When you hear the word “holy” what comes to mind? You probably read into it things from your past experience that make it unpalatable to you. Most of us associate it with some kind of grimness. We think of "holy" people as those who look as if they have been steeped in vinegar or soaked in embalming fluid, baptized in lemon juice. During the `92 election, George Bush was asked the obligatory religious questions and the issue of his church attendance was addressed. He was commendably forthright on the subject, but was careful to insist that he and Barbara did not want to come across as "holier than thou." Presumably this statement was made for fear of offending some voters, but it also betrayed an uneasiness common to many. To be in any way involved in "holiness" seems to portray a judgmental attitude in a society which prides itself in "nonjudgmental" attitudes. Holiness seems to communicate a self-righteousness in a culture which is much more committed to "feeling good" and "looking good" than "being good" and "doing good." (Adapted from Stuart Briscoe, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Holiness, p.10,11) We are so often conditioned by our culture to be averse to the idea of holiness. Yet God’s Word commands that we live holy lives. Therefore, it is important to understand what we mean by holiness. We will get a bit of a better idea what holiness means when we realize that our English word is derived from hal, an Old English word that gives us the homonym -- whole. This relationship is not just in English, but is, more importantly, true also in God’s Word. To be holy is to be whole. Holiness and wholeness are synonyms. To be holy is to be complete, to lack nothing. It is the idea behind perfection. Then we can see that holiness is something we all lack. Completeness is completely absent from our lives. This is never to say we are as evil as we can imagine. It just states the obvious, what Scripture says is sin: we are imperfect, incomplete. We are not holy because we are not whole. While we are incomplete people, God offers a completeness we so much need. He sets the perfect standard up so that we can see our imperfectness and run to Him for our completion. GOD DEMANDS COMPLETE OBEDIENCE (Verses 22-23) The standard is perfection: Keep all the decrees and laws. If I took a poll, most would consider themselves law-abiding citizens. Oh sure, you roll through a few stop signs here or there. The weight on your driver’s license may not be quite right. You really haven’t done that much wrong, or at least you haven’t been caught. We play the same games with God’s Law. But this passage doesn’t allow partial obedience. Obedience is not like buying the best cantaloupe in the store; you don’t look for the best of the bunch. The opening command here is emphatic: all the decrees and all the laws. Good intentions don’t count. Desire to do right is not even enough. Holiness is wholeness, it is completeness. It is perfection. Partial perfection is an oxymoron. The image of failure here is rather graphic. What happens when we do not fulfill complete obedience? “The land will vomit you out.” In polite company one does not talk like that. But the image well conveys God repulsion of our sin. When we break God’s laws, God’s creation responds. Sin is like an infectious disease that the body fights. When I was a teenager, I bought a canoe that my friend John Zeswitz and I would take up and down the mighty Conestoga River. Well, actually it wasn’t much of a river, it was a creek meandering through the farmer’s fields of Lancaster County, PA. The first time we ventured out, in lowering the canoe in the water, John dropped his end, and with a loud crash the aluminum hull bounced off the rocks. This hurled my water jug into the air and as it came back down in the bottom of the canoe, the lid in turn flew off and out poured my water. But, I thought, no need to worry, there’s enough water to drink in the river. At 14 I was about as smart as bait. I didn’t draw the connection between the dingy color of the creek and the farmer’s fields that came to water’s edge. The putrid smell and the brown masses floating on the top, the scores of dairy cows wading on the shore didn’t phase me the least. I skimmed off or spit out what I thought was dirt. My thirst was quenched - until the next day, when my body responded to my stupidity. My body, like the land of Israel where God’s children were headed, could not tolerate the invasion of that which was offensive. God, the Sovereign King, will not tolerate disobedience. What is more, not only must they obey God’s commands, they must not obey the customs of their new land. In verse 23 we have the prohibition not to live according to the customs (decrees) of the nations. The land of Canaan, where the Israelites were going, was not empty. It was inhabited with people who engaged in every form of debauchery imaginable to mankind. Many of the laws found in these chapters forbid the horrid practices which were common there. Verse 2 mentions the practice of offering one’s children to Molech, in which a parent would take a young son or daughter and have him or her burned alive in order to keep their false gods happy. In light of what the Canaanites did, God removed them and sent in the Israelites. But they could not continue the same practices. God’s grace forgives, but does not provide an excuse for continuing in the same sin as before. Far too often, we find it easier to ignore the commands of God and assimilate the customs of our culture. The church is to be in the world, but not of it. Yet, more often than not, the church has been of the world, but not in it. We are told to be salt, being absorbed by the world as salt is absorbed and gives food a new taste. But instead we are content in being frosting, offering to sweeten the intolerable and change nothing inside. (Adapted from Paul Oestreicher, The Double Cross, p. 107-108) GOD OFFERS COMPLETE SATISFACTION (Verse 24) Complete obedience is what God demands from us. This wholeness then produces satisfaction. But far too often we recognize that we are not whole and we are not satisfied. T.S. Eliot says, "All our knowledge brings us only closer to our ignorance, And our ignorance brings us closer to death. But closeness to death does not bring us closer to God." Then he asks this question: "Where is the life we have lost in living?" Isn't that the question so many are asking? Where is the life I have lost in trying to live? Why don't I know the way out? How come I am so frustrated, so hurting, so broken? Why can’t I be satisfied? The problem is we don’t keep the laws, we aren’t whole because we are not holy. What Eliot recognized is the constant pattern that we can not escape; we lose life in living, because our living is outside God’s commands. But notice what God says. Our end of the bargin demands absolute obedience. His end is to give us the land. “You will possess their land.” “I will give it to you.” But not only that, the land is described in terms of satisfaction: “flowing with milk and honey." This description seems odd to us, a bit of a sticky mess. But milk was a delicacy. In an era without refrigeration, and without drugs to keep cows lactating, milk was enjoyed when one could get it. At a time before a variety of sweetners, honey was the primary way to make something taste good. The land here is placed in terms of refreshment. The phrase may also refer to a slightly intoxicating drink where sour milk was combined with wine boiled down to a sticky substance. The image here is one of abundance and enjoyment. All of this is given on the basis of an inheritance How is an inheritance received? For those who have anything left when they die, they will the remainder to others, more often than not to family members. It would be nice to be willed something, to receive that which you did not earn, but, based on family you've got. I could roam the law offices of various firms in Waukesha and Milwaukee, sitting in on various readings of wills. But chances are I’ll get nothing. I’m not family. Despite the demand for complete obedience there is a certainty here that Israel will receive the land as an inheritance. This creates tension; it is necessary to obey all the laws or you’ll get tossed out of the land, but God, knowing how stubborn their hearts are, still gives it. How then do we reconcile complete obedience and complete satisfaction? GOD DECLARES COMPLETE ACCEPTANCE (Verse 26) How are we to read this? What is it saying? The NIV translates this as a weak imperative: you are to be holy. But in the margin they offer another reading: you are to be my holy ones. This is a statement of fact. The trouble is the Hebrew verb can be read either as a statement of fact, a condition or a state of existence, or an imperative telling us what to do. The verb doesn’t help, but the context does. Notice what is said in the second half: "I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." Here we see the initiative of God at work. We are not being commanded here to set ourselves apart to make ourselves God’s possession. Rather God places us in a new position in order to be His possession. Verse 26 provides the answer as to what it means to be complete, whole or holy. What we see here is that while God demands complete obedience so that He can offer complete satisfaction, He does so by declaring his complete acceptance of us. Verse 26 assumes these lengthy commands, the numerous laws and then tells us that completeness, wholeness, holiness comes from God alone. God makes us holy. How? Look at the cause for our holiness: "I, the Lord am holy." Holiness is not something one takes on, it is not a status attained and accomplished by years of halo polishing. It is not realized as you embark on a self-improvement program or a life of personal sacrifice. It comes by God declaring, according to His own nature, that we are holy. Our holiness is not attained, it is given. Holiness is not bought, but borrowed. We take on that which is not ours, but becomes ours when we receive it. When we are born into a family, we receive the family name. It is not something we must prove to be worthy of. It is our birthright. I was not partially a Vogel when I was born, but completely one. Yet that name was not given on the basis of my performance. It was given to me before I realized what it meant. Rather than trying to attain completeness through perfect obedience to the law, God credits to us Christ’s obedience for us. The mistake we often make with holiness is that we consider it an issue of human morality. But holiness is never produced by human morality, but divine purity. Our holiness is never to be an end in itself. It has little to do with our life for Christ, but Christ’s life for us, His death in our place. Our lives then are designed to demonstrate God’s holiness; our daily piety is working out the implications of what God has done for us in Christ. This is made more clear back up in verses 7-8. Notice the command: "consecrate yourselves and be holy." There is the command. Then again: "keep my decrees and follow them." But then comes the basis: “I am the Lord." (This is covenantal language, the promise-keeping God who saves). God then further defines Himself as the “one who makes you holy.” We are commanded in verse 7 to be holy not because we have the innate ability to do it. Rather, it is because God is the one who makes us holy. The command comes because God fulfills the conditions of the command. This same thought is brought out in 1 Corinthians 1:30. Christ is our holiness. It is something given to us. Again in 1 Corinthians 6:10-11, we are sanctified, to be made holy. This is spoken as an accomplished fact in the past tense. It is for this reason Paul can call the people in Corinth saints (1 Corinthians 1:2). How holy do you feel today? You have two choices to holiness. First, you can try to keep all the laws and decrees of God on your own. But just a small hint, a gentle reminder. You haven’t yet nor will you today or tomorrow. I’d say you have about as much chance doing that as the Bears have winning this afternoon, but in case the unthinkable happens, I won’t use that analogy. Your other option, the other path to wholeness, completeness is to realize that first you are incomplete, you are broken. You know the law is necessary and it is good, but it has this nasty habit of pointing out your imperfections. It is then that God offers you a wholeness that is not of your own making; it is a wholeness that is given as a gift. As Christ took your punishment and gives you His righteousness, then you can be called holy, because the Lord your God is holy and He has set you apart to be His own. Martin Luther wrote: "It is the nature of God that he makes something out of nothing. Consequently, if someone is not nothing, God can make nothing out of him. Men make something into something else. But this is vain and useless work. Thus God accepts no one except the abandoned, makes no one healthy except the sick, gives no one sight except the blind, brings no one to life except the dead, makes no one pious except sinners, makes no one wise except the foolish, and in short, has mercy upon no one except the wretched, and gives no one grace except those who have not grace.” (Martin Luther, from a Lenten Meditation) |
