The Seventh Day, Bodily Discharges, and the Holiness of God with Pastor Ryan Braley

Man.

Thank you, verna, Let us pray God.

We give you thanks this morning for this word, thank you for this wonderful letter from Peter, and I ask God you would help it to come alive to us this morning that we could see with fresh eyes and maybe even for the first time this morning.

And I ask you to give us wisdom, give us clarity and discernment about how we can be people of the cross who live in this time and place.

We're several thousand years away from a lot of these things, but I pray you to give us the imagination, the creativity with which to see how we can live out this story here in Elk River and the surrounding areas or wherever we're going to tomorrow.

And yeah, god, I pray that you would help us to give our eyes focused on the cross, and this morning we would understand in a deeper way what it means to be people who are holy and called to be holy and how we can do that.

So we ask you to bless us this morning in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Okay, you can see it again.

Okay, please stand back up.

I'm just kidding.

I'm gonna call it Lutheran Calisthenics is what we call that.

Well, good morning.

We are in the middle of our First Peter series and I was saying earlier this morning on First Peter's, this wonderful book, that really you could preach one cent at a time and we could be in First Peter for like almost a whole year.

But we only have four weeks.

So I'm just kind of giving you some themes.

So week one, the theme was being born again into a living hope.

These are people.

It was a letter written from Peter.

Who is this old, wise Peter?

Now?

He's not the young brash fisherman who's flexing his muscles all the time, he's an old, retired fisherman who maybe still flexes his muscles on occasion, but the muscles are a little saggier.

And anyway, he's writing this letter and it's to people, exiles, gentiles and Asia Minor, and they are living in a culture and a society that's sort of counter to the cross.

They're like unfriendly to the cross and the gospel message and they're under immense persecution and oppression and they're trying to figure out how do we live in this way?

So Peter writes them to encourage them to not lose their hope and he reminds them that you've been born again into a living hope.

That was week one.

That was the theme of week one.

Week two was the last week.

How do we deal with suffering?

Peter just sort of assumes we're all gonna suffer and so how do you do it?

Well, and that our suffering ultimately joins us in solidarity with Christ, that we suffer in many ways because we are Christ followers, and so we're not immune, and neither is God.

God is also not immune to our suffering.

He dives right into this whole mess with us in Jesus on the cross.

And then today I wanna talk about the holiness of God.

My sermon title is called the Seventh Day bodily discharges and the holiness of God.

Yeah, you're welcome.

This is a free one.

And the holiness of God, are you ready?

In the beginning, in Genesis one, god creates.

He creates all kinds of things.

He creates light.

By the way, I drew my own slides again for you this morning, so you're welcome in advance.

But just remember, I didn't study art in college, I studied theology, so they're wildly different, but I gave it a shot.

I thought it'd be fun.

So, god, if you don't have any fun, I'm gonna have fun.

So whatever, you can join me or not, it's up to you.

He created light.

He also created the moon and the stars, thank you, thank you.

This is way better than the first gathering.

You guys are way more engaged.

I like the approval I feel.

I just feel so secure, god or not?

God also created the sun.

By the way, I show up.

Did someone just boo me?

Oh, my gosh, I'm not going to get heckled this morning.

My goodness, you guys.

I did show these to my 12 year old daughter.

I'm like what do you think this is A sun?

Oh God, good, at least it's recognizable.

The sun got also then creates, in those first six days, trees.

Now it's either an owl living in there or a giant bullet went through that tree.

I can't, as I drew like that.

That's a really big hole.

But either way, a tree.

I like that tree, it's pretty.

God also creates rivers and things like the duckbill platypus.

Yes, I was really proud of this one.

The duckbill platypus then goes on to create things that are wonderfully brilliant, like naps.

It's in the original Hebrew, just don't Google it, just trust me on this one.

He also creates birthday parties.

Just drink this one in for a minute.

You're going to notice all the things.

Some of you should carry around a five year extinguisher your birthday party, just in case you're old.

Okay.

God also then creates this beautiful thing called the mix tape.

Yeah, let's go Now.

I realize this joke is for a very specific segment of the population.

I get it.

If you're too old or too young, you're like what's a mix tape?

But everybody else knows what I'm talking about.

You don't go to share in our team, our Megan, whoever, whatever, forever Young ones.

It's like a playlist, but it was a one, one little block of tape there.

You had to wind it.

Anyway, the whole thing.

And then, lastly, god also creates babies in Halloween costumes.

Again, that's in the original Hebrew.

Just don't look it up.

Just trust me on that one.

Okay, none of those last few were in the Bible, but you get the idea.

God creates all these wonderful things in the first six days.

In the seventh day, god shifts gears and he stops, he ceases creating, he finishes and then he rests, which is always kind of odd to me, like, was he tired?

Does God get tired?

Why does he rest?

But he stops and he blesses the day and he calls it holy.

Now the original Hebrew word.

There is the word kadosh.

Everyone say kadosh, kadosh.

I love that word, it's a good word.

This is the first time, believe it or not, that the word holy, or kadosh, is used in the whole Bible.

It's used a ton in the Bible.

Most often it's used in the book of Leviticus, which we'll come to later, but for now, the first time it's used here.

Now, remember the principle of first mention.

Whenever you're reading the Bible, if you come across a location or a word that's used a lot, go back the very first time it's used.

It will help you understand what that means or what happened at that location.

So here's odd, because the very first time the word holy is used it's in reference to time, a day in fact, which raises all kinds of questions for me.

Why did God call this day a 24-hour period or a period of times, moment in time, holy?

He calls it kadosh.

And what about this day is?

Kadosh is holy.

What is this all about?

Why would he do this?

The great theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, this great Jewish theologian, says this when history began, there was only one holiness in the world.

There was holiness in time.

Then he goes on to say this it was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul.

I love that.

And God blesses the seventh day and calls it kadosh.

Now, the word holy is difficult to define, and if I say that word it probably conjures up for you all kinds of images or thoughts or definitions.

One definition that I found actually in Webster's dictionary it just says anything that is holy, that is devoted to God.

Fair enough.

So priests, you might say, are devoted to God, therefore they're holy.

So the Bible, it's the holy Bible because it comes from God, it's devoted to God.

Fine.

But here's the tricky part.

When you sort of define this word and kind of unpack it a little bit more God is called holy when God is called holy, not because God is devoted to God or comes from God, God is holy in a different way.

How is God holy and how should we understand this word?

Now, in the Hebrew it's the word kadosh, which I told you.

Also, in the Greek the word is hagias.

Everyone say hagias.

Wonderful, you can drop these in your mealtime conversations.

Look around today and score some bonus points, and most of us have all kinds of ideas about what this might mean.

In fact, if I said, hey, define what is holy for me, many of you might say or have said, well, anything that's without sin or that really is like is perfect or not profane.

You might think holy.

To be holy means to be pure, like morally behaved.

You might have a friend who says, oh, you're so holy, you're holier than now because you behave in this morally upstanding way or ethically upstanding way.

Holiness also kind of conjures up this idea like not go ahead, sarah.

You can put the back up, like not being near to sin or not being near to the things that are profane, separated from the profane.

So here's an example Things that are holier, things that are kind of other than separate than go ahead, sarah, you can keep it up there, distinct from the profane.

Thank you, sarah.

She's a wonderful job.

Give Sarah some love this morning.

Every morning I'm like Sarah, you just bear with me.

I know I'm going to be all over the place, but she does a wonderful job.

So thank you, sarah.

So it's.

You might have this idea in your head about what it means to be holier, or something to be holy, and so you might think of God in the same way.

This is your framework for what God is like.

If God is holy, fine.

It might look like this then oh wait, go back.

Oh, okay, I got some examples for you for separate things than the profane.

So if I were going to give you some examples like, hey, here's some things that are holy or separate than the profane, here's an example.

And if you've ever been to the Mall of America, you know what I'm talking about.

Right, yes, this is an example.

Hey, these things are holy, this is profane.

Here's another example, am I right?

Yeah, I thought not long or hard, but that was an easy one.

How about this one?

So short goodbye.

We love long goodbyes, don't we Minnesota?

Okay, I do, I love long goodbyes.

My staff, like you've said goodbye four times.

Why are you still here, ryan, I'm sorry.

Okay now, if you think about God in the same way, like separate from the ordinary, or the profane, or sin or those, you might have this idea of what God is like.

You might even use words like oh, we are separated from God because we are profane or have sin or sinned, and God cannot be near those things because God is holy.

So you have this divide.

Now, for me, this raises all kinds of problems, though.

One is that this sort of idea of God it defines God as holy over and against sin, which God existed before sinning.

This is what God can't be defined in reference to sin, because that's not how God is.

God is defined in and of himself and also he existed way before sinned it.

So that's kind of a problematic idea.

Also, this flies in the face of a lot of biblical ideas and images of God and the holiness and sin.

In the Bible, the most profound is the incarnation.

Here's a picture of the incarnation in case you missed it the incarnation when God comes into human form in flesh of Jesus of Nazareth and jumps right into the middle of our sin, our brokenness.

Of course he doesn't.

Well, he does become sin for those who know the Bible, but also, he's not a sinner per se at all, but he hangs out with them, so much so that people think he's a drunkard.

So Jesus is not separated from those who sin or from sin.

He's hanging out with them.

So this idea of holiness is that which is like sort of like separated from the profane or from sin just doesn't work if you understand the incarnation.

So how then, can we be people who define holiness?

Peter says, hey, be holy for I am holy or for God is holy.

So how can we be people who are holy knowing that God is holy?

How can we understand this?

Well, I want to unpack a few other images or symbols or metaphors of holiness in the Bible and maybe that'll help us round out our idea of holy.

Does that sound all right?

Number one, going back to Genesis one, the first six days are a certain way, and that last day, the seventh day, is unique, it's distinct, it's brazenly, unabashedly different.

It's in a class all by itself.

This seventh day, it looks different, it feels different, the whole thing is different.

And it's not just because the first six days were full of sin and the last day had no sin.

Was sin less right?

Like your six college friends who would sleep in on Sunday mornings, you're the only one who got up to go to church on Sunday mornings.

Okay, nobody in here.

Fair enough, it's got nothing to do with sin.

In fact, it's that this day was unique, utterly brazenly distinct.

How Well those first six days God was creating, he was doing, he was filling, and that last day God ceases from working, he stops and he rests.

That seventh day is about resting, it's about being, it's a slower pace, it's about celebrating the things that have been done and filled and just being present with them.

It's about presence and enjoying the life that's been created.

That seventh day is unique.

It's distinct, it's slower, it's resting, it is holy.

A friend of mine is a Jewish rabbi.

He says it this way.

He says on the sixth day, work got the creation to very good, which is not bad.

It's actually very good, the Bible tells us.

But it was not holy.

Holiness was a result of the creation coming into a state of rest.

That's holiness Of basking in the light of the presence of the one who created it.

How many of you have ever just sat and rested and basked in the light of the one who created life?

How many of you have a day a week where you do this?

How about this?

He goes on to write then, by doing ie, through your works, you and I cannot attain holiness, can't do it.

At best we can get to very good and we can hang out here for another half an hour.

But I'm just gonna tell you, your works, the things that you do, can at best get you to very good, which is not bad.

That's fine.

So pray and read your Bible and come to church and be kind to old ladies and old men and give and sponsor and help the poor.

Those are all wonderful things.

Do them.

They're very good, but those things will not make you holy.

Your behavior doesn't do anything to make you holy.

They're actually distinct in different things.

It's only by resting in the Lord that we can attain a state of holiness.

Jesus says it this way abiding me and I will abide in you.

That's it.

Christ is in you.

That's already been done.

You are in Christ.

Jesus did it on the cross.

Then he says it's finished, so just abide in me, rest, relax.

You ever see a plant trying hard, like a vine trying hard to stay connected to the main vine?

No, they just abide, just rest.

Somehow holiness has somebody who's just resting and being connected to the vine, remembering that you are already in Christ.

Christ is in you.

Christ did that.

None of your actions, none of your works did anything to do with you or it helped you get already where you are.

Jesus did that.

By the way, in Jewish theology actually Christian theology they use this image of the seventh day of the Sabbath.

It's later called the Sabbath, not until Exodus, but the seventh day is a picture and an image of the age to come.

They call this the fancy word eschatology.

It's the study of all things to come, the age to come when God will restore all things, make all things new, and the resurrection will happen for everybody else, not just Jesus.

But there'll be this great resurrection, the day we all look forward to, and when he does that, the Jews and Christians will look forward to that day and they celebrate it on the Sabbath, on the seventh day, when we have Sabbath rest.

They remember and celebrate and anticipate the age to come.

So already this idea of holiness has something to do with God restoring things, proper order and time, new things, resting, sort of just being aware and awake to the presence of God already in your life.

Celebrating.

I like the word shalom.

Shalom is this great Hebrew word.

It's a wholeness and completeness in community and being connected to each other and to God and the land.

This is what holiness sort of has something to do with anyway.

And Peter writes a letter to the exiles who are over an Asia minor and they're struggling, they're suffering under immense persecution.

He tells them hey, be holy, because God is holy.

Now, as you heard, veruna read Peter's quoting the book Leviticus, my favorite book and of course yours as well.

I'm Sherah.

Leviticus, wonderful book in the Hebrew Bible, and he's quoting from the book of Leviticus.

And of course he would do that because Peter uses a bunch of Old Testament Hebrew images and pictures to connect the audience to the Abraham and Sarah story and helping them say, hey, you are now also the people of God and you belong to the family of Abraham and Sarah.

This is your story, so pay attention, and it's the same for you and I as well, who follow Jesus.

He would say.

So he quotes Leviticus, which is actually a great strategy.

I always think when in doubt, just quote Leviticus.

If you're ever in a debate or in a party and having, like you know, it's just cocktail conversation, just drop in.

Hey, never boil a goat in its mother's milk.

I said what I said.

Just walk off and see what happens.

I love quoting Leviticus in random times and places.

Great, and remember, hey, leviticus is a beautiful book about rituals and rituals of holiness.

Remember, holy is used more times in Leviticus than any other book in the Bible.

This whole book is about holiness and being whole and holy and clean before God to present your worship before God Kind of the overall view of this.

And Leviticus is a book about rituals.

Rituals are, of course, a concrete example of an ideal truth.

So when you watch rituals, they're like in his theater.

They're acting out or putting on display or embodying a deep theological truth.

So when you read Leviticus you're like, pfft, maybe a little bit like that, but understand.

Like when you read it.

There's all these details about how to behave with God.

It's like an actual acting out theater of like these deeper truths and many of them regard or relate to holiness and they tell us deep things about God and humanity and life and life and community and what holiness actually looks like.

So if you want to know what holiness looks like, go to Leviticus and it has everything to do with being pure and clean.

But remember the context of Leviticus.

Remember our last series story context and symbol.

So what's the context?

Peter's quoting Leviticus.

We know that.

And then the part of Leviticus is quoting comes from Leviticus, chapter 11.

Leviticus 11 · chapter mention

I want you to see this.

So, turning Leviticus 11, I think it's on page 85.

They told me this morning I have a different Bible.

This is where Peter's quoting and I think it will help us understand holiness in a different, unique, maybe way.

So so far, holiness has something to do with, has something to do with uniqueness, distinction being in the class all by itself.

It has something to do with resting and abiding, celebrating, being present with God and with the creation.

Now here's Leviticus 11.

Go to verse 45, actually go to 45.

So it says I am the Lord, your God.

This is God talking to a people who are going to worship him and be with him and dwell with him.

And he's going to dwell with them and he's teaching them how to be holy and he gives him all these rituals that are holiness rituals.

It's I am the Lord, your God, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God.

Therefore, be holy, because I am holy.

And I was like at first glance, like why would he say that?

He just sort of dropped setting like this humble brag, like be holy, for I'm holy.

By the way, I'm the one who set you free out of Egypt.

You're welcome, very much.

You're welcome.

Like why would he do that?

He just drops us in.

But notice what he's doing.

He's contextualizing holiness within the liberation story of the people of Israel.

Like hey, remember, holiness has something to do with.

He's telling them like liberation from slavery, being free, being able to live as my people, and vice versa.

So holiness has something to do with delivery, with liberation, freedom.

God's holiness is on display in action when he sets the people of Israel free.

It's his love, his love, his holiness is on display.

You see, holiness is something to do with liberation, restoring relationships, restoring community, restoring wholeness, this idea of shalom.

And, by the way, when you help other people who are in bondage or under oppression or have been marginalized, when you help them, it's a holy act.

When you help others and you help set them free, when you sit and talk with an addict and you pray for them, when you help someone who's living in poverty and you help them in all kinds of ways, that's a holy act.

When you help anybody who's been enslaved in any kind of way, that's a holy act.

One of the reasons why many of you are so passionate about speaking up on behalf of unborn children is because you're engaging in this holy act of helping those who can't speak up for themselves, and we do it at every age level.

So, even when you're older, we want to value and honor this kind of liberation and freedom and life at every age and every level.

These are holy acts.

Jesus said it this way.

Jesus said hey, look, better to have a millstone tied around your neck than to offend one of these little ones, because holiness has something to do with setting people free and helping them find liberation.

So Israel was called to image this God through concrete behavior that sustains life.

And every detail matters.

Every detail, not just behavior or actions or details in the sanctuary or in the temple, but it matters.

Every part of your life, it all matters.

When I was younger, I worked with middle school kids and high school kids and hang out in the church here, and many of them were not familiar with this building.

They didn't like, they weren't here a lot.

They'd come here on Wednesday nights or other times and they'd hang out, and many of them would bring in their old behaviors with.

They didn't like stop acting a certain way because they came in the door and so they would use language that many of you might call like foul language or swear words, and they would look, they would say it and they would look at me like, oh, sorry, sorry, I shouldn't swear in church.

I say, well, one, I'm not that offended, but I'm not easily offended.

But two, hey, you shouldn't just behave a certain way because you're in the church building and then when you go outside you can behave another way, like, every detail of your life matters how you live and how you are and how you treat others and the things that you say and what you sort of your way of being in the world.

It matters, no matter where you are.

And so in here great, out there, yes, great Every detail matters, including how you boil goats.

This is why he mentions this don't boil a goat, it smells good.

And also bodily discharges.

You know, I was coming to this just a little bit later.

In Leviticus he gives these ritual ideas for cleanness around.

The idea of bodily discharges.

It's in the Bible.

Look it up in Leviticus.

It's wild and like, why is he talking about this?

Well, I want to say a couple things.

This one might be a tangent, but so all the things in life matter.

So there's this whole chapter on like bodily discharges and what you do when these things happen and you're kind of coming up against life and death and this very sacred thing, bodily discharges, believe it or not, and they teach you then the priests how do they become ritually clean after you have these bodily discharges.

One thing I'll say too, like in this chapter they talk about the act of sex.

Yes, he just had sex in church, I know, but hang tight, but like, you can read this to your kids if you want to give them a sex lesson.

But the idea is like, hey, this is like an important, like heavy thing, this act of sex.

It's a powerful thing in which you come up against this.

You know, life and death come very, very, very close together in this act.

So treat it with reverence, a sacred, holy thing.

And I think part of our problem is we treat this act of sex as gift from God, as a flippant, almost passive thing.

And it's unfortunate because it's like, actually a very heavy, grave, serious, weighty thing that God wants us to handle with like, with seriousness.

And so then the priests like, hey, when these things happen, you can read about it later.

Here's how you then become ritually clean after these things happen.

And so in this chapter and in many other ones in the book of Leviticus, there is this sense of holiness, means to be clean or whole, or healed.

It's not just simply a matter of like, hey, behaving good, or behaving morally good or not being, you know, full of sin.

It's this idea of like being whole and clean and like restored back to community, back to life, and with God and with others.

So the invitation is this live an integrated life, not a fractured life, but a integrated life.

Live out of your whole self, live a healed life.

Many of us walk around as a disintegrated self, suffering from wounds and baggage and all these things as an invitation to be healed.

And Peter calls the exiles to be holy, for God is holy.

He's not just saying be morally perfect or try harder, or stop smoking cigarettes or don't listen to rock music or don't get tattoos or don't swear in church.

He's saying something much deeper, more profound than this.

He's saying look, be unique, be different in the culture around you, be whole, be restored to your neighbor, to your enemies, to yourself, to God.

Be healed, live out of your full self, your true self.

Don't hide any longer and then create goodness.

Invite others into this goodness, this wholeness, this communal life.

Help others be free, set them free and, yes, let your good works, or let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

When you live in a culture that's contrary to the way of the cross, your actions, your life, the things you do, how you spend your money, the things you say will stand out in contrast to the rest of the world.

Does it make you better or not?

It just means you're different, you're unique, you're distinct, and the call is to invite others to be a part of that life.

Live a whole life, live a healed life.

Now, here's the bottom line.

I'll end with this you didn't do this on your own because, remember, your actions, your works, don't make you holy.

Jesus said abiding me and all abiding you.

So here's how we've been healed.

That's it.

It's finished Central this morning.

May you know that God is holy and God is holy and, in response, may you be holy.

And by that I don't mean try harder and gird up your loins and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and try to have good thoughts and stop being depressed and to quit drinking.

I don't mean that.

I mean be whole, receive the invitation to be healed.

This morning.

Maybe you need to just allow the Spirit to come and heal you and your wrong thoughts about God or yourself or the world or your enemy.

Allow God to come and heal you that you can be clean and whole and restored Somebody this morning.

You see, you hear the invitation.

Hey, just rest, abiding me and all abiding you.

You don't have to keep doing things.

You're already good enough.

I already love you.

Relax, receive this gift.

It's free, it's finished, and this morning may we look forward to the great day of the resurrection, when God will make all things new and resurrect all things and restore and redeem all things, including you and me and those who've gone before us, and put the world back to rights and make it whole, and the whole thing becomes this holy thing.

And in the meantime, now you be holy, for God is holy, amen.