The Heart of the Matter

The scripture lesson is found in Leviticus. Guess what? We're in Leviticus.

And I know at least one of you has read it all the way through because she told me this morning she had,

and she thought about giving up,

but she went ahead and soldiered on and finished the book of Leviticus.

It's actually, when you're reading through all of it, you think,

why does God have this in here?

And I think we see some of it, why he explains the holiness that is required

and the sacrifices that are required to bring a redeemed life.

And then we see this foreshadowing of the Christ who came for us.

We're going to be reading from Leviticus chapter 11, verses 43 to 47.

Leviticus 11:43–47

Do not defile yourselves by any of these creatures. Do not make yourselves unclean

by means of them or be made unclean by them. I am the Lord your God.

Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves

unclean by any creature that moves along the ground.

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

Therefore, be holy, because I am holy.

These are the regulations concerning animals, birds, every living thing that

moves about in the water, and every creature that moves along the ground.

You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures

that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.

So it's interesting, you know, why is this passage in here?

Well, it's speaking about what is, obviously speaking about what's clean and

what's not clean, what is available for the Israelites to eat,

what is supposed to be prescribed by law.

Now, up until, well, early on when Adam and Eve were in the garden,

they only ate of the plants, okay?

And they were not allowed to eat of the flesh.

And later on it became allowed, but there were some criteria of what was to

be what was to be eaten, what was not to be eaten.

Why is that in there? What we want to see is why is that in there?

Why is that passage in here? What's the purpose of it?

Well, I think the purpose of it is pointing out what is holy and what is not holy.

What God sets aside, what God designs as holy is what is holy.

And so we're looking at this passage when the Bible speaks of something as holy,

it is meant to be separate and uncommon, not used for mundane purposes.

The word holy is used to describe places, days, things, and even people.

There is holy ground where God meets us and tabernacles and sanctuaries where

we bathe in the presence of the Lord.

There are holy days and services as well as special holy rituals like baptism

and the Lord's Supper, which we're going to be celebrating today.

There are holy instruments, articles that are cleansed and set apart for worship,

like the furniture and dishes and utensils in the Hebrew tabernacle.

And there are holy people, those cleansed and set apart or consecrated for the holy use of God.

The priests in the Old Testament were set apart for a holy use.

They were only to be priests. That's all they did.

That was their job. That was their calling. That was their, not just their calling,

but that was their dictate from God. They were to be the holy ones.

To be holy is to be unique. It's to be different from the rest.

It's to be distinctively better, reserved for a special purpose.

Now, when God says, be holy as I am holy, what do you think he's saying there?

Are we going to be perfect? Probably not. But we are to be set apart and consecrated.

Holiness also has a moral overtone. It describes those things that are set apart

and totally consecrated for spiritual use.

They are made pure, sacred, dedicated to a single purpose, and that is what

is pleasing and serving God and God alone.

When a pastor in the Free Methodist Church is brought up front to the annual

conference and kneels to receive his ordination, we think of it as a ritual.

But what it is, is it's that time where the bishop and the elders of the church

lay their hands on that pastor and say, you are being separated out,

you are being set apart for a holy purpose.

Trustfully, hopefully, prayerfully, they have been cleansed by the Holy Spirit as they do this.

The term holy is used to describe people in this situation when it is,

as we have seen in this passage,

they are said to be separate from the rest of their culture as evidenced by

their uncommon love for God and for others.

The Christians were first called Christians in Antioch.

When it said that they loved one another and they shared with one another and

they knew that they were separated, there was something totally different about

them than there was about anybody else.

In fact, it was meant to be a derogatory term, much like Methodists was meant

to be derogatory toward Wesley and his holy club. This was meant to be derogatory.

Look at those peculiar people out there. So they were set apart.

They were different than everybody else.

The white-hot passion to imitate Christ consumes us.

Their radical, almost fanatical obsession with God causes them to think of nothing else but pleasing God.

I wonder, when we are going about our day in everything that we do,

when we talk to somebody on the phone,

when we meet them at Quick Trip, When we do anything, are we thinking,

is what I'm doing pleasing to God?

That's not to say that we are to become so heavenly-minded that we're of no earthly good.

I had a Presbyterian pastor one time that just said that, what good is heavenly

thought if it's of no earthly value?

If it's not doing anything here and now, why do we think about heaven?

We need to have something that heavenly thought needs to govern what we do in this life now.

Your will becomes so intertwined with the will of God that you want to please

him in all aspects of your life, which causes you to be of extremely earthly

value in regarding others more than yourself.

That's not the way of culture. The way of culture today is me first, right?

Me first. I'm above everybody else, and I'm going to make everybody else look bad, so I look good.

But Christianity to holiness, being set apart to be like God,

is to serve others and to lift them up.

Jesus said the two greatest commandments are these. Love the Lord your God with

all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

It's possible for common people to have an uncommon love for God.

Think about Moses.

Moses was somebody who murdered somebody, buried him in the sand,

ran away into the wilderness, began herding sheep, and God called him and set apart.

I wonder, what's your history and what has God called you to?

The Bible has said in the happy experience of holy men of holy women of the past confirms it,

that it's possible for those who seem to be ordinary people when they're set

apart by the renewing of their mind and the consecration of their spirit to

become extraordinary and sanctified

examples of holiness by their uncommon love for God and for others.

It's possible to do what is right and like it.

It's possible to be holy and right in our living for Christ.

If it was not possible for us to live holy life, God would not have told us to be holy as he is holy.

I mean, God's not that kind of God. He's not going to tell us to do something

that he knows we can't do.

He's going to tell us to do something that we can do through him and through his power.

But we're reminded time and time again of Scripture, that what may seem impossible

with man is possible with God.

Romans 8 tells us that when we surrender to the Holy Spirit of God and he runs

our lives, we will be holy.

When we say we die to self, as Paul says, and surrender ourselves to the Holy

Spirit, walk in the life of the Holy Spirit, we will be different than what's

out there. Believe me, people will notice.

This is what's called the sanctified life. It's the meaning of holiness,

dying in its lustful pleasures and seeking only God's glory.

This morning, I want us to look at what holiness is. We have walked down the

road of what we've seen about sacrifices and what we've seen about a holy God

in this book of Leviticus.

And over the past few weeks, we've looked at sin and the need for forgiveness and obedience.

We've discovered the need for sacrifice and the shedding of blood for the washing away of our sin.

And as we continue this morning, I want us to look at the obtainable holy life.

What it really truly looks like. I mean, most often when the Church of Jesus

Christ, especially in America, is really all about feel-goods,

and we're going to be looking at what does it take to be holy and set apart.

The first thing we see is that holiness is a renewed mind.

If your mind were a movie, what would it be rated?

Would we feel comfortable viewing the movie of our mind in church with our friends

and wives and neighbors sitting next to us, watching what goes on in our mind.

Romans 12 verse 1 talks about the renewing of our mind, the setting part,

Romans 12:1

and the transformation that comes through that with the Holy Spirit.

I'm afraid to say that too often we would not want the thoughts and attitudes

and pictures that bombard our minds to be revealed to our brothers and sisters in church.

I've already told you that when 9-11 happened, my first thought was not,

will God save those Muslims?

Please redeem them, for they know not what they do. My first thought was not that.

My first thought was, make a parking lot out of that land.

How holy was that? And it was only after time that God kind of chastised me

in my spirit. What are you thinking about? These people are my children.

They're my creation as well.

We often hide behind the explanation that we live in a sensual and violent nature, and we can't help it.

With all that we face each day, is it possible to have a pure mind?

But the psalmist writes this, who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord but he

who has clean hands and a pure heart?

If it's not possible to have clean hands and a pure heart, why would God say

that to us in the scriptures, in the writings of David?

And as I've said here before, thoughts produce feelings, feelings produce actions,

actions have consequences.

So how can anyone live a holy life? As I said, Romans 12, 1 and 2 tells us that

it's only by the renewing of our mind.

It's one thing, as any failing Christian will tell you to admire the mind of Christ.

It's something entirely different to have the mind of Christ in us.

It's really great and easy to talk about God and Christ and what he's done and

all that, but to transform that into our lives and be sacrificial for him is much more difficult.

We may want the life of Christ. We may teach it.

We may explain it. We may interpret it. we may profess it and still never actually attain it.

But those who truly crave it will one day find a growing resemblance to the likeness of Christ.

You will find that as you go on in this life called Christianity,

in this following of Jesus, you will look back at some of the things in your

life, even in your early Christian days,

and you'll think, I did that? I said that?

Wow. And God still saved me and still used me.

A renewed mind allows us to begin to think like Christ. Philippians 2,

Philippians 2:5

verse 5 says, Your attitude should be the same as that as Christ Jesus.

We not only act, but we also react like Christ would.

To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you as an example

that you should follow in his steps.

In 1 Peter 2, verses 21 to 23, it says this, he committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.

1 Peter 2:21–23

When they hurled insults at him, he didn't retaliate.

When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

When we're attacked verbally, emotionally, a lot of times we react negatively toward it, don't we?

Instead of just simply walking away and allowing God to deal with those who are striking us.

We not only read the word of God, we love it.

Psalm 199, verse 97 says, how I love your law. I meditated on it all day long.

The meaning of the word meditate is like the word ruminate. You know what the

word ruminate means, right?

You know what the word ruminate means, right?

Chew on it. Chew on it. And what else does a cow that is a ruminating creature do with what he chews?

Over and over again. He chews it, takes it in, brings it back up,

chews it again, takes it in, brings it back up.

Over and over and over, we ruminate on the Word of God.

We listen to it. We talk about it. We think about it. We speak it.

We bring it back up when the thought comes to our mind that that scripture is there for us.

It's like a cow does, digesting every morsel over and over and over again to

get the very best and the most out of it.

Now, everybody's going to go to a Chinese restaurant and think about all of

the rumination that's going on.

No, maybe not. We even marinate our minds in the Word of God,

letting it permeate us to the very core of our being.

Colossians 3, verse 15 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you

Colossians 3:15

teach and admonish one another with all wisdom,

and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

So the first thing we see is that holiness is a renewed mind.

The second thing is holiness is pure, is a pure heart.

Bible tells us that the heart is the seat of all affections and desires.

It is the focal point of who we really are, buried deep beneath the layers of

image, personality, attitude, and behavior.

We can fake Christianity for

a while, but sooner or later, what's in us is what's going to come out.

Everything we do, every pleasure we enjoy, every decision we make,

every habit we form is found within our heart.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences.

It's not possible to act, think, speak, laugh, or cry for very long in a manner

that's inconsistent with our heart.

Vince Havner put it this way, whatever's in the well will eventually come out in the bucket.

The Bible says our hearts may be purified from every selfish desire and liberated

to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength,

and then to love a neighbor as ourself.

This and nothing less is entire sanctification, as the scripture calls it.

It is the perfection of love for God and for others.

It is a selfless love. So purity in heart is the heart of the matter.

So let me share a poem with you that describes what a pure heart looks like.

When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught,

and you sting and hurt with insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy

being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed,

when your advice disregarded,

your opinions ridicule, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even

defend yourself, but take it all in patient,

loving silence, that is dying to self.

When you stand face to face with folly, waste, extravagance,

spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Christ endured it, that is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversations or to record your

own good works or itch after condemnation,

when you can truly love to be unknown, that is to die to self.

When you see your brother prosper and have his needs met while your own needs

are far greater and in desperate circumstances and are not envious or desirous

for their failure, that is dying to self.

And when you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than

yourself and can humbly sit inwardly as well as outwardly,

finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart.

That's dying to self. And that is nothing less than a pure heart.

We also see that holiness is a sincere faith.

King James Version of the Bible calls this a faith unfeigned,

which means it is without blemish or false.

1 Timothy 1, verse 5 says, the goal of this command is love,

1 Timothy 1:5

which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere, unfeigned faith.

You cannot truly love unless you have a pure heart and unless you have a sincere faith.

In other words, we do not say we believe something, then practice something else.

In fact, one pastor of another circle of faith admitted of his church,

he says, we believe these things, we even teach these things,

but we don't do these things.

That's a sad commentary on Christianity these days, isn't it?

But in his word, we find there is another kind of faith possible.

When our hearts are pure and our minds are renewed, it's possible to have a

faith that makes the supernatural world look like it's right next door.

Like Christ, we can kneel in our agony and pray, not my will, but yours be done.

I wonder how often we do that.

We maybe say, asked by God to do unusual things as was Noah and to go out on a limb, as did Abraham,

or to pray for miracles, as did Elijah, or even to look into the flames and

sing hymns like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,

and thousands of other more contemporary brothers and sisters have done.

Or we may simply be asked to speak in love to our neighbor and to provide them with food and shelter.

But by the grace of God and the

strength of his presence, we will remain standing and strong to the end.

Ephesians 6 chapter 13 says, put on the full armor of God so that when the day

of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand.

So holiness is a renewed mind. Holiness is a pure heart.

Holiness is a sincere faith. And finally, holiness is a passion for God.

In the days of false prophets, and the reckless fascination with the supernatural,

holy people know their God.

There is a spiritual hunger in this world today, and it's going after many things that are not Christ.

We may or may not be formally educated, but our fire comes from having been with Jesus.

We may or may not prophesy or cast out demons, but there's a certain confidence in our stride,

in an authority in our voice, a familiarity in our prayers, which says we are

on a first-name basis with the one whom others can only talk about.

I wonder how many of us are really on a first-name basis with the God of the universe we should be.

Our fun even flows naturally in the midst of this passion for the Holy One whom

Isaiah met in the temple.

I think of that when I think of all of the things that we see around us.

The fun that people seek after in this world is not fun to me.

I don't even view half of it as fun.

Drunkenness, drug addictions, all of that.

Passion for a holy God will cause us to deny that which has no real meaning for the church.

We keep and observe spiritual disciplines that the lukewarm church considers extreme.

We not only obey the word of God, we love it.

Even Leviticus. We not only are not only interested in God, we thirst for him.

We hunger for him. We want to have his presence with us all the time.

We want to know what he's thinking.

And we want him to know what we're thinking and to guide our thoughts.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences.

This passion for a holy God is literally shown in all that we say and do.

It helps us to pray without ceasing. By now, according to 1 Thessalonians,

we read passage in 4, verse 7, but by now we have seen the height to which we

who are called have fallen down.

And we see the height to which we should be obtaining.

And here's what is written in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 7.

1 Thessalonians 4:7

God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. What does that mean?

Does that mean thou shalt not do this and thou shalt not do that?

Well, here's some things that we can find out. Here's some assumptions that

we can know about. Three assumptions.

First, the life of holiness really is possible. It's not a motto.

It's not a slogan. It's an invitation, not an adversement for a few people.

It's an invitation for all of us to become holy as God is holy.

God's desire is that his people would be holy.

Why? He wanted his people to be set apart and cleansed and prepared for his

service and for his glory. Why?

Because God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself,

and he chooses to use us, his chosen people, to accomplish his mission.

He wants us along for the ride.

Second, we see that even though this life is possible, we must be careful to

understand that we're not holy just because we say we are.

I remember a gentleman in a church many years ago, not a free Methodist church,

but it doesn't matter whether it is or isn't, but talked about becoming sanctified.

And he said that he remembered reaching out and grabbing sanctification from out of God's hands.

So he was holy. And I said, friend, if you are doing it on your own works to

take that holiness from God, it's not something God has given to you.

It's in your own works. It's not and his.

Holiness is something that God makes us and turns us into by the transforming

of our mind through the renewing of our mind.

And even though we may say or think we're holy—,

What defines us is how we live. And then, even though this life of holiness

is possible, it means a good deal more than we think it does.

And because of this, we most often, those who profess to be entirely sanctified,

oftentimes are not, just as I told you about this one gentleman.

As far as we're concerned, holiness is something that God has given us,

transformed us into his image, set us apart, declared us to be holy.

Friends, God has called us to be ministers of the reconciliation of Christ.

He doesn't want dirty vessels to do it.

He wants us to be holy as he is holy, set apart, cleansed, to be used for his purposes.

The separating thing in our movement called free Methodism is our call to scriptural

and social and practical holiness.

We've looked at a holy God. We've seen sin, and we've heard of true repentance and forgiveness.

We have now seen the aspects of a holy life.

So now as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Supper, I'm going to ask you

to search your heart as we prepare in these next few moments as we pray. Where is my heart today?

Am I being set apart and cleansed and used for the holy purpose of God as As

we celebrate the Lord's Supper, as we observe what Jesus had done for us,

he was set apart from the very beginning,

and his whole purpose was to be our redemption in our Lord and our way back to the Father.

He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And so our purpose is to be set apart for a holy life with a holy God amongst

the people that need to see a lighthouse.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this service, as we close this service

with the Lord's Supper, we ask that you would dwell in our presence,

that you would make your presence known.

We know that you're not physically present in the bread and in the juice,

but we know that this is our remembrance of you, of what Christ has done,

but so often we take this as a ritual and not as a meaningful example of what you have done.

So Father, just as Jesus gave himself for us, help us, Lord,

to give ourselves up for you. In Jesus' name, amen.