Holiness brings Harmony

Well, greetings in the precious name of Jesus. Happy to be with you this evening, and I trust that what I have to share would be an encouragement and a blessing to each of you.

I guess my prayer for you as a congregation is last last Sunday I had to share down at the congregation Oasis, and I told them that my prayer for them and it would be for you too. The Apostle Paul there in Philippians, when he wrote to them, he says, "In this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that ye may approve things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ." And then I like this next verse, "Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God."

I trust that each one of you are filling the presence of Jesus and the Holy and the Holy Spirit in your life. Tonight I want to take a message from First Peter. I'm always encouraged when I read through the book of Peter. You know, it was I'm thinking that it was there during the Passover or right after the Passover, the Last Supper, that Jesus said to Peter. He said that when you are converted, strengthen your brother.

And then a short time later, after the after the resurrection, and Jesus came to them when they were fishing, he told Jesus again. He said, "Feed my sheep." And when I when I when I read through the book of Peter, I stop and realize I think that Peter did a very good job at what Jesus told him to do, where he says, "Feed my sheep."

The title of my message tonight is Holiness Brings Harmony. If you would, I'm going to be reading a few verses from the end of chapter one and then go over into chapter two some. But if you would take the first chapter of of Peter here, you could pretty much divide it into three parts where it speaks of hope, holiness, and then harmony.

And I think that's what he's telling us, is when you when we are saved by Jesus Christ, that that hope that we get, it grows into holiness, and then holiness grows into harmony with God's people. And if you would, if you're much of a Bible scholar, you don't have to read very much, and you soon discover that a major theme of there's a major theme that is spoken, and that is this this theme of holiness. And, you know, Jesus talks about it. Paul talked about it. Peter, John, and Jude, each one of them spoke of different aspects of holiness. And when I think of holiness, it's separation from the world unto God, to an upright, righteous life.

And the effect of the cross is to translate us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And we know that Peter talks, or it was it's Jude talks about the deceivers that come and and they have changed the grace of God into lasciviousness and tell us that basically that that idea of lasciviousness is that we can have an unbridled lust. We can still, even in our as we claim to be Christians, we can still follow the lust, our own lust, and live in the lust of the flesh.

And these men often gave license to to living after the flesh. And Peter wanted to speak out against that. Another major theme in the body is this idea of unity or harmony.

Jesus prayed there in John 17. He says that when he prayed to the Father, he says, "I pray that they could be one as you and I are one." And I think, though, he was specifically in that setting there, he was speaking of the Jew and the Gentile as becoming one, coming one together. And we have that same thought when you would go to Ephesians chapter two, where it talks about tearing down the middle wall of partition. And again, it's speaking of bringing the Jew and the Gentile together into the church. And that was no small undertaking.

But I also think that we don't have the issue here tonight of trying to get the Jew and the Gentile to agree. But I think that he still wants the same oneness in the church today, in the 21st century that we live.

Now, the interesting thing to me is that this idea I'm going to use I'm going to put the word harmony in for unity.

There there seems to be a certain amount of tension between this this theme of holiness and this theme of of harmony or or unity. And and if you stop and you can stop and think about yourself, maybe I'll try to explain what I mean. There is whether it is a subconscious thought of yours or a conscious or a subconscious, you're you you will find yourself that you will either hold holiness up to a higher degree, or you will hold unity or harmony up to up to a higher degree.

And sometimes that that creates that creates tension within a brotherhood or within a group of people. Let me explain. If you're a person that holds holiness up higher than harmony or unity, you will probably as you look at at different issues that come up, you will say that this is this is our standard. This is the way we apply to this truth. And and this is where I stand. And it probably don't matter how many splits and splinters that fly. That's probably where you're going to stand.

On the other hand, you have those that are that hold unity. The idea is that we want to be unified. And if you're on that side of the fence, you will probably you're a people person, and you will probably open yourselves up or be willing to lower the bar and probably open yourselves up to drift some.

Now, we need and I think that in Christ, the goal that we want to do is to bring these two things together. Now, maybe I should ask a question, and maybe I should ask the question, should we put more emphasis on holiness, or should we put more emphasis on unity and harmony?

Anyone want to stick their neck out and and and say which which which which is there a is there a hierarchy in this thing? It should one be should be one be raised up higher than the other.

Well, if no one wants to stick their neck out, I guess I'll have to stick my neck.

Okay. You're in harmony. And the other thing that's happening is unity for the Lord's country. I couldn't quite get Lord's country. Do you have unity or harmony? There's a possibility of that. Yes.

In the verse of Peter that says, "Purify your hearts unto the unfaithful among the brothers," and that's very much together. Okay.

I think they both come together. I guess I would agree a little bit with Edsel. I think that if you want to, that we should that we should that holiness maybe comes a little bit higher, but it cannot it cannot stand alone. And but but I'm going to try to explain the reason why I feel I think that holiness the reason why I think that it maybe comes a little bit first. I think that holiness is love for God, and holiness is separation from the world, devotion to God, and obedience to God.

Jesus in his in the Great Commandment said that, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." This is the first and Great Commandment. The second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

So we see that the first commandment when I said about holiness is love for God, the first commandment or the Great Commandment is that I love God with everything I got, my with my all my strength. And I feel that my relationship with man is going to follow or flow out from that relationship with God. To me, the greater love is my love for God, and my love for man flows out of that. I'm going to read that verse that John spoke about. Maybe I'll just read the verses here altogether that I was planning on reading, starting at verse 22 in First Peter to about verse two in chapter two.

Seeing, ye have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, being born again, not of a of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower thereof falleth away. But the Word of God endured forever. And this is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto him.

Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby.

Verse 22, where it says there that we have purified our souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love for the brethren, see that ye love one one another with a pure heart fervently. The New King James uses instead of the unfeigned love. It talks about sincere love.

And I'm going to speak to those verses a little bit more a little bit later.

I guess my or the the thing that I would like to stress or the thing that I would like us to I think that there's a real blessing that we can there's a real blessing when we can bring these things together, the the holiness and the unity which leads to harmony. And I think that that is what God really wants. And just as he wanted to see the the the Jews, that's the kind of of church life that he wants to see us experiencing today. And I think that there's a great power that comes out of that. I think, though, that there's there is a holiness that is not properly interconnected or meshed or whatever you want to call it with loving others.

We you probably have probably have heard of or read or maybe personally know someone that maybe has been raised in a in a Christian home or with churches, but for some reason don't want anything to do with a church with God. I remember of a young man.

Well, he's not young anymore because he's two, three years older than I am. But I remember when it just seemed like for what reason he turned his face away from from God and anything Christian, and he absolutely just didn't want anything to do with it.

And as far as I know today, I'm not quite sure where that man would be today. But as far as I know, as far as I know, that man has not changed to to today. And I had to wonder if if a situation and I'm not I don't know all the ins and outs of that situation. But sometimes I think what I said about holiness that is not properly interconnected with loving others, I think that we can that holiness that is prioritized without love can be very, very detrimental to to to to young people, especially. We profess to be a holy people. We emphasize what is true holiness. God first. He is to be loved.

He is to be feared, and he is to be obeyed. But then when I stop and think of those verses there in in First John 3:1, where it says, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him because it knew him not."

I have to stop and think, you know, there's times that in our holiness we can we we feel that maybe or do not have the love that we should have for those people that are are struggling. And I think that's when we should remember the love that God had for us, that when we were walking away from him, he did not reject us. Behold that love.

But in that love, I think there are commands that are not negotiable. But our holiness, to me, our holiness has to be enclosed, enclosed in a culture of love, care, and support. We have to be willing. And I think if if that is happening in our brotherhoods and our families, I believe that we're going to experience the harmony and unity that is blessed of God. I think that it's going to that that's when when there's people when they look look on our on our congregations and see that if they're if when our children look at us as as parents in our families, that is something that they're going to say, "That's what I want. That's what I desire to have."

John 3:16, it says, "Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And the reason why when I'm thinking about this culture of love and support, I think that our congregations and our brotherhoods should be one of the easiest places for someone that maybe within our congregations has failed, that is one of the easiest places for them to come and pour out their heart and and and to confess or whatever.

I just I just believe that that should be the type of of brotherhoods and of and the care that we are showing.

I do think, though, that in this aspect of love, if someone rejects the fundamental truths of God's Word and they call us unloving, that is something that that we cannot help. There are areas that yes, if someone rejects, there is going to be a separation. That's okay. Thank you.

As I said, Peter talks a good bit about about holiness as you would go through Peter.

If you would go back to verse 15 and 16 of chapter one, it says, "But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy."

And when I when I thought of that idea of being holy, to me, the main idea behind holiness, we often think of that as the aspect of moral purity. And that is that that has a large part of it. But when I think of holiness, I think of a partners or being set apart. And to me, it's the idea that God is separate. He's different from his creation, both in his nature and in his perfection of his attributes. But the but to me, the most interesting thing about that is, you know, so often when people claim to be holy, the first thing they want to do is kind of build a wall around themselves that no one else can is allowed to penetrate that.

But God calls us in his apartments. He calls us to come to him and share in his apartments or his separation. He says to us, "Be holy, for I am holy." And to me, that's that's a beautiful thought that God that God does not set up a wall of his holiness, but he asks us to come in and to be to be part of that.

Then looking here a little bit at verse 22, where it says, "Seeing, ye have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unto unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently."

This verse is again another little bit of an interesting book verse. It's a verse of of doubles. It talks about an unfeigned love. And then it it tells us that we are to love one another with a pure heart fervently. So there we have. To me, it's it's kind of a it's too if you look up some of those words, there's two types of love here. There's the like brotherly love, which you would find in in in families or we it's a love that yes, we are willing to to stick up for one another. But then we also the the the later love is the agape love, when we're willing to give to lay down our lives for the for the sake of of our brother.

It talks about a purified soul and a purified heart. And so there we see a a total a total cleansing. And I think when it's when it talks about fervency, when it talks about that we are to we are to love one another with a pure heart fervently, it's talking about the degree of our love or how much that we love. And then it also talks about loving with a pure heart. And then I think that that's loving with a right motive. That's that's that's what is our motive for loving someone? Is it is it just to get something back? But when we when we think of this here of this agape love, it's a love that is that is giving.

And when I think about that, if if our brotherhoods could work in that way together, I think again that there's going to be a harmony and a unity that is going to be is going to be quite a testimony to to others. You know, the world sees a lot of fighting and a lot of scrapping, but when they come to the church, that's not what they're expecting to see to the body of Christ. And that's what I think that that Peter is telling them. There should be a love and a togetherness when we come together.

I see this as as a love for our brother. You know, at Saint Thomas, we have accountability groups. We break up into two small groups and we give we have to write down on a piece of paper all of our all of our websites that we that we use, how much time you're spending on them. And there's a there's other different different things. And I think that that's good.

But sometimes maybe we should be sitting down and there should be accountability groups and the questions should be asked and you should be brought into account of how much do you really love your brother? That may be just as important as having this accountability groups for for the digital world and all of that.

And when I speak of this love, it would just seem like, well, if we have if we lived in a perfect world and our our love for God would just naturally translate to a love for the brother, everything ought to just work out well. But I think we all know that there are some patterns in our lives at times and some thinking that kind of throw a kind of throw a quirk into that whole thing. And that's when Peter goes on to give and I'm just going to look at a few practical things that he speaks about that we are going to have to deal with within our lives if we want to in if we want to be able to enjoy this harmony that he that he wants us to.

In verse one of chapter two, he says, "Wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby."

I would take from the way Paul or or the way Peter is saying this here, he says, "Lay aside that he is saying that you or we maybe have things in our lives that that we are going to have to take them and lay them aside." If you would also go back into Hebrews 12, I think it's verse two, where it says that we are to lay aside every weight and to be setting sin. But anyways, Paul here or Peter here gives five things that he tells them that they are going to have to lay aside if they expect to experience harmony, whether it's in in your family, whether it's in your church or or what or or in any of your relationships with other people.

He starts out, "Lay aside all malice."

Maybe I should just back up a little bit. If if we as if if I as as a father insist on certain things of my children doing certain things because I say those things that you want to do, they're just not holy and I want to hold up holiness. And if I insist on those things and have these any of these five things sticking in my life, I can promise you things are not going to work out well.

And it's going to be the same way for us as a body of believers. If we have any of these things that he that that that Peter specifically tells us that we are to take them and put them aside because any of these five things is going to take a is going to be a wedge in any relationship. If if I have these things in my marriage relationship, it's going to be a wedge and it's not going to my wife and I's relationship is not going to grow.

Okay, malice. Let's just look at some of these things and what they mean. Malice is a desire for someone to be harmed or embarrassed or or in some way suffer. And it's not meaning that I'm going to do something else to make Colin suffer or someone else suffer or make him to be embarrassed. But in my heart, I am hoping that something happens to Colin that things just don't turn out well for him.

And these these are things that we are going to have to look at our own hearts at.

But I'm convinced I'm not the oldest guy around. I'm not the youngest, but I have seen situations where some of these took place were were in and there and it led to all kinds of chaos. It goes on that we are to lay aside guile. Now, guile is deceit or it's something that is deliberately dishonest.

It's I do something that I am being being deliberately dishonest to make maybe to make myself look better. I'm not sure. It can be a number of things. But again, relationships are built on transparency and honesty and on trust. Again, I take the marriage relationship. If if I am not transparent and honest to my wife, if I go somewhere, it just is going to have put a lot of distrust in her heart. And that's what happens so many time in relationships. There's not open transparency.

And God is said of Jesus here in the second chapter down, I think about verse 22, it says that speaking of Jesus, who did no sin, neither was there guile found in his mouth or there was no deceit that was found in him.

Next, it tells us that we are to put hypocrisies aside. And to me, hypocrisy is pretended piety or love or it's you're just being an actor. And a good a good example of this is Ananias and Sapphira in the Bible.

You know, there was there was good things happening in the church. People were selling their things and they were giving their money to the apostles. And somehow Ananias and Sapphira got caught up in this thing. And as far as I know, there was nothing said that they had to do this, but they wanted some of the attention or some of the glory. I don't know what it was, but so they sold their stuff and pretended that they were giving it all to the church and they were not doing that. They were holding it back.

We can do a lot of things to try to be pious. But again, if it's a if if it's if it's if it's not or if if it's not coming from the heart, it's going to be a again, things will end up in in ruin.

Next, it tells us that we must lay aside envies. And maybe all of you are different than me, but I think that if we're all honest with ourselves, these are things that we have to deal with. It's it's not something that that we have to deal with these type of feelings when they when they come into us. We have to repent of them. When I think of envy, it's it's has feeling ill will towards someone. And I'm going to use because of their superiority. And I don't know if that's a good word or not to use there, but it's it's it's ill will towards someone that maybe can do something better than we can do.

And it's it's kind of a sad thing of these blessings or these gifts that Jesus has given to the church and they can turn into things that cause all kinds of problems. In Ephesians 4, when it it it tells us that he gave apostles and teachers and he goes on to say that it was for the edifying of the saints and goes on a little bit later to talk about how it is supposed to give us stability.

And what is so easily or at times can happen is someone may might have a certain gift and I wish I had that gift. And instead of building up that brother, I have a tendency to tear down that brother.

Again, things it tells tells about more about more gifts in First Corinthians 12 and Romans 12. Jealousy is probably something that closely goes along with envy.

And the last thing here tells us that we are to lay aside evil speaking. And I'm just going to put this as it's a slander. We're tearing down one's reputation or gossip. And that's something, again, I think we all probably have to work on it, but maybe some more than others.

But all of these things are going to if we do not lay them aside, is going to dictate against brotherhood and harmony within within our congregations. Then I like there in verse two where it says, "As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the world Word that ye may grow thereby. If so be, ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." So I trust and it's my desire that that just as babes or as as these little babies desire their milk from their mothers to be strengthened, to grow, that I also am going to take the Word of God and I'm going to desire that. And these areas that maybe that I've spoken of, as I see them in my own heart, I want to rid myself of them that I can grow and that I can rejoice in the Lord.

So my prayer for you as your as a congregation that and as individuals that that in your holiness of life, that the outworkings of that would be harmony with God and also harmony with each other. God bless you.