Holiness:: Radley Chapel 24.02.08

Text: 1 Pet 1:13-16

Present Cheese to unsuspecting first year.

"what is this?"

“what adjectives could you use to describe it?”

"what are these? (holes)"
What adjective would you use to describe it therefore ("holy")
I'll give you a clue this is a characteristic which according to popular
opinion this cheese probably shares with the pope.
That was, I admit, a painfully cheesy joke, but at least I have your
attention.

I want to talk to you about holiness.

In the desert after they had escaped from Egypt, God told his people the following:

he said, “Be holy, because I am holy”. Be holy, because I am holy

Now there is a problem. Whilst I hope only a limited number still think I am talking about cheese, many, I would suggest, are nevertheless confused about holiness. You see, I think holiness, just like Britney Spears, gets a bad press. We are going to conduct a quick social experiment in chapel to see if that is true here.

I would like everyone to think of someone, one person in particular, who they think is holy. You have 10 seconds to think of someone holy.

Now, in order to conduct my quick social experiment, I need everyone to raise their right hand in the air.

Put your hand down, if the person you thought of was the pope.Now put your hand down, if the person you thought of was over 25 years of age.

So that’s pretty bad news. Basically no one here thinks of young people when they think of ‘holy’ people, and a whole load of you think immediately of the pope – who indeed seems very holy, but he’s not exactly an easy role model to relate to. But God said to all his people Be Holy. And that includes people like you and me under 25.

To clear up the confusion, let me tell you what holiness is not:

It is not religiosity,It is not being dreadfully solemn

It is not being boring, It is not wearing white robes, holding your hands constantly pressed together in the prayer position and taking ridiculously small steps so that it looks like you’re actually floating along, Holiness is not being old. It is not being ‘holier than thou’, you know, one of those people who walks around looking down on everyone else telling them with every glance how desperately immoral they are. It is not reserved for monks, nuns, vicars, popes nor indeed for cheeses.

Holiness means simply this:

It means being set apart. holiness means being set apart.

In fact, pretty much every one of you is wearing an illustration for me. We’re all in our Sunday suits. That’s one piece of clothing that’s set apart from the rest. It’s different and it stands out.

So being holy means just the same. It means being set apart. It means being different. Standing out from the crowd.

And holiness is what God wants. He said to his people “Be Holy, because I am Holy”

But, JFA, I hear the Radleian remonstrate. Why are you telling a bunch of adolescents to stand out from the crowd. If that’s what holiness is all about what kind of public school boy would be interested. I spend my life trying to fit in, trying to wear the right piece of clothing, say the right thing, not say the wrong thing, listen to the music that’s makes me cool, and go to the same holiday destination as everyone else. My life is about blending in, not standing out.

I’m a teenager, man, why do I want to be ‘holy’, ‘set apart’, that's social suicide?

In many ways, no one likes to stand out, to be different.

And you know, I’m pretty sure that’s why many people don’t want to follow Jesus. They associate Jesus with all sorts of weird things. They think becoming a follower of Jesus, becoming holy is going to mean obligatory sandal and white sock wearing. They think it means being boring, and having no fun. And quite frankly if that’s the kind of holiness God is suggesting I wouldn’t be interested either.

But being holy is more than just being different for the sake of it, it’s certainly not about being odd. Holiness means being set apart, yes but it means set apart for a special purpose. In fact just like your Sunday suit. It’s different but in a good way. It’s smarter than everything else in the wardrobe. It has a special purpose.

God said to his people “Be holy, because I am holy”. In other words, be set apart, be different, yes, but for a special purpose. That special purpose is to be like him, like God. Be holy, because I am holy.

Sure we often don’t like to stand out. But standing out for something special is everyone’s dream. Imagine your name gets read out by the warden in warden’s assembly for successfully getting into Oxford or Cambridge. You’re standing out for a special purpose. There’s no shame in that. And so it is with those who want to follow Jesus. God calls us to stand out for a special purpose, namely to be like him. What nobler purpose could there be than that?

To see what that looks like, we only need to look at Jesus. He was totally different from all those around him. In a culture of retribution he said love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. To those who treat sex casually he said sex is sacred and should be kept within marriage. To those who think money is all we need, he said that love of money is likely to exclude us from his kingdom. Finally, for all those who rejected him, scorned and mocked him in life, he, God’s chosen King, went to die on a cruel Roman cross so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. That is the kind of special purpose Jesus proposes for his followers.

Let me give you a few more recent examples of radically different Christian living.

Jackie Pullinger is a remarkable Christian lady, with an upbringing perhaps not too dissimilar to ours. She had a vision in which she felt God was calling her to help those in the walled city of Hongkong. Against all the advice of those around her she left with little money and only a single ticket. Hongkong was nothing like the wealthy metropolis it is now. A part of the town, the walled city, was effectively out of police jurisdiction and ruled by the triad gangs. There were enormous problems of Heroine addiction and prostitution. When she arrived she got a job as a primary school teacher and started a youth club for the local kids. She earnt very little money and was in constant danger. Some of the Triad gang members came to her youth club. As many accepted Jesus, they found that he set them free from their addictions. The work has continued to grow in scope to this day. Jesus reached out to people with the Good news of forgiveness and a relationship with God. Jackie did the same.

That is a holy life, a life set apart for a special purpose, God’s purpose. Wouldn’t it be great if the world had more holy people like that?

Or take William Wilberforce. Brought up in the second half of the 18^th century in a privileged family in the North and educated at Cambridge. He lived in at a time where slavery was still upheld as morally acceptable, but when he began to follow Jesus, he became convicted that he should use his political power to fight it. After his conversion he channeled every part of his energies into campaigning for the abolition of slavery, which indeed he did see through.

He certainly stood out, indeed was ridiculed by some. Just like Jesus he believed all men had equal value irrespective of their race or upbringing. He was a holy man, living with the priorities of God, not of man.

Finally, an example closer to home. When I was thirteen and had just started public school, I went to the equivalent of Christian forum. A chap called Henry in the lower Sixth came up to me, welcomed me, asked my name and generally set me at ease.

I couldn’t believe it. You didn’t do that. You never talked with lower years, it would undermine your status. Where would your respect be. But this one boy decided that it was better to stand out, and obey God’s command to love his neighbour, than to follow the crowd. That is holiness too.

Who could say, whether Christian or not, that we wouldn’t be better off with more Holy people. More people who have set their lives apart for a special purpose: to love the outcast, campaign for justice, welcome strangers?

In each case they obeyed the call to “be holy, because I am holy”. I wonder what purpose you have determined for your life at the moment. It might be Olympic athlete, property magnate, banker, or simply a comfortable existence with a nice car and a nice house.God says “be holy, because I am holy”. I wonder, will your life stand out?

Talk to Saygo (st. andrew's youth group) 2 Timothy 2:1ff

Do you ever wonder, “what’s the purpose of it all?”. Do you ever question, “why on earth am I actually here?”

SLIDE This happened to me not so long ago as I was in a couple of feet of water. I was in Scotland and it was my first ever fishing experience. I was salmon fishing on one of the best stretches of river the British isles have to offer, at enormous expense to my incredibly generous father-in-law who had invited us to join him there.

It’s not hard to figure out the point, you say. The point, surely, is to catch salmon, is it not? Well yes and no, you can of course go to waitrose and buy delicious salmon without having to put any waders on, without standing in the shop for 14 hours, without waving your arm rhythmically back and forth for a good part of the day, and without the lottery aspect that you might not actually come home with anything at all. + it costs £2.50 a pop rather than about £100.
Now that fact does demonstrate the excessive simplicity of an answer like “catching salmon is the point of salmon fishing”.

I wonder do you ever get a similar confusion when it comes to bigger questions of life, and faith. Perhaps you’ve come to saygo with exactly that question. You’re not sure what you believe in, and you’re wanting to find out. What does Christianity say is the purpose of life? What is my purpose? What am I meant to be doing while I’m here on this earth? Those are fantastic questions, and I hope today you’ll get a little closer to answering them. Then again, perhaps you’re from a Christian family, or you’ve been coming to saygo for a while. You’re pretty sure you believe, but you still, feel, like me with the fishing, you don’t quite get it. You can see people around you, even people your own age, at saygo perhaps, just like mustard keen fishermen, who are so involved, they’ve got such a clear sense of purpose in their faith, they’re living all out for Jesus, but you can’t really see why you should want to do the same. You wonder, what is it that they see, and I don’t, which means they’re so keen, but I’m not really.
Perhaps you believe in Jesus, but instead of energising you, giving you a reason to live, you find that your beliefs are just a bit of a drag really. You come to saygo because you feel you should or because it keeps your parents happy, or because your friends are here, but to be honest you often catch yourself thinking “what is actually the purpose of being Christian?”, “what difference does it actually make?”, “I believe, but so what?”. “Why am I even here?”
I hope this evening you’ll hear some answers.

SLIDE
Let’s read verse one of chapter two. 1 Timothy is a letter written by the apostle Paul to his rather timid disciple Timothy as a spiritual encouragement and a guide to what he should be doing with his life as a Christian. What he writes to young Timothy he could easily have written to us.
“You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”. x2

Young timothy may have felt like a bit of a spiritual weakling, as indeed we might, but God says “be strong”. Take your spiritual spinach. Or the way I would like to put it is “plug in to the grace of God”. Get connected to the grace of God so that it powers you up. We need some electricity to get our spiritual lives going – look at verse 1, “you and I need to be “strong””. How? verse 1 again “In the grace that is in Christ Jesus”. – we need to crank up some strength by hooking ourselves up to the ultimate power source - God’s grace SLIDE in Jesus Christ.
It’s like a lamp. Look at this lamp. A lovely piece given to us for our wedding. Beautifully crafted with a smoothed, swirling engraved wooden stand, natty lamp shade and velvet base to avoid scratching the table I put it on. Lovely.
But, let’s be honest, fundamentally pretty useless on its own. That is, until you plug it in. If you want this bad boy to it’s job you’ve got to plug it in. And when you do, boy it’s a beauty.
It’s the same with you and me. Ok we’re a bit different on the outside, I’m pretty ugly you’re all quite good-looking put by God’s standards, none of us is really any good at all if we’re not plugged in to his Grace. If we are to do our job properly, to fulfil our God given purpose we need to be strong or plugged in to the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

So what is Grace, and how can we plug in to it?

A good way of remembering what Grace means is this acronym SLIDE God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.
When we speak about Grace we mean all the wonderful things that we do not deserve, but God gives them to us, because Jesus Christ got hold of them for us in exchange for his life. God’s Riches At Christ’s expense.

It’s like this. God created the world, and put us in charge to rule over it and live off it. He gave us his laws to obey, and to show us how to relate to him, the one who thought up every cell in our bodies and every word on our tongue before we were even born.
But we don’t like that. You only need to watch a five year old being told to eat brocolli to realise that disobedience is our standard response to rules. We hate the idea that someone else should call the shots, and so we love to hate God and his laws. [SLIDES] We lie, we cheat, we show favouritism, we hate, we kill, we gossip, we manipulate, we ignore men and women, we are greedy, blind to our mistakes, quick to criticise another, impatient, obstinate, unfaithful, intolerant, foolish, full of sexual lusts, perverted, superficial, but above all proud, self-promoting, and self obsessed. SLIDE From our point of view we consider there is only one ultimate reality in life – that’s me, not God. There is only one King in our lives, that’s me not God. There is only one rule in my life,SLIDE mine, not God’s.
All that is what the Bible calls sin.
And it has consequences. Just like when you get £5.50 per hour in wages for stacking shelves at Sainsburys, the wages we get for sin is death. That’s what the Bible says. And after death, because God is just, we are destined to suffer eternal punishment in hell.
I find it hard talking about this, and if you’re anything like me, it’s hard listening to it. But that doesn’t change anything, does it? If I’m drowning in quicksand and you say to me “you’re drowning in quicksand”, and I say “that’s a bit harsh isn’t it, I don’t like that idea”, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m drowning in quicksand.
It’s tough to take, but the bible says we deserve to go to hell.SLIDE x 4

And this is God’s grace:
Just imagine a mass of billions upon billions standing with their back to God each wearing the crown of his life on his own head. there’s me … God says “despite what each of these has done, I love them so much I want them to live and not to suffer that punishment which they fully deserve.” So he puts into action the biggest rescue mission of history. He parachutes down himself in human form, Jesus Christ God the son, & lives a perfect life, and although he is completely clean from sin, SLIDE God the son gets up onto a cruel cross to bear the wrath, the anger of God the Father which was originally intended for us. And now each one of that massive crowd can turn back to God without fear of recrimination.

That is Grace.

And God commands us to be strong in that Grace. SLIDE To plug in to it. Plugging in to the Grace of God, just means knowing it. We need to know God’s grace. We need to know it deeply, in our minds and in our hearts.
So may I ask you, “Do you know the Grace of God?”
Have you ever known the wonder of complete forgiveness for all your sins, past present and future?
Have you ever looked in your mind’s eye at Jesus hanging on the cross, and thought, “he did it for me!”?
Can you say confidently, without hesitation, that despite your wrong doing you know you will not go to hell because you know Jesus has freed you personally from sin?
Are you SLIDE plugged in?

Perhaps you have, well, fantastic you’re plugged in, keep learning about Jesus, and you’ll be stronger and stronger with each day.
Or perhaps you were once plugged in but you feel like you’re not any longer. You’ve lost interest: to be honest Jesus doesn’t mean much to you at the moment. You could wake up tomorrow and find out he’s not there anyway, and it wouldn’t really make much of a difference to your life.
Perhaps you’ve never know this Grace properly. In fact this whole supposedly live-giving thing is a mystery to you. it seems completely new.
Keep coming here to saygo, find out more about this remarkable man Jesus, join a discussion group, ask Christian friends some questions, or pray. If you are one who feels like this you could even speak to one of the Christian staff after this. It’s hard to look at Jesus very long and not be gripped by his grace.
It might be that there is one other type of person here. You’ve understood understood what it means that Jesus died, but it’s not personal yet. You know Jesus died for all sinners, but you don’t yet rejoice to know that Jesus died for all sinners and that includes me! All you need do is ask God that you would benefit from that grace. Just pray to him and ask him. If that’s you, it would be a great idea to tell a friend or a leader so that they could pray with you.

That’s purpose 1. Don’t worry no.s 2 and 3 will be a lot quicker.

Look at verse 2 again,
entrust what you heard me say1 in the presence of many others as witnesses2 to faithful people3 who will be competent4 to teach others as well

Paul says to Timothy, that now that he’s plugged in to the Gospel, “what you heard me say” he needs to pass it on to faithful people who in turn will teach others as well. He’s saying Timothy needs to pass on the news about the Grace we just heard of.
If we think of it in terms of my lamp. Plug in, and then shine brightly. When you plug in and power up a lamp, it’s not just plugged in for its own benefit, it’s plugged in so that it can give everything around it’s light. It should be the same with us. We should shine brightly as Christians, and the light we shine should be the bright news of Jesus Christ who came to save every man. So we should shine brightly. In fact Jesus once said that a Christian who keeps the news about Jesus to himself is about as good a lamp that keeps all its light to itself.
If we feel we’ve got our head round grace, but we still can’t see why being a Christian should change our lives, we still don’t feel a strong sense of purpose. Here’s one way Jesus will never let us be the same again. This is God’s purpose for you – to shine brightly the message of Grace to your friends family and your community.
How do you do it?
Well, we can start by asking friends to saygo. This is a great place to hear the good news about Jesus. But they’re unlikely to come unless we invite them. In fact, that is God’s purpose for us.Thaddeus story.
Another great place to hear the gospel are the summer camps. That is exactly how I first understood about God’s grace. It was in the summer, when I was 14. How grateful I am that one person took the trouble of inviting me.

Plug in , shine brightly and Finally, a third purpose. Last the course.
Look at verse 3 “endure suffering as a good soldier in Christ”, or verse 10. “endure”. To endure means to last a long time. It’ll be tough being a Christian but God wants us to last until the end. Like a soldier we to stay focused on the battle , like an athlete we are to complete the race, like a farmer, we’re to work hard until the very end of the harvest.
There’s one more thing that’s key to a good lamp. The bulb has got to last. It’s no good if it stays on for while and then pops just as you’re trying to get your contact lens in. Put in the long lasting bulb.
That’s why I’m putting in a long lasting bulb. A bulb that will last the course.
Are you finding it hard to keep going in the Christian life. You’re not the only one, it’s never been easy. But ask the soldier, the athlete, the farmer, is it worth lasting the course? Yes they’ll say, always worth it. Paul’s third purpose for you and me Last the course.
You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Plug in, shine brightly, and last course