Holier Than Thou? | Jackie Hill Perry

like i think holiness in the abstract is not offensive i think when it gets down to uh submit your body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto god whatever you eat or drink do all things to the glory like when you get into those kinds of like specific exercises of holiness that's when it gets gets offensive because now you're dealing with people's idols you know you're dealing with people's sin patterns and sin natures uh it's an inconvenience to give your life as a living sacrifice when you don't want to this episode is sponsored by the new film respect respect starring jennifer hudson follows the rise of aretha franklin's career from a child singing in her father's church to her international superstardom aretha handpicked jennifer to betray her in this film the remarkable true story of franklin's journey to find her voice and never lose faith her music shaped a generation topping music charts with anthems still relevant today from think to respect to amazing grace jennifer hudson's live performances of aretha songs demand to be seen on the big screen i saw it and it was a great film respect also stars forest whitaker marlon wayans audra mcdonald mark marone titus burgess and mary j blize don't miss respect only in theaters august 13th well thank you for watching another episode of the ju 3 project podcast as always i'm lisa fields the founder of the g3 project and today i'm joined by a very special guest mrs jackie hill perry soon to be jackie hill perry phd in about 15 years correct you're right welcome welcome jackie thank you for having uh the lesser intellectuals at the bottom of the pool on your show i appreciate it you're not you're not lester you probably know more bible than some of the ones that have a phd honestly um tell our audience who don't know who you are just a little bit about yourself yeah so i'm married seven years to a man named preston we have three daughters and one son on the way because i'm five months months pregnant and uh yeah i love jesus and i do all things words so writing books communicating the scriptures and uh yeah just yeah speaking about things all the time and you make a bomb chili um yeah and she ate every ounce of it she and i didn't even realize you wasn't responding to any of my like questions you were just eating and saying it was amazing i've been thinking about it since i left um and a matter of fact i asked my dad to make chili and i told him that you said there was two things you put in it that i'm not going to say because i don't know if you give those things away on the internet right and he saw me putting that in there and he was like why i was like i had it before it was good but yeah it sounds crazy but it it works yeah it does it does so but we're not here to talk about that today we're here to talk about your new book holier than thou mhm so what made you what made you tackle such a big topic like the holiness of god with this new book um one i don't think i'm intimidated by those kinds of topics you know i i i talked about i talk about sexuality uh i wrote a bible study on the book of jude which nobody ever preaches on um so i think for me it was why not uh but it's also primarily because um i feel like how the culture is and even how our hearts are is symptomatic of what we believe about god and i feel like there's never like you can never have enough resources about the nature of god especially um contemporary resources from you know a millennial that's also african-american and woman i think that just adds a different perspective to it that's that's so good so so helpful um one of the things about holiness is when people if you come up like jackie and i in pentecostal uh were you apostolic jackie or pentecostal uh started baptist and then ended up apostolic pentecostal yeah so you know that i'm just all confused you know that holiness uh can take on different forms in the space of pentecostal what are some misnomers about holiness that you think people have been taught um i feel like one of the primary ones is that holiness is just about rule keeping you know like when i used to go to church like when i was growing up it was like you had to wear dresses you couldn't wear pants you didn't go to the movies you didn't listen to secular music you didn't play cards which always i'm like why we can't play cards like i can't play uno but i think they attributed that to too close to gambling or something and so i think many people develop a framework of holiness that is completely centered around just be right do the right thing uh and it's like yes god's holiness uh what's included in it is his moral purity his his ethical standard the fact that he is sinless he is righteous he is good he is honest he is faithful he is consistent all those things uh but it's also his transcendence the fact that he exists differently than us that he is not creaturely in any way and so i think when we hold both together we see that holiness is actually much wider and broader than we have understood it or taught it or lived it that's that's helpful what what is holiness what is the yeah the right understanding of it yeah so the root word of holy is to cut or to separate and so holiness conveys the idea of separateness we obviously observe it first in genesis 2 when god uh got some in my hair when god makes the sabbath day and he sanctifies it he he makes it holy meaning he sets it apart as unique and distinct from all the other days it's a day that's supposed to be treated holy as unto god and so holiness again is just being set apart now the two categories that define god as holy which i just mentioned is god's moral purity that god is righteous without blemish without staying without wrinkle but it's also that god is transcendent he is unique he exists ontologically different than us and um i think one of the i think a really helpful practical way to bring that down to okay what is how does that help me to understand that god is holy well let's say the verse uh cast your cares on me for i care for you when you set up god's moral purity it means he's not lying like it means he has compassion he's not apathetic but if he's transcendent it means that because he's sovereign over your circumstances and sovereign over your cares he can actually use them to work out for your good and his glory and so i think both of those together just shows you like oh like god being holy is a really good thing that's extremely helpful do you think holiness is controversial in this time if we when we get practical about what it actually means to be it in our bodies yes like i think holiness in the abstract is not offensive i think when it gets down to uh submit your body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto god whatever you eat or drink do all things to the glory like when you get into those kinds of like specific exercises of holiness that's when it gets offensive because now you're dealing with people's idols you know you're dealing with people's sin patterns and sin natures uh it's an inconvenience to give your life as a living sacrifice when you don't want to you know when you rather give it to every time they can hear it it comes your way and so that's part of the struggle yeah it cuts at our very core of of culture right now like our ability to dictate our own destiny on truth um and so uh i imagine that there will probably be people who uh who don't like the concept uh of holiness in this thing uh because of that yeah which is one thing i've been thinking about is how even if we don't like holiness we we want it and what i mean is um like even the ideals that we impose on our neighbors we want them to be good to us we want them to be kind we want them to be consistent we want them to uh not lie to us not steal from us we don't want them to be greedy like all of these are holy things that we are expecting of our neighbors and so imagine if we lived in a society where there was no moral standard uh as given to us in the law of god then then earth would have nothing like nothing anchoring it saying no there is there is better and there is there is more and there is a there is a way of living that dignifies humanity and doesn't destroy it and so that's the irony is that we really do want holiness we just don't want it at the expense of ourselves and so it's it's interesting we want other people to live holy we don't want to live holy hello i want you to be nice to me but i don't want to be nice to you yeah you've also uh i think it would be crazy to have you on the g3 project and not talk about your uh jude uh bible study that's true tell our audience a little bit about why jew was such an impactful book for you that you decided to write on it it's like the little brother that nobody pays attention to you know and i felt like i had to say no like all scripture is god breathed and profitable for teaching and the training in righteousness um and for building us up for the work of industry so i felt like man like let me let me bring this back to our attention um but i think the the the compelling thing about jew that people miss is that he legit is dealing with a lot of the stuff that we deal with in the church today and in our culture um and he's answering many of our questions the questions that we asked at you know uh q and a's during uh conferences you know he says like hey like is is cats out here teaching you that god's grace is a license to sin um and if you try to apply that today people may not be esteeming and exalting god's grace but we are exalting his love saying hey here's an attribute of god let's boost this up and use it as a way to recommend perversion and it's just like you know we need to contend against that um and then he spends the whole body of his letter talking about the fact that god will judge people that teach falsely that god will judge people that uh lead people astray and lead people away from godliness which is another necessary message that we serve a god that is just we serve a god who is justice is righteous but then he closes it by encouraging us like yeah they tripping and they going off the rails but to him who was able to keep you from falling hello and so i think jude is one book that like every christian really needs to um yeah spend more time in yes so make sure y'all get that uh jude uh bible study in addition to come on promote lisa holier than now come on here [Laughter] what the what what are some challenges about god's holiness as you were writing this book that made you reflect and say man that's that is challenging to me personally um a lot of it but i i think one aspect in particular is his justice uh how in exodus three no can't be somewhere in exodus when god uh exodus 34 when god speaks with moses when he's in the cleft of the rock and he says the lord the lord uh slow to anger compassionate uh you know having steadfast love who will by no means clear the guilty and you realize that god's righteous standard is is so high that he must judge sinners but then you think about yourself and you say but i'm still alive like other just reached out and touched the ark any and he dropped dead you know i'm saying ananias and safari just said a little lie and they dropped dead i didn't did more than that all the time so for me that was that was the thing that got to me is that god has been more forbearing and patient towards us than we are willing to give him credit for uh and that just that convicts me on another level because it's like i don't even exhibit that kind of patience you know what i'm saying like somebody sins against me once and i want to cut them off i want to i want to be vengeful but it's like even god himself is slow to anger and so both of those thing is just like wow like yo you you different yeah that's that's so helpful and such a helpful thought and we as you were talking i started to think about how i was just esau was on the podcast a couple weeks ago we were talking about how people think there's two different gods the old testament god and the new testament god the old testament guy is angry and then the new testament god is nice um and loving and if you read scripture as it's written from genesis to revelation you you know as you're articulating god has always been merciful god's always been sold to anger he didn't just wipe them out now there's instances as you said in the old testament and in the new where it's like you get one and done but you know that one and done also is what the part of your life that we saw but we don't know in the nicest of fires history so we only see them one time and that's when they get that one and done but they could have been living filthy their whole life and god was merciful to them um my goodness that's an observation right there but we just we just see them at one aspect of their life where god cut them off um yeah so i i love how you highlighted that because i think that's helpful for us to look at it and that goes along with something i know you're passionate about just reading the whole word um don't just um cherry pick take the whole role as ezekiel said the bitter with the sweet because i mean i we know this but like you really can't you cannot understand much of the new testament without knowing the old you just can't it's not written in such a way where you can isolate these books from one another how are you going to understand the book of hebrews how are you going to understand romans how are you going to understand jude even like they are constantly making reference to the old testament and so i think seeing how both of these hold hands just gives you a really clearer picture of god himself um and what he intends for us to believe about him that's awesome when you said hold hands i just thought like a illustrator illustrating the old and new testament holding hands that would be dope that would be pretty somebody should do that um they should because if any illustrators are watching send us that tag us um i don't want to do the work but if you feel like this and they're gonna put a world but beneath it like they always have worlds and hands next to each other in pictures so what are what are the apologetic challenges you see i know people give you send you a lot of questions you and preston preston has um conversations on the street is that what it's street combos right mm-hmm um so yeah you talk about strangers about the faith yeah jackie not so much i don't see her talking to strangers on the street no ma'am [Laughter] but uh y'all are an apologetic uh family um you you um are engaging y'all have different personality types so i think preston's more extroverted you're more introverted so he'll be on the street but you also do it online through your books and and through other ways so y'all are apologetic at your core as a unit um which is great to see what are the challenges y'all are seeing um in in your work man um i know preston he would say in his in his field in particular he he would say that the evangelical response to justice and social justice issues is such a stumbling block to a lot of the conversations that he has uh in the barber shop on the street um and so i think that's definitely an apologetic hindrance that uh there's just a large swath of the church that does not they confess to be christians but they don't actually seem to function uh like christians i think for me especially because the the the lane i tend to fall in in many times is sexuality but also just woman i meant woman conferences all the time i i think there is um a biblical illiteracy problem i think there is a just a self-centeredness to how we understand the christian faith and even how we read the bible and i think what that does is it not only hinders our ability to interpret with interpret the scriptures without ourselves at the center but i think it also hinders us from living in a bible community where even those kinds of hindrances can be challenged and then overcome if that makes sense and so i think just having also a faulty view of the church and our need for it and that social media and podcasts and conferences and all of that is good but it's not sufficient to sustain us especially as we venture into a world that is getting more wicked by the day and that wickedness is convincing it's compelling it sounds logical it sounds just to live for yourself but it's not and so there's many but i think those two are really important yeah and i think that um that biblical literacy that you mentioned and the self-centeredness oftentimes of preaching uh work hand in hand um because i always tell pastors people are going to study how you preach come on yes they're going to study principles so they're going to go to the concordance and find all the faith passages and study them out of context you know they're going to study so if you teach them through your preaching how to study the word by preaching ex expository uh preaching which i mean that's not you know you could do topical but have a healthy balance but if you don't teach people how to go through the word they're always going to think about scripture going forth a point or principle not necessarily going through scripture to understand it that's absolutely true because so much of how i study the bible is based on how i observed other people study the bible period and so but i i still think the bad thing is i imagine that there are people in solid sound preaching churches but the pastor is competing with social media pastors you know and so like it's like because the social media pastor got on yeezys and i'm not saying jesus i got yeezys you know i'm saying but i'm saying all of these superficial external things uh do something to our eyes where we start to get distracted and now we looking at our preacher like oh he not you know he's not talking to the issues of my day he's hard to apply because he way up here and it's like no let your pastor pastor you yeah girl because those uh the popular pastors ain't gonna marry you bury you hello come to your come when there's a crisis um if somebody in your family died they're not gonna be able to comfort you they might give you a nice line but they're not going to be there when christ and you can't observe their fruit their captions is not fruit it's a caption that that's that's just a gift of communication like i need to see gifts of the spirit and you have the privilege of being able to observe that in your actual pastors that you have access to definitely well i want to circle back to the reason we're here holier than that hold it up again nice cover by the way i like how it looks um worn and it's new at the same time so because we praise the ancient of the days amen all right my god that almost sent me the tongue um uh and the stained glass that's dope too just kudos to you on design shout out to creators who think about aesthetic that matters it really does i bought books just because the cover looked yeah nice like it really i don't even know if the words are good but i like that cover yeah it will bring you in uh what other things about the book holier than now that you want our audience to know that we haven't already talked about um again that god uh being holy is a good thing and and the subtitle of the book is how god's holiness helps us trust him and i wrote that because again uh the doctrine of holiness can you know stay in our minds stay up there in the cloud somewhere but i think when we understand that god's holiness is actually an incentive for our faith then we recognize why it's something that we need to understand and thus believe and i got that framework from two passages in scripture one is jeremiah two uh where god is speaking to israel and he says what injustice uh or what worthlessness have you found founded me that you left me and went after worthlessness and became worthless and then in john 8 jesus talking to israel again he says can any of you convict me of sin if not why don't you believe me and in both instances you have god presenting his moral purity as the reason why he's worthy to be trusted worthy to be loved worthy to be near um and so i think that's a really interesting perspective so that when you get get into the book and when you get into the resources that the book explains whether there's exodus or or john or whatever you start to see man god is saying that there is nothing in me that is bad there is nothing in me that is limited everything i am is sovereign and sufficient uh good and righteous wise and perfect and so why not trust my word why not surrender your body why not give me your mind um especially when you compare him to idols idols are always held up as profitless as useless why because they're insufficient to be god therefore they cannot be holy and so i think um that's what i want people to see is that man if god is holy that means you cannot treat him as if he has the potential to be be sinful towards you or or be anything less than good that doesn't mean it won't hurt because like the spirit drove jesus into the wilderness and god laid on him the sin of everybody and judged him in the flesh and so to be in christ does not mean that i won't suffer but it does mean that again god is so sovereign and so good that he will utilize it for our good and for his glory so that's what i want people to see is that this ain't just so you can learn a bunch of stuff it's literally so that your faith will be stronger that's me that's my soapbox and i'm off of it hey man woman of god jesus you tell i've been talking about this a lot i got excited no i think that that is helpful as we we mentioned biblical literacy and one of the things that you know i know that you're passionate about is people reading scripture um for those who are struggling to read scripture to to love the word of god what what tools would you to offer them or what strategies to falling in love with god's work there's so many because i could i could i could offer tools but then if i don't address the idols that might be keeping you from loving the scriptures then it's like i'm just giving you you can i'm saying like it's sometimes we don't love the scriptures because we don't love god himself sometimes so i think even just being honest with ourselves honest with our heart about what it is that's keeping me from loving this book that reveals god so get that out the way i think from there one thing that i see uh in this generation in particular is that we really lack patience when it comes to reading and studying the word of god and i think that comes from you know these ten minute devotionals uh these quick little clips on instagram like we just want a quick word all the time and so when we get in the scriptures because we didn't get it quickly or we didn't get a word that engaged our affections quick enough and all of that we just close it and we move on but it's like man the people that you look to these these pastors that you follow that give you this good word that 30 minute sermon might have came through four weeks of pray in four weeks of study and meditation and talking through it and begging god and wrestling with the text and so i think that's one thing is we need is we need patience while studying the scriptures which is to say hey you may not get everything the first time but that's okay like stay stick stay there have the holy spirit be with you in it like holy spirit help me help me understand this thing i don't get it and now help me apply and i promise you if you stay faithful to that if you lean into that god will show you things in the text that you did not know was there why because the spirit himself is what illuminates the word since the spirit himself is who inspired it and so yeah get rid of your idols and endure through that thing and then listen to two three podcasts and go to courageous conversations uh the first weekend of september yes shout out to that courageous conversation i want to go so bad i was supposed to promote that at the beginning um but we are actually sold out of in-person tickets so those who want to come in person uh yeah we're out but you can come virtually uh for uh get a virtual pass we won't be live streaming but you can get a virtual pass at courageousconvos.org so make sure you do that shout out to jackie for reminding me of that because i completely forgot i got pushed down so i could watch it that weekend okay yeah i i didn't know if you wanted to travel uh five months um pregnant that might be a lot i am i am i i got something to do that weekend that's the problem but i will well you can out of the replay will last for 48 hours okay so you could go i'm gonna watch it i'm gonna be like this with my coffee thank you for joining us jackie how can people get your book um yeah holier than that and how can they reach on social um holier than daobook.net is probably the best because you can you know click on all the sources that has it and then social media i don't think there's other jackie hill pairs there might be install i think if you just type in like help here and you see a brown skin girl with a gap long dress and a bunch of kids and that's me well thank you so much jackie it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast remember to get her book i'll hold it up again holier than thou thank you all for watching another episode of the ju3 project podcast you can catch all our past episodes at g3project.org remember you can get our curriculum merch or take online classes all at g3project.org and you can become a monthly partner uh by going to g3project.org backslash donate remember here at the g3 project we're helping you to know what you believe and why you believe it until next time grace and peace and god bless [Music] you

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 20,099

Rating: 4.9666271 out of 5

Keywords: Jackie Hill Perry, Holier Than Thou, apologetics, jude

Id: e0jUqwhwtJk

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021