Holiness - Time to Take Action

Holiness – Time to Take Action

Text:

Declaration: To be holy requires us sometimes to take drastic action.

Proposition: It requires a resolve and action for one to gain holy living. The price may seem great but the rewards are eternal.

Illustration of Ermine.

In the forests of northern Europe and Asia lives little animal called the ermine, known for his snow-white fur in winter. He instinctively protects his white coat against anything that would soil it.

Fur hunters take advantage of this unusual trait of the ermine. They don't set a snare to catch him, but instead they find his home, which is usually a cleft in a rock or a hollow in an old tree. They smear the entrance and interior with grime. Then the hunters set their dogs loose to find and chase the ermine. The frightened animal flees toward home but doesn't enter because of the filth. Rather than soil his white coat, he is trapped by the dogs and captured while preserving his purity. For the ermine, purity is more precious than life. - HGB

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from the grace of God, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. —D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Crossway, 1999)

I want us to consider today that God wills that his children would be distinctly different in the eyes of this world. It requires a resolve and action for one to gain holy living. The price may seem great but the rewards are eternal.

We shall consider the actions of Jacob and his family that led them to the place where God had intended for them.

Background

Jacob has now returned from Padanaram where he had stayed with Laban for 20 years. Meets his brother Esau with apprehension and then sojourns in Succoth and the land of Shechem.

I. The COMMAND to Jacob

A. Arise seems to indicate he was preoccupied with life as he knows it.

B. It is an instruction to return to the place where he had experienced God for himself the first time.

C. It is an instruction to fulfil a vow he had made

D. What started in Jacob flowed to his household

II. The COMMISSION to the Household

A. To put away what they had become casual with

1. Strange gods

2. Customs and practices

3. Ungodly activity

B. Wash and be clean

C. Changing of garments

Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations or enthusiastic fervours, but in the likeness to Jesus.

III. The COMMITTAL into the ground

A. They took their idols and earrings and buried them.

B. The idea is a burial of something that is now dead.

C. The radical action of Closing doors to what we will not return to

i. Lifestyles

ii. Relationships

iii. Ways of thinking

IV. The CONSTERNATION of the observers (amazement, dread, awe or terror)

A. There is God’s blessing when being obedient to God.

B. There is the work of God in the minds and hearts of the observers.

A holy life will make the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns, they just shine. - D. L. Moody

Conclusion

Will you Arise and consider Him who suffered for you for salvation?

Will you Arise from your entanglement with this world and follow wholeheartedly the Lord like when you first got saved?

Will you take some action to closing some doors, burying lusts and sinful activity?

Will you allow God to impact others by your obedience and likeness to Jesus Christ?