Albert Mohler - "Be Ye Holy for I am Holy Says the Lord" | Expositors Summit 2019

and we're going to turn to the Word of God I'm going to ask you to turn to first Peter in the New Testament as we get ready for the message of the evening I'm so thankful for dr. charlie dates and his message this morning and looking forward to hearing him again and have pastor Bob Russell with us such a dear friend to me and a Southern Seminary throughout all the years and a colleague in the gospel here within the context of this great city of Louisville it's wonderful to have him coming I look forward to hearing him open the Word of God also tonight it's wonderful to know that we get more preaching tomorrow and through Thursday Aleister big coming and Herschel York and others preaching we get to do this seriously we do not one of us is here out of coercion or compulsion no one has arrested us and brought us here one day they may arrest us for what we do here but no one's here held captive so that means we're here because we want to be here and because we're drawn together and that raises the question what has drawn us and it is the Word of God who has drawn us that is the the one true and living God and whose voice do we want to hear the voice of God and thus we turn to scripture 1st Peter chapter 1 and we will begin reading as you look in the text at verse 13 therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorant but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written you shall be holy for I am holy and if you call on him as father who judges and partially according to each one's needs conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers not with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot let's pray aye father what do we do when we hear your word when we hear you speak when we hear words such as these what do we do but pray we come before you because our ears are not worthy of hearing such words our tongues are not worthy of articulating such words but you have sovereignly determined that it should be so and it's to your glory and so father we think you're for the privilege of hearing such words for the sacred privilege of speaking such words if either we do so knowing that by these words by your spirit you will conform us to the image of Christ by your word and thus all things are from you and through you and to you to whom be glory forever amen the passage to which we've just turned from first Peter is explicitly about the theme of this conference about purity and in particular the purity of the preacher and that's a that's a very important issue because as we're thinking about the ways that the gospel is compromised in our own era it's abundantly clear that a lack of purity and the pulpit is translated into a catastrophe in the church the stakes could not be higher there is now no place to hide there is no question that one of the chief means by which those who would humiliate the church try to bring about that humiliation is through a demonstration of scandal and sin in the church and particularly in the pulpit the text to which we've just turned in first Peter explicitly describes normative Christianity is a life of holiness with a with a command be holy as God speaks even as I am holy so I want offer you a challenge tonight and I speak it to myself even as I speak to you right now beholding we're waiting be holy try it make yourself holy I'm watching you're watching me I'm going to make myself holy you know what that ends up looking like we make ourselves look foolish we bring in dignity upon the gospel but the command is be holy and that requires some explanation and so in the course of our consideration of this text tonight we're going to consider together what it means that we are offered the command we are addressed with the words be holy as I am holy but we are the people who are wholly incompetent in making ourselves holy every misunderstanding of sanctification is based in a theological error and every theological error produces a malformation of sanctification it started for me very early I became a believer at age 9 and I heard the gospel preached I'd heard it preached many times before but at age 9 I heard the gospel in such a way that I understood myself to be a sinner not just that I sinned but that I am a sinner and Christ was preached as the remedy for sin and rescue for sinners and it just made perfect sense to me for the first time in my life and so I grasped Christ that that is a picture of saving faith I knew myself to be dead in my sin and trespasses and unable to do anything for myself and so I just claimed and confessed Christ with all of the energy and desperation of a nine year old my parents raised me in the nurture and admonition of the Lord I've been raised in a Christian home we were at every service imaginable and at some I don't think ever happened my father was the training union director he was also at times the training director my mother was the preschool director my father was a grocer my mother was a nurse she stayed at home with us from the moment I was the first born born so that they just devoted themselves to the church and to their children I was in every single program of the church that was imaginable all the means of grace were very close to me and in my teenage years I'm thankful that I was surrounded by wonderful faithful Christians and and they loved me in Christ and we we had a youth minister that every Church had to have a pastor and after that you had to have a minister of music and after that you had to have a youth minister and then if there's anything left over you had a Minister of Education but you had to have a youth minister because youth need a minister and back when I was a youth led by a youth minister in the Southern Baptist Convention the job qualifications to be a youth pastor a youth minister and the Southern Baptist Convention was that you graduated from college you could play the guitar and you didn't get a girl pregnant that was basically it there were like three questions that were asked nobody asked do you have a clue what's in the Bible can you teach the Bible is that there's no scandal and you got an education gonna play the guitar your youth minister and if you think I'm exaggerating you need to go back with me and then thankfully so many of those youth ministers love Jesus and they look my youth pastor loved the Lord and he loved us and he was just freshly married to a wife he loved her and and and it was a beautiful picture except when it came to holiness and I don't mean his holiness he was a man of stellar Christian character I mean the theology of holiness so I was a teenager and that's that period of life in which you're trying to think about everything adolescence is when complex analytical reasoning happens and and so get ready get ready this is what this is what makes adolescents adolescence there are physical changes yes but there are cognitive changes so I put it this way a four-year-old thinks but a fourteen-year-old thinks about thinking those are very different things it's impossible to find a four-year-old existentialist you don't find a four-year-old walking around I'm not sure there's meaning in the universe no popsicle all that is necessary you know that that's it that that's that a four-year-old existentialist is an impossibility or a freak of nature that you don't want to meet you know when at one of the two but every fourteen-year-old is an existentialist waiting to happen you know you knew the kid the kid was sweet you know she was she was just happy and the next thing you know meaningless meaningless is there just like all of a sudden she's got one book and it's Ecclesiastes you know how how did this happen you know vanity vanity all is vanity and then but they're thinking about thinking and when you're thinking about thinking you begin to think of yourself in different terms than you thought before and you become not less but more of a mystery to yourself right that's the terror of adolescence it's that you get to know yourself and you're scared of yourself but the dominant model of sanctification in my church was more of a kissing model of sanctification it was it was pointing towards higher life and so you know you had the carnal Christians and you had the the spiritual Christians and there's so much language in the scripture that fits right into this you know not only be holy but but be spiritually minded and and and and so there were those who said what you need to do is you need to you're a baby Christian you need to grow into a mature Christian and mature Christian is on this this level of holiness and and and and and and it's an experience you'll know it when you get there and you feel this intimacy with Christ and and you think only holy thoughts and you do only holy things and and and you've graduated from that car immature level up up until now you're a mature Christian and-and-and-and-and your holy problem is I didn't meet any people who apparently met that definition I just it just it I didn't the people that were spoken of as being holy they were certainly pious in a way but they didn't seem very happy about it and I just didn't see how in Christ we were supposed to graduate to misery and and and besides that with this complex analytical reasoning the whole process whereby you come not only to think but to think about thinking that's when you realize the Sermon on the Mount a four-year-old can't understand the Sermon on the Mount a fourteen-year-old is terrorized by the Sermon on the Mount right right why is a four-year-old because the four-year-old only knows thou shalt not write and you need a lot of that shalt nots if you're four otherwise you won't make it to five you you need that like don't stick the screwdriver in the electrical outlet not a good idea we don't need complex analytical reasoning you don't need to understand alternating current stop all right but at 14 you need a little more and at 14 the problem is when I speak of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said you have heard it said thou shalt not commit adultery but I say unto you that if you lust in your heart you have already committed adultery and and a four-year-old's looking at you cross-eyed not understanding adultery we hope but also not understanding the the inner workings of the heart but at the adolescent it's all of a sudden different because the adolescent knows I am stuck in a pattern of sin even if I do not commit X or Y or Z and and and then the teenager is also stuck in the position of not being able to shift the want button you know you can just say okay I want to not want that I want to want only the things Christ wants me to want I want to be the person who wants that way and doesn't want another way so I'm gonna push that button and I'm gonna go from being a carnal Christian to being a mature holy Christian if I can just change my once the problem is you can't just change your once not just as a factor force of the will now that's where I also decided that I was watching a lot of Christians in denial and there were Christians and you would say you know how can I pray for you oh I'm just singing a happy song I'm just singing it all day long I'm gonna pray for you because you're an idiot no I'm gonna nothing I just this is one of those things where you know you just meet people and they would just they would feel like they had to tell you that they have no struggles whatsoever that they have got this all figured out they're living on this higher plane and as one of my friends pointed out the higher you get the more of a jerk you evidently become that can't be yet that can't be yet now I know there's some of the folks who were you know speaking at a Catholic Conference or whatever if they were to come and speak they would describe it better than that and they produce some wonderful Christian people but the problem is as I tried to understand what it meant to be holy the problem was that I was starting in the wrong place how in the world do I know what holiness is how do I have a definition of the word haha how do I have a standard that even describes for me authoritative ly what holiness is and who can make me holy if I can't myself notice what Peter is writing to the church in verse 13 therefore this is after he's explained our salvation look at the verses preceding concerning this salvation the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things into which angels longed to look I emphasize the word you because Peter emphasizes the word you this is written to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and we have received the gospel we have received the teaching and preaching of Christ we are God's new covenant people and even the Angels long to get to understand that which is revealed and preached to us it's very privileged you we're a priceless ly privileged we that explains the therefore naturally therefore what follows therefore preparing your minds for action girding your loins I love that that's a get ready for the race yeah this is Christianity is not passive it we're not called to a life of passivity we're rather to gird ourselves prepare our minds for action and being sober minded serious set your hope fully on the grace it will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ you know one of the things about the New Testament the Bible as a whole but the New Testament in particular and the shorter epistles even more particularly when you look at these letters you realize that you could preach a sermon on every single verse just look at the verse we just read there's so much there we don't have time to unpack it not even in a in a superficial way except to make reference to it what it sets is the context but we are the center hopefully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ now that tells us that we are to live eschatological lives that's that's very important we are as Christians to live eschatological lives we are not to expect the fullness of anything in this life and by the way that means we're not going to experience the fullness of holiness in this life but we have set our minds fully on the grace of God that will be revealed to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children oh that's a good designation for Christians as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance now that is a shocking statement again we don't have time to unpack it in full but notice that you are surprised by the last word or if not you should be because what Paul says here is do not be conformed to okay we're with him this sounds like Paul this is Peter riding here it sounds like Paul in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove the will of God that which is good and acceptable and perfect do not be conformed to the world that's not what that's not what Peter says he says do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorant oh you ever thought of your life before Christ as a time of ignorant that's how it's defined here Peter by the Holy Spirit says that your life is divided if you're a Christian between a former time of ignorance and the revelation of Jesus Christ wow yeah so we had lived all our lives in ignorance until the light of Christ has shined in our hearts and we are no longer ignorant but whether rather we are illuminated by the revelation of God and by the work of the Holy Spirit to call us to Christ and then the before and after is ignorant and Christ who is our wisdom but there's a life that was involved in our former ignorant there were patterns there were passions that marked and characterized our former ignorant and maybe maybe we were so ignorant at the time we were ignorant of even how our passions were formed in the time of ignorance a part of what has to happen in the life of a Christian is that we are not only liberated from ignorance in an intellectual sense we have to be liberated from the passions of our former ignorant Wow but notice what follows but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all of your conduct but is he who called you all of salvations included in that call effectual call yes but all of salvations included in the call the gospel call is he who called you is holy naturally then you also be holy and all your conduct it continues in verse 16 since it is written you shall be holy for I am holy I think all of us are trying to figure out what the standard is what is the standard for holiness the thrice holy God we are not to be holy merely because it is our spiritual service as Paul would say or a spiritual worship it is because we were created by and we were redeemed by and we are now made alive by the God who is holy Peter says as it is written as it is written that means it's written somewhere and you know where it is if it's written right whenever in the New Testament it says it is written it's not in Homer okay okay it's in the Old Testament so I wonder how many sitting don't look at the note and look at the study note in your Bibles I say this look at me okay don't cheat the question is how many of you know where in the Old Testament that is found and in what context it's not found in Isaiah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets in this sense it's found in the Book of Leviticus in chapter 11 verse 44 which turns out to be one of the weirdest places you could imagine to find this exhortation and command so look with me to Leviticus chapter 11 Leviticus chapter 11 verse 44 just to get the the context let's begin reading in verse 41 I told you you did not know this but you'll use it every swarming thing that swarms on the ground is detestable it shall not be eaten whatever goes on its belly and whatever goes on all fours or whatever has many feet any swarming thing that swarms on the ground you shall not eat for they are detestable you shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms and you shall not defile yourselves with them and become unclean through them for I am the Lord your God consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am holy you shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground for I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to beat your God you shall therefore be holy for I am holy got it I am NOT going to defile myself with any swarming thing I shall eat nothing that crawls on the ground on its belly with for six or eight feet I will not defile myself with a thing that is detestable whatever goes on its belly I have to admit to you have never even slightly I think been tempted seriously I mean you know you you know in the time before more ignorance by God's common grace I don't think I was up to this I I just never really thought of eating spiders roaches etc okay so why in the world is that in Leviticus I mean there's serious serious serious stuff on Leviticus massively important issues in Leviticus what is Leviticus it's the giving of the specifics of the Levitical law it's the it's the law that was to set Israel apart from the other nations because Israel was to be holy as God is holy the God who called out Israel and made covenant with Israel as a holy God and all of the detailed instructions he gave all the way through not only the moral law but the holiness code and even the dietary laws they were to set it Israel apart from the rest of the nations other people can eat bugs but not you okay now I want you to think about something I want you to think about something we are bushwa Christians in the 21st century living in the United States of America and one of the reasons we have never been tempted to eat bugs is because we never had to eat bugs but if you are wandering in the wilderness you will eat any source of calories that passes by we are not spiritually above this we're just have a dietary array that is beyond this but hungry enough don't say what you wouldn't eat Leviticus chapter 11 it sounds strange it's in this context that we actually have the Word of God that comes in first Peter the holy spirit-inspired Peter to go back to Leviticus 11 and here's something else this years think about this Peter is writing this letter to the church and all he has to say is it is written he's writing it as if the people hearing the letter are gonna say oh yeah he's talking about Leviticus 1144 in other words this was so well known to two Jewish believers so well known that the principle that we are to be holy because God is holy that comes right out of this passage in Leviticus 11 it was so well known that all Peter had to do was remind them as it is written you be holy even as I am holy no we go back to 1st Peter chapter 1 the context once again is Peter writing to the church but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written you be holy for I am holy so every malformation misunderstanding corruption of sanctification is based in a prior theological error and the most prior theological error is a misunderstanding of the very character and nature and being of God there is no more fundamental doctrine than knowing who God is and thus there is no more fractious and dangerous theological error than misunderstanding God now of all of the the biblical teachings concerning God the most important of them according to the weight of Scripture is his definition as holy now in theologically we speak of the attributes of God and we speak of holiness as the as as the prime attribute of God's character and and that makes that makes perfect sense it may it makes perfect sense except God is not a puzzle of pieces that we name attributes when put together create the right picture if this is not an attribute of God it is what we attribute to God based in Scripture but it is God and Isaiah makes this very here in Isaiah chapter 6 the famous call passage of Isaiah when you remember that he saw of the Seraphim flying and and he heard them confessing holy holy holy is the Lord of Hosts the whole world the whole earth is filled with his glory that is known of course as the Tri Sagi on and you understand the Hebrew language such that there is no comparative and superlative in Hebrew there is no big bigger and biggest instead it's big big big if it's biggest if it's bigger it's big big this is a little bit big it's big Hebrew emphatic expression is by repetition RC stroll made this so well known to Christians and his book on the holiness of God it gets right to the fact that only one try sake on is found in Scripture only in one place is a word repeated such that it comes to us three times the only tri-state inconsolable that means if we don't know anything else about him we are to know that he is holy and once again that takes us to the limits of language because saying the word holy does not necessarily define what it means that God has revealed himself as holy holy holy and that is because our language also as a matter of our accountability and so when it says that God is holy and we understand that in the Hebrew we understand that in the text what are we being told we're being told primarily that God is infinitely not us oh my goodness he is infinitely not us now that creates a huge problem because we can't even imagine what is infinitely not us other than it's infinitely impossible to figure out what infinitely not us means except we have all the scripture to flesh out what it means that God is infinitely not us and and it means that he is set apart and you know enough to know that set apart set apart how well the important thing that recognizes that that another primal theological mistake is to confuse the creator with creation that's primal to every form of idolatry is confusing the creator with creation God is not his creation he is not in his creation he is not of his creation he is the creator who is transcendent over his creation and Christian theology based in a biblical worldview must never confuse the creator and the creation all right so infinitely not us also means that even as he has made us in His image it is impossible for us to reason from ourselves to God it is only possible to reason from God to ourselves there is no adequate reason in our sinfulness Paul makes this clear in Romans chapter 1 from creation to create or the only reason that was possible for our understanding rightly is from creator to creation and that requires special revelation requires the scripture which we just happen to have by God's grace set apart infinitely not us means more than morally pure but we have to start there because the first thing we know about ourselves is that we are not now as I explained when I try to teach the doctrine of sin and the imago Dei and and and and how we cannot not know that we are sinners every parent has the experience of having a toddler hide when he's done something he hasn't even been yet told not to do right just like Adam and Eve hid in the garden after their sin and it's because that toddler somehow knows that he has broken a law when he hasn't even been told not to do that yet he hides himself it does mean moral and that's made abundantly clear by the fact that even here in this text we are told not to conform to the passions of our former ignorant but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct so it turns out that even though the first meaning of holiness is infinitely distinct from a sinful creation and even from a finite creation it turns out that that is translated most importantly in our understanding and in our worship into a moral holiness and then again you look at the Old Testament now everything makes clear the logic of the Old Testament is is is that God who is holy will only relate to the holy reflections of his own holiness so those who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb are called the thing we are by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ which is ours by faith as we are justified by faith alone such that by the miracle of the cross and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ by the miracle of the gospel when God looks to us he does not see when he looks at Christians he does not see our sin he sees his sons absolute righteousness okay so that's how we can be called Saints it's not because we have behaved better it is not because we are even morally more sensitive than others it is not because we have achieved some kind of moral distinction it is because he is holy and he redeems by making his people holy and this is a real righteousness it's an imputed righteousness that's what Martin Luther called an alien righteousness so insofar as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are holy here's the good news it's a real holiness here's the bad news it ain't you you didn't do it it's there's not a shred of your holiness that is a bowl to God because it doesn't exist the infinitely holy God can only recognize and love as holy what is as holy as he is does that not make the gospel more precious because there's not that make abundantly clear that there is not one of us who has hope of salvation but for the righteousness of another so when Paul talks about the gospel in exalting in the gospel and boasting in the gospel and here when Peter talks about the salvation that the prophets prophesied about the true z'n to which angels longed to look he's talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ that alone explains how sinners can be made righteous declared righteous by the father because and only because of the imputed righteousness of his own son but Christians don't become Christians by being a holy but Christians show they are Christians by being holy now here's the the issue we need to keep in mind we are saved because an alien righteousness is declared to be ours the righteousness of Christ the active and the passive obedience of Jesus Christ His perfect righteousness are declared to be ours to the one who has faith in Jesus but the holiness to which we are called in this life is one that will never be perfected because the only one who can perfect it is the very God who redeems the revelation of Jesus Christ that Peter talks about here that that revelation of Jesus Christ that we are to set our hope on fully then and then alone is our full holiness made full so we believe in instantaneous punctilious justification but progressive sanctification I served in a church one time there were two little old ladies they were twins I say little old ladies that's very politically incorrect they were two chronologically advantaged females who were twin sisters who who lived together and and one of them declared herself to be so holy that she was without sin I didn't believe it most importantly her sister who lived with her didn't believe it but the point is that she really had somehow I mean after all be perfect even as your father is perfect and and it's easy just to take that and say look God Himself says we can be perfect no God actually says we must be perfect and we will be perfect and that when he looks to us through his son he sees a perfect righteousness but remember this is the same God who by the Holy Holy Spirit inspired John to write if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and if we say we have no sin in us we lie ok now we're told that on the front end before our salvation we were ignorant and then we're told on the other end on the other side if we declare ourselves to be without sin we're lying it's an amazing passage because it does include a command there are there is an imperative here there are action verbs that are involved here we are to be holy in our conduct not only that but in all of our conduct comprehensively and then we're told even as the citation is made to that which is written in Leviticus chapter 11 you shall be holy for I am holy but the point I wanna make is he doesn't say be holy rather you shall be holy but we're not let off the hook because he's also told us that we are to be holy in all of our conduct so it turns out that a gospel minded biblical doctrine of sanctification says here it is be holy but you can't but God's gonna make you holy because he can be holy in all your conduct because you must because the God who saved you and is holy expect you to live holy lives now you're not gonna live a life of holy perfection and thus when you sin when you confess your sins he's faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness and then you are called to a life continuing a holy conduct making progress in your faith as Paul says making progress in your faith so that as Peter says we set our minds on the revelation of Jesus Christ which is to come and we're living in the already but the not yet and we are to be found simultaneously seeking to be holy and knowing that only God can make us holy and not only can he he will and it will all be to his glory so what do we do with this well notice how Peter concludes because it's easy to stop at verse 16 but I went intentionally just a few verses further and if you call on him as father who judges him partially according to each one's deeds again that's just God the holy judge who has a holy people who requires a holy priesthood and stipulates a holy tabernacle and then designs a holy temple every everything he does is holy the gospel is a holy gospel we called the Bible the Holy Bible because if it's God's is holy and if you call one who his father who judges and partially according each one deeds each one's deeds conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile that by the way just means the Christian life if you don't feel like an exile you don't understand your situation and we're about to understand it more clearly because our culture is going to help us to understand what it means to be in exile knowing that you were ransomed to notice that passive we didn't ransom ourselves we were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers remember the passions of our former ignorance not with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot why are those last words necessary brothers and sisters we will one day have no spots we will one day be without blemish it's not today we don't expect it to be today although we earn for it to be today because we've set our minds fully on the revelation of Jesus Christ but one day by grace we will be without spot or blemish and we yearn for that day and we seek to order our conduct as if we're yearning for that day and we live as if we're inviting the world to see the power of Christ by watching us become more holy because of Christ in us the hope of glory but brothers and sisters the only reason that one day you and I will have no spots is because we were redeemed by the blood of a lamb without spot or blemish and thus were saved really truly saved be ye holy for I am holy says the Lord let's pray a father we pray that your word will do the work within us the only you by your spirit can do we pray that we'll be more obedient to Christ and more glorifying to you and more edifying to the church because of this hearing of your word we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord the lamb without spot or blemish amen you

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Published: Thu Dec 05 2019