◑Eighth indictment: A silence on separation.
There is a void of serious teaching about holiness. My dear friend, general teaching on holiness, everyone agrees. Let’s be holy. We need to be more holy. Let’s have a holiness conference.
But when you get specific about what that means, that’s when everything turns into a turmoil.
“Pursue peace with all men,” the writer of Hebrews tells us, “and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.”44
Does anybody believe this?
You say, “Brother Paul, I have been blamed so often for teaching, you know, works religion.”
Listen to me. Listen. Again, it goes back to regeneration and the providence of God. If God truly converts a man he will continue working in that man, through teaching and blessing and admonition and discipline. He will see to it that the work he has begun will be finished. And that is why the writer says, “Without sanctification, without holiness no one will see the Lord.”45
Why? Because if there is no growth in holiness, God is not working in your life. If he is not working in your life it is because you are not a child.
Look at the difference between Jacob and Esau. “Jacob I loved...Esau I hated.”46 Yet God fulfilled all his promises to both of them. Jacob was blessed. Esau was blessed. How did God demonstrate his judgments and wrath against Esau and his love toward Jacob? I will tell you how. He let Jacob run wild. He let Esau run wild, no work of discipline, no work of godliness, nothing. But he beat Jacob to death almost every day of his life.
The loving discipline, the correction of God to bring us to holiness.
Now there is so much teaching on this, but let me just say this. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.”47 Romans 12:1 and then go on to two.
Your bodies. Why does he say “body?” I think to avoid all this super spirituality.
“Well, I have given Jesus my heart and you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Well, as a matter of fact, you can judge a book by its cover. Jesus never said you couldn’t just a book by his cover. He said you could. “You will know them by their fruit.”48
And if you think that you have given him your heart, then he will have your body. And I will tell you why. The heart, my friend, is not some blood pumping muscle or some figment of a poet’s imagination. It refers to the very essence or core of your being. Don’t tell me Jesus has the very essence and core of your being and it doesn’t affect your body. It is just not going to happen.
And so what do we do? We go through Scripture, what, legalistically? No, drawing inferences? No. Just standing on the commands of Scripture.
About what?
I do not agree with everything the Puritans said, but I love the Puritans and one of the reason why I love them because I believe they honestly made an attempt to bring everything in their life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Their minds, because they wrote 800 page books on what should I think about according to the Scriptures. What should not enter into my mind according to the Scriptures? What should I do with my eyes? What should go in these ears and what should not go in these ears? How should the tongue be ruled? What should be the direction of my life?
And yes, I am going to scare you to death. How should I dress?
Now here I am going to be careful here. I don’t want to draw inferences and things. My dear friend, my wife says it this way. If your clothing is a frame for your face from which the glory of Christ springs forth, it is of God. But if your clothing is a frame for your body, it is sensual and God hates it. Enough said?
Now I can’t go through everything of holiness and holiness isn’t just outward expression, but we have become to be a people that uses the interior work of the Spirit as an excuse to say nothing is ever going to happen on the outside. And that is not true.
Some of you young men, you cry out probably more than I do that the Spirit of God would fill you and work in you, but it only takes one half hour of television to so grieve him, he will be miles from you.
Ninety-nine percent pure, 1% sewer I am not drinking.
One time I was struggling and Leonard Ravenhill was talking to a dear friend of mine who was saying, “Brother Leonard, a young man, brother Paul, he is really struggling.” And he sent a tract. I still got that tract. I will never, never part with that. It said, “Others can, you cannot.”
I don’t necessarily agree with everything.
Young man, listen to me. I don’t go to malls. I don’t, not because I am more holy than you. It is because I know what I am.
There is the story of one of the finest, greatest violinists in Europe playing his final concern, an old man. And when he finished a young man walked up to him, violinist and said, “Sir, I’d give my life to play like you.”
And the old man said, “Son, I have given my life to play like me.”
“I want the power of God on my life.” Then something has got to go.
“I want to know him.” Then some separation has to occur.
Let me tell you something, young man, everyone else is running around, all their little retreats and all their conferences and getting together with group hugs and singing Kumbyah and everything else. Maybe you need to get alone in the wilderness with God and fast for seven days on your knees studying the book of Psalms, just being alone with God, belonging to him.
To be a man of God there has got to be a sense where sometimes even your wife who is of your own flesh, one with her, she looks you in the eye and she knows she can’t go where you are going.
There is silence on separation. I think, “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?”49 Nothing. “Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”50 Nothing. Darkness is the opposite of God’s revelation.
At what harmony Christ was [?]. Nothing. Or what has the believer in common with the unbeliever? Nothing.
He says, “Come out from their midst.”51 Come out from the midst of what? Come out from the midst of lawlessness, darkness, satanic devices and the life and worldliness of the unbeliever. Come out from it.
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