Jesus Bought A House - Part 2 | Pastor Paul McGee

Greetings, greetings, greetings this morning.

Amen. In the House of the Lord, we're

going to stand today and turn to a New Testament scripture.

So glad to see each one of you and that you're in good health.

And if you had heat and water today, then you're doing great.

Maybe you had to put your toe outside the sheet and just check

it out before you stepped on the floor.

We typically sleep with a fan blowing quite forcefully, and it

feels good when you're under the covers.

And whenever I stepped totally out of that, I thought I was in

the Blizzard and I was just trying to get to the fan to turn

it off. Amen.

But it's good to be in the House of the Lord today.

First Thessalonians, First Thessalonians.

Thessalonians is just a great word to say in it.

First Thessalonians chapter #3 I want to read just a couple of

verses today. Amen.

We are in the great season here. Got a few things going on.

I hope you join us tonight for time of eating and fellowship

and some activities. I hope you come.

Amen. Please do so.

And as my wife said, if if you didn't get signed up to bring

something, come anyway. Even come anyway and be a part,

Amen. We'd love to have you and come

with that ugliest sweater you got.

Just come on. Or maybe it's the most festive,

I don't know. However, we got a different

categories. Come participate.

You might not wear it anywhere else, but you can wear it here.

Yeah. And so we'll accept that First

Thessalonians chapter #3 just verse 12 and verse 13.

Today the Bible says, and the Lord make you to increase and

abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even

as we do toward you to the end. He may stablish your hearts

unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His Saints.

Today I have simply called this holiness position and practice,

and not only by getting nervous because holiness involves a

whole lot, such a vast subject. You can't just talk about it in

one setting. And so it covers a whole lot,

Amen. And so this really kind of

piggybacks on our who do you belong to conversation we had

last week and a couple of weeks ago.

Amen. I want to stay in that for

today. Can we ask the Lord to just open

our hearts and minds today? Father, I love you.

God, we need you. Lord, your word is forever

established and it's true. Lord, open up our hearts and our

lives today God to that word. I pray Jesus bless you.

People that are here, God have made an effort, Lord, to brave

the cold to be in the House of God today.

I know Lord Jesus that you'll return something to them, God,

for their faithfulness. Lord Jesus to your house.

God will not fail to thank you and praise you for what you

accomplished. In the lovely name of Jesus

Christ that I pray Amen and Amen the church say Amen Amen, you

may be seated today in Jesus name.

I kind of prefaced what I said because I understand that there

are many feelings provoked whenever someone mentions the

word holiness or holy. And some of those feelings may

just be the result, perhaps of some misunderstandings about the

holiness of God or our holy God. I would dare to say this morning

that there wouldn't have been anybody leery here today if I

said we were going to prod into the meaning of love today

because we know, according to Scripture, first, John tells us

that God is love. But just as emphatic and as

direct as that statement is that God is love, the Bible also

records that God is holy. So matter of fact, in this text

today that we read, we see that the Scripture kinds of binds a

little bit of love and holiness together with one another.

Love, love and holiness. And many times people describe

them as the attributes of God that I see it God is love, God,

he is holy. It's not just an attribute so

much it's the very nature of God.

It's, it's who he is. And it's interesting again, our

text joins right here in verse 12, it speaks of love.

And then verse 13, it speaks of holiness in these new

consecutive verses. The Bible tells us in our text

that that the Lord makes us increase and abound in love with

a goal in mind. This was the goal for making us

increase and abound in love. The goal in mind to the end that

we may be established or established our hearts blameless

or unblameable in holiness at the coming of the Lord Jesus

Christ. So again the the subject of love

it it's just too vast to just the divine by defined by the

words unconditional love. The love of God is too vast just

to call it unconditional love, but also holiness is too vast

just to define it as God's sinless perfection.

Because neither of these just aptly describe what love is or

holiness is in their entirety. Amen.

We can talk about holiness as being a separation from sin and

a dedication to God and all of those things that we say that I

have said already about love and about holiness, they're

absolutely true, but it's not the entirety.

It's not the completion of the whole picture of everything

there is to be said. When you look in your Bibles

from Genesis to Revelation, the terms holy and holiness,

sometimes as people read them, mean different things to

different individuals. And I believe that's the reason

why there's somewhat of a controversy today because we

come up with our own concept or idea about what holy is

concerning God or what holiness is concerning God.

But the Bible tells us that holiness is a very clear,

significant topic in Scripture. As a matter of fact, I just did

a little run on it. I was using my Little E Sword

Bible program. And the word holy is found one

611 times in the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

To put that in perspective, the word love is found 311 times

from Genesis to Revelation. We see that in our text that one

of the purposes of our growth in love is having our hearts

established, unblameable Brother Reese in holiness whenever the

Lord Jesus Christ returns. Amen.

That means when it comes to being holy, every one of us then

got to be careful of not not to miss anything, Amen.

I want to have a good understanding of it.

I don't want anything to be missed.

Amen. I want to know everything there

is to know about holiness because He wants me to be

unblameable at His return in that regard.

And so to understand everything there is about the holiness of

God, it's necessary to look about a few different

perspectives of holiness. And we will not get through them

all today. But number one, we got to look

at the difference between God's holiness and our holiness, God's

holiness and our holiness #2 we got to look at today the

difference between the holiness that we acquire, the moment that

we've been born again of the water of the Spirit and God's

Spirit comes inside of us. The holiness that we acquire at

that moment, and then the holiness that we express through

the life that we live #3 we got to look at the differences

between external holiness and internal holiness when we talk

about stewardship of our attitudes, stewardship of our

emotions, stewardship, if you will, of our physical externals.

Amen. All of these things.

And so with that, today, I think it, we need to dig in just a

little bit and see what, what exactly does holiness mean?

What does the Bible, Let's put it in those terms.

What does the Bible mean by the word holiness?

Well, and I'm throwing little, little Hebrew and Greek language

here. You today your Bible, the Old

Testament was written in the Hebrew language, in the New

Testament, the Greek language. But the Hebrew word translated

holy in the Old Testament was known as kadosh, and the Greek

word used in the New Testament was hagios.

Our English word then that we have is the word holy.

The word that we use holy today in our English language actually

came from a German root word, which was Hal.

All right, that's where we get the words that we use today in

our English language as whole and health.

There's a, there is a tie of holiness to wholeness and the

healthiness. This is also the root of the

German expression, what we call today as hell, right?

It's an expression where we are are telling a person that we

would help them and wish them to have good health or happiness or

good luck to hell. And so when we look at all this,

even there's a, there's another connection to the Hebrew word

and you have it in the word Hallelujah, Hallel, which means

to praise. Hallelujah means praise the

Lord. So we see all of this concerning

the word holiness. We see wholeness, we see health,

we see happiness, we see praise. All these things are in the idea

of holiness in its general sense.

And so that that's a lot of positive factors.

Brother Fred, when I think of health and holiness and things

of that nature, Amen. Positive impact for a believer,

Amen. For God himself, a life of

holiness. But when you get into looking a

little bit at narrow meanings of, of the word holy or holiness

in the Bible, Amen. What it means to say to someone

or something, whether it calls something holy or someone holy,

Amen. We get the idea from Scripture

many times in Scripture. I've said this probably a

gazillion times it seems like. But whenever a word is first

used in Scripture is the beginning of the meaning of that

word in the Bible, it's, it's like it's purest meaning.

And we go yes to the book of Genesis chapter #2 for this

meeting. The Bible says in Genesis 2 and

verse #2 on the 7th day God ended his work which he had

made, and he rested on the 7th day from all his work which he

had made. And God blessed the 7th day and

sanctified. Everybody say sanctified.

The word sanctified is used, but the Hebrew word that it comes

from a lot of times is translated holy in our English

Bibles. So this is really the first

occurrence, sanctification, holy, same thing right here in

Scripture because that in it he had rested from all his work

which God had made. And so we have this word holy.

It's a matter of fact, to understand sanctified means

holy. It's later in the book of Exodus

chapter #20 whenever the the 10 commandments are being listed,

that God tells Israel, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

So after creation was finished, after the fowl, the air, the

beast of the field, all these things were finished, man and

woman was created. The Bible tells us that God set

the 7th day apart from the other six days, because the other six

days were all used for common labor of creation, of the things

that would be in the water, the things that would be in the sky,

the things that would be up on the land, humanity and animals

and beasts and creeping things. All these other days were for

common labor. But the 7th day was different.

The 7th day was set apart as a day of rest Amen.

And so this tells us that there can be even particular times, as

it was here in the book of Genesis, set aside or deemed as

holy unto the Lord. And so in order for the people

to keep it holy that the commandments told us of, then

they would set this day apart and make it distinct and

different from every other day of their life for the purpose of

setting aside time of seizing from their labor and turning

their attention toward God. It wasn't that all the other

days were evil. It's just all the other days

weren't holy because they weren't set aside for a

particular use and for a particular purpose.

And so that seventh day was dedicated to the Lord.

And being dedicated to the Lord, it was different then from all

others. It made it special.

It made it, if you will, holy. When we read in the book of

Exodus chapter #3 we read an episode even with Moses.

Many of you will remember it. It's a quite popular passage of

scripture. Moses encountered God.

He was watching over his Father in law's sheep on the backside

of the desert. His eye was caught by something

that was not typical for him to catch.

And it was a Bush that was burning, but it wasn't being

consumed. And the Bible says in Exodus 3

and verse 4. And when the Lord saw that he

turned aside, speaking to Moses, He turned aside to see God

called unto him, that is Moses out of the midst of the Bush,

and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

And he said, Draw not nigh, hit her, put off thy shoes from off

thy feet. For the place where upon thou

standest is holy ground. So we sing that a time could be

set aside as holy, but now we have a place that can be set

aside as holy. He's saying, Moses, take you,

take your shoes off. Because this ground isn't like

all the other ground of the desert right here.

This is special ground. I want you to honor this.

This is special right here. Take your shoes off.

Show, show some respect for this ground.

Amen. Whenever you come here because

God wanted him to know this ground has been visited and

touched by me, and since it's been visited and touched by me,

it's not like every other ground.

It's had my touch upon it, all right.

And so this, this is holy ground.

This this particular place is holy because I have touched it.

And so there's this idea of holiness, of course, in

association and connection with a holy God.

Hey man, in the prophet Isaiah book in your Bible, Isaiah

alone, in Isaiah alone there about 30 times that God is

simply called this the Holy one 30 times and Isaiah he's called

the Holy One. For example, example, Isaiah 43

and verse three, he says for I am the Lord, thy God, the Holy

One of Israel, thy Savior. And Isaiah 48 and verse #17 he

says thus saith the Lord. And I like this because this

kind of ties back to who do you belong to?

Thus said the Lord thy Redeemer. Remember redeeming, buying back

some have been sold, or taking buying back something that used

to belong. Thus said the Lord thy Redeemer,

the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord, I am the Lord thy God.

And so we see many times in Scripture that holy or holiness

is, is associated with God. So much in the Bible, again, not

just an attribute of God, but it is God.

God is holy. And so we cannot, I believe from

Genesis to Revelation, if you were to read it, I mean, 611

times it's mentioned, you cannot separate the God of the Bible

from the concept of holiness. He cannot do it.

God is holy, It's his very nature.

And he, the Redeemer, the one who bought me, He's the holy

one. Whenever you get out all these

little dictionaries about the Hebrew language and you look

through them and look at the root word of holiness, Kadosh,

it means pure God is a holy God. He is a divine pure God.

Amen. There, there is no, there is no

uncleanliness about our God. God is pure in his moral

character. God is pure in all the ethics of

his attributes. His words, his acts are pure.

His thoughts are pure. His attitudes, his modus, his

judgments, all of those things are pure.

As a matter of fact, when we talk about God, it's an absolute

purity. Brother Trout, he's perfect,

could find no fault with him. That's the reason when God made

himself abide and came among us as Jesus Christ, and he was even

before the trial pilot, before he's crucified, I find no fault

with him. He's absolute purity without

blemish, no imperfection. All right, This is the God that

I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, the Bible

says in first John one and five Speaking of this God, God is

love, God is holy, God is light, and in him is no darkness at

all. John said it also describes him.

The Bible says in James One that he is the Father of lights with

whom is no variableness, neither any shadow of turning.

It's again speaking to the absoluteness of the purity and

the honor of our God. And so it indicates us that

God's holiness, His purity, His perfection, this pure light come

in the darkness. There's none like him.

He alone is holy, but the one who is truly holy, blameless in

holiness, has provided them for us an example, an example about

what it means to be holy. Jesus said in Saint John 319.

And this is the condemnation that light is come into the

world, and men love darkness rather than light because their

deeds were evil in a very practical sense this morning.

Holy means to be separated, separated from what's unclean,

separated from what's impure. Or if we could say it like this,

it means then to be dedicated to everything that is holy and

dedicated to everything that is pure.

So since God is the absolute representation of what holiness

is, then it's God who sets the boundary line of what is holy

and what isn't holy. Because nobody.

We could all have opinions. You might be 7 days from Sunday

what those opinions are, but only he who is absolutely holy

knows where appropriately to put the line, Amen.

So we know that none of us are exactly like God.

When I received the Holy Ghost, I received the Holy Spirit in my

life, right? And I'm either submitting to

that Spirit I received on some days and other days, Amber, I

kind of go my own way, right? And I feel conviction because

that Holy Spirit's like, and I'm like, talk to the hand because

the face ain't listening. I'm going to do what I want to

do, you know, type of scenario. Hey, man.

And so none of us have absolute holiness.

None of us are absolutely pure or absolutely perfect.

The Apostle Paul described as having the Holy Ghost, as having

this glorious treasure, but it's in this earthen vessel.

It's in this earthen vessel. And so we fall short and

sometimes we have selfish motives and selfish ideas and

sometimes, I'll speak for myself, we get bad attitudes.

Good case in point, Tatum. Wednesday night, my daughter

locked her keys in her car for the second time.

Within probably a month, both of her, both of her car fobs was in

the car. That's the way it was last time.

Her only key is in the car. The first time I went to her

workplace and fished with a coat hanger for about an hour or so

in the bitter core code to get it out.

Wednesday night, it was that again, except the other side.

I became so frustrated. I had a bad attitude.

I'm just telling you, I, I, I'd mess with that for so long, got

the keys right there that there was no way they were all going

to come out. I had a bad attitude.

I know, Fred, but you'd worked all day.

I thought about it. You worked all day and I wasn't

going to do that to you. I know you would have, but I

just decided I'd get the bad attitude for you so you could

sleep. I had a bad attitude.

I wasn't holy in that moment. I'm just telling you I was not

holy in that moment. Because we all say and do things

sometimes that are not in harmony with the character of

God, that pure, absolute holiness.

Hey, man, cut. When we talk about God's

absolute holiness, we do talk. It's something, right?

That's separate. It's set aside.

That's the reason why holiness in today's world is so bizarre,

because it doesn't fit the mode of regular society.

It's set apart. It's distinct, it's different.

It's noticeably different. Come on.

Yes, that's right. Amen.

In other words, because God is absolutely pure and we are not,

His Holiness is different from mine.

I'm aspiring. That's a go.

That's a high mark I'm working toward.

I'll let me put it in this way. I'll never reach there till the

day of rapture. Until we are like Him.

It doesn't. The Bible says it does not yet

appear what we shall be, but we shall be like Him in that

moment. So yeah, I'm strive, but that

doesn't keep me from striving. That doesn't keep me from

pressing toward the mark of a high prize and the calling of

the Lord Jesus Christ. So he is definitely His Holiness

is separate from me and then different from me, but it's

something to it's something to strive for.

That's the reason why some of the Hebrew Bibles translate

that, that kadosh or that holiness as different.

As a matter of fact, one Jewish translation of Leviticus 19 two

says it like this. It says you shall be different,

for I the Lord your God am different.

In our English Bibles it is that the Lord is holy, and so you'll

be holy. But it says in one of the Jewish

translations that you'll be different, for the Lord your God

is different. That could also just as easily

be translated. You shall be pure for the Lord

your God is pure, or you shall be set apart because the Lord

your God is set apart. All of these are legitimate

standings of His Holiness. So I'm, I'm as a believer, I'm

in pursuit of holiness. And as you pursue holiness and

pursue the Lord who is absolute, pure and different from society

and everything else, you will become different than the world

that you live in. Amen.

Because our society deems different values than the values

of the Lord what God sees as holy.

Most of our society, and it runs the gamut, even an attitude and

all kinds of things. Most of our society would say

it's just not relevant, all right.

But the Bible says and tells us that God's values, his ways

again, are ways that are higher than our ways.

His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, more noble,

transcendent values. That's why the Bible says that

this is a tremendous verse. But in Proverbs 1524, it says

this. The way of life is above to the

wise. And if you read Proverbs 15, I

want to, I want to define this for you.

The wise. Is it like the wise that we

think of right now? Somebody intellect, intellect

intellectually, I can't even talk this morning.

Someone that's smart. All of my family is just just

adoring the fact that they're related to me right now.

I'm just, they said, have you practiced the word stupid

lately? I'm just, you know, Sister Cox,

come on, help me out here. It's not wise doesn't

necessarily equate with intellect, right?

Or being smart in Proverbs 15. It's the wise in Proverbs in

general. The wise are the ones who align

themselves with the ways of God. So reading it in that with that

understanding, the way of life is above to the wise, the way of

life is above to those that are trying to align themselves with

the ways of God, that He may depart from the hell beneath.

That's awesome. When we say God is holy, and

that means He is perfectly and absolutely pure, without spot or

blemish or any kind, separated and different from anyone else.

Amen. And even as a creator, His own

holiness indicates to us that He is separate and different from

His creation. He is.

He's the creator made us separate and different.

It's just like a painter. A paint is separate and

different from his painting. There are fingerprints.

There are things in the painting that indicate who the painter

is, but it's not just like the painter, Amen.

All of us are part of the pain. All of us are part of creation,

but God is the painter, He is the Creator, and he has

fingerprints of himself upon and in our lives.

So when we talk about God's holiness and our holiness, there

is a difference between US and Him.

When we think about in the human realm, holiness can be thought

as the attributes that God manifests in the life of a

believer. That means my holiness must be

modeled after God's holy. He's the standard.

You know, you know, if if a dollar because that's bad today,

I guess sooner or later I think dollars will be out of

circulation. But whatever it is a 20, if

there was a different standard for our money and there it

varied all within the United States what that standard was,

then the value of that is up. It's every which way.

We could not do commerce, we could not do business because

there was no standard that we can go back to as a guy that

says this is this is what $20 is be no use if it was left up to

everybody's own idea and concept.

Well, likewise with holiness, there's must be a standard and

the standard is God because we can't live.

We can't live without there being some type of standard,

some type, if you will, common ground that says this, this is

the way it is. And so our holiness then is not

be based upon my thoughts or my ideas or my, my, what I believe

that should be or how I define that.

No, it's what God defines it to be.

Hey man, because when I understand, whenever I first

come to the Lord and I'm filled with His Holy Spirit, I'm

anointed with His Holy Spirit, so to speak.

Amen. It develops inside of me them a

longing for a pursuit of more of what I have experienced, right?

Of more of what I've experienced.

David describes the difference between our holiness and God's

holiness just in a couple of verses of the Psalm.

Psalm chapter #18 and verse #30 look at this.

As for, and I'm just going to read a segment of it, Brother

Zach. But As for God, his way is

everybody say is, is perfect. It is perfect.

Look at that. If we go to the 32nd verse just

a couple down, the Bible says it is God that girdeth or arms me

with strength and maketh. Everybody say maketh my way

perfect. Here's the big difference.

God is, and God's trying to help me make my way perfect.

His way is perfect and I'm on the journey in it.

And God is making. God is helping.

God is enabling, God is empowering.

God is. He is, but I'm in process.

That's the difference between our holiness and his is already

founded. His is already established.

It's trying to be established in my life.

His is already a said and done finished work.

I'm in process. Amen.

So I need to be made, but there's something that Donuts.

It's kind of like the Potter and the clay scenario, right?

I need to be made. I need to be formed.

I need to be formed. Amen.

So God is working in our lives and it is I mean, and this is

not my my notes today and I'm having problems talking this

morning. I probably just need some food

tonight. That's what it is.

I'm just going to, I'm up here in delirious and it's just

really bad. And but the Bible tells us,

Speaking of Scripture in, in Philippians chapter #4 I believe

it is talking about where you work out your own salvation with

fear and trembling. It might be Philippians chapter

#2 but it says you work out your own salvation with fear and

trembling. We're like, oh, I work out my

own salvation. But the very next verse tells us

it is God in you. It's God in you working it out.

And so when you get that holy one, that Holy Spirit inside of

you, the way that your salvation is worked out is by him working

through that Spirit that you receive, working through you.

It's not in my notes, but it's in the book of Philippians,

Amen. My wife can probably find it

while I continue, Amen, teaching this morning.

But whenever we consider this now, so that God's holiness is

different, my holiness, bar none, yes.

But there is also a difference between what we'll call today

that holiness that we received the moment that we're born again

in the water and the Spirit. Because the Bible tells us in

the book of Corinthians that he imputes his righteousness to us,

imputes his righteousness to us in a moment, and then what we

live out in our daily lives. All right, so you got to think

in a couple of dimensions this morning.

Again, we have a spiritual position in God when we're born

again of the water and the Spirit at our new birth in a

moment of time and our our sins have been cleansed by the watery

grave of baptism because we went down to the lovely name of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And whenever we receive his

spirit inside of us, right, the gift of God, the Holy Ghost

inside of us and that is signaled and, and and evidenced

and uttered. Amen with other tongues that you

were not taught to speak or say. It's not like some of the

language you have, but it's the empowerment of the Holy Ghost.

Then we stand before God as holy ones.

He's imputed His righteousness unto us, but how many here ever

received the Holy Ghost and still had some unholy way by an

act of God? I'm washed by act of God.

I'm called His positionally because He imputed His

righteousness to me positionally.

I am holy before the Lord, but there's another holiness, and

that's how we live and what we do with our lives after we

receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

So I've been made holy by the new birth.

But then I got to learn the ways of the Lord, the model of the

Lord, to put in practice, to put in practice Scripture.

Amen. In his spirit, the Bible says in

Hebrews 12 and verse #14 Paul writes and says follow everybody

say follow. Or we could use the word pursue

peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see

the Lord. Paul also wrote in 2nd

Corinthians 7 and verse #1 Brother Zach there, I'm just

using the last phrase there. He says, but let us cleanse

ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting

holiness in the fear of God. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let us Paul speaking to the church at Corinth, Let us

cleanse ourselves. I was cleansed whenever I He

washed me in the watery grave of baptism.

He did all this. I was holy.

Yes, you were positionally, but there is also an applied

holiness. That is a journey.

That is a journey. Holiness is absolutely granted

by God through your new birth. But then it is continued to be

pursued and followed after in our lives.

It's an applied holiness. Just just imagine with me for a

moment, and I'm being mindful here.

Imagine me just for a moment that that you have some very

expensive liquid that you would like to display and one of the

old classic Coca-Cola bottles somewhere around the 1950s.

Brother Fred, you just like to do that this expensive liquid

and what's so just exquisite and neat about this, this this

liquid is that it sparkles like stars on a cloudless night that

that is just that's just the way that it performs.

And so you go to a garbage dump and you find a pile of old

bottles and you're looking them over very carefully and a lot of

them are caked with dirt both on the inside and the outside.

And you finally found one that you believe is potential.

So you take it and you take it to the proprietor of the dump

and it's a dirty bottle over and over.

But he dollars, yeah, it's going to cost $10,000.

Well, price seems just a little ridiculous, but you pay it

because you have the money and you want that particular bottle.

And so then you take the bottle home and you go clean it up

because you're putting this just expensive, just neat, just

fabulous liquid that you want others to see inside the bottle.

And so the first thing you do, I mean, they use Dawn to clean,

you know, oily animals. It's been in oil spills.

You get your little Dawn bottle out and you put some squirts in

there and you got your little, you know, bottle brush and

you're cleaning that little thing and you rinse it.

I thought, man, the inside, that's clean enough now to hold

this sparkly substance and you're about ready to pour it

in. But then you realize the outside

isn't clean and what's good for the inside to be all clean and

me put this sparkly substance in there when they're still not

going to be able to see it. This is expensive stuff and it

has such a radiance and the insights clean, but nobody's

still going to appreciate what's there because I don't have the

outside clean. And so after all, you just begin

to scrub down the outside as well, and you do it.

And when it's all said and done, here is a bottle that that's

transparent enough or both inside and outside clean enough.

And you put this expensive liquid in that you wanted

everybody to see and now they can see because there's a

holiness both internally and externally.

Amen. Here's the fact of the matter.

The moment that this individual grabbed the bottle from the

dump, listen to me, it became holy in the sense it was set

apart. It was set apart from the

grouping of all the other bottles.

It was separated. And then he started to dedicate

it to his purpose of what he wanted.

Again, under score, the idea of holiness, it's a great picture

of when a person is born again. God puts a spirit on you.

He sets you apart, his blood. You become God's property,

separated from all the rest of humanity and dedicated to God

for his purpose. But if He puts a spirit in US

and that's all that happens, He really wants to let our light

shine before men, that they might see our good works and

glory our fire, our Father, which is in.

But if that spirit gets inside of me, and all the mechanics of

my external life are the same that my outer life has always

been, how's any attention going to come to the change that's

happened on the inside of you? Hallelujah, Amen.

And so there is a washing, there is a process, Amen, of holiness

that takes place in our everyday lives so that glorious light can

go beyond, if you will, the clutter of the light that we

once knew. The Paul wrote to through the

Corinthians again, he told them look at this in First

Corinthians one and verse #2 Brother Zach, the Bible says

unto the Church of God, which is at Corinth to them that are

sanctified or made holy or set apart in Jesus Jesus Christ,

called to be Saints, called to be the holy ones.

I'm not just sanctified you, I want you to be holy.

I'm not just set you apart. I want you to live the life

again. That's the reason why I told us

to cleanse ourselves of the flesh and the spirit.

We looked at this just last week.

It's an external and an internal flesh and spirit.

So we're made holy through the new birth, but I need cleaned.

There needs to be a cleansing of the flesh, a cleansing of the

spirit. They need to be perfect and

again, the idea perfect in Scripture, we think, Brother

McGee, there's no one perfect that's right.

But perfection in Scripture oftimes relates to completion or

a finished work. So the story of the bottle

really shows holiness in a couple of ways.

One has to do with our new birth.

God saved us. Now we belong to him, right?

I am his, I'm holy positionally, but then there's a second aspect

where we're living and on a journey and we're being made and

more progressively becoming more holy through a cleansing of

ourselves, of flesh and spirit. New Testament word for it is a

big word. They call it sanctification, but

that's what it is. That setting apartness 1 happens

in an instant. Our position with God.

One happens over a lifetime. Amen.

God starts the process. God starts the process.

But you see in Scripture, there's times he says that we

got to separate ourselves and there are other times it says he

separated us. It's not contradictory.

We both have a hand in this holiness journey.

We both have a hand. I'm going to say, man, staying

with me this morning. I'm mindful of your time here.

But this is for sure true. God's holiness, our holiness,

all these things. It's not some just like a relic

of some some generation of time pass.

Neither is holiness just some narrow set of external rules.

Holiness is the radiant, the absolute holiness of God that's

expressed through redeemed people because the same Lord who

purchased us by His blood has committed himself to the

cleansing of us by His Spirit that we received.

He increases our love. Brother Reese, so that our

hearts may be established, steady, settled, however you

want to say it, unblameable in holiness when he returns.

So I'm not called sister, same. I'm not called to manufacture

holiness, but to live within what God has already claimed as

His own. You're mine.

The bottle belongs to Him. The cleansing is going on.

And the purpose then is that revelation of Him in US if we in

bow our heads today. I just want to ask you a few

things for prodding our hearts and minds this morning that even

this morning, it doesn't matter how long we've been a part of

the church or we've been say so and so forth.

We can take a moment to examine our hearts today in our life and

ask God, God, show me where I've already made some strides in

holiness, but also God show me areas where you're still pulling

me and making me and want me to become Lord more clean.

You can look at your life today and and see where there's been a

pursuit of holiness intentionally.

Amen. And we're thankful for that,

that positional work of being a new born again Christian and the

the holiness that comes with that.

But we also didn't have a development of holiness of our

life through obedience and reverence and daily and it is

folks. It's a daily surrender that we

live unto the Lord and we're thankful all we want to talk all

day long about the love of God, but we also must realize that

the love of God is trying to establish something in us,

something that's unblameable, something that is pure,

something that is set apart, something that is distinct.

And so as we go forth from this place, I know we have no service

tonight, but as we go forth from this place this evening, we want

to live as a vessel like that old bottle that's meant to be

seen. What is inside of us.

We want to commit, Lord, this week.

Here's a good prayer, Lord, if there's anything that's unlike

you, if there's anything unlike you in my life, help me with

that. I'm telling you folks, and you

might think this is just humorous, but I'm just being

honest with you. The next morn, Friday morn after

or Thursday morn after the bad attitude, Dad with the car and

the keys, I sat down in my chair and my bedroom and the first

thing out of my mouth was talking to God about my bad

attitude on that street. And I cried like a baby because

it wasn't right. What was it I was saying?

God, I need cleansed. Make me.

Make me, I'm just like, thank God it was so late and didn't

have everybody out in their yards, you know?

And make me, I'm on a journey. You're on a journey.

None of us have a place to get in where we can look down our

nose at anybody else. Maybe your Holiness aspects you

have trouble with are things that can be seen and heard.

Maybe someone else's things that nobody can see or hear, but

they're still a struggle. Yes, yes, yes.

Can we just raise our hands right now to the Lord God?

I belong to you and you're the Holy One.

I belong to you, God, and you're the Holy One.

You're the absolute epitome of holiness, God.

Yet you have given me your Holy Spirit.

You have given me the Holy Ghost God, what's been worked inside

of me, let it work through me. Let it work outside of me, God,

so others can witness. Others can witness.

The change that has happened on the inside has impacted every

aspect and area of my life. And that doesn't bring glory to

me. That brings glory to you, That

gives honor to you, That brings respect unto you.

Hallelujah, Jesus, come on somebody here I am, Lord.

God, don't stop working on me. Don't stop working on me, God.

I want to be obedient and I want to be reverent and I want to

follow God. Where you leading?

Hallelujah, Here I am, Lord, Here I am, Here I am.

Hallelujah. These altars are open this

morning. Brother Alex is playing today.