I'm not sure if you're all that into the top-40 pop music scene... but when that song, "Fancy," by Iggy Azalea and Charlie XCX comes on, the windows go down and the volume goes up. I think I've pretty much nailed the bottom line message of the song. It's basically one declarative statement. "I'm so fancy, you already know." Which I believe roughly translates to, "I am awesome; you know this already."
That message is good enough to get you to the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 for 7 consecutive weeks. Aka that song was the most popular song in all of America for nearly two months. I'm fancy! I'm awesome! And you know it!
I actually got a chance to meet with Iggy and Charlie, and we've been working on a new rendition of "Fancy" for this part of our Live a better story sermon series... They couldn't get the mixtape to us quickly enough but it goes a little something like... "I'm so Holy, You already know..." I considered asking you to sing along with me, but I'm sure you already feel completely awkward by this point.
Seems like a less enthralling message to scream out the windows of your vehicle with the radio turned up, huh? "I'm so Holy!"
I mean honestly, in this culture I'm fairly certain the portion of people who truly want to be holy is more like the minority than the majority. To be Holy is literally to be set apart. To be unique, distinctive, and different, is to be Holy. But... holiness has a certain vibe that just isn't all that appealing to our culture at large. Holiness makes people think of a nose thumbed up in the air, or someone who is too pure to relate to the "less-than-holies."
But what if Holiness didn't have to carry a negative connotation? What if instead of running from Holiness, we repainted it, redeemed it, and reclaimed it? Is that even possible?
When you reach the point where you have utterly surrendered your self to The Lord, inviting His Spirit to crush who you were and make you a new creation... your life will change. You will look different, distinctive, unique, and yes... you will become in a very practical sense, holy.
This is a good thing. Holiness in its true form is from God after all. Yet external holiness only comes from an inner surrender to The Spirit of the living God. And as daunting as that sounds, it is not as impossible as it's been made out to be.
Let's pray.
Now, if I was to walk over to that closet and grab a basketball and sign it with a sharpie... how much money would you pay for it? Couple grand? No... Maybe $500? No... maybe if you needed a nice ball you'd ask me how much I bought that basketball for and pay me $5 less than that since I had marked it up.
But... if Michael Jordan walked up onto stage and signed that same basketball, I'm willing to bet that we could get a pretty good chunk of change out of it.
The same thing from a different place can hold a completely different value. Kind of like choosing between eating a steak at Alexander's on Jefferson in town, or at Bob Evans... That shouldn't be hard. That's holiness in a nutshell. Good some places, not so good in others. It's not too hard to find this same principle in our Bible.
You know something that really got Jesus fired up? Misplaced holiness. That is, Holiness painted in the wrong light.
We see a classic scenario of this in John Chapter 9... Jesus is about to do something that displays how He Himself is Holy and set apart... starting in verse 1:
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7)
Reading on a bit further we hear how this man retells the story of how he was healed:
10 So they said to him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" 11 He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.' So I went and washed and received my sight." (John 9:10-11)
So on the surface level we make this basic observation... a man who was blind has a personal interaction with Jesus, and this man walks away healed. Jesus has the set apart authority to heal the blindness of this man. Wow. That's great. Who could possibly thumb up their noses at that...
Yeah... no. People got mad. Imagine that... Hear this from verses 13 and following.
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, "He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see." 16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?" And there was a division among them.
In life, it seems like we're constantly running into people who can look at a completely good situation and repaint it in a negative light. The people who did this to Jesus were this group of individuals called the Pharisees.
Here's the thing though, the Pharisee's didn't have completely evil intentions. The Pharisee's were committed adherents to Judaism. And like all good Jews, Pharisee's understood that the reason bad things were happening in their lives, in their country, and in the world in general was because the Jews as a people had displeased God. They had sinned over and over again to the point where God had to a great extent cut himself off from His people. And they wanted to fix that.
So The Pharisees got to thinking that if they lived completely Holy lives, locked into some really clearly defined rules, then God would restore good fortune and His divine favor to all of Israel. But everyone had to get on board. Pretty Prid Pro Quo or give and take, wouldn't you say? And it makes sense, right?! Be good and Holy, and God will be happy and reward you...There's no loophole there right?
Perhaps the biggest Pharisee rule was the observance of the Sabbath... If you look at the creation narrative in Genesis, and the Ten Commandments in Exodus... it's clear that God took a period of rest after He completed his creation, and that He commanded His people Israel to rest as well.
I like rest! Ideally I'll get a football game and a nap in this afternoon... But what the Pharisees did with rest was just plain silly. They took rest to the extreme! Which shouldn't rest be non-extreme in nature? It got to the point where if hardly anything happened on the Sabbath, or the "rest day" of the week, they would call it a sin, call it evil, and potentially punish those who broke their extreme-rest rule. It was like mandated naptime, with a booby-trap set up by your bed so you couldn't not rest. (Parents, how well does mandated rest time work with your children?)
Their opinion about Jesus is clear: "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."
The Pharisee's had it totally wrong. They made it to the point where they could look at a completely good thing, like the healing of a blind man, and paint it in a negative light. And they thought that they could be completely holy and good apart from God. What they failed to realize was that Holiness flows from God to us, not from us to God. Or as Jesus said, and Jon reminded us last weekend, "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)
Are you tired with misplaced Holiness? I'm sure you've experienced in it your life. Someone laid down a law for you that was impossible for you to follow. Yet they still held you to that high standard. Or maybe as you're sitting here this morning you're beginning to realize that the standard you're holding the world to isn't even as standard that God is holding the world to?
Misplaced Holiness is exhausting – even when it comes to rest. When Holiness comes from the wrong place, it thumbs us into the dirt, and looks and tastes all together rotten.
Before we move forward this morning, would you accept along with me that Holiness – the ability to be set apart, different, righteous, and distinctive – is something that comes from God and God alone? That's how you take back Holiness, and repaint it in its true light. Holiness (that is good) is from God and God alone.
When I was growing up, I had a really deep desire to be respected. Especially when I was in grade school and middle, I wanted people to know that they shouldn't mess with me. So I got in a couple of fights, wore these ridiculous skateboard shoes, and most of all I tried to talk in a way that I thought made me look tough.
I cursed as much as I possibly could. And the place where this happened more than anyplace else was the school bus.
Now, no one in my family knew this. I checked my tough kid persona at the door. But one day my cousin Sarah came over after school to hang out with her friend Katie who also rode the bus with me. And Sarah and Katie got to talking... "Sarah, where'd Daniel learn to talk like that?"
They got such a great kick out of that because I really wasn't that tough...and they secretly wrote on one of my school folder's in permanent marker "Daniel, The cuss-word kid."
How do you think my mother handled that when she came home to that phrase written on my school-folder sitting out on the counter?
I placed my faith in Jesus at the age of 9, but honestly nothing really changed in my life. Hear me out though, I truly believed that Jesus was the Son of God; I deeply believed that through faith in Jesus I would receive eternal life with my Heavenly Father; and I knew that through my faith in Jesus that God was faithful to send to me the presence of The Holy Spirit living in me. I knew these things. But nothing changed.
Part of that is adolescent development. I get that. Part of that is growing up in a split family, and trying to act tough as a result, I get that. But by the time I was 21 and graduating Bible College, I came to the realization that my life didn't look all that different, distinctive, unique, or set apart. I knew a lot of stuff about God, but it wasn't making a great difference.
In John chapter 7, Jesus is at this religious gathering in Jerusalem called the Festival of Booths. He's not making a big deal about it though because there are a bunch of folks who want to kill Him there. But there's this moment where Jesus seems to be seized by God's will, and he stands up and makes this proclamation:
"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" (John 7:37-38)
And He's not talking about physical thirst or physical tangible water...verse 39 explains the rest:
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:39)
I was praying before I went to bed earlier this past week, and I just kind of had this icky feeling of discontentment. I couldn't sleep, and I didn't know why. Shouldn't I have felt more at peace from my time of prayer? What's the deal with that?
When we aren't tapped into the life source of Jesus, we will always feel sharp feelings of discontentment and longing. My external behavior never changed on genuine level until I invited Jesus to overwhelm who I was, and do whatever he wanted... You don't get true external change, or Holiness with a deep inner whole-hearted surrender to Jesus.
Jesus is the source of true change.
But here's the greatest issue I find myself and so many others facing... As Christians, We claim that we've truly surrendered our lives to Jesus, but our lives look so strikingly similar to the way they have always been.
Ever heard someone justify their worst habits, mistakes, behaviors, personality traits, etc. by using the phrase... "Well I'm just a sinner saved by grace." And "God, knows my heart... and he cares way more about that..."
If you've whittled Jesus down to someone who only cares about your emotions and feelings... you have completely mischaracterized Jesus. At that point you're just talking about some divine sage that you've made up yourself.
It was Jesus himself who said: "17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. (Matthew 7:18-19)
What we do a lot of the time with Jesus is we really magnify one thing about Him, put it on a pedestal, yet ignore Him in His totality. I'm not exempt from this either. As I was reading John 9 this week, I was struck by something I've never notice before. I've probably read/heard this passage dozens of times in my life, but I caught something new that totally repaints the entire story.
From verses 6 & 7: 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
Did you see the difference? Did you catch the nuance? In this instance Jesus not only spits in the mud and anoints the man's eyes; He also sends the man to wash in the pool. And the key phrase here: "So he went and washed and (THEN) came back seeing."
True inner surrender is always followed by active obedience. You can't have one without the other. It's modeled in the Gospels. It's modeled in the very miraculous healings of Jesus.
But who was the blind man obedient to? Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
Holiness comes from Jesus, or God himself, and without inner surrender to God's Holy Spirit, external change is shallow at best.
So where are you? As you survey this idea of internal surrender and external holiness... do you find yourself convicted that your inside and outside don't match up? Are you all external works with a rotten core? Or are you all fluff, idealism, and intentions with no visible change?
Holiness means an entire life set apart in surrender to the Spirit of God.
As you're sitting here you may be thinking to yourself... well this is hopeless and impossible. How in the world will I ever get to a point of complete surrender to God's Spirit? How do I even start?
When the law was laid down to the people of Israel in the Old Testament, they didn't do an incredible job. If you read about the wandering of Israel in the desert upon their Exodus from slavery in Egypt, you'll see plain as day that they failed over and over again. The Exodus leader Moses himself could never quite get His people to live up to God's standard... but that's why I find it interesting that Moses has these words to say, in his farewell speech right before he dies:
From Deuteronomy 30:
11 "For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off... 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
The Israelites never lived up to the standard of the law...because all they had to rely upon was a law...but as we strive for this Holy standard...may we ever remember that Holiness is not too hard for us...because we have been filled with streams of living water, God's Holy Spirit, through our surrender to and faith in Jesus.
And if Holiness is from God, and we believe we are created in God's very image, then to become Holy, is truly to become wholly Human. You can do it.
Let's pray.