sad today that many churches give the impression to people that God is not much more than ordinary. That He's just a step up from us and that we can compare Him to us and define Him any way we want and approach Him any way we want. But the Bible is clear that God must be thought of and then approached in the way that Scripture tells us. As we grow in our faith, that growth can only come by a correct, biblical understanding of God. I want us to think about what I just said. In order to grow in our faith, we have to have a correct biblical understanding of God. There are many people that think that they can grow in their faith by doing a bunch of things or reading a bunch of books or whatever, but unless we have a correct biblical understanding of God and that understanding continually grows, we will not grow in our faith, at least from a biblical standpoint or in a biblical manner. So, we might say that our growth or sanctification is the continual renewing of our minds, discarding the false notions about God and adopting correct ones. That's really what sanctification is. So often we think that sanctification is a result of doing things. That's not how sanctification works. Sanctification works through a growth of understanding biblical truth. This was Israel's downfall. Just like much of the church today, the nation did not submit itself to the knowledge of God. In Hosea 4, in verse 1, And I'm gonna kind of go slow today because I'm pretty tired. Let's just call this a Bible study today. If you can kind of just follow along with me. I'll try and slow down a little bit. Hosea 4.1. Hosea says here to Israel, hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel. For the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land." This is God's indictment. He is putting them in the courtroom. And He says, I've got a charge against you, Israel. What is that charge? There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. Israel's biggest downfall was they didn't understand who God was. Sanctification or spiritual growth, then, is a continual growth in the true knowledge of God and conforming our lives to that knowledge. Sanctification is not in doing. It's not the performing of lists or performing of spiritual duties or even spiritual disciplines. These things are the outworking of a greater and greater biblical knowledge of God. So, doing is a result of sanctification, not the cause. Please understand this. Too many people have got this flipped around. doing is the result of sanctification, not the cause. When I learn things about God, I am motivated to live for God. I cannot live for God until I am motivated by the knowledge of God. It's that simple. This is why God said in Hosea 6.6, you might just want to go over a couple of chapters, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and here it is, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." It's not that God didn't want the burnt offerings. He didn't want the burnt offerings apart from the knowledge of God. To mindlessly bring a burnt offering means nothing to God. To mindlessly do a list of do's and don'ts and spiritual disciplines means absolutely nothing to God. Here we see that God doesn't want our doing apart from our knowledge of Him. There's a very instructive passage in 1 Corinthians 15. I'm going back and forth Old Testament and New Testament to show you that this is pervasive. This is what God has always told His people. 1 Corinthians 15. Here Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for their sin. But why are they sinning? That's the question. And he addresses this. Why aren't they growing in their spiritual walk? Or why aren't they growing in their sanctification? Well, the simple answer is they're sinning. You can't sin and grow at the same time. They're antithetical. But he says here in verse 33, Do not be deceived evil company corrupts good habits. Awake to righteousness and do not sin, for some do not have the knowledge of God." I speak this to your shame. The Corinthians were sinning. They were associating themselves with the wrong people. evil company. And those wrong people influenced them to sin. That's pretty simple. You hang around with the wrong people. You're not going to grow in your sanctification. They even allowed their unsaved relationships to influence what they believed about the doctrine of the resurrection, which is really the context of chapter 15. In light of this, Paul commanded them to awake to righteousness and do not sin. Wake up to righteousness. But notice why he says they were sinning. Notice what caused them to be influenced by ungodly people to sin. For some do not have the knowledge of God. They don't have the proper knowledge. Obviously they had some knowledge and in this case they had the wrong knowledge. I mean, I could preach a whole sermon just on this phrase. I mean, just let your mind run with this. They don't have the knowledge of God. They don't have the proper knowledge of God. So that means they had the wrong knowledge of God. They thought God would just live with their sin. They didn't think God would do anything. They thought that they could live the Christian life in sin. But if they had the proper knowledge of God, they would have understood. You can't do that. And he says, I speak this to your shame. You should know better. Christians today should know better. They should know that the first thing is to gain a proper knowledge of God. Forget the lists. Forget the do's and don'ts. Those will take care of themselves when you understand who God is. Those will become crystal clear. You won't have to go, oh man, what was number 17? You won't even have to think that. Corinthians were targets for sin because they did not have the knowledge of God. They didn't know what the Bible said about His nature and His character. If we properly understood who God is all the time, we wouldn't sin. Really? You're going to sin against God? I mean, if you had that at the forefront of your mind and you knew who God was and you knew what He is capable of in disciplining you and all those kinds of things, we would not sin. That's why we're supposed to continually renew our minds in the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God controls the Christian life. I can't say it any more clearly. The knowledge of God, proper knowledge of God, controls the Christian life from beginning to end. The greatest way, the only way to live a godly life is not following lists of do's and don'ts. Not running to do your spiritual disciplines or anything else like that. Those will be absolutely automatic if you understand the knowledge of God. When Satan comes against a believer to tempt him or her to sin, as he did Eve in the garden, he does so by perverting what? The knowledge of God. Hath God said? And if He did, surely He didn't mean what He said. He completely twisted her proper understanding of the knowledge of God. Go to 2 Corinthians 10. I mean, once you understand this, you're going to see this all through Scripture. 2 Corinthians 10, Paul says in verse 5, We cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against what? The knowledge of God. Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Every satanic argument that comes into the Christian life is against one thing. And Satan knows this and he exploits it. His arguments are against one thing. The knowledge of God. He did it with Jesus with three temptations. He did it with Adam and Eve in the garden. And Paul puts it here in a theological statement. we have to cast down the arguments of the enemy against every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. In Colossians 1, if you want to turn there, if Satan can warp our view of God, and he does continually, to one degree or another and he can pervert our view of God, which he does, then he can bring us into sin and derail our spiritual growth, which is his purpose. And this is why Paul continually, continually prayed for his churches to grow in what? The knowledge of God. Sometimes I think we just read these passages and we just kind of skip over that. But here in Colossians 1, look at verse 9. For this reason we also, since the day we heard of it, do not cease to pray for you. Well, that's good. And to ask that you be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in what? The knowledge of God. Do you see the bookends here? The knowledge of His will at the beginning and the knowledge of God at the end. That's all Paul cared about, just growing the knowledge of God. Everything else will be taken care of. Go to 2 Peter. And sadly, this is the last thing people want to do. I don't have time for that. I don't have time to read my Bible. I don't have time to study. 2 Peter 1. In verse 2, grace and peace be multiplied to you in what? The knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through what? Through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. And then he goes on to list how we grow in our faith, our sanctification. It's all the knowledge of God. All of it. He says it twice in verse 2. Again, the book ends. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God. He's given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him. Paul couldn't have emphasized this anymore. Peter couldn't have emphasized it anymore. The Old Testament couldn't have emphasized it anymore. If we're caught in sin, if we're not growing in our faith, there's only one reason, one reason we're falling down in our growth in the knowledge of God. What's the secret to the Christian life? Everybody wants to know what the secret is. There's no secret. Just learn who God is. It's all you have to do. There are so many programs on the market today, have been for years. This is how I got started in the Christian life. I mean, I was all into this. You know, you get the navigator's seven steps on how to grow and all this other stuff. I mean, that's pretty normal. How to grow as a Christian. But I'm telling you, many, many of those programs are based on doing, not learning about God. Do the list, and you'll be more like Christ. Spiritual growth is never caused by doing, it's caused by knowing. knowing more and more about God and His nature and His attributes. And that's why I've taken a couple of weeks to talk about it. It's just kind of introductory to where I'm going. Why I'm talking about sovereignty and holiness. This is crucial to living the Christian life. This is not some, you know, intellectual, non-related thing to the Christian life. This is the Christian life. How does your understanding of sovereignty, of understanding that God controls everything, not affect how you live? I haven't been able to figure that out. Or how you react to different situations. Sovereignty completely drives my life. Otherwise I would be a nervous wreck at the end of the day. You know, wondering why God couldn't help me in this or why God couldn't do that or why He didn't do this. I mean, I'd have everything upside down on its head as to what the Bible says. I can look back at the end of the day and tell you exactly what God's will was for me that day, exactly, and be 100% correct. If you don't believe in divine sovereignty, you'd never be able to do that. I mean, you'd be a spiritual wreck at the end of the day. Sovereignty governs all of God's other attributes, all of them. It governs who He loves and who He shows mercy to and who He exercises His justice toward. In the same way, holiness governs all of God's other attributes, His moral attributes. It, too, governs who God loves and who He shows mercy to and who He exercises His justice toward, among many of His other attributes. I personally think that sovereignty and holiness have to be mastered by the Christian. If you can get those two under your belt and then gradually work your way down the list of his attributes, it's going to completely change your life. So these messages are important for our spiritual growth. to do a bunch of lists without knowing who God is or what He's like is nothing more than legalism. That's all it is. It's legalism. Which so many are guilty of and of course this is exactly where Satan wants us. He doesn't want us to know who God is. If you don't know who God is, you're not going to know how to make any decisions. You're going to be groping in the dark. To know God, to know what He's like is what changes our thinking about how we behave. So I believe that a study on the attributes of God is the most important study for Christians, unquestionably. At least that's what the Bible bears out. You want to know what to pray for somebody? I pray for you every week to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, to grow in the knowledge of God. It's monotonous. I pray it every week for everybody in the church. I mean, that's not the only time I pray for you, but that's specifically what I pray for on Sunday mornings before I even start editing my message. That's what Paul prayed for. That's what we should all pray for, for each of us. Before we get started on this study of holiness, I want to begin with a brief definition. There's some confusion out there as to what holy means. I think we've got part of it right, but some of it we've left out. The Hebrew word for holy is kadosh, that's Q-A-D-O-S-H, that's how we would transliterate it. It means marked off or withdrawn from ordinary or common use. The verb form of kadosh, which we would call sanctify, so holiness and sanctify both come from the same root. Basically, sanctify means to make holy, so that's the verb form of holiness. Does that make sense? The verb form means to cut. or to separate, to cut off and set aside, or to separate from something else. That's what it means. So God's holiness means His being marked off or withdrawn from anything common or ordinary. You know, most of the time we think about holiness as, well, it means that there's no sin involved or there's no evil involved. Well, yeah, that's true. But that's not where we start. it really starts with God being separated from not just sin, but from everything, even common things. And that's why in the book of Leviticus, while you're reading through it, You couldn't use even common, every ordinary day things in the worship of God because He's not only separated from sin, He's separated from ordinary, non-sinful things. He's above even that. He's marked off. or withdrawn or separated from everything and everyone. That's who He is. That's His nature. It's not just what He chooses to do. That's who He is. We can also say that God being holy is cut off or separate from or unique from all other things. In other words, there is none like God. And how many times do we hear that in the Bible? God said this repeatedly. He said in Exodus 9.14, there is none like Me in all the earth. That means He's holy. It really doesn't have anything to do with being non-sinful. It just means that He is different, unique, completely above His creation. He said in Isaiah 46.9, For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like Me. This is why He said, don't make any graven images of Me, because there's nothing like Me. You couldn't represent God by something we already know if you wanted to. You can't do it. That's why don't do it. He said in Isaiah 45.6, there is none besides Me, I am the Lord, and there is no other. Just by virtue of Him being God, there's no other like Him. That's why He says, I'm the Lord. I'm God. There's none like Me. This is a perfect description of His holiness. This is the positive side of His holiness. Separate, cut off, marked off. Or cut apart and marked off. So, in this sense of separation, God is holy. We need to fix that in our minds. His holiness doesn't just mean absence from sin. It means absence from everything. His uniqueness. That's really at the root of the word holy. He is unique or in the broadest sense He is one of a kind. Not comparable or like anything or anyone else. But what also makes God unique in His holiness is not only that He is separate from everything and everyone or that He is unique. He is unique in the fact that He is intrinsically holy. intrinsically holy. There is nothing else or no one else that is intrinsically holy. In other words, God is holy by nature. He doesn't just choose to be holy. He is holy. He can be nothing else but holy because of who He is. See, I can choose to be a husband. I can choose to be a father. God just is. And God is a father by nature, isn't He? He didn't choose to be a father. He's the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus existed from all eternity with the Father. That's just part of His nature. As believers, God communicates holiness to us both legally and practically. And this is kind of a side note. Legally, He makes us holy by imputing to us the holiness or the righteousness of Christ when we believe. He imputes that to us. This means we are holy in our legal standing before God. It doesn't mean He makes us holy. It just means that He imputes or puts to our account. It's a legal term. It's an accounting term. His holiness. We're holy in our legal standing before God because of Christ taking away our sins even though practically we're still sinful. In other words, God sees us as holy because of what Christ has done for us. He also sees us as sinful in a practical sense. But in a legal sense, He sees us as holy. You see the difference? The legal sense, He sees us as holy. The practical sense, He sees us as sinful. God also makes us practically holy by the Holy Spirit. And by the Holy Spirit, we're gradually and ever so slowly being made more and more holy every day. And I have to take that by faith because when I look at my life, I don't see any huge jumps in holiness. I just see more sin. But somehow God is making me more holy. He's going to have to explain that to me when I get to heaven. And then one day I will be made completely holy when He glorifies me, right? But it's not intrinsic holiness. Holiness is not part of my nature like it is God's. Mine is a borrowed holiness. It's an acquired holiness. God doesn't borrow or acquire holiness from anyone or anything. He's the source. I'm the beneficiary. So His holiness is holiness by nature. It's part of His being. His imputed holiness is given to us legally so He sees us as holy in a positional sense or a legal sense. And His imparted holiness is the practical holiness that the Holy Spirit works in us to actually make us more like Christ day by day. So as an attribute of God, we are talking about His intrinsic holiness, His holiness by nature. It's who He is. He's holy through and through in and of himself. And this is what God means when he says, there is no one like me. Listen, just, when I get on the other side, and I'm made completely holy, and God is completely holy, those are two different kinds of holiness. One's intrinsic. One's borrowed. One's imparted. I mean, even when Adam was created in his pure innocence, he was not intrinsically holy. Only God is. Adam's holiness was given to him by God so it was an acquired holiness. You might look at it like this. The relationship between the sun and the moon, right? It's pretty simple to understand. Both of them are bright lights. But the moon doesn't have any intrinsic light. It's just a reflection of the light of the sun, which has intrinsic light. So the sun is the source of the light. The moon is the receptor and reflector of the light. But looking at the two, they're both light. That's the way it is with God and us. God's the sun and we're the moon. So a brief definition and description of God's holiness gives us a baseline by which we can set forth a doctrine of holiness for God. And I want to look at this briefly, and this is by no means an exhaustive study. on God's holiness, but I want us to look at two categorizations of God's holiness as it relates to His uniqueness or separateness. So, introduction is over. Let's get started with the message. First, God is separate from His creation. Pretty obvious after what we've just talked about. We said that God is separate or unique from all other things and beings, or simply put, separate from everything He's created. So, biblically, God cannot be a pantheistic God where He is literally everything and everything is Him. Neither can He be a panentheistic God where He is in everything or part of everything. That's the difference between pantheism and panentheism. Pantheism is God is everything. Panentheism means God is in everything, okay? Both of these are nothing more than Eastern mysticism, which so many in the West have adopted today. I mean, it's even in some of our quote Christian songs, it's been flooding into the church. I mean, everything the world has, the church just brings it in, baptizes it with Jesus' name and we're good to go. But biblically speaking, God is completely separate from His creation. He is not it. He is not in it and He is not part of it. This is why Solomon said in 1 Kings 8.27, Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built. God is outside of the universe. can't explain that. He's above the universe. The heaven of heavens cannot contain you. He's not part of this. God is above and outside and greater than His creation. So when we say that He is holy we should be thinking of His separateness from all things and all creatures. This is how He is unique. What other being is like this? That's why He says, I'm God. There is none besides Me. Whereas you and I have an affinity to all other human beings. I mean, I'm like every one of you. You're like me in human qualities. I could never say there's none like me. I can't do that. we're all alike in nature. The mountains have affinity with other mountains. Animals have affinity with other animals. Name one thing besides God in this world that's unique from a creation standpoint. Everything has a relationship to every other thing. God has no affinity or likeness or commonality with any other being. That's why He says He is holy. When God called Israel to be a holy nation or holy people in Exodus 19.6, He primarily meant that they were to be a people separate from the other nations. You are to be a holy people. You could interchange. You are to be a separated people. They were not to be like the other nations in any respect, in life or in worship. And that's why when you read through a particularly Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and then Joshua in the historical books, where Israel is doing this, and they're not supposed to do what the other nations do. It's because they're supposed to be a separated nation. That was by design. And some of the laws that we read, I mean, they make no sense at all, except for this one fact. They were 180 degrees from the nations around them. This is why God gave them His holy law, a law unlike any other law. They were to worship differently than the other nations. They were to live differently than all the other nations. So when you read Leviticus and you see all of these unique laws, sometimes bizarre to us, you see how Israel was to be completely different from all the other peoples around them. And anything that God declared to be holy to them was to be holy to Him. So, for example, when God told them to make holy oil or holy perfume, to be used in worship, in the worship of Him. And if you as a perfumer, a commercial perfumer, duplicated that perfume for commercial use, you were to be stoned to death. That's what it says. Because if you're using that perfume or that oil for worship, you don't use it for anything else. it's holy oil. It's holy perfume. That's how seriously God took it. Because what He declared to be holy was only to be used for Him and for nothing else. And when God told His people to be holy from or separated from or unique compared to the other nations, it was for the one very simple reason, because He is holy. I'm holy, I'm separated from my creation, you're holy, you're to be separated from the rest of creation. He wants His people to be like Him. And if God's people are to be like Him in a moral sense, they are to be separated and unique as He is separated and unique. This is why He said in Leviticus 11.44. Let's go to Leviticus for a minute. I know some of you are getting more interested in Leviticus because I talk about it all the time. It's a fascinating book. It's one of my favorite books in the Old Testament. Leviticus 11.44. for I am the Lord your God, therefore you shall sanctify yourselves, or separate yourselves, and you shall be holy, for I am holy. That's the reason. I'm holy, you're supposed to be holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing, and so forth. Like the other nations did. You don't do that. Leviticus 20, verse 26, and you shall be holy to me for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine. There it is, all in one verse. The reason they were supposed to be separated from the other nations, because God is holy and you're supposed to be holy. Back in chapter 11, I probably should have just read the whole thing, in verse 45. For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. He brought them out of Egypt to be separated from Egypt because God is holy. He's a separated God. In the book of Leviticus, God states this seven times. Be holy for I am holy. If you want to know what the theme of Leviticus is, that's it. In 1 Peter 1, lest you think that this was just for Israel. And I'm not going to go through all the New Testament verses on this. I'll just give you 1 Peter. In verse, 13, chapter 1, 1 Peter 1, 13, Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance, talking about conforming yourself to the world. But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written in Leviticus 11 and Leviticus 19 and Leviticus 20, Be holy, for I am holy." Holiness is not a dispensational issue. It doesn't matter when you lived, in Old Testament or New Testament. before Israel or after Abraham. God always wants all of His people to be holy because He is holy. And that's what Peter is saying here. He quotes Leviticus. When it comes to moral character, It doesn't matter where it says it in the Bible. That moral character is for all of God's people. So a large part of God's holiness centers around His separateness from creation. And because God is holy, He can exist apart from and without His creation. Before His creation, it didn't even exist. So it's easy for God to be separate from His creation. But concerning His holiness, He's not only separate from His creation, but number two, and I'll try and run through this quickly, He's separate from evil. And this is our primary understanding of holiness. I don't think it should be, but it is. And when we say God is holy, we mean He's without sin. This is the negative side of His holiness. And as we said before, His holiness governs all of His other attributes. And because God is a God of holiness, He exercises His justice, right? His moral holiness demands punishment for any violation against that holiness. All sin warrants punishment. All sin. And since God's holiness is absolute, His punishment is absolute. This is why a person sins one time and they go to hell forever. Not because the sin is infinite, but because the sin is against an infinite God and warrants infinite punishment. No sin, no matter how small in our eyes, can go unpunished because of the holy nature of the one it offends. And punishment for unbelievers is absolute when it's meted out in hell for eternity. I don't understand how Christian theologians say that this is not just. None of us like it But just because we don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be that way. The reason that theologians say that this is unfair, that finite beings should suffer in hell for eternity for sin against God, is because they don't understand the holiness of God. They don't understand the nature of God. That's their problem. It's not that God did it wrong. It's that they did it wrong. they didn't understand the knowledge of God. These are our top theologians. In the evangelical church, there's books written on this stuff. That's why they've argued for annihilation. You go to hell for a little while and then you're annihilated. You shouldn't have to suffer forever. Or you don't suffer at all. You get a second chance. There's all kinds of wacko theories out there in the evangelical church. Anyway, In the Millennial Kingdom, all people will worship God, but I want you to turn to Isaiah 66. It's actually the end of Isaiah. As people, as nations are worshiping God in the Millennial Kingdom, and this is a hint of eternal punishment. This is one of less than a handful of references in the Old Testament to eternal punishment. and less than a handful might be a stretch. There might only be one other one or so in the Old Testament. But as the nations go to Jerusalem to worship God, Isaiah tells us that they will observe the eternal punishment of the wicked and why and why they are punished. Look at verse 23. These are the last two verses in Isaiah. It shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord, all the nations. Now remember, in the Millennial Kingdom, everybody goes in saved, right? Okay, so we got mainly saved people at this time throughout, at the end of the Tribulation. or at the end of the Millennial Kingdom, and they are to worship before God. And verse 24, as they're going to Jerusalem, and they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched. They shall be in an abhorrence to all flesh. So here we see why God meets out this eternal punishment. Because they have transgressed against Me. They have sinned against Me. That includes all sin. They've sinned against His holiness. For believers, Lest you think we get away with our sin, God still punishes our sin, right? Our punishment is absolute as well for every sin that we commit. Whereas unbelievers suffer for their own sins in hell for eternity, believers have had Christ to bear their punishment on the cross which was equivalent of Him suffering for our sins in hell for eternity. No sin goes unpunished. Either a person pays for their own sins or Christ does. So regardless of whether you're a believer or unbeliever, your sin receives absolute punishment. That should change the way we think about sin too. But regarding God being holy and His relation to sin, Habakkuk 1.13, we're familiar with that, right? You might want to turn there. In 113, Habakkuk says to God, you are of pure eyes and to behold evil and cannot look upon wickedness. Now we gotta put that in context. I wish more churches would understand this. We know that many churches look the other way when it comes to sin, both in their attendees and their leaders. Read the newspaper, turn on the local news, But contrary to what many in the church believe today, God cannot, because of who He is, tolerate any sin at any level in any one, ever. In Habakkuk's context, he questioned why God would allow a nation more sinful than Israel to discipline Israel. That was his question. He said, I thought you were pure eyes and it'd be old evil and you can't look upon sin. Why are you using the Babylonians to discipline us? This is one of the most prideful statements in the Bible. Apparently what Habakkuk failed to understand is that all sin is abominable to God, not just the sins of unbelievers. He seemed to forget that Israel's sins were no better than Babylon's. All of a sudden Israel's righteous and Babylon's wicked? read the account of Israel and Judah. They were worse than the nations around them because they had the law. On the other hand, Isaiah seemed to understand this when he said in Isaiah 59-2 to God's people who were living in sin, your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear you. He said this to God's people. When any child of God would think that God will fellowship with him or her when they have no regard for their sin, that's a mystery to me, absolute mystery to me. I mean, I know parents like this. You know, their kids do whatever they want and they don't say anything. You know, we're just buddy-buddy. And they transfer that right to the relationship with God. God's not like that. You sin, you don't confess, you don't care, He turns His back. Just like any good parent should do until there's repentance. Psalmist also seemed to understand this when he said in Psalm 66, 18, "...if I regard an equity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Is this a difficult concept? I mean, if we're living with unconfessed sin, God turns His ear away from us, He's not going to look on us. He's separate from sin, period. We have to understand that sin and God don't mix at any level because of His holiness. And we see this so clearly in Leviticus. And let's finish with this. Man, I don't know. It's probably not going to work. Do you want me to finish or do you want to pick it up next week? Everybody's hungry, right? The ladies are saying yes, the guys are saying no. Let's have a vote. Finish or not finish? I don't know what to do here. Dennis, you call it. All right. Leviticus 9, let's go to Leviticus 9. When Moses and Aaron, And his sons brought their offerings to the Lord both for them and for the people. Aaron did exactly what Moses commanded him. Moses got it from God and Aaron got it from Moses. And Aaron and his sons obeyed God completely up to Leviticus 9. It says in verses 22 to 24, then Aaron lifted his hand toward the people, blessed them, and came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of meeting and came out and blessed the people. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people, and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces." Yeah, I'd do the same thing. Fire comes down from heaven and consumes a bull on the altar, really? So God made an amazing display of his acceptance of Aaron's obedience in bringing the proper prescribed offerings to God when he sent fire from heaven to consume. God was completely satisfied. But in the following verses in chapter 10, and this is a very unfortunate chapter break, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, continue in their priestly duties. They weren't finished. They had just obeyed the commands of God completely in offering the sacrifices on the altar for themselves and for the people. And God responded favorably to them when he completely consumed the offerings on the altar. but they wanted to push the envelope as to how much they could bend God's commands. That's what's going on here. In the law, God had been very specific as to how the priests were to approach Him in worship. I mean, just read Exodus and Leviticus up to this point. I mean, it's meticulous what they were supposed to wear, when they were supposed to do this, how they were supposed to do that. So instead of offering God the prescribed fire in their censers, they want to see how serious God was evidently in His instructions. Instead of offering God the prescribed fire that He had previously told them, They offered God profane fire here in verse 1. They each took their censer and put fire in it, put incense on it and offered profane fire before the Lord which He had not commanded them. Unholy fire, that's the RSV. Strange fire, that's the NAS. Unauthorized fire, that's the ESV and the NIV. So how lenient was God with their deviation from His specific command? How much slack did He cut Nadab and Abihu in bringing something different from what He prescribed? Or how much does God allow us to disobey Him and not consider it sin or a violation of His holy law? So the question here is, does God have some kind of a sliding scale for obedience? Is He really that exact about carrying out His commands completely? Or can we just carry them out however we want? Partially. Slightly different from what He commands. They still brought fire. They still brought their censors. And frankly, this is the question that we in the church should answer. This is the crucial question. How serious is God in how we worship Him? How much do we test God in our worship? Those are questions we should ask. Do we have to worship God as He prescribes or can we improvise and really worship Him however we want as long as it's within reason? See? Nadab and Abihu thought that this was within reason. They knew what the law was. And I'm sure they thought that what they were doing in bending the rules was still within reason. If they didn't think it was, they wouldn't have done it. And after we see how meticulous they were in their previous officiation at the altar in chapter 9, doing everything perfectly, I don't think anyone would say that they weren't sincere in what they did. I don't see this as a rebellious thing. The sin of the high hand, I'm going to do it this way regardless of what God says. I don't think that's what's going on here. They knew God better than that. Maybe they thought they could improve on what God said. There's no indication that this is rebellious. So, maybe they were exhausted. I mean, just read the previous chapters. I mean, all the stuff that they had to go through. They had to stay in the tabernacle for seven days and consecrate themselves. Maybe what God wanted here was just a little bit too much for them. So, we're gonna cheat a little bit. They didn't want to put the extra effort in to bring the right fire. We don't know what the right fire is. Maybe it was some fire outside the camp they had to go get and they didn't want to go get it. So they had something on the altar and they put, I'm just speculating, strange fire. It wasn't the right fire. That's what's going on. Maybe it was just too much trouble to give God what he commanded. Maybe they could give God something better. Who knows? All I believe is I think they were sincere about it. There's a lot of good, sincere people in leadership, really. Whatever they were thinking, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. even though they worshiped God in an unprescribed manner as many do today. But what was God's reaction? Okay, I see the heart. You guys are all right. I know you're trying. So did God overlook their disobedience even though it was probably done with the right attitude? Look at verse 2. So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. This is exactly what happened three verses before this. Fire came out of heaven and devoured the offering. Now the same fire comes out of heaven and devours them. God was pleased with one. He was displeased with the other. This is what we call a zero-tolerance policy. Pretty unfamiliar with this in our society today. Even though Nadab and Abihu bent the rules, God didn't. even though they wanted to worship God, even though they had worshiped God properly just moments before this, even though they were officially called priests, officially prepared to be priests, and officially and successfully carried out God's commands previously, God would not accept their partial obedience now in their worship. He wouldn't do it because worship is our highest calling. We can't worship God however we want. That is unacceptable to God. Zero tolerance. In God's economy, like it or not, regardless if you're right brain or left brain, God is black and white. Always has been, always will be. There's no room for interpretation or alteration for what He commands and there is certainly no room for error as Nadab and Abihu figured out that day. And let's not forget, this was the first time they had ever done this. This wasn't number 10. They hadn't even gotten their clothes dried yet from the consecration and they're going the first day on the job. God didn't tolerate it. which makes his tolerance even more amazing. This actually was their first rodeo. And what we have to learn here is that God is an exact God. But why? I always ask the question why. I can't get out of a passage without asking why. Why is God like this? Why so strict? Why does He demand absolute perfection and carrying out His commands? In this case, it's worship. Well, look at verse three. Then Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord told me. By those who come near me, I must be regarded as what? Holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified. There's one thing in the Bible God doesn't tolerate. leaders being unholy in worship which reflects an unholy light on God. There's no time, no place, no situation when any believer can approach God and not regard Him as holy, as separate from His creation, as separate from His sin, as different from all His creation, as unique. You can't do that. There's not one prayer in the Bible you can give me where you see a flippant attitude or an unholy attitude or an irreverent attitude toward God or that God is your buddy. It's not there. Just the opposite is there. So many other examples of sincere disobedience in the Old Testament. How about Uzzah? He was scared to death that the ark was gonna fall off the cart. He stuck his hand up and stopped the ark, and God killed him on the spot. Not because of his sincerity, but because of his disobedience. That ark was never supposed to be up there to begin with. It was supposed to be carried on poles, and God killed him. To make a point, you don't mess with my law. You don't reinterpret it. You don't bend the rules. Akin, the list goes on and on. Him and his entire family were stoned and then burnt. Man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, stoned immediately. Zero tolerance. We can't give God less than what he demands, but how much do we do it? We do it all the time. You say, well, why doesn't God kill me? like He did them. How many people does God have to kill to relate to us how He feels about something? Let's face it. If God killed every one of us for disobeying Him, there wouldn't be anybody left. All I have to do is what? Get the knowledge of God and I know what He feels about it. So when He doesn't kill me, when I mess up here in worship, or when Kurt or Don or somebody in worship doesn't do exactly what God wants them to do, the reason we're still living is not because God has changed and He doesn't care anymore. It's because instead of giving us justice, He gives us mercy. Well, we could do a whole series on this. I'll spare you. I'm not sure any of us would survive. I had a quote from Tozer here, but I'll let it go. It's time to eat. Thank you, Lord, for this time. Thank you for, again, the patience of my brothers and sisters. And help us to have a great fellowship meal. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.