Holiness in the Spirit
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Can you imagine all your thoughts from the past week being flashed on the screen before us this morning? How would you feel? Would you have to leave town?
Our thoughts are just as important to God as our actions, and our thoughts are known to God just as our actions are.
O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
In the sermon on the Mount Jesus taught us that God’s commands are intended not only to regulate outward conduct but our inner as well. Just as we try to adapt the appetites of our bodies we must learn to bring our thought lives under obedience to Jesus Christ.
Paul warns us against misguided and wrongly motivated attempts to control the body and leave our thought lives unrestrained.
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
The Bible tells us that our thought lives determine our character.
For as he thinks within himself, so he is.
He says to you, “Eat and drink!”
But his heart is not with you.
There’s an old verse that says this:
Sow a thought, reap an act
Sow an act, reap a habit;
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Our thought lives are impotant and we need to take time to examine where we are and get them under control.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
So with this verse in mind our first point is this:
Do not conform but transform
Do not conform but transform
As Christians we are no longer to be conformed to the pattern of this world but we transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.
So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then.
Holiness begins in our mind and works out to our actions.
Garbage in, garbage out.
We need to evaluate the effects of the things we feed our minds and use Phil. 4:8 as our standard.
Are thoughts are stimulated by what we allow around us influencing us. Are they pure, lovely, admirable, execellent or praiseworthy?
The world around us constantly seeks to conform our minds to sinful ways. It will entice and persuade us.
My son, if sinful men entice you,
do not give in to them.
If they say, “Come along with us;
let’s lie in wait for innocent blood,
let’s ambush some harmless soul;
let’s swallow them alive, like the grave,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
we will get all sorts of valuable things
and fill our houses with plunder;
cast lots with us;
we will all share the loot”—
When we resist people may ridicule and abuse us and say we are old fashioned and puritanical.
Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you.
Too often instead of resisting we are are more and more willing to give ground to the constant pressures of the world. We need to have a standard and live by it.
The things we read, listen to, watch, there needs to be a standard ensuring we don’t fill our minds with garbage.
We also need to think about what our eyes see. We teach these values to our children but yet we think we are exempt as adults.
Jesus warned against the lustful look.
But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Job made a covenant with his eyes.
“I made a covenant with my eyes
not to look with lust at a young woman.
David’s look was almost fatal to his spiritual life.
Late one afternoon, after his midday rest, David got out of bed and was walking on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath.
We need to not only guard our own eyes but be careful not to be a source of temptation to others. Which means modesty of dress and actions is required for both men and women.
And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes.
Treat older women as you would your mother, and treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters.
Phil. 4:8 talks about more than not conforming but transforming it also talks about purity, and contentment.
Purity
Purity
Purity here means to be genuine, free from things that would adulterate something and make it impure; as in the purity of gold. It is similar to the concept of holiness.
When we think of purity of heart, perhaps we think of someone whose motives are pure, who possess no guile or malice. Someone who is good natured and may even be somewhat naive. But that is not exactly what our Lord is talking about here.
Within the context of what our Lord is saying, He is speaking about the heart of someone whose sins have been forgiven and whose heart has been made new, whose purity comes, not from themselves, but from the presence of Jesus in their lives.
When I think of purity I think of milk.
There’s nothing like a tall glass of cold milk. It is clean, cold, white, the color that tastes like purity.
Can you imagine drinking that glass if there is a fly in it? Even if that fly was removed there’s no interest in drinking it hey?
But let someone remove the fly and once again the milk appears to be pure, although there are now things in it you cannot see, unseen contaminants that make it impure.
That was the problem of the Pharisees in Jesus' day, and it's the problem with many people today. Their hearts have been contaminated by sins no one else can see, and thus they give the external impression of purity. But within them there is sin that remains uncleansed and continues to contaminate their lives.
Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 23:27-28 when He said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 28"So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
The standards for citizenship in the kingdom of God are extremely high. External, outward, human righteousness might lead people to think you are pure, but that won't cut it with God who sees the heart. God says there has to be an internal work, a transformation at the most basic level, not only of what we do, but of who we are. The sins which stain our hearts need to be washed away and only the blood of Jesus can do that.
Isaiah 1:18 says, "Come now and let us reason together, Says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
We are being called here to a pure heart. Jesus is saying that the pure in heart are those who are saved, those who have been washed in the fountain filled with blood drawn from Emanuel's veins. As the song says, Sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
Now we need differentiate between positional and conditional purity.
Positional purity is what happens when I am saved. He has written my name in the Lamb's book of life and declared that I am His. He has made me positionally pure.
Now, conditional purity is another matter. The truth is that sometimes the condition of a Christian's walk can be so bad, they can be out of step with God that there are impurities in their lives. That does not change their position before Christ, but it does affect their fellowship because they are allowing things in their lives that are contrary to the new, nature of purity they have in Jesus.
So to be pure in heart speaks to my position as a Christian before God and also to the condition of my walk with God. It does not mean that you and I must be perfect, it does, however mean that we have come to that point where Jesus is firmly established as Lord of our lives.
This leads to our last point this morning:
Contentment in God
Contentment in God
Making Jesus Lord of our lives. The cure for the sin of envy and jealousy is to find our contentment in God.
Asaph in Psalm 73 was envious of the wicked as he saw them prosper. He felt that his pursuit of a holy life was in vain. Only when he was enabled to say to God:
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
There are defilements of the spirit that has stopped Christians from being content in God and these are:
Bitterness - this arises in our hearts when we do not trust in the sovereign rule of God in our lives.
Take a look at Joseph - he was sold by his brothers into slavery, falsey accused by his master’s immoral wife, and forgotten by one he had helped in prison, Joseph never lost sight of the fact that God was in control of all that happened to him. In the end he was able to say to his brothers:
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
We can become bitter against God and other people. Asaph was bitter against God because he felt that God was not giving Him a fair shake in life.
When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
Job was bitter because he felt God was not recognizing his righteousness and even came to the place where his attitude was described as:
For he says, ‘There is no profit
in trying to please God.’
2. Unforgiving spirit - bitterness toward people is the result of in unforgiving spirit. Someone who has wronged us, either apparently or actually and we refuse to forgive that person. Instead we harbour thoughts of bitterness towards that person.
When we refuse to forgive we forget that that God has forgiven us of far, far greater wrongs.
We are like that servant in Matt. 18:21-35, who having been forgiven a debt of several million dollars, had a fellow thrown into prison over a debt of a few dollars.
3. Spirit of retaliation - when we are wronged, the tendency is to get back at them - often in our minds if not in actions.
Paul wrote:
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Peter wrote:
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.
The way to cleanse ourselves from a defiling spirit of retaliation: to entrust ourselves to Him who judges justly and who said “It is mine to avenge and I will repay”.
4. Critical spirit - a critical spirit has the root of pride. It is easy to see other people’s issues or faults and not our own.
The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.
We are quick to see - and to speak of - the faults of others, but slow to see our own needs.
How sweetly we like to take the opportunity of speaking critically of someone else - even when we are unsure of our facts. We forget:
There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
Conclusion:
We need to keep these attitudes in check. These attitudes keep us from being holy before God. They are just as evil as immorality, drunkenness, and debauchery. Therefore we must work hard at rooting out these sinful habits from our minds. We need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for what they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts that are pleasing to God.