Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript

Sermon scripture today is found in Exodus 22:31. Please stand for God’s word.

Exodus 22:31: “And you shall be holy men to me. You shall not eat meat torn by beasts in the field. You shall throw it to the dogs.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and for your spirit. We thank you that your spirit is a Holy Spirit. We thank you that he comes to us to sanctify, to make us holy progressively. We pray now that he would take your holy word and write it upon our hearts that we might indeed be a congregation that is set apart in holiness to you and making distinctions in the context of our lives.

We pray that your Holy Spirit would illuminate this text through understanding that we might become increasingly transformed by your power into holy men and women, boys and girls. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. This text is a simple one. Nothing real complicated here. A little bit of complication in terms of that law relative to the particular time of this stage of redemptive history about not eating meat torn by beasts.

But essentially what I wanted to do today is simply go through a variety of scriptures that talk about how we’re to be holy men consecrated to God. John Calvin said that this particular text is summed up in this: that whosoever alleges God’s name and boasts themselves to be his people are called to cultivate holiness and to keep themselves pure from every stain. May God in his grace to us grant that we would indeed be men who in the context of our homes cultivate holiness.

This specific law is addressed to men. “You shall be holy men unto me.” We’re going to speak covenantally here. The outline is premised upon various distinctives that holy men have in their context of their lives. But this doesn’t mean that if you’re a woman or if you’re a boy or a girl that you’re off the hook. Men covenantally represent the nation here. The term for man here is in the plural. It refers to the entire congregation, and men represent that congregation in terms of there being heads of families and also covenantally in a sense heads of the culture as well.

So men have an increased responsibility in the cultivation of holiness and the keeping themselves apart from every stain indicated by the slain beasts. But it’s a responsibility that men have that they are to cultivate in the context of their families as well. So we’re to train our households up in cultivating holiness and also keeping ourselves from every stain in the words of Calvin.

So let’s talk first about what holy men are in terms of the basic meaning of the term.

**First, holy men are consecrated, separated from and to men. They’re consecrated men.** The word holy has its origins in the word to cut or to separate. And so they’re consecrated. They’re separated away from certain things. Now, the picture of that in this text is they’re separated away from the eating of a particular kind of meat torn by animals in the field as a picture of their consecration or being set aside.

But it’s not simply a consecration from something. It’s a consecration to something. “You’re to be holy men to me.” So when we talk about being set apart, becoming holy, the New Testament translates the word holy sometimes as sanctified or to become sanctified or the process of sanctification. All the same thing. It’s a growth in holiness, a growth in being separated away from death—the picture by the animal torn in the field—and unto life, unto God who is the source of all life.

So what we’re to do here is we are called to be holy men in every aspect of our lives. It was said of the early saints in the first few centuries of the church that the saints never saw an apple as just an apple. An apple was a picture of God’s order, a picture of the beauty of God’s order, the tastefulness of what he has given us. Perhaps by way of being a fruit, a reminder of our fall and of our redemption and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to consecrate, to set apart our thinking, our actions, our emotions to the service of God is of the essence of holiness. We are to separate ourselves from ourselves as it were, as well to be separate unto God and to serve him.

We’re certainly supposed to be separated from sin and dedicated and consecrated then to walk in terms of the word of God. 2 Timothy 1:9 tells us that we are indeed saved for a particular purpose. It says that God has saved us and called us with a holy calling. So holiness is not some kind of abstract out there sort of thing. It is a calling that we’re to exercise. We have a holy calling before God. It’s very practical. The concept of biblical holiness.

Leviticus 19:2, which we talked about a little bit in our Bible class this morning, begins the center section of or rather is the center chapter of the center section of the book of Leviticus, which is the center section of the Pentateuch. And the center section of this particular form of God’s narrative structure in the Pentateuch is a book of laws—that’s what Leviticus is. And the center of Leviticus is a section, the third section of the book, that are laws for holy living found in chapters 17-22. And the center of God’s laws for holy living is chapter 19 with a list of seventy specific commands from God—a comprehensive number of commands dealing with many aspects, virtually all aspects of our lives.

And in chapter 19 at the center of the Pentateuch, the law of God given to a redeemed people (it comes after the Day of Atonement) is headed by a commandment to be holy: “because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” So holiness is seen in relationship to chapter 19 of Leviticus as a very practical matter affecting the details of our lives and seeing every bit of our lives set apart, are consecrated to God.

Again in Ezekiel 22:26, we have a reference to holiness, and God says through the prophet, chastising the people: “The priests have violated my law and have profaned my holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and profane. They’ve not made distinctions as they go through life.”

We’ve talked in our Bible class about how the unclean and cleanness laws of Leviticus 11 through 15 track the fall of man. It’s a manifestation of the effects of the fall. To be unclean in the Old Testament is to manifest the effects of the fall. Sometimes it wasn’t necessarily a moral transgression. If a woman had a baby, she was unclean for a period of time. It’s a manifestation of the effects of the fall and God’s judgment upon the woman that she would bear children in pain. So unclean and clean in the Old Testament means this manifestation of the effects of the fall.

And in giving us a picture of that in the animal world, God wanted his people, the particular priestly nation, to look at the animals in the land and say some are clean and some are unclean. Now, they were all okay for food. Noah was told you can eat any food you want to eat. All the animals are given to you for food. You can eat pork, snails, whatever it is. But when it comes to the particular priestly nation being established in the book of Leviticus, the priestly nation is to make a distinction in what they eat based upon certain truths.

Animals that parted the hoof—that made a distinction as they came into contact with the cursed ground—were seen as clean. Animals that made no distinction in terms of the ground were unclean. Animals that chewed the cud, that meditated, in other words, that were a picture of the meditation of God’s people on his holy word are a picture of clean animals. To meditate as we come in contact with the world is the picture of the clean animal in Leviticus 11.

The clean fish in Leviticus 11 required fins and scales. The scales were armor. We’re to take up the whole armor of God as we go into contact with the nations of the world represented by the seas in the Old Testament and the water that the fish lived in the context of. We’re to be armored up. When you deal with carnal men who may be converted to great living plants for Christ, you have to have gloves on. You want to be armored up if you’re a fish swimming in the waters. And you want to have fins. You want to have guidance and direction as you go through the world.

When you go into the world tomorrow, whether it’s in the workplace, your homes, your school, homeschool, whatever it is, you should think of yourself as being a fish guided and directed with purpose, moving through life, consecrated, holy men and women, holy boys and girls, consecrated to God in your movements and in your actions, armored up, making a distinction in terms of your contact with the cursed world, guarding in a sense your contact.

Our job is to redeem the world through the preaching of the gospel of Christ, but making a distinction in the context of that. And Ezekiel says when a people fall away, they fail to make distinctions between the holy—what is inside the realm of God’s presence—and the profane—what is outside of the temple of God—is the picture or manifestation of that in the Old Testament economy.

So holy men are men that make a distinction. They’re men who are consecrated, set apart to God in the very details of their lives and how they go about interacting in all things and in their guidance and purpose and direction in moving through life.

Now, this distinction that characterizes holy men is a distinction that’s based upon the law of God. In Leviticus 19, this central section of law says, “Be holy because I am holy.” And then it lists a bunch of laws recapitulating the Ten Commandments and telling about them in more applied forms.

So when we talk about holiness, we always see holiness in reference to the law of God. We always see it in reference to God’s specific instructions. We don’t know how to set ourselves apart to God apart from the word of God. And so we heeded to his word and his law as we go over consecrating ourselves to God.

Now, I’m not going to go through all these particular case laws. I’ve given you some references on your outline in terms of holy men not eating animals torn in the field but giving them to the dogs. But without getting into a lot of detail there, the point was that in the Old Testament, you had a particular priestly nation. You had priests within that nation. You had the high priest within that nation. And in the context of that, you had varying degrees of prohibitions relative to what people could eat or not eat. If you were a Gentile God-fearer in the context of the land, you could eat things that the Levites couldn’t. You could eat things that the normal Israelite couldn’t. There was a distinction in peoples.

And the New Testament says that all those distinctions characterized by these laws of some people can eat some things and other people can’t eat those things—all those are now brought to fruition in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has definitively cleansed the world. In Acts 10, he comes to Peter and says, “Don’t call unclean what I have cleaned.” And he’s got in his canopy of clean things representation of all of the world, clean and unclean beasts. Nations are represented by those beasts.

So the particular application of this law in terms of what your diet is no longer binding upon us. But there are truths to it that we’ll meditate on a little bit later in the context of the sermon.

So the first thing I want us to understand is that God says that holy men are consecrated, dedicated, set apart men. I don’t want us to think of holiness in Greek terms where we’re kind of meditating on God and not really active in the application of the word.

Listen to Psalm 15. Psalm 15 tells us who can abide on God’s holy hill. The question is, “Who shall abide in your tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?” So who’s going to be in contact with your holiness? Who are these holy men to look like?

And it’s not—what we don’t read in Psalm 15 is simply a lot of interesting thoughts and pious emotions and feelings. What we read in Psalm 15 are a series of things that they’re supposed to do. “He that walks uprightly, works righteousness, speaks the truth in his heart. He that backbites not with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor; in whose eyes a vile person is condemned, and he honors them that fear the Lord. He makes distinctions in the context of the men he comes in contact with. He applies the law of God in relationship to his neighbor, in relationship to the vile person, to the righteous person, to the way he goes about doing his work, to how he does his recreations, to how he raises his family, etc. That swears to his own hurt and changes not, that puts not his money out to usury, nor takes reward against the innocent. He that does these things shall never be moved. He’s the holy man.

God grant that we as holy men would see the need to consecrate all of our actions in terms of God’s law to the glory of the God who created us and redeemed us in Christ. Holy men are consecrated, set apart men. They’re actively moved, setting apart not just away from sin, but consecrated to holy actions in terms of God. Holy men are consecrated men because they make distinctions as they move in the context of life.

Now, that’s the general sense of the term holy used in this verse. But specifically, there’s a context of this verse. And you remember we said that this first section—this second part of the case laws in Exodus 21-23 that we’re dealing with now—began with the statement that we were not to curse God or revile him or revile his rulers. It began with our tongues.

So in terms of the immediate context, this verse “be holy men unto me” sums up several verses that we’ve been talking about for the last month or so.

**Secondly, holy men are tongue-taming men.** Holy men are men who make a conscientious effort to tame their tongues, and they can do it. Separation from sin and consecration to God is seen in the context of the specific verse here. The not eating animals that are torn in the field and entering into holiness is related to the little details of life. What kind of food you’re going to eat.

When we talk about the tongue, we’re not just talking about the tongue in reference to the big parts of our lives when we want to get serious and instruct our families, when we want to get here with other Christians and encourage them in the faith and we get very careful about our tongues. But I think when we see holiness and consecration in all matters and a distinction in all matters, we want to be men who tame our tongues in the little things of life.

When no one’s around, what is our speech like? Do we grumble or dispute as those people in the wilderness and as we’re tempted do in our Adamic nature, or are we grateful with our tongues?

When we speak of God, do we think of who we’re speaking of? And do we think of his attributes, his holiness, his righteousness, his condescension of grace and mercy to us, his sovereignty, his wisdom, his power, his strength? And does our speech reflect then a proper apprehension of God on our tongues? We do not revile the gods, the rulers, the people, nor do we revile God. We do not speak lightly of him.

Bush in his commentary on this phrase said that holiness depends in great measure on our obedience in small matters—small matters. James tells us in the verse we’ve spoken of in the last few weeks several times that the tongue is a small member of the body. And it may seem a small thing what we do with our speech, particularly in the casual conversations we enter into. But God says here that he caps off this section with holiness.

And this section begins with men being men that tame their tongues in relationship to God and in relationship specifically to the authorities that God has given to us as well. If we’re going to be holy men, we must be men who continue to apply the truths of the sermon that we preached several weeks ago that brings conviction to us in the terms of our tongues. We want to be holy and consecrated to God as tongue-taming men.

**Third, holy men are delivering men.** And I want to turn now to what I do on the outline. I turn to several attributes of God—or rather, several results of this attribute of God. Holiness is an attribute of God, and it is a communicable attribute. God is totally set apart to the standard of his own character. He is the definition of that. And we can be set apart or sanctified, increasingly made holy, because this is a communicable attribute of God.

And in relationship to God, we read in the Song of Moses in Exodus 15. In the context of the great deliverance that God brought his people out of Egypt, we read this verse:

“You blew with your wind. The sea covered them. They sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee? Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises and doing wonders. Thou stretchest out thy right hand. The earth swallowed them up.”

As Moses’ song relates here, God delivers his people, and in the context of that deliverance, his holiness shines forth. God makes distinctions, and God’s holiness results in his delivering the people of God. It is a central attribute of this song of Moses. It’s the attribute of God that is at the center of this song that explains why God has gone about doing the delivering work he has done.

Now, if we want to deliver our families from besetting sin, if we want to help encourage and train up our children in the right way to go that they might walk in the paths of holiness, and we want to deliver our wives from besetting sins to them, and we want to deliver the church from sins that beset us in the context of this particular manifestation of the church, and if we want to deliver the culture from the sin that it’s fallen into that is shown in the abomination of abortion that we spoke about last week, God says that deliver comes from a holy God. And as we take that attribute of God upon ourselves in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are men capable then and indeed motivated with the same motivation God has in making distinctions to deliver our culture.

Do you want to be a delivering man for your household? Do you want to be a delivering man in terms of our culture, our communities, our church? Then be a holy man to God, totally consecrated to him, circumspect in your dealings. That circumspection being standardized by God’s word, his law word to us.

Holy men are delivering men.

**Holy men are also controlled, long-suffering men.** In Hosea 11:9, God says, “He will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not enter the city.”

God says that in a time of great sin and abomination in the context of his people, he is patient. He is long-suffering. He constrains himself, so to speak, in terms of the literary device of this text because he’s not a man. Fallen man wants to strike out. Remember Cain, the picture of the two seeds warring against one another. And Cain is the man who kills a youth for simply insulting him. Fallen man wants judgment right now.

And when we want judgment right now, it’s usually because we’re working in the Adamic flesh. We may be applying that flesh to a contemporary issue such as abortion, toward wanting God’s judgment against those in the context of our culture. But God, because he is holy, God’s holiness separates him from sinful men. And in his holiness, he says here, he is long-suffering and patient.

Do you have trouble with being long-suffering and patient? Do you want things to happen right now in the context of God’s judgment coming? Are you impatient with your children? Are you impatient with your wife? Are you impatient with yourself? Even God says the key to a resolution of those actions of longsuffering is to focus upon holiness to him and consecration to him.

God’s men who are holy men are controlled and long-suffering men. Now, we have commands to be long-suffering and to not flare up in anger. But I think that, you know, it’s kind of the other way around. We don’t attain holiness by delivering people. We don’t attain holiness by trying to be self-controlled. It is the holiness, the consecration of the inmost part of our being to God that is reflected then in the longsuffering and patience we have waiting for God’s judgments and wanting to see people—ultimately not destroyed, but rather wanting them to be brought back to repentance.

Now, in Hosea, God does finally roar like a lion. He roars like a lion, and that’s what recalls his people to himself. So God’s wrath is not forever postponed, but God is patient. God is long-suffering. We should be patient and long-suffering because it reflects the holiness that we have through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells us. And if we’re going to be, if we are, if we want to be deliverers and we want to be men who are controlled and long-suffering and patient, then it behooves us to cultivate holiness in the context of our lives.

And if God is using our anger or impatience in the context of our lives, or he’s using our failures to move our families ahead, or to move our friends ahead and encouraging them to holiness, or in moving our particular community ahead, then he’s probably given us an evaluation to say, “Focus on holiness. Focus on the consecration of all you are to service to me. Unlike men, God is patient. And we shall be like God if we are holy men.”

**Fifth, holy men are trustworthy men.** The same attribute of God is why God can be trusted. We read God is holy by nature, and he is separate from moral imperfection. He can be trusted to be faithful to his promises.

Psalm 33:21 says, “Our heart shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in his holy name.” We read those verses, kind of skim over it. Holy name. Yeah. Yeah. Well, think about it though. His holy name. God is holy. It’s a communicable attribute. And because God is holy, we can trust him.

The same thing is said in Psalm 22, the words of our Savior essentially, words on the cross: “You are holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee.” See, you’re holy. Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted and you delivered them. They cried unto thee and were delivered. They trusted in thee and were not confounded.

God says that holiness means we can be trusted. You know, and again here I suppose one way to think of it is you want to put before yourself the image of a God who is holy and therefore trustworthy, and you want to attempt to be trustworthy and so consecrate yourself to trustworthiness to others. But really I think trustworthiness is a result again of this attribute of God, which is communicable to us, which is holiness—which is this consecration in terms of his law, away from the old man toward the new man in Christ. Holiness results in others then saying: “Yes, I know Joe X., and he’s a trustworthy man because he’s a holy man. I can see in the context of his life, in his speech, in the way he treats his family, in the way he handles his finances, in his circumspectness in his life, and him not blowing off steam every time you see him, I can see that this is all in relationship to Jesus Christ whom he adores and loves. He’s a holy man, and he’s the man I’m going to go talk to when I have a problem that I don’t want other people to know about. He’s the man that I’m going to call on to help me be delivered in the context of some difficulty in my life.”

Holiness. Holy men have the result that they are then trustworthy men. Conversely, if you know somebody you wouldn’t trust with elements of your provision or things that you have or difficulties you have or whatever it might be, you should pray for that man for holiness. And if you’re a person that others think they can’t trust in that particular way, then the answer to that is certainly to try to work to be more trustworthy. But again, it’s indirect because the direct thing we’re to do is to consecrate ourselves anew to God.

So trustworthy men are holy men. In other words, holy men end up becoming trustworthy. Other people look to them to be trustworthy and to be deliverers as well.

**Sixth, holy men are law-abiding men.** Now, we’ve made reference to this already, but we understand that we have these attributes of God—of patience and longsuffering, of deliverance, and of trustworthiness. And these stem from the fact that his name is holy. He is holy. It’s one of his attributes. And so his attributes of God are reflected then in God’s word to us.

And so as a result, we read in Romans 7:12 that “the law of God is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.”

And again, I mentioned Leviticus 19:2: “Be holy because I’m holy,” and here’s my holy word. Here are the law that will allow you to make proper distinctions and separations—that consecration away from and toward God, away from our fallen nature, toward our new nature in Christ, away from the fallen world, toward God, away from our sins, toward righteousness. The put off, put on—that holiness is you can do that because I give you this holy law.

And Leviticus 19 then gives you seventy commandments by which you’re to be holy. And we tend to make a distinction, at least the church in America frequently has made a distinction, between the law of God on one hand and holiness on the other. But in the scriptures, they’re intimately linked. If you get rid of the law, which tells us how to properly make distinctions, how are you going to be holy when the essence of it is to make distinctions and to be consecrated?

Throw away the law and you throw away the source of personal holiness and sanctification. So there’s no opposition in the mind of God between his holy character and his holy law, his holy word. And what this says is that we then, in order to attain or to cultivate holiness, we must cultivate a knowledge of God’s law.

There is an incredible ignorance of the scriptures in the context of our Christian culture in America. There’s ignorance in me. There’s ignorance in this congregation. We have not been trained in the law of God, what God’s word says from our earliest days. Most of us haven’t at least. And we have this tremendous gap of knowledge. And then we wonder why it is that we have different difficulty being holy. Why? Because we’re not holy. You know, we’re not consecrated to God. Why do we end up not being trustworthy? Why aren’t we able to deliver ourselves or others? And why aren’t we able to be patient? We fly off the handle or we’re just removed from the whole thing altogether, which is also wrong. Holy men are active men.

We wonder why that is. Well, it’s because we don’t know the word of God. The word of God is that standard. It’s the line that makes a distinction. This is good. This is bad. This is righteous. This is non-righteous. People who do these are lawkeepers. People that don’t do these things and they do these things over here are outlaws—they’re outside of the law of God. The lines of holiness are prescribed by God’s law.

And so, holy men are law-abiding men. Now, this has an implication as well to the civil sphere and to the other laws that we have. Law of God tells us to obey our rulers, to honor them. We saw that in the immediate context of this verse earlier. And law-abiding men means that we have a high appreciation for the fact of law in a particular culture. And we do not want to by our denigration of man’s laws drag down the concept of law in the context of our own minds or the context of our families.

So law-abiding men—if you want to be holy, affect deliverance, be trustworthy, be patient, understand the word of God, understand the law of God.

Now, the church has a responsibility obviously to teach God’s word, and we do that in Lord’s Day worship services. And for a lot of you, the primary instruction you’re getting in the law of God is the Sunday sermon, and that’s good. It’s a good thing to do. But I just cannot imagine how that could be enough. I cannot imagine how you would not have a need to on a fairly regular basis do your own particular study of the word, read good books from men who have studied the law of God and transmit that knowledge of the law to you, attend conferences where good godly men come and speak outside of Sunday morning service, attend if you can Sunday Bible class or Judge’s Bible study Tuesday nights.

We—I’ve mentioned this over and over. But you know, I just want to make sure we understand that there really is no shortcut to being holy, man, apart from a knowledge of God’s word. And you can’t have a knowledge of God’s word if it is shut all week long, all month long. Can’t do that. I mean, it’s good. We did this Friday night. What we did Friday night is we had a holiness meeting. We had a revival meeting because we went to a book that had taken some scriptures and helped us to understand those scriptures. That’s a great way to learn the Bible.

Personal Bible reading is good. It’s very important to do that work yourself. But, you know, for most of the last 6,000 years, people didn’t have this Bible. And so God doesn’t require the reading of his word in those cultures—I’m saying now—for them to understand. But what he did require was getting together with men who knew that word to be taught by them on days other than the Sabbath day activity or other than Lord’s Day worship services. And we have that ability now in our own homes. God has given us this incredible treasure, the printed word, and we take it for granted and we leave it shut.

We simply can’t do that. We must open the scriptures. We must read those scriptures. We must read good books about those scriptures. And I’m speaking now primarily of men again. Men, you form the pattern. You are, as we talked about Friday night, responsible for everything that occurs in your household. And you’re responsible to make sure that you, your wife, and your children are growing in your knowledge of the simple facts of God’s law and then in the application of them.

We simply—there’s no shortcut to holiness. Holiness is a result of understanding and abiding by God’s law.

**Seventh, holy men are active men.** I—you can read all the Bible you want, and if you don’t apply it, it does you no good. Holy men are not passive men.

You know, we have this—I’ve talked about this before. But the plain fact is that we have Greek thinking that’s been intermingled with the church for the last 2,000 years. Now Greek thinking developed in such a way as to say that there’s this distinction between matter and spirit, and that matter and that kind of stuff is kind of bad, and spiritual stuff—that’s good. So ideas and abstract concepts—that’s what holiness is all about, or so the church has taught at various times in church history.

But the scriptures, in drawing holiness and sanctification right together with the law of God, says that law is applicable in the details of your life. As our text here tells us: what are you going to eat, what kind of food can you get? Can’t have roadkill. You see, it applies to the detail of your life. So holy men are not—you know, isolated, pulled back—but they’re active men who pull back from an improper consideration of things that they might attain to and consecrate their lives to God.

Only those who are holy in their actions—in their actions now—will dwell in God’s holy hill in Psalm 15. We looked at that earlier. How are you going to abide in the holy hill of God? Do all these things. There’s a list of things you’re supposed to do, and your life is supposed to be characterized by.

Leviticus 19, as I said, has to deal with all the details of one’s life. The law of God that’s applicable to us in chapters 17 and 18 of Leviticus deals with the very details of how we engage in marital relationships. There’s no area of earth over which Christ doesn’t claim kingship and lordship and authority. And God says that if we’re to be holy men, we must be active men. Our holiness can’t be reserved for our prayer closet. It’s really, you see, it’s really about what we do as we come out of that prayer closet by applying ourselves in devotion to God and all the details of our lives. It’s not our personal experience. That’s not what holiness is in the context of God’s word.

And he gives it to us right here: “Be holy. Don’t eat this kind of meat.” You know, a modern translation—not translation, but a modern way of stating this verse—could be said that be holy, eat the Lord’s supper. In the Old Testament, we’ve got all these mostly negative prohibitions on what you could eat. There are some positive things—the peace offering, Passover, etc.

New Testament, those prohibitions of clean and unclean are gone. And it’s replaced with this positive statement to get together on the Lord’s day and eat the Lord’s supper. And we’re going to talk about the relationship of this verse to the supper at the Lord’s supper portion of our worship. But you see, it’s that practical. God says, “Be holy. Drink wine. Be holy. Eat this bread.” And then understand that holiness applies to all of the food, all of your actions in the context of life of your life.

Holy men are active men. They’re not pulled back. They’re not focused on their feelings. They’re not focused on the subjective side of things. They’re focused on the objective relationship of their lives to God and to his law. They are consecrated and dedicated in all things. They are active men.

Hebrews 12:14-17 tells us that we’re to “follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.” So he’s going to tell us here how it is we’re to follow holiness: “Looking diligently lest any man fail the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up to trouble you.” So to cultivate holiness, you don’t want to have roots of bitterness. You want to drive those things out. And remember that Leviticus 19, the center of the chapter—we’ve talked about this—says that don’t be bitter, don’t hold a grudge against your neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself. Be actively motivated toward him.

How are you going to be holy? Put apart grudges and bitterness and serve one another in the context of Christ’s church. “Thereby, many may be defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.” If you’re going to be holy, you’ve got to put aside fornication. You’ve got to put aside the uncleanness characterized by Esau.

So this text in Hebrews tells us that holiness is required of us. It’s seen in terms of community together. It’s contrasted with bitterness and fornication. Bitterness and fornication defile—using an Old Testament term, make unclean. Again, now the person who exists in the context of bitterness and fornication defilement was a being removed from ritual holiness, ritual cleanliness—the ability to approach God’s holy temple in the old covenant. And so when we become defiled in terms of bitterness or fornication, our actions and our attitudes toward our fellow believers, then God says we’ve moved away from holiness as it relates to what we are as people.

So holy men are active men—actively pursuing, loving their neighbor, actively assuring or putting aside fornication and the craving after that which the world provides as opposed to what God provides in his means.

Holiness and sanctification are translations for the same word, as I said earlier, in the New Testament. And it’s important for us to understand that there’s not a distinction between holiness and growth and sanctification. It’s not a negation. Again, I know I’m driving this point home many times, but it’s not a negation of something—holiness. It is a separation primarily unto the Lord Jesus Christ. Doesn’t say “be holy men in the abstract.” It says “be holy men to me.” We tend to think of it as isolation from sin, which is important. But more than that, it is actively pursuing a lifestyle that’s in conformity to the word of God and consecrating all that we have to him.

Again, in 1 Thessalonians 4, we read about holiness. We read this:

“Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us, how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more. For you know the commandments we gave you by the Lord. This is the will of God, even your sanctification.”

Now, that’s the same word for holiness. So this is the will of God for your lives. Holiness. That’s why it’s the summation statement at the end of chapter 22 before chapter 23 moves into some new sets of laws. The summation of what’s being said so far in the case law is “be holy to me.” It’s a summation of sanctification. “This is the will of God even your sanctification.”

“What is holiness then that you should abstain from fornication that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.”

The first application made in the epistle to the Thessalonians is the marriage relationship and specifically it is the physical side of that marriage relationship that is spoken of immediately. Then 1 Thessalonians 4 says we’re to be active men in applying the law of God in the context of our marriage and particularly the physical aspects of it. That blows Greek or Platonic or Neoplatonic holiness right out of the water, does it not?

It is holiness to engage in proper marital relationships with one’s spouse. Now, the Hellenistic wing of the church didn’t like that stuff. That’s why they promoted virginity. That’s why they promoted celibacy—because that is bad, that’s dirty. But here, when it says this is the will of God, that you’d be holy men, it says that you would be holy in terms of your physical approach to your wife. You can’t get more earthy than that.

Holy men are active men. Holy men are men who are consecrated in the details of all of their lives. It goes on that “every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor in holiness.” In other words, and you know, if you have trouble—just a pastoral aside here—if you have trouble, you know, seeing that aspect of your life, men and women who are married, as holy, get to an elder, get to a friend to encourage you in that. I mean, the importance placed in the first part of this list of what holiness is cannot be overstressed.

And if you don’t, if you think to yourself, “holy relations, what is that?”—then you’ve got a problem. You see, you’ve probably thought of holiness in this Greek concept as devoid from these material things you enter into in the context of your life. So get to an elder, get help, get assistance, get pastoral counsel and advice. Nobody’s going to look down on you if you come to me. I’m not. It’s a difficult area to work through, and I’m here to help you do that. And Richard and Chris are called to help you to do that.

All right. But he goes on: “Not the lust of concupiscence even as the Gentiles which know not God that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter.” So the second application of the will of God, which is your holiness, is this: Holy men have good relationships with their wives, and holy men have good business relationships. That’s what it means. Don’t defraud another brother—your brother in work. Hebrews says the same thing. We could turn there. It says the same thing. Holiness and love are put in the context of marital relationships and business relationships. That’s what it says. Very earthy, active sort of things that define what Christian holiness is.

What do you do with your checkbook? How do you go about doing your business practices? What influence do you have on your company? Is it an influence to righteousness, not defrauding, or is it a slide back to unholiness?

You see, holiness penetrates to these active details of our lives because “the Lord is the avenger of all such as we have forewarned you and testified. God has not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness.”

You see there it is again: this uncleanness of the slain, torn animals, food in the Old Testament is now pictured to us as applying to the details of our marital relationships and our business relationships. You see, and to move away from those things, to move away from holiness in those areas, is to become unclean again. It’s to manifest the effects of the fall.

The last matters of uncleanness listed in the laws of uncleanness in Leviticus 11 through 15 is the uncleanness of issues from the sexual portions of the body. Because as Adam knew Eve, the fall was manifested in that relationship. So when we slip back into an unholy view of that thing, then we’re slipping back into the manifestation of the effects of Adam. We’re slipping back into unholiness. And God says, “Press forward into the new man in your marriage relationships and your business relationships. This is what we have been called to, cleanness and holiness.”

“He therefore that despises not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit.” How does it work? How do we get this holiness? God has given it to us. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ has been effectual. God has now given us his Holy Spirit to indwell this church and to indwell individual believers to take what the law of God, write it upon our hearts, and create holiness and sanctification in the details of our lives as we are active men actively pursuing holiness in each of these areas of our lives.

It goes on to say: “But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write unto you if you yourselves are taught of God to love one another and indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in Macedonia.”

So what he’s saying here is that now what I’ve told you here is the will of your life is holiness. Holiness is seen in terms of the very earthy details, the active participation of your life in terms of marriage relationships and business. And what that defines is love of the brethren. Holiness is a corporate activity in the context of a community. And he says, “So I’m not going to have to talk to you anymore about that. I’ve talked to that a little bit. We could talk more about it because that also is at the core of holiness is our relationship in the context of the community.”

It goes on to talk more about holiness. He says in verse 11 that “you study to be quiet, to do your own business, to work with your own hands as we commanded you, that you may walk honestly toward them that are without and that you may have lack of nothing.”

Holiness. Work with your hands. Study to do your own stuff. Don’t be a loud guy. Don’t be walking around the streets a lot. Do your own thing. Don’t stir things up so much. You know, the quiet holy life of consecration at the center to the purposes of Christ’s kingdom is what God calls holy men to be active in their holiness. And he says the end result of that holiness is that you can walk honestly toward them that are without and that you’ll have lack of nothing.

**Holy men exercise dominion.** It’s kind of the last point I’m going to make, but here it is right here. The end result of that kind of consecration in terms of God’s law, knowing it, applying it in the power of the Spirit: you become trustworthy. Men look to you. You become a deliverer of people from problems. Men look to you. You become patient with men in their long—in their difficulties and their foibles and their sins. And men look to you.

Men see you as a holy man, and they then come to you and inquire of that holiness. And so you exercise dominion. You conquer the nations. You go in and drive out the Canaanites by being a holy man and having that holiness seen in the context of people you are in the context of. And that’s a light that draws the elect to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit.

So holiness, sanctification, and Holy Spirit are all wrapped up in this text. And holy men are declared to be those who are consecrated and set apart to God.