Dennis Tuuri

A Portion of the Sanctus

A portion of the sanctus comes from Isaiah 6. So it’s been part of the worship of the church since before the initiation, the transformation of the church into the realization of the coming together of Jew and Gentile and the church formed after Christ’s death. So it’s a very old song. It’s a very old song and that’s one of the reasons why we sing it. We want to have a good basis, a historical understanding of the history of the church to challenge us in terms of what we do.

They’re not always right in the past, but they always will be beneficial for us to study and many times to imitate.

Secondly, it’s a new song. It’s an old song, but it’s a new song. And what it is, I want to look here at the textual basis for the sanctus and essentially it comes from two specific verses from Isaiah 6:3 that we just read, the song of the angels. They cry one to another and said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Heaven and earth are full of your glory. So when you sing that first line of the sanctus, you’re singing scripture. And if you’ve memorized the sanctus, and most of us have, you memorize Isaiah 6:3 in essence or a paraphrasing of it.

Now I also have in your outline that it’s a new song. That’s the old part. But the new song is that in Revelation 4:8, this same song is reiterated in the context of the New Testament. Picture of Jesus ascending into the heavenly throne room where he leads humanity in Revelation 4. In Revelation 4, after the seven letters to the seven churches, John is brought into the heavenly worship in the temple or throne room of God. And what he sees there are angelic creatures or elders. We think probably overseers of angels. And also these four creatures who again cry out to one another and are singing the same song.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Now, their version is a little different. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. And we’ll talk about that. But what I’m saying is that the song in itself, just in quoting from Isaiah 6:3, we’re also quoting from Revelation 4:8. And so it’s a new song in that it is a song for the New Covenant church to participate in.

This is particularly evident as we look at Matthew 21:9. You can turn there on your scriptures, please. We’ll see that the second half of the sanctus—the first half is this quotation from Isaiah 6:3. And the second half of this is from Matthew 21:9. And this is Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Verse 9: Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.”

Now our particular setting for the sanctus repeats some of these words. Blessed is he. Blessed is he. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest. But it’s all an expansion of this particular verse in Matthew 21:9.

And on your outline I’ve noted there in each of the gospels, the other two synoptic gospels and also the gospel of John, this ascription of praise to God on the part of the host who welcomed the Lord Jesus Christ to Jerusalem is recorded in each of the gospels. And what we’ll look at as we get to the end of the sermon, really it’s a citation that goes back to Psalm 118. And when we look at Psalm 118 in comparison to this quotation in Matthew 21:9, we’ll see a significant movement in something and that’s at the end of the sermon.

But for now, understand that when we sing the sanctus, one way to think of it is we’re singing something from the Old Testament although it’s Peter in the book of Revelation. And then we’re seeing something from the New Testament, Matthew 21:9, but it’s hearkening back to Psalm 118. And so really, it combines these together, but it definitely shows the progression in history that’s happened with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The early church as they moved toward communion would have a long prayer of thanksgiving. And one of the basic elements of that prayer of thanksgiving was to praise God and to thank him for all of creation. So they’d start—you know, they had no problem with long prayers. They’d start at creation. They’d pray right through the patriarchs, pray right through Egypt and the deliverance from Egypt, pray right through the prophetic period, then go right through the history of the world as portrayed in the Old Testament, thanking God.

And in this long prayer of thanksgiving, it would begin and end with thanksgiving for angels—the angels who sang as God laid the foundations of the world and who assisted as his ministering servants in creation. And then they would at the end of this period, they talk about Isaiah 6:3, that those angels lead us in heavenly worship. They’re always praising God. And it is their worship that we enter into through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as that prayer moved forward and approached the table and as that great thanksgiving was prayed, the people would enter into those praises during some of these liturgies at the place where Isaiah 6:3 would be talked about and they would sing the sanctus at that point.

So the movement from old to new is that the Lord Jesus Christ has brought mankind into the angelic praise and actually of course now causes man to take dominion over even the angels as Hebrews talks about. Man is made a little lower than the angels but now he’s been granted glory, honor, and dominion through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So this song is a reminder that the church has been singing praises to God like this for 2,000 years and it’s a reminder to us of the movement of history, basic continuity both halves reflected in the other covenant.

But we can never talk about continuity if we don’t understand that continuity is really not a good word for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the changes that have happened in history since his advent and since his leading man into these throne room praises and since he now puts man in a position of once more being restored to exercise dominion over the earth, replacing as it were the angels who replaced man when man was booted out of the garden.

So it is a new song as well and it’s very important for us to recognize that this newness is part of what we celebrate as we sing the sanctus.

Now this song is an angelic song and I use angel here in the broadest sense of the term. In Isaiah 6:3, these are seraphim, burning ones. Not—you know, without getting into all the angelic orders—in general we have the angels, the angelic order, this is their song.

So it is in its first interpretation, the first half of this Isaiah 6:3, this is an angelic song of praise to God. And I think if we think about it just a little bit, we’ll see what the nature of that praise is. And first of all, they praise God. What is the message of the song? Holy, holy, holy. They praise God for his holiness of being. First of all, now this word holiness, we got to talk about it just a little bit. There are essentially two kinds of holiness in the Bible.

There is intrinsic holiness and what I’ve referred to as redemptive holiness. There’s holiness that belongs first and foremost to God alone. He is intrinsically holy and there are two elements of that intrinsic holiness of God. The first is that holiness is almost a synonym for divinity or deity. So holiness means the complete otherliness of the creator as opposed to the creature. So holiness first of all refers to God in his being separate and distinct from mankind.

So we can sing when we sing holy, holy, we can sing that nobody else is holy and the Bible can say there’s none holy but God. Well, that’s because in talking about intrinsic holiness, God has holiness first of all because he is God and we’re not. Nothing else is God. So nothing else is holy in that sense.

However, there’s a second component to God’s holiness and that is his moral perfections. That is his ethical purity. That is his being totally the definition of what morality and goodness and joy and peace are all about. And so God has these two aspects to his intrinsic holiness.

And so when the angels sing forth and when we enter into the praise of the angels and actually lead it in the context of the New Testament church, as we sing the sanctus here in a couple of minutes, what we’re saying is praise God, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. You are God and God alone. We’re praising you for your godliness, for your divinity, your deity. And we’re also praising you because of your moral perfections. And holiness has this connotation of moral perfection.

But the second thing, the second way that holiness is defined is as redemptive holiness. A lot of discussion about what the basic Hebrew word holy means. You’ve heard of Kadesh Barnea, a city in the Old Testament. Kadesh is the Old Testament Hebrew word for holiness. And it seems like the root of it is to cut off something and separate it. So it means to be separated. So it means to be separated from one thing and consecrated to something else. So the idea basically is one of separation and we, you know, we know that in the Bible holiness has reference to the sacred versus the profane. Things are made holy here and they shouldn’t be over here. There’s a distinction from secular and we want things to be sacred.

Unclean and clean was one way to teach the people in the old covenant about holiness. It remains so for us as well. Some things are okay, some things are not okay to be involved with. And what we want to understand here is that when God says something is holy, he moves it apart from one state to the other. Okay?

So for instance, at Mount Sinai, they’re going to receive the law and God puts up a boundary around it, establishes a particular purpose and a ritual regarding the reception of the law by Moses and the elders can come so far and the people got to stay over there and there’s a ritual set up. And when God puts that boundary around Mount Sinai, it becomes the holy mountain.

See, there’s nothing intrinsically holy about that mountain as opposed to the next mountain. But God has set it apart in some way. You see, he has prescribed it for a particular purpose and he has proscribed, banned, you know, commonality from coming in touch with the holy mountain while it’s being used by him. So it sets it apart from one to the other.

And I refer to that as redemptive holiness because that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ came to effect in a high sense of course—is to bring us into that group of separated, set-apart holy people from the commonality of our birth in the old Adam. When we baptize Molita Joy, you know, we set her apart so to speak through a ritual action in holiness to God. Now, we know that ultimately that’s because of God’s selection of her to be placed in the context of a covenant family, etc.

But still, God wants us to do these ritual actions to remind ourselves of our set-apart nature. And in the case of baptism, it is the sign and seal of that being set apart to a particular purpose.

So the angels are praising God for holiness. Holy, holy, holy is their theme. They sing praises to God for his intrinsic holiness, his holiness that he has in his own being, the holiness of his moral perfection. And if we take a whole Bible view, we also see them praising God for the redemptive holiness that he brings into the world in bringing things into relationship with him.

So God has set apart some things away from something. They’re not just dedicated again, but rather they’re dedicated to what is good and they’re separated from what is evil. That’s the essence of holiness for those who have been separated or called by God.

Now the angels also praise God for his actions of glory. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. So it’s not just God’s holiness, you know, is separate that we’re praising God for when we sing the sanctus, but we’re praising the fact that his glory is revealed in his actions in terms of heaven and earth. He moves earth in terms of the heavenly model. He brings glory to earth and we praise him for his actions, for his sovereign providence and bringing about the glorification of the world according to his purpose.

Third, the angels praise God for his command of hosts. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Sabaoth means host. In Revelation 4:8, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. His strength, his power, his command of hosts is talked about here.

Now, host in the first instance refers to the angelic hosts that surround his throne room that do his bidding. But then secondly, the people of God as an army are referred to as a host as well. So some people have translated Lord God of Sabaoth as Lord God of armies—armies in the sense of angelic armies and armies in the sense of human armies as well. You know, everybody is called into the army of the Lord.

Molita Joy when she’s baptized as she was this morning, she’s enrolled as part of the host to be commanded by God. And the angels—and we praise God for his holiness. We praise God that he is moving in history to manifest his glory and we praise God that in doing that he commands hosts. He commands angels and he commands men to affect his will in the context of the world.

We also praise God for his assurance of victory. I mentioned that we have the second half from Matthew 21:9. Hosanna. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in Matthew 21:9 is basically—by this time in history, it’s become an interjection that shouted forth when the king comes in to take his reign. There’s no doubt that this king is going to bring prosperity. There’s no doubt that this king’s paths are going to drip with goodness. There’s no doubt that this king is going to produce deliverance and prosperity and the defeat of the enemies of Israel.

There’s no doubt about that when we read the account in Matthew 21:9. And when we sing hosanna, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, that refers first and foremost to Jesus. Then we are singing and praising God as the angels did for his assurance of victory. The whole earth is full of your glory, they said, and we say, and Psalm 118 says that God is going to bring victory and deliverance to his people.

And then finally we praise God for his blessedness. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. The angelic choirs—they praise God, bless him for all these things—his holiness, his work in history, being commander of hosts, etc. So it is an old song. It’s a new covenant song and it shows the movement of history and it is an angelic song that we can understand what they were doing.

And finally, it’s a moral song. It’s a human song. It’s a song that we enter into. And by a moral song, what I mean by that is that we can see reflected in this praise of the angels and our praise to God implications for our lives. It is an implicit call and I’ve listed four things here: to praise, holiness, participation, and victory.

So as we sing the sanctus, we enter into angelic praise. We enter into the praise of the historical church for the last 2,000 years. We praise God for the movement of history through the coming of the Savior. But we also are being reminded of who we are. Okay? The angels set the pattern for our worship.

Calvin says this. He says, “Now, when we’re informed that the angels are employed in uttering the glory of God, let us know that their example is set before us for imitation. For the most holy service that we can render to him is to be employed in praising his name. When he associates us with angels, it is in order that while we sojourn on earth, we may resemble and be joined to the inhabitants of heaven.”

So God says that this song is one that we’re not just supposed to see the angels doing. We’re supposed to enter into, which is why the church has been singing it for thousands of years. And we’re supposed to look at the angels and what they do in heaven, the heavenly pattern of their praise and usher ourselves into it and let it transform us.

So first of all the implicit call in the sanctus is a call to praise God with the angels. And you know what Calvin says here is of critical importance for understanding who we are as people. We’ve talked about this a lot in our church, but we are not primarily human by way of thinking. We’re not homo sapiens. You know, we are people primarily—our primary purpose in life and what identifies us—is this praise that we’re supposed to sing to God.

It is the highest and the church has held this. It’s just not very much articulated these days. But the highest duty and joy that we have in life is to be ushered into the praise of God.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily comport with our Adamic nature. And our children being brought up, they’re not necessarily going to just say, “Oh, when would we get to go to church and praise God?” They’re going to see, “When do we get to go to church and have friends with our friends, have a good time with our friends?”

But this is what it is. The praise of God and the formal worship of the church is the highest calling man has. So Calvin said so is implicit by this thing. And we’re to be ushered into the praise of the angels. And it’s an implicit call to us to join that angelic song.

What is the song again? The song is holy, holy, holy. The song is to focus on the holiness of God. And when we come together to join the angelic choir in praising God in his throne room in Lord’s day worship, we see the primacy of praise and we see the primacy of the basic content of our praise and ascription of holiness to God and praising him for his infinite being.

Now we also see in the context of Isaiah 6:3—not just the basic content of what worship is about, praising God for his holiness. We also see the fervor by which we’re to sing these songs. The angels cried aloud to one another as seraphim did in Isaiah 6:3.

So we look at the angels and we see the content of our praise. We see the significance of praise, but we also see the fervor in which we’re to enter into the praise of God. We’re to cry aloud to one another in the context of the worship service of the church. We’re to sing loud with knowledge, with fervor, not because we want to hear ourselves sing, but because we want to praise God.

If we understand who it is we’re being ushered into the throne room to serve and worship, we will be driven to praise his holy name. And we’ll put aside the silly, you know, pride that men usually have, which is why men don’t sing as loud in the church usually. They’re prideful. We’ll put all that apart and we’ll humble ourselves before the King of Kings and say, “Praise God for what you’ve done in my life this past year. Praise you for sustaining me through difficulties. Praise you for telling me that the end result is my paths will drip with fatness, the way that you come to be with me.

Praise God that my eternal home in heaven is assured and that earth is a foretaste of all of that. Praise you that you’re always with me. Praise you that you’ve given me power to walk through this earth. Praise you that you’ve separated me in the totality of my being to be yours, consecrated and dedicated for your service. Praise you, Lord God, that even in the difficult times of my life, you call you tell me to cast all my care upon you.

Not because you’re uncaring or because you work it out somehow. And we’re to cast all of our care upon you, Lord God, because you care for me. Praise God.

When we come into the worship of God, that’s what we’re to focus on, the person of God. And when we do that, we’ll see the angel’s fervor as something we want to enter into. We’ll cry aloud to one another, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Notice the angels’ persistence as well. This is what they do all the time. This is what they do all the time. And the implications of that is this is what we’re going to do with all of our lives. Maybe not verbally singing, but I believe that our lives should be punctuated by songs and praises and hymns to God, not just for this hour and a half on Sunday, but the rest of our week as well to encourage each other.

It’s what the scriptures tell us to do. We’re to enter into the angel’s persistence. And we also note here the angels’ fear, their reverence, their awe. You know, they cover their faces. They cover their feet. There’s a reverence and fear, a proper fear of God that the angels portray for us here. And it goes on—I’ve quoted the verse about how his voice, God’s voice shakes the pillars of heaven. And Hebrews tells us that, you know, we’re ushered into the throne room of God.

We’ve come to Mount Zion. We enter into angelic praise with the church triumphant in heaven and militant on earth every Lord’s day. And then it says to fear him because our God is a consuming fire. And now he’s shaking not just the earth but heaven and earth together. God is in the process. History has changed since the coming of the Savior. And now everything that can be shaken, everything that is not of his kingdom that’s not consecrated, holy to God, it is going away.

The posts of heaven, the foundations of the earth are being shaken by the throne room activity of the Lord God. And when we enter into the praise of God, we focus upon his works in history. And we know that is a tremendous shaking that he’s producing in the context of our times. And we know that we’ll either be shaken down or we’ll be shaken out.

Holiness—we enter into the angel’s fear of God as well. And I want to make an application point here.

If this call, the sanctus is a call for us to enter into the fervent, persistent, awe, fearfulness of God, content of our praise. If we’re to do that, then we want to get better at it. If the angels give us a picture in Isaiah 6:3 in which we sing often in this church in the sanctus, of training us in worship, God now has said that while man was subjected to the angels, now he’s been given glory, knowledge, and dominion. He’s exalted above the angels.

And now your primary instructors in song is no longer the angels. Your primary instructors in how to sing this way—the way the angels sing—are men. Men have taken over the job again. Adam was booted out. Angels took his place. Jesus has brought us back in. And now man replaces angels.

So your primary teachers are men. And one vehicle by which we’ve provided you in this church, the ability to enter into this in a fuller sense, is the Sunday school class that we have at 10:30 where men teach other men to be leaders. Not because they’re so smart or so rich or so strong or any of that stuff, but let him that boast in this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord.

Well, we do that through song. Leadership occurs through the praise of God in his sanctuary. And if we as men are going to lead this congregation into the new millennium, and if we’re going to lead this church into the next century, and if we’re going to lead this church in the paths of holiness this year, then we will do it first and foremost by being transformed in our praises and singing to God so that we join with the angels in fervor, persistence, knowledge of who we’re singing to, and a proper reverence for God.

Songs and leadership. That’s how we move ahead. I believe God says that our primary duty is to praise him and he moves us in the context of dominion by doing that.

Secondly, this call is an implicit call not simply to praise but it is an implicit call to holiness of actions. Again, quoting Calvin, that the harmony between us and the angels may be in every respect complete, we must take care not only that the praises of God may be sounded by our tongues, but likewise that all the actions of our life may correspond to our professions. And this will only be done if the chief aim of our actions be the glory of God.

So this sanctus, this first half of it that Isaiah 6:3 tells us that not only are we to see as our primary focus in life praising God for his holiness, but we’re also implicitly called to be holy. Therefore, because he is holy, we focus on God’s intrinsic holiness, but we also focus on his redemptive holiness that we’ve been redeemed for the purpose of being holy in all of our lives.

Holiness has a certain centrality to it. As I said, one of the names for God that Isaiah frequently uses is he’s the Holy One of Israel. The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. Holiness is almost a synonym for deity. It has a central aspect to it and it has a central aspect in the context of our lives as well.

Psalm 15 tells us that only holy men will abide in the hill of God, the worship of God. We are to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. We’re to understand what we’re separated apart to and removed from. And when men don’t do this in the Old Testament, it’s talked about in terms of their inability to make distinctions. God has established us or saved us to the end that we might distinguish between holy and unholy and between unclean and clean.

And when God comes to chastise his people, he tells them they no longer have properly seen to this distinction between what is unholy and what is holy, what was unclean and what has now been cleansed or separated to God. And so the scriptures tell us in Leviticus 19:1 and also in 1 Peter 1:16 that we are to be holy because God is holy.

When God separates us, you know, like taking that mountain or like taking an instrument, a particular fire pot or a particular fork that’s to be used for the sanctuary use and he consecrates it to that use—holiness. It’s a picture, a reminder to us of us being separated to God, being made holy because he is holy.

This redemptive holiness is what God has called us to engage ourselves in. And so 1 Peter and Leviticus 19 tells us to be holy because God is holy.

Now there’s also another indication of the centrality of holiness to us. In Hebrews 12:14 we’re told to pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Holiness is not an option. Holiness is central in the context of our development as men.

Now, I would also say that holiness is kind of a capstone virtue. We talked about this a little bit in Sunday school. We’ve talked about it a little bit before here. But there are three distinct falls of mankind. Adam falls in the garden and sins against the Father. Cain falls in the context away from the garden by killing and striking out at the image of God in his brother. And then the Sethites, the sons of God, sin against the Spirit by taking to themselves wives that are not committed or consecrated to God.

And the end result of that is the reversal in the rest of the book of Genesis. Abraham proves patient, not taking from the Father what is not rightfully his, waiting, waiting, waiting. Jacob proves kind to Esau instead of striking out against him. And Joseph proves himself holy in the context of his witness in empire times in Egypt as he ruled the whole world.

And the picture of that—and the reversal of what the Sethites did—is that when the daughters of men come after Joseph in the form of Potiphar’s wife, he resists her and flees that kind of uncleanness or unholiness.

So Joseph is the picture that really holiness is kind of the capstone virtue of what we are as Christians. These things can be correlated to the first three commandments and it’s the fourth commandment where the word holiness finally comes in and that’s to keep sanctified or holy the Sabbath day. So as we move through obedience to God in terms of patience, brotherly kindness, and a full witness of Christ, whatever we do, we’re ushered into a proper understanding that’s what we’ve been set apart to do, to be holy and consecrated to God.

Holiness is the very way in which we’re to walk. In Isaiah 35, verses 5 to 8, we read the following:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened. The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer. The tongue of the dumb shall sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water in the habitations of jackals where each lay. There shall be grass with reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there and a road and it shall be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for others. Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray.

What’s our walk? I saw this movie this last week, The Emperor’s New Groove. And by groove, what the movie talked about is kind of the way you move through life. The emperor had this groove he was in. And whenever you kind of got in the way of that groove, he would, you know, throw you out the window and you’d get beat up pretty good or whatever it was. You don’t want to get in the way of the emperor’s groove.

Well, the true emperor, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ. King of Kings is another way of saying emperor, right? Ruler of not just a country but all the world, and the emperor’s way, the Lord Jesus Christ’s way, his groove if you want to look at it that way, is called here in Isaiah the Way of Holiness. You see in that movie the groove of the emperor is pride, but he’s brought like Nebuchadnezzar was to become like an animal. In fact, he actually becomes an animal—a llama—and like Nebuchadnezzar he eats grass and he’s humbled.

So the emperor’s new groove at the end of that movie is humility and brotherly kindness. You see his groove, his way has become in a certain cartoon secular sense holiness. But you know it struck me that we should think of ourselves as being always in the Way of Holiness. That we should think that our lives are also marked by a way.

You know, the Bible says to walk in the way, the ruts of righteousness. So groove isn’t a bad word. You know, a groove in a record or something. There’s a rut we’re to walk in as we go through this world. There’s a way. And Isaiah tells us that way is a way of holiness. It’s the way of consecration, seeing everything set apart for the purposes of the emperor.

So the Lord Jesus Christ comes to give us a new way in our lives to lead us in the Way of Holiness. God is the Holy One of Israel and he calls us to walk in the context of holiness.

I took a walk yesterday in my preparation for this sermon. Walked around Oregon City here for about an hour. Walked around it and I thought about this and I thought about how does it—what does it mean to be holy in the context of what I’m doing today? Well, it’s to look at the world around us and see that everything now—bells on the horses right—will be called holy, be inscribed on the common work horses. Everything now has been set apart since the coming of Christ for the purposes of Christ’s kingdom.

So I picked up a couple of flyers off houses that are for sale. I’m going to start posting them here on one of the bulletin boards. Maybe some of you want to buy one of these houses. But if nothing else we should pray for who’s going to inhabit those houses, that God brings along the elect community of Christ to move into those houses.

Those houses are set apart. See, now evil people may live there who reject God. And we want to pray that if that’s who they are, they move out. See, we want the possessions of the earth restored because they’re consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our groove, our way of holiness is to go through the earth and see ourselves as separated in all that we do and say.

You see, the problem we have with holy is that we think of the secular and the profane or the secular versus the sacred and we sort of think of it in terms of geographical or spatial ways. This building’s holy and that one’s not. But the emperor’s groove is a claim of holiness over everything, you see. And we consecrate things by the use of them.

And so we pray as we look through this city where God has planted us now as a church. We pray that the elect of Christ might inhabit these homes and understand their need to consecrate these homes for the services of the king.

I walked around and I saw this high school that’s sitting a couple of blocks away from us and I thought, “Oh boy, that’d be a nice location for a seminary, wouldn’t it?” You know, we don’t want atheistic anti-God education going on in that building. We want to pray about that building, seeing it as consecrated for the purposes of the king. I don’t care what they’ve consecrated it to. Reality is determined by the emperor and his way of holiness. And we walk and look at things according to the emperor’s way.

We want to say dispossess the people that are not proper stewards of that facility, that we might have proper stewards there.

I walked along and saw these businesses and I thought, why don’t I just walk over to Dairy Queen for lunch occasionally or the pub, get to know those businesses and pray that Christian people might run those businesses? We got a Christian place where Jacob works right next to the Dairy Queen just a few blocks from here. You know, I’m looking at Oregon City and thinking in the providence of God, this is where he’s placed us. And if we’re going to be consecrated, we should be praying for these homes, praying for these businesses, and then actively involved.

And as I walked around, I thought, “Yeah, that’s a good thing. I can tell the congregation tomorrow, tell them to pray for these houses.” But you see, the idea is I then realized—no, pray for the houses. Don’t talk about it. Don’t just lecture on it or preach about it or encourage people. Do it. You see, the way of holiness is not an intellectual way. The way of holiness is a way of actions. It’s a way in which we speak things and we do things and everything’s consecrated and dedicated to the purposes of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I believe we’ve got a couple of key families in our congregation. Those of you who live close to this facility, you should think of yourselves as sort of key in this idea of looking at what we’ve got to do here in terms of outreach. I thought about the churches around here. I’m going to a meeting of the Oregon City pastor’s prayer breakfast Tuesday morning. You know, these churches—we want to see our job as encouraging them and their maturation.

We want to take what God has given to us and share it with them. And we want to learn from them to the degree that it is consistent with the scriptures and with the proper sense of holiness and dedication.

God says that we have a way. Young men and young women, what do you do as you move through your way in this world this week? Are you going to think of your lives as being separated and consecrated to God? When we come to the table, going to remind you that’s the purpose for which you’ve been redeemed, to serve the king in everything you do and say.

Are we trend setters in the world or are we having our trends set by the world? I mentioned the movie. We can go to these movies and change the way we think because of them. Or we can take what’s good in those movies and what resonates with the truths of scripture, be encouraged by them and eliminate the rest, the way John talked about last week as worthless.

See, holiness is not removed from the culture. Holiness recognizes that culture is a gift of God to be grabbed a hold of, to be used, developed, and challenged and consecrated to the purposes of the king. Holiness isn’t retreat from interaction with our culture. Holiness, the way of the emperor, is to go through this culture—the families, the businesses, the entertainments that are found in this community—and see them as set apart to the king and move to make that manifest where we are.

That’s our job here. The next century, I hope some of these things come to pass. We have a long-term vision.

Well, holiness is also seen in the Sabbath. How do we do this? That’s a big task to take on the culture and change it. Well, you know, one of the places we want to begin is in Lord’s day worship because as I said, the word holiness comes up in the Ten Commandments in the fourth commandment, in Exodus 20:8-11.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It all begins here. Our following through with holiness of God that we praise him for and following through in practical actions begins with praising him for it. If we cannot come together for an hour and a half and have everybody here, everybody here on time, everybody here prepared to enter into the worship of God, we’re probably not going to do real well in claiming the community.

It begins here. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

I’ve got some groove things that I do on the Lord’s day and you know I don’t—you don’t have to do these things. Certainly what I do though is, you know, six days of the week I have two checkbooks in my back pocket. One for the church and one my own. Sabbath day I self-consciously take it and I do not put it in my pants. I got to put it in my dresser drawer.

Somebody asked me last week and we had stuck around for New Year’s Eve service. Are you going to—did you bring a change of clothes? No. I don’t change clothes on the Lord’s day. I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s fine if you guys play change clothes and recreate. That’s okay. But what I’m saying for me, it helps me to keep this day holy, set apart somehow from the rest by being dressed a little differently, a little better.

See, and it keeps me more in the groove. I’m, you know, I’m prone like all of us are to fall out of that way of holiness on the Lord’s day because the evening starts to come on. If I keep my clothes on, well, if I keep my good clothes on, I keep my Sunday clothes. Now, now look at—I don’t, you know, what if you change clothes today? That’s fine. But what is not fine is if you change clothes after dinner or before dinner and go and do whatever you’re going to do and treat it like a normal day.

That is not fine. The day is to be set apart somehow to God. It’s to be sanctified. It becomes, you know, the leaven the leaven of the whole lump of all of our time. And if we can’t do it here, there’s no sense in drawing out goals and objectives for the neighborhood and the culture and all this stuff. Start here.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. What do you have to do to change your life in terms of the holiness of the Lord’s day? Probably something. I got to get up a little earlier. I was right here right on time for Sunday school, but I should have been here a little earlier. Should have made a little better preparations last night. There is no excuse for being here late. You know, if that offends you, I’m sorry, but you know, I just do not see—if this is what we say it is in the sanctus when we sing it, if this is the height of the purpose for our being to come together and to praise God.

We don’t want to come in when the sermon starts. What does that say about us? Primacy of, you know, hearing a word to us as opposed to the primacy of the actions of entering into God. When the call to worship goes out from this church, everybody should come in. Not later, not you’re off doing something else in the building. So no, get here if at all. Though sometimes things come up, but you know that should be very rare.

And when you come here, sing with the fervor and the content and understanding of what we’re to do. And then, you know, you got this worship service right here, right? And around this worship service, we’ve got this time to come together to study the word. It’s an excellent preparation for coming into worship. And I don’t want to, you know, pressure you to come to Sunday school. I’m just saying but if you want to avail yourself of that, I think there’s good things going on here.

And then after the service is over, we have this agape. And again, there I think we know this. We’ve talked about this over and over. The agape is a picture of our union and fellowship in Christ and the love we’re to have for one another. It’s not normal fellowship. We’re on our best behavior. You know, it—and then the rest of the day, it’s a 24-hour day. God, you know, a day is a day and the whole day is to be kept holy in some way.

So that establishes the consecration of our time, the rest of our week. So when I put the checkbook back in the pocket, hopefully what I do on Monday is I remind myself—maybe not explicitly every week—but what I’m reminding myself of is that I want to use all the money of this church and all the money of my family checking account in the emperor’s groove, in the emperor’s way of holiness somehow.

You see, it sets up the proper use of the rest of the week.

I mentioned money in the kingdom. The tithe is holy to the Lord. Leviticus 27:30. We’ll have reports in a couple of weeks, you know, receipts for giving to the church this year and you should probably do a little mathematics. You should probably say well, am I really seeing the importance of the consecration, the special consecration of 10 percent of my income to be used for God’s purpose? And if you’re not, you know, then what are you doing with the rest of your money?

If you can’t see the special consecration of this day then the rest of your time will probably go downhill. If you can’t see the special consecration of the tithe, the offerings you’ve committed to, then probably the rest of your finances go downhill.

I know that one of the deacons has told me several times that the only time he’s ever gotten in financial troubles in his life is when he did not, you know, set apart and consecrate that part of his income. It’s always true.

Relationships. In Leviticus 19, we have this chapter full of 70 statements that is an exposition of the Ten Commandments and it begins in verse two: “Speak to the congregation of the children of Israel say to them you shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.”

See the centrality of holiness? The very beginning of this long list, this detailed exposition of the Ten Commandments, is a call for people to be holy. He has given us these ethical standards by which we’re to be separated in all that we do to him and where does it start? “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.”

Now that phrase, I am the Lord your God, is a marker. It marks these various specific commandments. So God intentionally links two things here at the head of the list. One is the Sabbath. We’ve talked about that. But the other is to revere your father and your mother. Proper relationships are a special focal point of holiness in relationship to God.

So God sees us especially thinking in terms of our time with the Sabbath day and the worship of him, our money with the tithe, and our relationships. And at the center of that is honoring and reverencing our father and mother.

Young men and young women, the way of holiness that you’re to walk in, your groove this week, is to be one of reverence and obedience to your parents, even when they don’t act that way. Now, I know that implicit in this is if you’re going to get a lot of honor as parents, you’re going to want to act honorably. But there’s something about just being put in that position by God that he wants children to reverence and honor.

Children, the way you enter into this next millennium, the way you enter into the Way of Holiness this week, today is to commit yourselves when you come up, consecrate yourselves in obedience to the word, to commit yourselves to honor and reverence your parents. I didn’t put it at the first of the list. God did. And God puts it here for a very important reason.

And I’ve listed some other verses here.

Moving on a little bit. Relationships in terms of spouses. I’ve noted this correlation several years ago. And I think it’s significant. Let me read a couple of verses. Hebrews 13:4 and 5:

Marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled. But fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Let your conduct, your business, be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

So two things there: the holiness of the marriage bed and then the importance of honesty and business dealings. Then 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8:

This is the will of God, your sanctification, your holiness, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification, holiness, and honor and not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God that no one to take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter because the Lord is the avenger of all such as we are also forewarned you and testified.

So he went from sexual relationships in the context of marriage to not taking advantage and defrauding your brother in any matter. In both of these texts God says that in terms of being a separated people we’re to be separated first in the context of our sexual relations. Now the book of Leviticus and talking about clean and unclean, the whole point is fidelity—high fidelity to your mate. No sexual relationships outside of it. Fidelity to your mate.

And even in the context of that relationship, Paul tells us here there you’re you’re—