Remember Whose You Are: Living a Holy Life in an Unholy World

Have you ever felt like you're swimming upstream in a culture that seems to celebrate everything opposite to what you believe? I guarantee you, you couldn't count on one hand the number of sermons I've preached out of the Book of Leviticus in my ministry. But this past week, as we've been reading through the Bible together, I found myself captivated by this ancient book that speaks directly to our modern struggle.

The Foundation of Holiness

Leviticus 19:1-2 gives us what someone has called "the motto of the Book of Leviticus." Here, Moses delivers God's instructions to the entire community of Israel: "You must be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy." That's simple, isn't it? Well, it's simple to read. I understand the second part where it talks about our being holy. I'm still trying to comprehend - I don't know that short of heaven I'll ever really comprehend what it means to understand that God is holy.

The bottom line is Leviticus is all about God's holiness. But we need to understand what holy means and what it doesn't mean.

Beyond Rules and Regulations

Some of us have grown up with the idea that holiness is totally separation. You don't do this, you can't do that, better not do this. And it's been very rule oriented. Now there is that aspect of our holiness, where yeah, there's some stuff we're not supposed to do. But isolation isn't a part of that.

Jesus addressed this beautifully in John 17 when He prayed to the Father: "I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth. Teach them your word, which is truth."

Jesus wasn't saying "give them their own little colony somewhere." He said, "I'm going to be leaving these guys here pretty soon and they're going to be in this rat race. They're going to be in this world... And so keep them pure, keep them holy, for your honor and for your glory."

What Makes God Holy

So what makes the Lord holy? What is it that sets him apart as being distinct or different? His attributes - his righteousness, the fact that he is always right. And we don't say that with a smirk on our face. He is always right. God always does what is right. God always does what is loving.

If you have those pillars in your life and in your mind when tragedy hits, when bad things hit that you don't understand, you go back to those two pillars. God always does what's right and God always does what's loving. It doesn't matter if you and I can understand it because we're very time oriented and we start thinking here and now, well, God doesn't work that way, does he? God works for eternity.

When we think about his attributes, obviously we think about his purity, his genuineness. There's nothing tainted in God. There's no mixture of anything bad into God. Everything about God is pure. Everything is wonderful.

Who Is Like Our God?

I did a little concordance search this past week on BibleGateway.com. I typed in the question "Who is like you?" and wanted to see how many times the psalmist asked that question. About four times. In Psalm 35:10, we read: "All my bones will say, Lord, who is like you, who delivers the afflicted from him who is too strong for him."

The answer comes in Psalm 40:4-5: "How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust... Many, O Lord, my God, are the wonders which you have done... There is none to compare with you. If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count."

There is no one like the Lord.

Living as Holy People

What happens when God's people are holy? Number one, God's glorified. All the credit goes to God, because we are holy only as he is holy. We can't do this on our own. It's not in our wiring. It's not in our DNA. We have to have that transfusion of God.

When people are able to look at us and identify us as being one who follows God, that's not an insult. That's a word of affirmation about the light that you are shining in this world. It's an affirmation about the salt that you're spreading to the people in your circles.

I'll never forget what a wise lady told me in a church parking lot over 35 years ago. I asked for words of wisdom before heading into a difficult denominational meeting, and she looked at me with all seriousness and said, "Remember whose you are." Here it's been 35 years later, and I still remember those words.

Putting It Into Practice

Over 40 times in Leviticus 18 through 26, the people heard the words from Moses, ultimately from God: "I am the Lord, your God." Remember whose you are.

Go read Leviticus 19 this afternoon - that's your reading assignment. You're going to see God giving instructions about how to take care of your family, how to worship, how to carry out your business practices, how to take care of the poor, the disadvantaged people around you, how to behave in court. The bottom line is this: The entire book of Leviticus can be condensed into two commands - love the Lord your God with everything that you are, everything that you have, every single thing about you. And secondly, you love your neighbor as yourself.

My question to you this morning is, are you living a life separated to God, dedicated to God, consecrated to God? He's meticulous about how you live your life because you are his. That's the bottom line of what it means to be holy.