of things that we take for granted as kids in the church. I took for granted when I was a kid in the church. You don't realize that the average kid out there really isn't that interested in God and has no connection with God and is not holy.

You are in a very special category of holiness by the grace of God. You didn't get there because somehow you were better than other kids. Almighty God said, you, I choose you to be holy. And we have to choose whether we wish to partake in that holiness or not. So we're talking about holiness. We're talking about this to all the parents and all the other people here. And now we have to step back and say, wait a minute, all you children need to understand God has declared you holy.

He didn't declare you perfect, by the way. He declared you holy. But His parents, that should also send a little shockwave of worry through us, too. That means that when we look at our children, we have a responsibility to model holiness and to teach holiness because where are they going to learn it from? God declared them holy because of the parents. That's what we just read. Because of the parents, He says, your children are holy. You and I now have a responsibility both to model holiness and to teach holiness to them. As a grandfather, I have a responsibility to try to model and teach holiness to my grandchildren because they are holy because of their parents.

How serious does God take holiness? How serious does He take holiness? Let's go to Exodus 29. Exodus 29. You think, why in the world and of all the important things that are put in the Bible, why is there this passage that talks about clothes? I mean, I don't mean how we should dress, but how the priest should dress. There were priests back then. There was a tabernacle. That tabernacle had worship service every day. It had special worship services on the Sabbath. It had special worship services on the Holy Days.

And there was a priest, the high priest, and this high priest had sons. And they had to dress a certain way. And the reason why is God said, I am holy. This tent is holy because this is a special place. How special was it when they looked out their tents? During the day, there was a pillar of a cloud that was on that tent, except when it moved and they had to follow. During the night, there was a pillar of fire on that tent, except when it was moving.

In other words, that's holy because God's presence is there. The things in it were holy, and the people that were called to go in there and serve God were holy. Can you imagine if you're the high priest, you're the only person on the face of the earth that can go into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement?

Everybody else would be killed by God. There's only one person on the face of the earth. That's a pretty special job, isn't it? And God says, you're holy. This is your holiness. This is your holy job. So it says in verse 1 of chapter 29, and this is what you shall do to them to hollow them or to make them holy for ministering to me as priests. And He talks about how they're to take this bull and they're to kill this bull and have unleavened bread cakes mixed with oil, and you're to put it into a basket, and you're to bring two rams, and they're to do all these sacrifices. Verse 4, and Aaron and his sons you shall bring to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and you shall wash them with water. All these people came to see this huge ceremony with all these sacrifices, and these men were actually washed with water to symbolize what? A purity that they were obtaining. They were becoming pure in order to serve the living holy God. He is pure. And He was saying, look, I know you're not completely pure, but I'm going to give you holiness, so you're going to have to obey this truth. And there's verse 5 says, you shall take the garments, and they were special clothes that they had to put on. And Aaron had to wear the special clothes, and his sons had to put on the special clothes. Verse 6 and 7, they have a special hat that they have to wear, a turban, and they had to be anointed with oil. Verse 9, and you shall gird them with sashes, Aaron and his sons, and put the hats on them, and the priesthood shall be theirs for a perpetual statute, and so you shall consecrate. Consecrate means to make holy for a religious purpose, so you shall consecrate Aaron and his sons. This was so important to God that He said, I want you to understand holiness so much, all of these rules to come watch what I do in simply taking these three men and preparing them and saying, I have called them for my special service. And so they carried out this special service, and what was the service? It was to proclaim the holiness of God. What is it like or what happens in our relationship with God when we take holiness that He's given to us and we don't think it's important? What is it when God gives you holiness? He gives you a part of a purity that comes from Him that you and I don't have, and He gives us that purity, and we? It doesn't mean anything to us. What happens? How important is that to God? Leviticus 10. You are here because if you've been baptized and received God's Holy Spirit because you actually have God's Spirit in you and there's a holiness that God is giving to you. If you don't have God's Spirit but you're here, it's because God has called you to come learn about holiness. If you are a child and you are here, if you are a teenager and you are here, it is because God has said you are holy. How important is that to God?

Oh, well, big deal. I'm nine years old. Holiness isn't that important. No, you have to understand.

The Creator of the universe, the one with all power, the one who is all pure, the one who knows everything, the one who knows every thought of every person on the face of the earth at the same time, the one who could stop the sun and blot it out just like doing that.

That being says, you, little nine-year-old brat, are holy to me, and you now must take on qualities of holiness. For us older folks who have God's spirit, think how even more profound that is. Like I said, tie that into what we talked about last week, how profound it is to receive God's spirit and then turn all that to give that up.

Leviticus 10, the Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censure and put fire in it and put incense on it. Now, there was a perpetual fire that they were supposed to burn that was a holy fire. God said, look, your job is very simple. You do these simple ceremonies. In doing so, you declare my holiness. And God said, one of these things you're supposed to do is this perpetual fire. You know, they must have let it go out. They didn't do their job. So they just went and got some more other fire someplace. You know, no big deal. They didn't get the holy fire. They just got out of it. How holy can fire be, right? Remember, holiness isn't the object. It is what God imparts into the object. God is holy. It has to do with His separateness. It has to do with His purity. So God imputed something into that fire that wasn't there. And they took that for granted. So they offered profane fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. Verse 2, these are the sons of Aaron.

These are two grown men who have been picked by God to serve Him in a way that only the two of them could do of all the people on the face of the earth. He had marked them for holiness. He had called them for holiness. He had given them holiness. He had given them holy things to do. So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. How serious is God when He imparts holiness? I always have to... I want to make a caveat here because I don't want people to misplace God's mercy. But they did not regard God's mercy as important. God had already shown them mercy. God had already declared holiness to them. Notice verse 3, and Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spoke saying. You know, Aaron's grieving and saying, why did God kill my sons? And Moses said this is what God told him to tell Aaron, but those who come near me, or by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy, and before all the people, I must be glorified. If we want God in our lives, if you want God to answer your prayers, then you must appear before God in reverence of His holiness, His separateness, His uniqueness, His purity, and you must glorify Him. It was so serious that they didn't do that, that God killed them. So we can never take God's mercy and use it as a license to disregard what He says, because you are holy. God has already imparted to you something about Himself and given it to you. So how do I become holy? Now, I want to deal with it directly to the young people, in terms of how do you learn to be holy. Two things that you can do to learn to be holy.

First, you have to go ask God to teach you holiness. If God has declared you holy, then you have to go say, God, you're going to have to teach me this holiness stuff, because I know you're holy and I know I'm not you. So that means I'm going to have to learn this. So even as a child, you have to go to God and say, please make me holy. If you want that, then you need to go ask Him. Make me separate. Make me different so that I am like you, that I am your child. Now, realize what you're asking for when you go ask that. You're literally asking to be separate. You're literally asking God to make you different than the evil world around you, which means that you're not going to fit in. To ask to be holy means to ask to be separate. It means to be asking God that you will not fit into the world around you. So if we're always driven by, we have to fit in, we have to fit in, then we have a hard time being holy. So the first thing is go ask God to help you understand holiness.

To ask God to help you understand repentance. And ask God to help you become holy, because He's already sad. You are, if you will just follow it. The second step to holiness is you must study what the Bible teaches about holiness. And I'm just going to go through parts of one passage. Remember in Peter where we read, he said, Be you holy as I am holy?

That's a quote from Leviticus. Let's go to Leviticus and let's see about holiness, because let's look at that statement in the context of Leviticus 19. Leviticus 19. Okay, I've got to learn holiness. Where do I start? Where do I start to learn holiness? Difficult question, isn't it? There's lots of commandments in the Bible. We have the Ten Commandments, that's a sensible place to start. I think Leviticus 19 is a remarkable place to start about holiness, because that's what the subject is about. Now, we're not going to go through every verse. Some of these verses apply directly to ancient Israel. Some of them apply to an agricultural society. I want to go through the verses, though, that apply directly to how a young person can learn to be holy. How do you start learning to be holy? Where do you start? So let's start in verse 1, Leviticus 19. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the congregation of children of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. So here's where we begin. Now, then God says, let me tell you how to be holy. You be this way because I am this way. You learn this way because this is how I think. And you truly won't be just this magic, you know, I'm holy, I'm holy, because God said I'm holy. But you will become holy. And this is where you start as a young person. This is where you begin. Verse 3, Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father. You want to understand holiness? It starts with your relationship with mom and dad. Of course, I mean, it begins with your relationship with God. But, okay, God, I've come to you. I want to learn how to be holy. First thing he's going to say is, honor and obey your mother and your father. Oh, no! I didn't know holiness was going to be that hard. You know, we start with that? Yeah. Three starts. If you're really going to be different, if you really are going to be holy, as he has declared you holy, remember, you are holy because your parents are holy. Remember that? So, we need to go to them, and we need that right relationship with them. So, if you want to start to learn holiness, and we're going to go through here, your first step is honoring your mother and your father. First step. Well, we don't honor our mother and our father. We're not being holy. Second point here in the same verse is, and keep my Sabbaths, I am the Lord your God. Now, remember, keep the Lord your God. Now, remember, he starts us by saying, I am holy, so you shall also be holy, like I am. And you'll see throughout, he keeps going back to, so remember why I'm telling you to do this? I am the Lord. I am the Holy One. And if you want to be holy, this is what you do. So, with young people, it begins with honoring your mother and your father and learning to keep the Sabbath holy. You say, well, how do I learn holiness? Holiness is a huge subject, because eventually holiness touches every aspect of your life. So where do you start when you're seven or ten or sixteen? Where do you start? This is where you start.

You first start by honoring your mother and your father, and then the second step is you start to keep the Sabbaths correctly. Because as you learn holiness in those two ways, you will begin to apply that and learn holiness in all other aspects of life. Verse four, do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molded gods. I am the Lord your God. So, if you want to remain holy, you cannot participate in a paganized Christianity, which is the world that we live in. This would include Christmas, this would include Easter, this would include Valentine's Day, this would include where paganized ideas have come into and become part of a worship system that has nothing to do with the Scripture. So okay, I have to learn to be holy. I start with mom and dad. Then I start keeping the Sabbath. Oh my! That means I really have to stop doing this or this or this. Well, you have to replace it with something too. The Sabbath isn't supposed to be negative. But then I get to give up all these other things that seem like so much fun. This is holiness. God has offered you holiness. Now, nobody has to take it. I have seen children turn their back on God's holiness. I mean very little children and don't want it. As soon as they get old enough, they're away from the house, despise their parents, and go out and live life however they want and never come back. I've seen that happen. So I know children can choose. I know as a child I had to learn to choose. Sometimes I'd go off and didn't want to be holy and then sometimes you're drawn towards holiness. We'd go back and forth. But the thing is, we do choose. And eventually, as children, you choose. Eventually, you become adults and you choose. God has already given you those options. God has already offered you holiness. Okay, well, we start with Mom and Dad. We start with the Sabbath. We start with, okay, we reject all these other things. Now, holiness is a lot more than that, but that's where we start. Let's go down to verse 9 in the same chapter. Well, let's get to verse 11.

You shall not steal nor deal falsely nor lie to one another. So if we want to be holy, we have to learn not to steal. We have to learn not to be dishonest in our business dealings. We have to learn not to lie. As adults, we're still struggling with these things. How much holiness are we still struggling with? We're still struggling, as adults, sometimes, with honoring our parents.

We're still struggling with, as adults, how to keep the Sabbath properly. We're still struggling with seeming like attracted to worldly religious ideas. Sometimes we're still attracted to these. Sometimes we still fall into dishonesty. We still fall into things we should not do. We're still struggling with holiness. But as children, as adults, if we want to learn holiness, this is where we begin. So as children, you begin to not steal. You learn not to steal. You learn not to be dishonest. You learn not to lie to one another.

But you leave, so you decided, if you themselves know that salvation would be l one of the reasons why Paul spoke as ourselves, many times he referring to the Catholic Bible That's so wonderful. Why are they upset over that?

Because it's not holy. It is a lack of recognition of the holiness of God. God is so pure, God is so holy, that when He says, don't do that, He means, if you're holy too, you don't do it. We don't take God's name in vain. Now, as adults, we still struggle with that sometimes, don't we? You're out at a construction site and you slam your thumb with that hammer?

And you can say things that you haven't said in ten years, right? We still struggle with holiness. But children understand, young people, teenagers understand, this is how you begin. This is where you start to understand holiness. It's Leviticus 19, because He starts this with, Be you holy, as your Father in heaven is holy, as God is holy. Verse 13, You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob him.

The wages of him who is hired shall not be remained with you all the night until morning. There's business people holding back someone's wage so you can invest it. People do that all the time, don't they? That's not holy. That's not holy. God says, if someone works for you, they deserve to be paid as quickly as you know. Whenever that pay period is, they deserve to be paid. That's holiness. Verse 14, You shall not curse the dead or put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God, I am the Lord.

You know, if you... I have something that bothered me for 30 years. I finally got over it years ago, but it actually bothered me way up into adulthood. I was a teenager, and there was a young boy that had a mental handicap in the class, and some of the boys were literally pricking him with their pencils.

And he was hurting, and he was defenseless. And I was so angry, I wanted to defend him, but I was so angry I was afraid to defend him. And I didn't do anything. That bothered me for 30 years, because I wish I would have gone and beat the tar out of those boys. That bothered me in my 20s and my 30s. That was probably 40 years old before I finally said, you gotta let go of that boy. Come on, let that go. Holiness is we don't ever hurt people weaker than us.

We don't tick on people. Holiness is so we don't do that. When we do that, we're not being holy. But this applies right to your life every day, doesn't it? When you go to school, verse 15, you shall do no injustice and judgment.

You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, and righteous issue shall judge your neighbor. You know what that means? That means right is wrong, and right and wrong is wrong. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Now, you're told that different in society, depending on who you're talking to. Sometimes, judges favor the rich. They can give them a little money, so the judge doesn't do what's right.

He favors the rich. Sometimes, in what you'll see in our society a lot in secular humanism, they favor the poor. In judgment. Tell you what you're taught at school. You're taught that the reason for crime is poverty, and that's not true. That's breaking holiness. The reason for crime is corrupt human nature, because there's been lots of poor people who have been holy. And there's lots of poor people that aren't even holy that don't commit crimes, because they just have some basic honesty to them.

Poverty isn't the reason. Corrupt human nature is the reason. And here he says, you want to be holy, you don't favor the rich, and you don't favor the poor. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, no matter who does it. Like I said, you'll find all the time in court situations where rich people are favored, and you'll find all the time in walls where poor people are favored.

And that's not the way it's supposed to be. Now, we do have a responsibility to the poor. By the way, I skipped one section here for lack of time where it talks about our responsibility to the poor.

So I don't want to say we don't have a responsibility, we do, but I'm trying to show you that holiness means that everybody lives by the same standards. Verse 16, you shall not go about as a tale-bearer among your people. And he ends this sentence with, I am the Lord. This is one thing that we just take, but it didn't bother us. We feel like we can gossip about people behind their back on just about anything. We can tear people down, we can say all kinds of things about them, we can gossip, gossip, gossip. We can bear tales. Holiness is learning how not to be a tale-bearer. Holiness means that you don't go around gossiping about other people. Well, that's hard if you're a 13-year-old girl, because that's what you like to do the most. Talk about other girls. Not always nice things, right? That can be very difficult. Holiness means we learn not to do that. For I am the Lord your God. Verse 17 says, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. 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 Lord. What Jesus said, to love your neighbor as yourself is the greatest commitment in the law. Where did you get it from? Right here. It's the basis of holiness. Verse 28, you shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you. I am the Lord. Every year at camp, questions come up about tattoos, and kids say, why? Why can't we have tattoos? Everybody else has tattoos. It's because you're holy. It's because you're holy. Now, if you have a tattoo, you can't get it off. But don't go get any new ones. Don't put tattoos on yourself because you are holy, because God likes you just the way you are, because God doesn't do bad work. You don't have to go fix that. That's doing holiness. Verse 30, you shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits. Do not seek after them or to be filed by them. I am the Lord your God. We must stay away from demonism. We must stay away from anything that has to do with witchcraft. We must stay away from Wicca, which is, by the way, real popular among some segments in high school.

But holiness means you can't go there. Verse 32, you shall rise before the gray head and honor the presence of an old man and fear your God. I am the Lord. As a young person, holiness requires that you show respect to old people, older people, like me. Old people like me. That's why when we say, don't run, you know, you're a little person, you say, I'm going to run, I'm going to run, I'm going to have fun in church.

Don't run. You're going to knock over an older person and you think, oh, big deal. You're not being holy at that moment. Holiness is understanding them. And he said, well, why do I have to learn all this holiness? Because the Almighty God said, you are holy. That's why. Isn't that because I tell you? It's not even because your parents tell you. It's because the Almighty God, we already read it, he said, if your children, because of your holiness, your children are holy.

It's because God made you holy. Throughout the years, I've seen children come up, understand that, grow in that, and I've watched their parents turn against God, leave the church, and the children stay. I've seen that happen. Holiness. God has called you for a reason. He already knows your name. He knows what you're all about.

He listens to you when you pray. He says, now, let me teach you how to be holy, because I've declared you holy. Over the years, I've had children, teenagers, my own kids. My own kids said this to me numerous times. Dad, how come, it seems like half of all the teen Bible studies we go to, half of all the messages are given to us at any kind of teen, a Sabbath service, how come when we go to camp, half the messages there are about keep the Sabbath and fornication?

Why are those two subjects brought up over and over again? Well, there's a reason for it. Obviously, because those aren't like the only commandments, it's not you say, well, those are the most important. I mean, those are in a greater context of commandments. I mean, the greatest commandments is love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, love your neighbors yourself. Now, if you understand those, you're going to be keeping the Sabbath and you're not going to be committing fornication, but why are those two things pulled out?

Why don't we talk more about coveting or stealing? Why do we keep pulling those two things out? And there's a reason why. When you go back to the book of Genesis, Genesis is the book of beginnings. What you will find is themes that are started in the book of Genesis and they run throughout the entire Bible. Okay, there are themes that actually start in Genesis and they run throughout the entire Bible. And right at the beginning, in the first couple chapters of Genesis, God establishes two things that have to do with holiness.

One is marriage. It's holy. It's established right there at the beginning. And the other is the Sabbath. He established holy time right there at the beginning. Why then do we make these things such big issues with teenagers? Because they're beginning points. They're starting points. They're not ending points. We don't worship the Sabbath. But it is holy time in which holy people have a relationship with the holy God. And that affects the rest of the week.

That affects every other day. Why do we make such issues out of wait till you're married? Because marriage is holy and anything that damages that is wrong. We forget it's holy. As adults, sometimes we can have trouble with our holiness between us and God because we are having trouble with those two issues, those two starting points.

Those are just starting points. We're back to the very beginning, sort of like grade school here. And we start with right at the beginning of the Bible. If you want to understand holiness, understand marriage, understand the Sabbath, you'll begin to understand holiness. Be you holy as I am holy. And God rested on the Sabbath day. Right? Be you holy as I am holy. I created a man and a woman and you two are to be married. There. I've shown you what it's all about.

This is where we start. It's interesting, one last scripture, 1 Thessalonians 4. We were reading all this in Leviticus. You said, oh, it gets sort of boring just to go through laws. Right? We don't usually just take a whole chapter and go through law after law. But you have to look at all that in context. You put all that together and say, okay, I must honor my father and my mother. I must if I'm going to be holy.

I have to give up Eastern Christmas if I'm going to be holy. If I'm going to be holy, I should not be getting tattoos. If I'm going to be holy, I have to not lie and not steal and I have to be honest, even when it hurts. I must love my neighbor.

I must keep the Sabbath. You start to understand what holiness is. That's not the end of it. But this is where we begin. This is where you all begin.

You get tired of us harping on certain things. That's because we're still at the beginning. As you get older, you begin to learn about all other aspects of holiness, too. But we have to start someplace, and God tells us where to start. Look here in 1 Thessalonians 4. Now, this isn't written to young people. 1 Thessalonians 4 is actually written to baptized members. So the message is to all of us. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3. For this is the will of God. What is the will of God? Your sanctification. The will of God is that you are being purified and made holy. That's His will. People ask me all the time, what is God's will? Usually on some issue. My answer is, I don't know. I can only tell you His will is this, this, this. Your will is that you don't fight. His will is that you be honest. His will is, I can tell you His will in your conduct. I can't always tell you His will in a decision. If we do His will in conduct and in thought, He'll take care of the rest of it. What we want is His will in decisions without having to be holy. So He says, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you should abstain from sexual immorality. Here He's talking to those who have God's will, who have a Holy Spirit. He says, God's will is for you to remain holy, to be purified. And you can't do that if we're participating in sexual immorality. We can't be sanctified with God and do that, whether we're baptized or not baptized. We have to give up those things. That each of you should know how to possess His own vessel in sanctification and honor. That each of us should learn how to own up, own our own bodies in holiness and sanctification. Living lifestyles of sanctification. Not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles, who do not know God. That no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this manner, because the Lord is the Avenger of all such. We also forewarn you and testify, for God did not call us to uncleanness, but to what? Holiness. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit. Now, he could have said, like Paul does in other places, he has given us His Spirit. But he deliberately says, you know, he didn't call us to uncleanness, he called us to holiness, and he would have given us the Holy Spirit. The special power and mind of God, the Holy One, has been given to us so that we can become holy. So here we have in the New Testament that direct tie-in to how important it is that we try to remain sexually clean, sexually pure. God forgives, and when we have sins, God forgives us. And what does He do? He cleans us up and makes us pure.

And we want to stay that way.

The concept of holiness is almost non-existent in society.

Unfortunately, in the church sometimes it wanes. We become more and more like the world in which we are not pursuing the holiness of God. We're actually pursuing some kind of religious self-righteousness. Or we just pretend that we come to services and we spend the rest of the time out in the world. We sort of be a Christian. God is not holy sometimes. God is not holy on one day of the week.

God is holy all the time.

He has called us to be holy. He knows we can't do that ourselves. We gave us the power to do it. You young people, God will help you be holy. You have to go ask Him. He will guide you. There's plenty of places in the New Testament where there were individuals, young people who did not yet have God's Spirit, and which God guided them to be holy. You have been personally chosen by God, and I just don't mean those who are baptized. Because by this, your children are holy. As members of the congregation, that should motivate all of us to be involved in the lives of all the children that are here, because they are holy. They are part of the congregation. And we hope that they will move towards, eventually, literally giving themselves to repentance and being baptized, and receiving God's Spirit.

Once again, this means that as parents, we must also model that as grandparents, as members of the congregation. We must model that behavior, as well as teach it. Holiness isn't some magic ritual that's supposed to simply give you a mystical feeling, like walking into a cathedral. That's not holiness. That's just a weird feeling. When God declares us holy, He means it. He has taken part of who He is, and He now imparts that to us. And we now become holy. But what that means is that we must live our lives. We must dedicate every moment, our thoughts, everything we do, to being holy, just as He is holy.

Amen.