Holiness

It is amazing when you go through the book of Exodus, the sheer amount of information that God gave to Moses about the tabernacle. Now, there's all these laws that are given and how to worship God and respond to God, how to interact with each other, how to interact with people that were not Israelites.

There's all this information. What is sin? What is legal? What is illegal? And then there's this enormous section of exact information on how to build a tabernacle, how long it's supposed to be, how high it's supposed to be, exactly what kind of skins it's to be made out of, exactly what color everything is, the composition of the poles, the composition of the utensils that they would use and the sacrifice, the composition and layout of the Ark of the Covenant that's set in the Holy of Holies. It is absolutely amazing how much information is given. And there's a reason for it. And it actually has something to do with this day we'll talk about in a minute.

They were given all this information because God said, this is going to be a place where I come to give you my special presence. Now they knew that God was everywhere. They knew that God wasn't in one location. But He also said, this is the place I will come to. This is a place holy to me. The concept of holiness is not something that we think about much in the world that we live in. I mean, we live in a world where, ask the person what the holy actually means, you probably get different explanations.

We would have different explanations in the church. What exactly does it mean to be holy? Now, in the literal sense, the Hebrew word that is translated holy means that something that is taken and separated for the purpose of God. It could be a person. It could be a place. It could be a thing. It could be time. The important thing is that it is chosen only by God.

Human beings did not have the power to make something holy. It's not possible. It is something that God says, this is mine. It is special to me, and I am going to use it for my special purpose. So He said, this place is going to be holy to me. Even the people who serve in this place are going to be holy to me. And the people are to worship God in this holy place.

What I find interesting, though, from the very beginning of God's interaction with ancient Israel, their worship of Him was not intimate. There was a barrier. There was a separation between them. Let me show you what I mean. Let's go to Exodus 24. When we look at something that's holy, God is actually telling us something about Himself. That's what's really interesting to do a study on what is holy, because every time you study something that's something God says, that is holy, He's telling us something about Himself. Because what He's saying is, I take this, and this is special to me.

And I take this, and I use it because it belongs to me. And therefore I separate it from everything else. It's separate from everything else in the mind of God. But ancient Israel was a holy people. They were a holy people. They were called by God for His special purpose. And yet here in Exodus 24, and Mr. Keller's talked about this this morning, where he said, here's where they confirmed the covenant. And it says, now He said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, naydab and abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.

God was on the top of the mountain. God's presence was there. They knew He was there. That top of that mountain was on fire. Hope was billowing off of it so they couldn't even see the top of it. They heard thundering noises from up there. And He said, I want you to take Aaron and his two sons, and I want you to take these seventy elders, and I want you to bring them up to Me, but you are to worship Me from afar. Except, He says for you, Moses. Verse 2, And Moses alone shall come near the Lord. For they shall not come near to Me, nor shall the people go up with Him.

So, throughout Israel's history, they worshiped God. And sometimes we even have a misunderstanding of what the word worship means. We tend to think of worship as song. You can worship God in song, but the word worship, especially Hebrew, is literally to bow down, to throw yourself down on the ground. It means an absolute subjection to whatever you are before.

It means to be prostrate. You're just down on the ground before it. That's what that means. So, to worship God, you have to bow down on your face, down on the ground, flat on the ground, and that's how you worship God. And He said, now, you are going to worship Me from afar. He could see the presence of God. To get close to the presence of God meant they would die. And He told them that.

You will die if you come any closer than I tell you to come. And so, even though they were called by God, and they were made holy, they were separated from God. This concept of the separation between them and God, and this concept of holiness is really shown in an incident that is told us in Leviticus chapter 10. Let's go to Leviticus chapter 10. They were separated for God for His purpose. And yet, and yet, they worshipped Him from afar. There was a distance between them and God that they could not bridge. They could not get across that distance between them and God.

They worshiped God. They saw the presence of God. But there was still something between them. And the idea of this holiness, that even though they were holy, the holiness between them and God was still a huge gulf. Verse 1, talking about the two sons that we just read about, the two sons of Levi.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and put incense on it and offered profane fire before the Lord which he had not commanded them. Now we don't know exactly what they did here, but whatever it was, it wasn't at all what God had said. There was a fire that they were supposed to keep kindled all the time. There was a special incense that they had to use. In fact, the incense was holy to God.

It was illegal for an Israelite to make that incense for personal use. That incense could only be used in the temple. The fire that they were using could only be used in the temple. It couldn't be used outside the temple and you couldn't bring fire in. We don't know exactly what they did, but whatever it was, these things that they were told to do, these rituals they were supposed to do in worshiping God, that they were prostrate before God, they were down before God, they were absolutely in awe of God.

They didn't have that attitude. And so they take this profane fire. They profane holiness. What we're going to talk about today is when we profane holiness, we disrespect God. That's very important on the day of Pentecost. What's that have to do with the day of Pentecost? We'll look at it in a minute. What happens here is verse 2. So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord. And Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spoke.

So you can imagine, Aaron just found out his two sons have been killed immediately by God. God, this fire came out and killed them. And God said to Moses, now you go tell this to Aaron, by those who come near to me, by those who come near to me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified. He says, to come before God is such a privilege.

This is grace, by the way. Those who say there's no grace in the Old Testament haven't read the Old Testament. In other words, God's saying, it's only by my grace that you can come to me. And you must understand my holiness, that I am separate. I am different than everything else. I am the creator. I'm the one who decides what is good and evil. And I must be seen that way, and I must be worshiped that way. So Aaron held his peace. Aaron understood what he was saying.

Moses called Michiel and Azavon, the sons of Uziel, the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, come near, carry your brother from before the sanctuary out of the camp. So they went near and carried them out by their tunics. They obviously weren't burned up. It says they were killed, but they still had their clothes on. So they're not... God's... however he killed them was immediate. They didn't suffer. By their tunics, out of the camp, as Moses had said, Moses said to Aaron, and to Eliezer and Ithamar, his sons, these two more sons, do not uncover your heads, nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and wrath come upon all the people.

But let your brother and the whole house of Israel be well, the burning which the Lord has kindled. You shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die, for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you, and they did according to the word of Moses.

Now you understand what he was saying here. He said, come here, the next two brothers step up. And Aaron, let the people go ahead and mourn the death of your sons. They should. But you have to understand you have been called to be holy before me. Your grieving will be done in private. You will not stop your duties. You will continue to carry out these holy ceremonies in my tabernacle, showing the people I am holy. Now remember, in this tabernacle, the pillar of fire is there. They see the presence of God. And he says they must remember that this is real, that there is a being here, and that He is different.

He is separate than everything else. You see how important God puts the concept of His holiness and something He declares holy. Now there is an interesting comment here in verse 8. And some of the rabbis, the Jewish rabbis, have come to a conclusion here, and an inference.

It is not an absolute conclusion. It says, Then the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine or intoxicating drink, you know your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of meaning lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, that you may distinguish between what is holy and unholy, and between clean and unclean. In other words, it may be they were drinking. Because why would all of a sudden out of nowhere, Jesus or God say, Look, you can't come in here in this holy place at this time when you're supposed to be doing a holy duty, and you can't come in here and be drinking.

Because you can't discern between the holy and unholy. So we don't know whether they had been drinking or whether this is just an extra add-on that God had said to them at the time. But it is strange that He says it right here. Holiness is important to God.

And I told my wife, I said, You know, sometime, sometime probably the next year, I would like to give a whole series of sermons just on holiness. What it actually means, because it is a primary doctrine of the New Testament called sanctification. Sanctification means to be made holy. We'll talk about that in a minute, too. It is a primary, core doctrine of the New Testament that people are being made holy. So the tabernacle, of course, eventually was destroyed after the time of Judges. Solomon built the temple, and it was a more permanent temple, sort of place, holy place for God to come to. Of course, Solomon's temple was destroyed. We are now under the New Covenant.

It's easy to say, well, we don't have a temple today, but we do. We have a holy temple today, and that temple is just as important to God in terms of its maintenance and what is done in that temple and what is done with that temple as it was at the time when He killed Nadab and Abayu.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

Now, some of you are probably already ahead of me here, but I really want to zero in on this today because this is very important for us.

We live in a secular society in which the entire concept of holiness is foreign to the average person. It's absolutely foreign to the average person. And yet you and I are sanctified people. That means we are holy people. Not because we made ourselves holy, as God made us whole.

Look what it says here in verse 16. Now, before I get into this, what's very interesting here is that we're going through 1 Corinthians in the monthly Bible studies in Dixon and Murfreesboro. And we just went through this whole section here and what He's dealing with. What He's dealing with is the church there at Corinth. It was a mess in every way imaginable. But one of the major problems they had were people had been divided into groups and they were fighting each other.

I mean, just the church was in a state of warfare. And some people were saying, I follow Paul. That's why I follow Paulus. And I follow Christ. And I follow Peter. And they're just arguing, fighting over doctrine. They're fighting and arguing over how things should be done. There were many problems in this church. We'll have to look at some of them and even understand what he says here in a couple of these passages.

So this is the context. And he says, do you not know that you are... He's talking to the church here. He's talking to the congregation. You are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. So in this very dysfunctional congregation, Paul's argument is, do you not know the same Shekinah, the same Spirit of God, the same pillar of fire, the same presence that came into Solomon's temple when he dedicated the temple that drove everybody out of it. Everybody had to leave it because the presence of God was there. Do you not understand you are the temple and it is that same Spirit that is not with you, but in you?

Now for those who aren't baptized, it's with you. God's Spirit is with you.

It surrounds you and it guides you and directs you. But for those of you that have been baptized, the very power and mind of God is in you. It's not a different power. Remember last year I talked about how He gave us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind, and how that power, love, and a sound mind is the exact same Spirit they received in Acts chapter 2. Exact same Spirit.

I'm going to talk about now that the Spirit you have in you is the exact same Spirit that filled the temple, that filled the tabernacle.

And that Spirit, that mind of God, the holiness of it, those people worship God from afar.

You worship God because He's in you. Now it's not like Hinduism that you've got to discover the God that's in you. There's nothing in us till God comes along. They're just us, pretty much messed up people.

And God puts His Spirit in us. And then He says, you collectively hear my temple.

Look how He finishes this thought. He says, if anyone defies the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

Every time I read that, I think of Nadab and Abihu.

They did not understand the holiness of the temple that they were serving in.

You and I are the temple.

Acts chapter 2 opened a whole new chapter in salvation history. What we see in Acts is the creation of a new temple that's still being built today. God is still building that temple today.

So if we as the congregation, every congregation, every person on the face of the earth that has God's Spirit, has God's Spirit in them and they're part of this temple. But that means each one of us is a part of the temple. Look at Ephesians chapter 2. We'll come back to 1 Corinthians in a minute, but I want to go to Ephesians.

I want to break this down into some very simple practical concepts at some point, but we can't... there are certain things that we will naturally resist until we understand what holiness is and that we are holy and what that actually means. We're not holy because we made ourselves holy. We're holy because God put His Spirit in us and said, you are holy.

You are holy. Ephesians 2, 19. Now, He's talking here to Gentiles. Gentiles would come into the church and they would say, well, where's our place in the church? And He says, well, it's very simple.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, and who the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, at whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. So He tells the Gentiles, no, no, you're just stones. We're all stones of a large temple. And each one of us is a dwelling place. Each one of us is a dwelling place of the temple of God or in the Spirit of God. And as we are put together in this building, He's building, a spiritual building, we become a collective temple of God. That's why there's no such thing as an independent Christian. That'd be like saying, we have a building that's being built, and we took one of the bricks, and we threw it out over here, and it's an independent part of the building. We're all part of the temple that God is building, every single one of us. Each stone has its place.

But this means that you and I are going to have to dedicate our lives to not just keeping the Ten Commandments, and we have to do that, not just going to church on Sabbath, we have to do that, not just keeping the Holy Days, we have to do that, but we have to dedicate ourselves to holiness God made you holy. Either you believe that, or you don't.

Either the Almighty God looked at you and said, come, I choose you, not so that you can stay what you are. I have chosen you to be holy, separated for me for my purpose.

And remember what He told Aaron, so you must see me as holy so that you will become holy.

And then He gave us what? His Spirit, which is called what? The Holy Spirit, which makes you different than anybody else. And He said, well, that sounds arrogant. You know, if it's not true, we should all go to another church.

Either God has called us, and I'm not just saying everybody in this room. When I say us, I mean, whatever Christians He's given Holy Spirit to. I'm not stupid enough to think that only means the United Church of God, okay? Wherever God has put His Spirit in a person, they're part of the temple. So let's just talk about us, okay? Let's just deal with us and the room. We are holy people, made holy by a holy God. You see, well, the Sabbath is holy. Yes, why? Because God made it holy. Okay, the temple was holy. Yeah, God made it holy.

We can think of all these things as holy, but we have to understand our relationship to everything God is doing is in the holiness that He is giving to us. And we must see ourselves that way.

The realization and acceptance of the individual holiness that God is doing in your life must be the foundation of your daily behavior. The realization and acceptance of our individual holiness must be. This must be the determining factor in our daily behavior. You and I don't go through God or to God through priests and ceremonies. We don't worship Him from afar. We are down before Him. We are laying before Him on our faces because we are before Him. He said, well, I don't go to His throne. Where is He? Was He not in the pillar of fire? He stole His throne. Yeah, sure, He was in the pillar of fire. What is the manifestation of the pillar of fire today? It is when hands were laid upon you and you received God's Spirit. It's the same Spirit.

How much are we holding back where we should be going because we don't recognize what God is actually doing, that He has given us the Spirit, His Spirit, the dwelling place of His Holy Spirit?

What that means to us individually, each one of us. You know, Paul uses this to start creating through 1 Corinthians, a whole series of interesting conclusions he brings from this thought. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 6. Go back to 1 Corinthians here. 1 Corinthians 6.

Let's start in verse 9.

He says, Do you not know? He's talking to the people there in Corinth. And we have to understand something here. Corinth was about as wicked a place as you were going to be in in the Roman Empire. The sexual immorality is unbelievable. I mean, the Temple of Aphrodite, and we talked about this at the Bible study in Dixon and in Murfreesboro, had a thousand temple prostitutes.

In other words, it was a religious duty. It was required for religious people to visit the prostitutes, male and female. To not do so was to be unrighteous in their concepts.

Corinth had two different places where the ships would come in, harbors, and so sailors would come in from all over the world. And it was a sailor town.

It had everything you could want.

It was a place of drunkenness and violence and absolute paganism. It's hard for us to understand paganism because we didn't come out of paganism. I mean, rank paganism. I don't think too many of us here were Hindus. But if you ever study Hinduism or go to a Hindu temple, I don't suggest you do so, you understand what it is to live surrounded by statues of gods and goddesses that you worship, that you sacrifice to. And this was the world that they were coming out of. And the Corinthian church was still one foot in that and one foot in God's way. And so he tells them here that they had to realize that, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? He tells them, look, you can't stay one foot here because you will not be accepted by God. Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators or idolaters or adulterers or homosexuals or sodomites or thieves or covenants or drunkards or revilers or extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. Of course, I always say you can make that list long enough and we can say, as such were all of us, right? And the list doesn't have to get very long before all of us could be in there someplace. He says, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

Wow! That's a whole huge theological concept in half the sentence. You are washed. That's what the symbolism of baptism is. Washed of our sins. Why? Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You are sanctified. You are made holy. How? He says, by the Spirit of our God. And you were justified. Justification means that we are able to come into a relationship, a right relationship with God.

How does that happen? Because Jesus Christ is there as the high priest and the intercessor, making this happen, and you and I can go before God and have a relationship because of what He's doing. We have the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the washing of our sins, sanctification through the Holy Spirit, justification through the work of Jesus Christ, and He just rattles it off like that. And all these people in Corinth are supposed to know exactly what He's saying. He expected it because they were being sanctified. Since they were becoming holy, He talked to them in ways that He expected them to understand. Even though many of those people, coming out of paganism, would have never even heard of Jesus until right recently, they would have understood much of the Bible. They're coming out of paganism.

But they were being sanctified. Let's skip down to verse 18.

Flee sexual immorality, and this was a place that had in the church, which is sexual immorality, rampant, because it was outside. That's the way it was outside in their society around them.

Now, once again, He's going to take this concept and sort of twist it into an interesting statement.

Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but He who commits sexual sin, sins against his own body.

Now, in the Greek world, they glorified the human body.

So I think that's an interesting way of putting this in this Greek city.

You know, you go steal from somebody, you didn't hurt your body. That's the person catching up to a beat job. But when you commit a sexual sin, you've actually sinned, you've actually damaged your own body. He brings the human body into this discussion. Verse 19, Or do you not know that your body, remember, he just said collectively the church is the temple of God. But do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

God's Holy Spirit is in us. Each of us individually are a temple of that Holy Spirit.

And he says, protecting your body from sexual sin is what a duty that all of us are supposed to be doing. Why? Because we are holy. Your body is to be holy before God also.

Your body is to be holy before God also. Now, if you're not careful here, well, let's finish what his thought, and then I want to make a comment. He says, "'For you were'" verse 20 "'for you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.'" Now, we talk all the time about glorifying God in our spirit.

We don't talk much about glorifying God in our bodies, right?

How do you glorify God in your body? Well, first thing he says is don't commit sexual sins.

When we go through, in fact, the next time in Dickson, when we go through 1 Corinthians, we will be going through, because we're taking it in segments, we're going to actually go through everything that the Apostle Paul has to say about sexuality and holiness. Sexuality and holiness.

Because he really makes a difference between saying what is acceptable and holy in a sexual relationship to God. It's not bad or evil. It's actually holy. It's good and what it's not, and why those differences and why the Church of Corinth almost couldn't understand what he was talking about. It's overwhelming to them because of the background they were coming from.

So we'll talk about that next time, because we have to talk about these things. He says, your body. We are to be holy in our bodies.

When you really start thinking about them, when we work that through, physical things do matter.

Now, let's be careful when I say physical things do matter. In the second century, here's how the Gnostics took Paul. They went in two different directions. One was, because spiritual is good and matter is evil. Your body is just so evil. It's so rotten. It's so disgusting. Do whatever you want, because once God forgives you, you're forgiven anyways.

So they literally lived lives of debauchery while claiming to be spiritual.

The other group of Gnostics took it in a different direction, and that was, since your body is holy, and it can't be holy because you're such a rotten, dirty, filthy thing, and both of these are predicated on the idea that your body is dirty, is filthy, it's disgusting, that the best thing to do was beat your body into subjection. They came up with the concept of hermits. You lived as a hermit where you starved yourself, maybe lived on a pole for years, wrestled demons, ate nothing but bread, slept on the ground, would not wear clothes. Some of them would just go out and eat grass naked. This is how they got closer to God. And they came up with the concept through this that the most holy thing you could be is a virgin. That was the absolute pinnacle of holiness, which is not in the Scripture at all. So that's why they created monasteries. We will have priests and nuns who are totally celibate, and that will raise them into this higher level of holiness. Well, that's not what he's talking about either.

Paul does not want us to glorify our bodies. He doesn't want us to denigrate our bodies. He wants us to understand that this body is a temporary dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and it should be treated as a temporary dwelling of the Holy Spirit. And the first thing he says is, so therefore, get away from sexual sin. Because, you know, you can't imagine—well, there is a point in the Old Testament where some of the priests were taking—they were actually taking young women into the tabernacle and forcing them to have sexual relationships with them.

You can imagine what God did to them. So we think about those things and we say, wait a minute, my body is that temple. So we have to start understanding. So we can't glorify the body, but we can't denigrate it either. He doesn't want us to go around saying what a rotten, horrible, terrible thing my body is because, you know why? It is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

It's just temporary. I mean, you know, I don't know about you, but I look in the mirror and it's not like, whoa, look at that great body, right? But it is the temple of God's Holy Spirit. Therefore, we are to—what did it say? What Paul say here? He says, we are to glorify God in your body and in your spirit. So we can glorify the body. This body is going to go. Remember what was read in the sermonette this morning from Philippians about how this lowly body—I can't remember what it was. Let's go there. It was Philippians 3. Philippians 3. And verse 20. This was read this morning. For our citizenship is in heaven, for which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able to subdue all things unto Himself. So, you know, we're not to glorify this body. This body gets glorified when we get a new one, and the new one is a spirit body.

But at the same time, we're to take care of this. This is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Everything we do with this should be seen as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

I'll give you an example. We are Christians who do not eat pork. We don't eat shellfish. We don't do those things. That was mentioned in the sermon.

Now, we will give a lot of reasons why we don't do that. Will docs really go and show, well, there were clean and unclean animals before the Sinai covenant. We'll go through the different explanations like in Acts 10, where obviously that is the reference to whether you can eat clean and unclean meat. It's obvious. He's talking about how you refer to people.

And we'll take all these doctors, we'll put them together, and then here's our biggest argument. Of course, you do know it's not good for you. Even doctors say it's not good for you.

And you know that's true. But where do you find in the Old Testament that they were not to eat pork because it's not good for you? Where is that?

Let's go to Leviticus 11. This is in the middle of the clean and unclean meat chapter.

You can say, well, okay, I'm a kid, or I'm young, I'm not baptized yet, or I'm a teenager, I'm a young person, or I'm just not baptized yet, so I'm not holy. God is calling you to be holy. Sorry! The Almighty God is calling you to be holy. So even though he may not have taken you through the next step in the process yet, yeah, he's calling you to be holy. It's your calling.

And remember, he says, when he calls us to be holy, we don't own ourselves anymore.

We are bought with a price. We already read that. Jesus Christ, we're bought through the price paid by Jesus Christ. And God says, I've picked you from my work. I've picked you for a special purpose. And we miss that so much, the importance of that. It's, ah, God, I don't want to be a special purpose. I don't want to be picked by you. I get something better I want to do in my life. Leviticus 11, 43, in the middle of what's talking about here, the clean and unclean meats.

Notice what he says in verse 43. You shall not make yourselves abominable.

You shall not make yourself disgusting. With any creeping thing that creeps, no show you make yourselves unclean with them, lest you be defiled by them.

Now he's talking about, don't eat this stuff. God says, I didn't make snakes to be eaten. I didn't make lizards to be eaten. Don't eat this stuff. It's sickening. And God says, that's disgusting to me. And I made them, okay, to eat these things. Verse 44, for I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves that you shall be holy, for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourself with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God says, I'm separate from my creation. And I have to tell you, to eat that stuff makes me, that's sickening.

Therefore, I am holy and I'm telling you, you don't eat it.

You know, someone comes to me and said, I by accident ate some shrimp. We don't say, oh, you get the same penalty as committing adultery. You get the same penalty as armed robbery, right?

But what if someone comes up and says, you know, I decided I like ham sandwiches. I'm going to eat ham sandwiches. I wouldn't say, oh, I'm putting you out of the church. What I would say is, you have a serious issue with understanding the holiness of God and yourself as the temple of God's Holy Spirit. You need to get this fixed. It's a holiness issue. He said, you don't do this because I'm holy and it's disgusting to me and I called you to be holy. So it should be disgusting to you. And I don't eat ham because, you know, one of the few things I remember at seven years old, when my parents came into the church, giving me a Christmas was either easy. I mean, I like Christmas, but okay. Giving up Easter was okay. Okay. I mean, I liked Easter. I liked Easter egg hunts and all that stuff. But deviled ham? What kind of God would you eat deviled ham?

Put that out of the can, spread it on the bread. You know, at seven, this was great. It has to do with being holy.

Because God says, I don't like it. And we say, I don't like it either. You ever see a little kid do that? A parent say, I don't like that. A little kid doesn't even know what you're talking about. A little kid says, I don't like it either. They don't like it. I don't like it. We are holy. And that's why we don't eat pork. It's just an added benefit that is bad for us, that we don't eat it because it makes us sick. Okay, that's just an added benefit. But it's not why we don't eat it. Because I tell you what, there's a number of things we eat that isn't good for us. There's a lot of things we eat that aren't good for us. But I like it. But it's not good for me. But it also doesn't make me unholy to eat it.

What God says is unholy is what He says it. If we're holy, that's why we do it.

I've seen so many people leave the church, give up everyone of God's commands, but they don't eat pork. It's like, but if you're holy, you want to do all the laws. If I am holy, I believe in the holy Sabbath. And so we realize that we are a holy people. Well, we compromise with ideas.

We are disrespecting God.

Now, I want you to start thinking about this because there's a lot of issues that we talk about in the Bible. We glide over. We mention it. We ignore them. And they actually have to do with holiness. It takes a lot of thought to think through holiness.

Let's go back to 2 Corinthians, look at another place where Paul talks about this. I want you to remember the world Paul is dealing with here in Corinth.

Even by Roman standards, Corinth was a corrupt place. The word Corinth in Greek basically had become sort of a word that you would slap on somebody that basically meant they were just a loose person, sexually loose person. You're Corinthian, Corinthianized. Even the city, the name, had become the mean disgusting. Even in the Roman world, where almost anything, believe me, in the Roman world, especially with slavery, violence, sexually misusing people was absolutely rampant because slaves were property. And up to one-third of the people in the city of Rome were slaves. That means the owners could do with them whatever they wanted. And even in that world, Corinth is bad. So here's what Paul tells them.

2 Corinthians 6, verse 14, Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Think of the world they're living in.

Now, we have a narrow definition of this, but this is a very broad definition that Paul uses.

For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial? In other words, he's talking about the pagan gods. What in Satan, what does Christ have to do with all this satanic worship of idols and paganism? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? The temple of God! Once again, what's his reference point? 1 Corinthians 6. The temple of God is always the church. He's not talking about the temple in Jerusalem. 1 Corinthians 6. The temple of God is always the church. He says, Who are we? Do we understand what it is to be holy in this place we live in?

He's basically saying, Be careful about every relationship. This would apply to marriage, but this is more than that. The reason I say that is because he had already said, Look, if you're not married, marry in the faith. He had already said that before.

What he's saying here is, Be careful about your business arrangements. Why would he say that?

Well, they had Christians taking other Christians to court and suing them. They were taking them to the pagan courts and suing them. It's in 1 Corinthians. I mean, that's how corrupt the church was in business. They just sued each other in the pagan courts. It couldn't even apply the law of God to the situations they were dealing with. He goes through and he talks to them about, You look at all this and you look at all the things he deals with. A man who was committing adultery with his own stepmother. That was happening in court.

He's looking at what they're living in. He says, You've got to be careful even about who your friends are. And you know, when you are living God's way, you may have friends that are atheist. You may have friends that are Hindus. You may have friends that are agnostics. You may have friends that are homosexuals. You may have friends that are all these different things, but there's always that friendship can only go so far, can it? It can only go so far. Why?

Because of this. The holiness of God in you and that relationship can only go so far.

And they won't understand it. It doesn't mean you dislike them. It doesn't mean you mistreat them. But that relationship can only go so far. Because you are holy. Because you are holy. That sounds an arrogant, doesn't it? I am holy? But either this is who we are or it's not who we are. If it's not who we are, yeah, we're pretty arrogant.

If it is who we are, we should be scared and awe and worship and straight out on the ground before God with your head buried in the sand saying, God Almighty, who am I that you would make me holy?

Who am I that you would say, I want you right now. I'll pick that person later. I want you right now. And you are my temple. You're my temple.

If that's who we are, then we have to live like the temple. What's very interesting here is this next part. He says, as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Now that's interesting because Paul, being Paul, he pulls parts of two verses out of the Old Testament, slaps them together, and creates a new verse.

He's apt to do that. What's really interesting in this is one of these verses he sort of pulls from it's Leviticus, but the other one is in Exodus 29. And in Exodus 29, he's talking about the holiness of the temple or of the tabernacle. He says, you are the temple of God, and he goes right to Exodus, where he's talking about the holiness of the tabernacle, to make his point.

But I find it amazing. How did he expect those Greeks to know that? I mean, it's easy for me. I can go look up in Exodus, and there it is.

But you see what's in his mind? He attaches what's happening, the tabernacle. That's why, even though you and I don't have a tabernacle to go to, that ancient tabernacle is gone, that's why we should actually study about that tabernacle. Because everything in there, pictures, something God is doing through the work of Jesus Christ.

Every part of it, and part of it, is holiness. They had to live in this society.

That's why, verse 17, he says, come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord, do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Verse 1 of chapter 7, therefore having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. In other words, you notice he says, flesh and spirit, before he said body and spirit.

So we are to have and pay our bodies a certain honor, if you will, because why? Because it's the temple of God. This becomes very applicable in a lot of different ways. A lot of different ways.

How we dress actually does have importance in holiness. If we, as men or women, dress in a way to sexually allure other people, and we cause them to sin, what did Jesus say? Jesus said, it is better than a millstone be tied around your neck, and you take out the ocean and thrown in and drown than to offend the least of one of these, my little ones. But if we dress in a sexually alluring manner so that we cause someone else to sin, Christ said, boy, that would have been, for you to do that, it would have been better for you to be drowned.

If we are the temple of God, how can we do that? See, modesty becomes part of this.

Modesty becomes part of this. Pornography.

He's, well, pornography doesn't hurt anyone else, but you are the temple of God.

It hurts God. He lives in you.

See, this idea of worship, the temple was to worship God, it is a place to love God. You are a place to worship God. You are a place to love God.

You know, we say, well, things like, ah, come on, yeah, I know I have a smoking problem, but that's not a sin. Show me that in the Bible. Okay, I can't show you where smoking is a sin in the Bible. I mean, being addicted to cigarettes is a sin in the Bible.

As the temple of God, should we be addicted to anything?

As the temple of the living God, should our bodies be addicted to anything? What holiness, what holiness allow us to be physically controlled by something else?

I've dealt with a lot of drug addicts in my life, and I've dealt with a lot of people addicted to tobacco, and that can be just as bad. I've dealt with a lot of alcoholics.

Alcoholism is not alcoholism. Drunkenness is directly mentioned in the Bible. A person being alcoholic cannot be a drunkard because they don't drink. But we can't be controlled by it. See what I mean? A person can be an alcoholic and say, I haven't had a drink in 20 years because if I do, I will be addicted to it. So they're not a drunkard. It's a difference.

Holiness means that all these things become... Oh, I've heard this so many times. Oh, we used to be so strict about people shouldn't go around chewing tobacco and smoking, and they get addicted to that stuff. That says to talk about that in the Bible. But holiness would lead you to say, I can't do that. It just takes you there if you understand what holiness really is.

This body isn't ours. It is the temple of the Almighty God.

It is the dwelling place of the Spirit of God. How many things do we compromise on? For us. Now, I'm not a health nut, but I do know this. When I abuse my body by how I eat, I am not being holy. Okay, if I have a piece of pecan pie, I'm not unholy.

If I eat an entire pecan pie, I am probably being unholy. You understand?

What I'm doing to this body is not acceptable as the temple of God. If I'm addicted to sugar, I tell you what, I think that high-fructose corn syrup may be more addictive than sugar.

Are we actually in our bodies being the temple of God if we're addicted to high-fructose corn syrup? Am I saying it's a sin to eat that? No, I'm not. I bet you there are people here addicted to it.

This is the temple of God.

It puts a little spin on it. It does a little different viewpoint of who you are.

This body has value, temporary, but it has value. It is to be taken care of.

It is the dwelling place of God. It's very interesting when you go back to in the scripture, it says about not in the Old Testament, not marking your body or not getting tattoos. The Jews are very fascinated with that passage, with that verse, because you're not to do cuttings because that had to do with mourning for the dead. It was all throughout the whole Middle East. People cut themselves when they mourned. They were overwhelming, and people today will cut themselves when they're depressed. That's a form of depression. So it was common for people just to slash and cut themselves. You'll find Israelites doing it in ancient Israel. There were times when they just said they would be mourning over something. They started cutting themselves. And they don't do that. And don't do that for the dead. And then there's this other statement that it really doesn't give you a reason why. It just says, and don't do these permanent markings on your body. And so they have a lot of discussion, the rabbis do, where does that one come from?

It's interesting, their conclusion is, it has to do with us being made in the image of God, and therefore we are holy.

That's a pretty good argument.

That's a pretty good argument. Why we as Christians should not go out and pursue getting on tattoos. Now, I know many people have tattoos here. That doesn't mean you're all thrown out of the church.

But I'm saying is we should not pursue, we should not go out and get tattoos. Why? Because we are holy.

Because we were made in the image of God. They have another argument. I can't, I see where it comes from. I think they're driving something out of the Bible's not there, but they say you shouldn't do it because the only marking God ever said you could do on your body was circumcision.

Anything other than circumcision is not allowed, as far as a cutting or a permanent marker. Now, that's, I can't see that in the scripture, but I understand their argument.

I do understand the argument of holiness. My body is the temple of God.

Would it be acceptable in the ancient temple for them to come along and put things on that temple?

And they were not.

See, we got to reason through a lot of these things, but there's a lot to reason through. If we start understanding holiness, now we got to be careful. We don't try to build some kind of legalistic concept around this, but at the same time, we individually should be exploring the concept of holiness. My holiness as the temple of God. Pentecost celebrates the day that God began constructing a new temple. A new temple where people are the dwelling places of the Holy Spirit.

Each of them are stones. Stones in the temple so that we do not worship God from afar through priests and sacrifices, but we worship God in the immediacy and the intimacy of our own minds where He dwells. Let's conclude by going to 1 Peter, chapter 1. Now, the first thing I thought of here, I probably should have gone through earlier in this sermon, but where it was in Romans 12, where Paul actually says that we are to make our bodies a living sacrifice and be transformed in the mind. Once again, he talks about two things here. He's not making them separate. They actually come together. You can't be transformed in your mind and simply do with your body whatever you want. Or you can't simply do with your body, say, okay, I'm going to be strict with my body and not have a chance to remind you. It takes both. So he's not trying to separate them into two things, but he mentions both. We are a living sacrifice in our body so that our minds are transformed. 1 Peter. 1 Peter 1. Verse 13.

Therefore, this is a weird metaphor. I just tried to picture this and I can't get this one down. Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lust as in your ignorance, but as He who called you is holy. You also be holy in your conduct because it is written, this is from the Old Testament, be holy for I am holy. You are the temple of a living God. Therefore, be holy.