This message by Glenn Meldrum was originally produced
by In His Presence Ministries for the Radical
Truth Podcast.
You can listen and subscribe to the Radical
Truth Podcast by going to www.ihpministry.com.
You are welcome to reproduce this message for
free distribution.
This message is part of a series entitled,
The Radical Jesus.
The radical nature of holiness has been the
subject of our last two podcasts, which is
part of our continuing study on the radical
Jesus.
So far we have examined why God's holiness
is so radical and why we have such
a difficult time understanding it.
We then looked at how holiness plays an
integral part of salvation and that without holiness
no one will see the Lord as Paul
told us in the book of Hebrews.
Let me take a moment to explain part
of the idea that is behind Paul's phrase,
without holiness no one will see the Lord.
The apostle is presenting an idea that would
have been familiar with the people of his
day, which was of a monarch sitting on
a throne.
People that received the king's favor were allowed
to enter into his presence and make their
petitions known.
So seeing the king's face has to do
with obtaining the king's favor.
Paul is telling us that the only way
we can receive divine favor and so be
able to enter into his presence is to
be holy.
This is an absolute requirement.
Implied in Paul's phrase is a negative where
those that are not in the king's favor
are denied access to his presence because they
are not holy.
We can then deduce that when people are
not dwelling in the Lord's presence or experiencing
his tangible presence in the church, there is
clear evidence that they are out of God's
favor because sin is in the church or
in the personal lives.
Paul's statement also tells us that the Lord
will not answer their prayers because they are
not in the king's favor.
Notice that the blessings come from being in
the king's presence and judgment from not being
in his presence and holiness is the determining
factor.
There is another picture that can be seen
from this verse and this has to do
with a person that was granted access into
the king's presence but has fallen from the
king's favor.
In such a setting the king would turn
his face from the person which was a
pronouncement of disfavor and judgment.
The person that fell in disfavor would be
instantly removed from the presence of the king
and receive whatever judgment was befitting his crimes.
The presence of the king would then be
forbidden to him in the future.
The only way that we can enter into
the king of king's presence is that we
must obtain his favor and holiness is an
integral part of obtaining that favor.
Those that are not holy will not have
access to the presence of the king of
kings so their prayers will not be answered
unless they are the prayers of repentance.
And those that once had the favor of
the king because they were holy at one
time but have fallen from grace are removed
from his presence because they have ceased to
be holy.
Why did Eve fall into sin as K
.P. O'Hannon?
Because she did not truly believe in the
judgment that death really would come if she
ate what God forbid.
This is the same reason why many continue
in lives of sin and disobedience.
Throughout this study I have tried to keep
a focus on the necessity of living in
right fellowship with God that we may know
Christ and the power of his resurrection and
the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings becoming
like him in his death and so somehow
to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
If we miss this all-important point then
we miss what the redemption Jesus purchased for
us is all about.
In today's lesson I want to examine what
it means to please God and how holiness
is an integral part of that.
Here is a very important question.
Can people please God?
There is a yes and a no in
answer to this question and I want to
take the time to clarify them.
Jesus perfectly pleases the father all the time
and in everything.
Twice the father spoke audibly from heaven declaring
that he was pleased with Jesus.
The first time the father spoke like this
was at Christ's baptism and the second was
at his transfiguration.
Jesus did not need this affirmation from the
father because he already knew he pleased the
father in everything.
These two events happen to give witness to
people who Jesus was and that he was
perfectly doing the father's will.
So we know that Jesus pleases the father.
Now here's the no response to the question
can people please God?
We are sinners by nature and by choice
so we are unholy which means that there
is no way that we can please God
in our present condition.
To please the father we have to be
like Jesus but we have this terrible propensity
towards sin that makes us unholy which is
entirely the opposite of Jesus.
Left to ourselves there is no way that
we can please the father.
It is absolutely impossible.
The good news though is that God can
do the impossible.
Somehow in our twisted ways of thinking we
have made mankind the center of creation but
this is just not true.
Creation is not about mankind but about God.
Scripture tells us that the heavens declare the
glory of God not the glory of man.
We are also told that the Lord created
everything that is for his good pleasure not
for ours.
But such ideas grade against our humanistic concepts
of life and the man-centered version of
Christianity that is so popular in today's Laodicean
church.
Now let's look at the yes response to
the question can people please God?
With the yes response we must leave the
realm of what mankind can do and enter
into the realm of what God alone can
do.
The yes answer to the question is all
about the supernatural.
The only way that people can please the
father is for them to be like Jesus.
This is how Adam and Eve were created
in the beginning in the image of God
which really would have been Christ's likeness.
But Adam and Eve sinned and at that
moment of their rebellion the judgment of death
came upon them and they spiritually died just
like the Lord warned them.
They no longer had the Christ-like character
they were created with because sin had twisted
and perverted that image into a wicked monstrosity.
Now only the sin nature defines the human
race in its natural fallen condition.
The reality we now face is that we
are willful rebels against the rightful king of
creation.
It is not a Christ-like character that
defines us naturally but a bent and wicked
one that is drawn towards sin like rain
is drawn to the earth.
It is a fact that no mere mortal
can live like Jesus through their own innate
abilities.
This leads us to the logical conclusion that
there is no way that we can please
God given our natural situation.
Plain and simple we are not good people.
Actually good people do not exist except in
the minds of those who do not believe
the truths of God's word or have eyes
to see the world in which they live
or a mirror in which to see themselves.
Paul told us the truth when he quoted
some old testament verses in Romans chapter 3
verses 10 through 18.
As it is written there's no one righteous
not even one.
There's no one who understands no one who
seeks God.
All have turned away they have all together
become worthless.
There's no one who does good not even
one.
Their throats are open grays.
Their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursings and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Ruin and misery mark their ways and the
way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their
eyes.
We can see then that the Lord does
not paint a pretty picture about the human
condition.
We are actually in very big trouble.
Now listen to what the prophet Isaiah declares
in the 64th chapter in the sixth verse.
All of us have become like one who
is unclean and all our righteous acts are
like filthy rags.
We all shrivel up like a leaf and
like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Left in our spiritual and moral condition we
are in a hopeless state destined for damnation.
We are unholy and have no right to
approach the king of kings in our wicked
condition.
This brings us to the wonder and miracle
of Calvary that we who were enemies of
God due to our willful practice of sin
can be made alive and holy through Christ.
That is really good news.
All of mankind is left outside of God's
favor but that does not mean that there
is not a way to obtain God's favor.
Through Christ's atoning sacrifice and shed blood we
can be forgiven, pardoned, and made holy.
Through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit
we can be transformed and grow in Christ's
likeness through that same power.
So Christ's likeness is obtainable for sinful people
but it comes only through Christ.
For people to be pleasing to the Heavenly
Father they must repent of their sin and
receive by faith the forgiveness and cleansing that
is freely offered to us through Jesus.
The same grace that saves us is the
same grace that makes us holy and grace
was never given to us so that we
could practice sin but so we could overcome
it.
Those that claim to be saved by grace
and continue in the practice of sin have
not been saved by grace and are grossly
deceived.
Through divine grace we grow in the practical
application of personal holiness.
What does personal holiness look like and how
does it work?
Look at Jesus and you will see the
life we are commanded to live and then
look to Jesus for the grace and strength
to live such a life.
A holy life is obtainable but only through
Christ.
It is like walking on water.
Nothing is as impossible without Jesus yet it
is fully possible with him.
Only Jesus pleases the Father so the only
way that we can please the Father is
that we must bear the mark of Christ's
character upon our lives.
We must become like Jesus in thought, word,
and deed.
This impossible work is not finished in a
day though it does begin in a moment.
It is a lifelong miracle of growing in
Christ's likeness that is only finished when we
reach those pearly gates.
If we have any conception of what it
means to be Christ-like then we are
faced with such a daunting task that we
could easily throw up our hands in hopeless
exasperation.
Our only hope is that we would seek
God to work in us a spiritual revolution
so mighty that it would radically transform our
lives that it would revolutionize us from the
inside out.
The problem of sin is so great and
the nature of holiness so naturally unobtainable that
apart from the miraculous we are doomed to
damnation.
The gift of God is revealed to us
in that he longs to revolutionize our lives
through his transforming grace so that through Christ
we can become what we could never be
through our own wisdom and strength.
This transformation has a beginning but will continue
throughout our days on earth until we stand
before our Lord's glorious throne and are granted
divine favor so we can see his face.
So can people please God?
Like I said there is a yes and
a no to the question.
The no to the question has to do
with our sinful condition that alienates us from
the Lord.
The yes has to do with the remedy
to our sinful condition and that remedy is
found only in and through Jesus.
So to be pleasing to the Father we
must be like Christ.
Now we come to the subject of holiness
and how it plays a major role in
pleasing God.
Holiness as it relates to mankind implies two
things separation unto God and separation from sin.
It is impossible to separate these two dimensions
of holiness for they are indivisible and happen
simultaneously.
Here's how it works.
The moment a person is genuinely born again
he or she is separated unto God and
is separated from a life of sin.
Since repentance is a change of mind that
produces a change of course if there is
not a change of course then the person
has not genuinely repented.
In other words when people truly repent of
sin they will cease the blatant practice of
it.
But we must see the more before we
can turn from sin we must first turn
to God.
Without first turning to God we will not
have the power to help us turn away
from sin.
By the sheer act of turning to God
we are turning away from sin.
They go hand in hand.
The picture of true repentance is when people
do a 180 degree turn and go in
the opposite direction.
We were once on the highway to hell
and we got off that devilish expressway to
go the opposite direction on the straight narrow
way to heaven.
This may seem very obvious but it is
just a fact that we cannot go in
two directions at once.
When we turn to follow Jesus we will
be turning away from the sin we loved
and practiced for so long.
If we continue in the practice of sin
then there is verifiable proof that we have
not repented.
Jesus told us that a tree is known
by its fruit and the fruit of repentance
is a life of righteousness and holiness.
The fruit of no repentance or of what
Paul calls worldly sorrow is the continued practice
of sin.
I remember seeing this cartoon depicting Satan greeting
people as they entered the gates of hell
saying to them with a devilish smile, you
will find that there's no right or wrong
here just what works for you.
To turn from the sin we have loved
we must have a better, a stronger love
than our love of self and sin.
In essence the love of sin is all
the same.
The only difference is the name of the
sin and how it is acted out and
the love of sin always produces the same
results no matter what name it is called
by and that is separation from God.
There is only one love that can possess
the power to cause us to forsake sin
and that better stronger love must be for
Jesus or we will not have the motivation
to forsake the sin we have clung to
for so long.
Only when we love Jesus enough will we
cease the practice of sin and when we
truly love Jesus we will want to be
holy.
It will be the desire of our heart.
It is love for God that is the
motivation for true holiness.
This is the desire where we do not
want anything to separate us from the place
of sweet fellowship with the Lord so we
get everything out of our lives that is
offensive to a holy God.
Love for Christ will always produce a passion
for personal holiness because we want to get
every expression of sin and evil out of
our lives no matter the cost.
C.E. Autry stated, when men look at
their sin through the presence of God they
recognize the ugliness of sin.
When this happens they become disgusted with their
sin and turn from them to God.
It is just a simple fact that everyone
who faithfully loves Jesus will refuse to practice
sin.
They will not want to live in compromise.
They will not even want the questionable things
in their life.
What I have just said puts me at
odds with a large number of churches and
preachers in America.
The lukewarm religion that defines so much of
the church today has no place for personal
holiness in its theology or practice.
Their watered-down religion makes intellectual assent or
sentimental notions all that is needed to go
to heaven.
Repentance has become a cuss word in many
churches in America, as are the words sin,
judgment, and evil, just to name a few.
Within many church circles is a teaching that
since they are saved by grace they have
been liberated from the legalism of old.
Now they claim that they have the right
to drink alcohol, to do the bar and
nightclub scene, to just plain party and sleep
around because they're saved by grace.
What an absolute lie.
Yet when you look at the lives of
people that live in compromise, whether they call
themselves Christian or whether they're pastors or board
members, you will see that compromise always comes
at a tremendous price.
Always.
Steve Gallagher made an interesting point.
Typically those who are most entangled in sin
are the very ones who cannot see its
presence at work inside of them.
Sin has the ability to mask itself so
well that it can actually make the person
who deals with it the least think he
is the most spiritual.
But how can people think such damnable nonsense
in light of verses like 1 John chapter
3 verses 6 through 9?
Let me read them to you.
No one who lives in him keeps on
sinning.
No one who continues to sin has either
seen him or known him.
Dear children, do not let anyone lead you
astray.
He who does what is right is righteous
just as he is righteous.
He who does what is sinful is of
the devil because the devil has been sinning
from the beginning.
The reason the Son of God appeared was
to destroy the devil's work.
No one who is born of God will
continue to sin because God's seed remains in
him.
He cannot go on sinning because he has
been born of God.
Notice the keep on sinning and continues to
sin part.
You cannot practice sin and be holy or
innocent.
Sin defiles the person 100 percent of the
time and sin always, absolutely always, separates from
God.
John is not talking about stumbling into sin
here but about the practice of it.
One day the Lord came to a man
deep in prayer and asked him this simple
question, why do my people entertain themselves with
the very things that drove the nails through
my hands?
Isn't that a disturbing question?
And if we ask that question of ourselves
it would do us much good.
Look at the history of Israel and you
will see that they chose to practice sin
instead of walking before the Lord in holiness.
The cost was tremendous which was the destruction
of their nation, the tremendous loss of life
and the eternal damnation of a multitude of
souls.
It's like William Tillett once said, sinful violations
make sinful acts.
Sinful acts often repeated make sinful habits.
Sinful habits long continued in make sinful character
and sinful character at length determines and fixes
unalterably the sinner's destiny.
Through Tillett's simple logic we learn that the
practice of sin produces a character of sin
and the person with the character of sin
came to that place through the willful choice
to practice sin.
Until we see just how evil sin really
is we will never flee from it as
from a wildfire consuming everything that is before
it.
We will never know the depths and heights
and riches of God's love until we grasp
his blazing wrath at sin.
But this is not a popular message today
is it?
If that message is not preached once again
the results will be horrific with multitudes spending
an eternity in hell both from within the
church and from without.
Calvary clearly reveals this to anyone that would
but take an unbiased look at the word
of God.
Sin is so evil there was no other
remedy than for God to become human and
die in our place.
The perfect sinless lamb of God took upon
his sacred shoulders the depths and depravity of
our sin.
Take a moment and gaze at the cross
and see the Savior that hung upon it
for you.
See the flesh hanging off of his body
after all the beatings and scourging.
Look at his once handsome face that was
now swollen and bleeding from the blows of
fists that rained down upon him.
Can you not see how they ripped portions
of his beard off his face?
Get a glimpse of the nails in his
hands and feet with the blood trickling down
his arms and off his feet soaking the
ground that was not worthy of such an
offering.
Open your eyes can you not hear the
final words he spoke from the cross?
And can you not see the agony on
his face when the father rejected the son
because he bore our sin on his sacred
shoulders?
Now tell me sin is a small thing.
If you truly get a sight of the
crucified Savior there's no way that you could
sanely claim that God is not passionately concerned
about our sin.
If you really get a look at the
crucified Savior then you will want to flee
from sin as you come to understand the
vast evil it actually is.
The wonder of Calvary unfolds before us when
we comprehend why he died on the cross.
Through the cross we can see the glory
of Christ and his marvelous love for us.
Sin is absolutely evil and the depths of
its evil are beyond human comprehension.
So much so that we do not have
words in human language that can describe how
cruel debase and evil sin actually is.
The fact is that if you do not
kill sin then sin will kill you.
We will never overcome such blatant evil if
we believe the devil's lie that sin is
not a big deal.
For those that are honest with the reality
of this world and with one's true moral
condition will conclude that we are all sinners
in need of a Savior.
There is a huge difference though between the
person that practices sin and the one that
stumbles into it and at the core of
the difference is the condition of the heart.
Those that practice sin do so because they
love their sin and want to continue in
it no matter what God or people have
to say about it.
Those that love Jesus will realize that in
their sinful nature is a love for sin
that if not crucified would take them into
the practice of sin.
Their love for Christ caused them to strive
to live without sinning but when they do
stumble into sin they know there is a
remedy and what is that remedy?
It is Jesus Christ himself.
As one of the old hymns go there
is a fountain filled with blood that never
runs dry.
There is the cleansing power of Jesus blood
which is freely given to anyone that would
take the path of repentance which means they
are turning to Jesus as they are turning
from their sin.
People that practice sin are of their own
free will not turning to God because they
have not turned from their sin.
Charles Spurgeon made this powerful little point, men
who only believe in their depravity but do
not hate it are no further than the
devil on their way to heaven.
That is absolutely true.
It is not enough to know that we
are sinners but we must become so weary
of our sin that we want to flee
into the loving arms of Christ to obtain
the victory he purchased for us.
Jesus freely forgives our sin and makes us
holy when we run to him in heartfelt
repentance.
He then offers the transforming power of the
spirit that can change a character defined by
the love of sin into one that loves
Jesus but this power is only available to
those that will live a life of repentance
and walk in practical holiness.
It is extremely tragic when people think that
repentance is a negative thing rather than the
positive blessing God designed it to be.
They have come to believe one of satan's
long-standing lies because they are full of
self and in love with their sin.
It is through grace and repentance that sinful
humans can become partakers of Christ's holy nature.
These are phenomenal gifts that we should cherish
and guard.
The man who wants to be holy will
live holy and no devil person or temptation
will stop him.
Now I'm not talking about determination or personal
fortitude as the means to which we can
be holy.
Those that are strong in Christ have become
strong in him by becoming dependent upon him.
In other words they are doing what Paul
commanded Timothy to do in second Timothy 2
.1. You then my son become strong in
the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
To be strong in God's grace we must
become dependent upon him.
He must be our strength and song, the
passion and desire of our heart.
Jesus loves us so much that he compels
us to crucify everything that breaks his heart
and is contrary to his will.
It would be a cruel God that would
command us to be holy and then not
define what it means to be holy or
tell us how to be holy or to
help us to be holy.
But the Lord has done all of these
things and infinitely more.
He has kept nothing back from us by
freely making available to us his divine limitless
power so that we can be like him.
It is the unfortunate reality that there are
people that call themselves Christians who do not
really want to walk with Jesus.
They have no burning desire to be holy,
no longing to live near Jesus, no passion
for the secret place of prayer.
They will contrive all kinds of excuses for
their compromise and lack of submission to God,
even trying to pervert the scriptures to justify
their selfish desires.
Let me quote another of Paul's instructions to
the young pastor Timothy from 2 Timothy 2
.19. Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed
with this inscription.
The Lord knows those who are his and
everyone who confesses the name of the Lord
must turn away from wickedness.
The Lord knows those who truly belong to
him.
He knows those that love him deeply enough
to turn away from the wickedness they are
prone to practice.
And he knows every hypocrite that claims to
love Jesus but remains in the practice of
sin.
He knows us inside and out and there's
no escape from his all-knowing gaze.
There's nothing that goes on inside of us
that he does not know about.
And he also knows why we do what
we do and why we don't do what
we should be doing.
I want to make a few concluding thoughts
to end out this section on radical holiness.
Christ's holiness will forever be absolutely radical because
it is both foreign to us and infinitely
beyond our comprehension.
Holiness is not part of God nor is
it one of his attributes because holiness literally
defines who he is.
It is his essential being.
The Lord is perfect in holiness because he
cannot become more holy nor can he decrease
in holiness.
The miracle of salvation is that a holy
God can take unholy people and make them
holy so they can live in unbroken fellowship
with him.
Our God is absolutely radical and absolutely amazing.
Now it's time we become like the radical
Jesus.
He deserves the reward of his suffering.