Sermons in Brief - Mini Messages from Pastor Harmon
"The Six Blind Men of Hindustan
and Holiness of Heart and Life" - Part 2
DT 6:1-9; DT 30:1-6; Lev 19:1, 18 MK 12:28- 34
I THESS 3:11-13; I JOHN 4:7-16
Dr. Mark A. Harmon, Pastor
Someone, somewhere, handed you a “Core Values” booklet outlining the “Core Values of the Church of the Nazarene.” You read it with interest, as you really want to know what the church you belong to values most. You read: We Are a Christian People, We Are a Holiness People, We Are a Missional People .
A good Southern Baptist deacon from Texas is surfing On the internet and comes across the Church of the Nazarene’s website. He finds a page entitled “Articles of Faith” the “We Believes” of the church, and he reads:
13. We believe that entire sanctification is that act of God, subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made free from original sin, or depravity, and brought into a state of entire devotement to God, and the holy obedience of love made perfect.
It is wrought by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service.
Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus, is wrought instantaneously by faith, preceded by entire consecration; and to this work and state of grace the Holy Spirit bears witness.
This experience is also known by various terms representing its different phases, such as "Christian perfection," "perfect love," "heart purity," "the baptism with the Holy Spirit," "the fullness of the blessing," and "Christian holiness."
He says: “I wonder what that all means? Isn’t being Born Again enough?”
Your teenage daughter is called to full time ministry. She is a sophomore at a Nazarene University. You gladly pay the $21,000 year for tuition (well almost gladly.) She’s home for Spring Break. It’s great to have her home and even better to be able to go to church together. But after church, at dinner, when you say how good the pastor’s been preaching recently and how you appreciate his emphasis on Holiness of Heart and Life she says:
“Doc, my theology prof, sure doesn’t teach holiness like the pastor preached holiness this morning. I don’t think I believe the same way as he does. I don’t believe in his kind of sanctification.”
The discussion which followed ruined your Nazarene Nap.
Holiness
Holiness of heart and life
Entire Sanctification
Second Blessing
Does it all seem a bit overwhelming?
Are the terms confusing, baffling and puzzling because you’ve never heard words before?
Or Are they confusing because you’ve heard those words but they have been defined for you over the years by so many different terms:
Rules and regulations
Purity
Set apart or separation
Total commitment
Christian perfection
Perfect love
Christlikeness
Sometimes, in trying to grasp what holiness means or how to live the sanctified life, we’ve become a little bit like The Blind Men and the Elephant: (Read the Poem found on contents page)
Last week we began by looking at the Holiness of God. God is “majestic in holiness” says Exodus 15.
This week we will balance the holiness of God or God as holy by looking at the love of God or God as love. For “God is love” John writes in his epistle.
I firmly believe we must keep these two attributes in balance if we truly want understand holiness heart and life. God’s holiness (God as holy) reveals our unholiness and our need for holiness. God’s love and (God as love) reveals how it is possible to be holy and live lives of holiness. We must keep the two in balance. The holiness of God requires our holiness: “Be holy for I am holy.” But the Love of God reveals how holiness can be lived: “Love God with your whole mind, soul, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”
Last week we saw the heavens crack open and the light of God’s holiness shine on Moses. God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." Moses experienced God’s Holiness--but then he experienced God’s love! "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”Last week we saw the heavens crack open and the light of God’s holiness shine on John the Revelator.
“On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of man,” dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.”
John then experienced the love of God—“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid.” The act of touching the shoulder was an act of love.
Last week we saw the heavens crack open and the light of God’s holiness shine on Isaiah. Isaiah experienced a transforming, unforgettable moment when he found himself in the temple. He saw the Lord high and lifted up and hear the Seraphim crying: “holy, holy, holy.” He experienced the holiness of God
But then he experience the Love of God. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" Moses was sent as a preacher of God’s word to a lost, wandering people!
It is very important to keep the white holiness of God in balance with the compassionate, caring, love of God. Without love, holiness is unapproachable. Without holiness, love is domesticated—a marshmallow sweetness. God is a perfect balance of holy love. Last week we looked at his holiness. This week let’s look at his love.
God is a God of Relationship
1. “God is Love”
Please turn to 1 John 4: 7-16. Tucked away in this gorgeous passage is a simple three-word sentence: "God is love" (John 4:8, 16). Those 3 words tells us love is an essential attribute, an essential characteristic of God. In 1 John 4:7 we read “love comes from God,” then “Everyone who loves has been born of God,” then “God is Love”. That is the central message scripture. God is a God of Relationship. HE IS LOVE.
Dr. Alex Deasley, my Seminary professor, wrote: “If anyone ever asks “What is the Bible about? What does the Bible say? We don’t have to sit back and say “Well it’s rather a complicated question and it would take a long time to answer it.” The short answer is “What is the Bible about? God is love.”
Some theologians say this is the central most adequate description of God. I believe it must be balanced by his holiness, but this awesome, majestic, powerful, fearful being is a God of Relationship—He is LOVE!
God’s love assures us God is friendly. In fact the Word assures us He is our friend and he wants to be friends. God is a God of relationships. He finds pleasure in us. He desires relationship with us. Zephaniah 3:17 says “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
His essence love and he acts lovingly for that is who he is.
2. He has made His love known
1 JOHN 4:9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God is a God of relationship. God revealed his love in Jesus. Love has to express itself. It cannot remain bottled up, inactive, unmoving. God revealed his love in a way seemingly uncharacteristic: the Divine being came near to us in Jesus. He came near to us in our loneliness, lostness, leastness, pain, emptiness, want, need, and sin.
Not only did he come near but he came near to save us from our loneliness, lostness, leastness, pain, emptiness, want, need, and sin. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
God is a God of relationship. He revealed his desire for relationship, his love, through Christ’s death on the cross! What amazing love! Then John moves on to complete his thought. God is love, He made that love known and then:
3. God means for us to love one another
1 John 4:11: “ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
To be loved by this God of relationship obligates us to love too! We would expect to read “since God so loved us we should also love him!” Instead he says something completely crazy: “since God so loved us we should also love each other!”
God loved us not when we were lovely, but unlovely; not when we were loveable, but unlovable! And so the obligation. Love can’t be taken, kept, hoarded. It must be given! We love each other even when the other is unlovely and unlovable!
John concludes in verse 12 “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” God’s love: for us, in us, for others--could very well be the definition of holiness we long for.
Paul seems to believe this when he writes: Ephesians 5:1-2 “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” To imitate God, to be Godlike, to be godly is to love, be loving. God is a God of relationship. He is love and he loves. To be like God is to love. So it appears love and holiness are very much the same elephant.
I Thessalonians 3:12-13 even suggests that love is the core of holiness: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”
When God said: “be holy for I am holy” he was saying we are holy as he is holy when we love as he loves. God is a God of Relationship.
God Calls Us to Respond in Love
Please turn to Mark 12:28:
One day a seeker of truth asked Jesus “of all commandments—which is most important?” The question shouldn’t surprise us. It was a familiar question in those days. The Law of Moses was divided into 613 commands! Rabbis discussed them, placing them in categories: heavy ones and light ones; important, more important, most important. The question isn’t surprising but it is Jesus’ answer that is. Surprising and revealing. “Love God undividedly,” he says. “Love neighbor unselfishly.”
This God of relationships who loves requires a response to love. It has always been so. Jesus was quoting from the Shema in Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” He was quoting from the Holiness Code of Leviticus: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Some scholars say he was the only one to bring these two together! Love, Jesus says, fulfills everything God requires!
God is love. He is a God of relationship. He loves us and in return he calls us to respond in love: to him wholeheartedly and to others unselfishly.
1. To love Him undividedly, wholeheartedly
Mark 12: 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
Doesn’t it make sense that when we love undividedly there will be no room in our hearts for selfish self- love ?
2. To love others unselfishly
Mark 12: 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'There is no commandment greater than these."
Love must express itself. Mother Theresa of India in speaking about loving the Lord with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength said: “this is the commandment of the great God and he cannot command the impossible. Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set.”
She also said that her work among poor and dying Calcutta, her work among the worst off of society, was what it meant for her to love God wholeheartedly. “We have to pour love on someone…the people are the means of expressing our love for God”
Conclusion:
Love is the essence of holiness. To be holy is to love wholeheartedly. To be holy is to love unselfishly.
“But” you say “I can’t love this way.” AND I SAY “NEITHER CAN I.” It isn’t our doing. It’s as John says, it is God living in us and his love being made complete is us.
When Jesus answered the seeker for truth the man responded: "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." Then, according to vs 34, Jesus said "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
But… “not far” is not in. There was something Jesus saw in this man that had not quite been surrendered to the kingdom. Something that he acknowledged in his head had not been surrendered in his heart.
A KINGDOM REQUIRES A KING. This man was not far from the kingdom. He needed to surrender to the king. Then he could love wholeheartedly and unselfishly and it would be more than just theory. It would be reality. Kingdoms require a king.
In Deuteronomy where the “wholehearted love” passage first appeared there is another passage. In chapter 30 there is this promise: “The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”
JESUS DID NOT MENTION THIS MAJOR SURGERY to this man not far from the kingdom. But he implies it. Major heart surgery is what is needed to cut away the desire to be the king of our own kingdom.
Major heart surgery is what is needed to cut away the desire to love ourselves selfishly. Major heart surgery is what is needed to remove us as king from throne of self love. When that surgery is accomplished then we are living in his kingdom instead of being “not far from” it. Then He is on the throne, high and lifted up and we are able to love with His love—wholeheartedly, unselfishly.