Numbers 13:17-33 (NIV)  

¹⁷ When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.  ¹⁸ See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many.  ¹⁹ What kind of land do they live in?  Is it good or bad?  What kind of towns do they live in?  Are they unwalled or fortified?  ²⁰ How is the soil?  Is it fertile or poor?  Are there trees on it or not?  Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”  (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)

²¹ So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath.  ²² They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived.  (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)  ²³ When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes.  Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.  ²⁴ That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there.  ²⁵ At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.

²⁶ They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran.  There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land.  ²⁷ They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey!  Here is its fruit.  ²⁸ But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.  We even saw descendants of Anak there.  ²⁹ The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

³⁰ Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” ³² And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.  They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it.  All the people we saw there are of great size.  ³³ We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).  We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

I believe there are two defining characteristics of God.  There are others, but I feel the two that are core are love and holiness.

Theologically people lean toward the characteristic of love which promotes a God that promotes anything and everything.  As holiness that reduces, the following of Jesus is reduced to a set of strict rules.

The first word in the passage I want to define is sanctification, which means for humans is through Jesus, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  We become more holy, more like God, through our faith walk in Christ.

John 17:6-19 (NIV)

⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.  They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.  ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.  ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they have accepted them.  They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.  ⁹ I pray for them.  I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.  ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine.  And glory has come to me through them.  ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.  Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name–the name you gave me–so that they may be one as we are one.  ¹² While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name that you gave me.  None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.  ¹⁴ I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  ¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.  ¹⁶ They are not of the world even as I am not of it.  ¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  ¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

During Jesus prayer, holiness is used and prayed for in the passage today.  Holiness is becoming important during Jesus’ prayer, He says, “I had made myself holy.  I have sanctified myself, so that they might be holy, so that they might be sanctified.”

Ephesians 1:4  Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.

Jesus has lived His life with one goal, that you and I might be holy.

The first thing God does with each of us is make us holy.

We all have areas of our lives that we would like God to improve or fix.  But we need to understand sooner or later, the ultimate solution for our needs is holiness.

Jesus doesn’t want to deal with us, unless holiness is understood and we are allowing Christ to change us from the inside out.

If we miss the fact Jesus came on this earth and died for us to make us acceptable (holy) to God.  We have missed the mission of Jesus time in this world.

If we don’t understand holiness, we can’t understand what it means to follow Jesus.

The question today: what is holiness and why should we be holy?

Holiness is made up of several things, holiness is a wholly committed to God, wholly focused of God and wholly renewed by God.

When Jesus says, “For Him I sanctify myself.”  Jesus is setting Himself apart, completely committed to what God has called Him to do.

Leviticus 19:2 To be holy means to be “set apart.”  Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.

God gives us rules to live by and tasks to accomplish.  We are to give ourselves to other people.  Use our time and money to be a blessing who have been placed in our lives.  God says, tell the truth, forgive those who sin against you, never repay evil for evil.

We are, as followers of Jesus, going to trust God, listen to and obey Him.  I’m going to sanctify myself (set myself apart for what God has asked of me.)

I will give up things which God does not want me to have or do, or because it is no longer right for me.  I’m going to be wholly committed to God, wholly focused on God.

We are to see Jesus is focused on what God has for Him in Jerusalem, both the good and the bad.

Holiness is to look at God and nothing else.  It is to be controlled by who God is.  We are to set our face toward God; as Jesus prayed, “sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.”

We fix our faith, as we let our mind fix itself toward God as Father.

If we fix on God as our Father, faith begins to grow in our lives such as holiness.  This change that is noticed we develop a praying spirit.  We pray for others, we forgive others.

If we get caught up on someone else’s faults and sins, the thing is you aren’t fixing your attention on Jesus.  In fact, when we focus on the sins of others, what we’re doing is downplaying our own sins, and conveniently forgetting that God has covered all of our sins too.

If we are living with God’s love, as part of His family and we blow it, we know we are not kicked out of the family.

When we blow it, we repent and develop a grateful spirit, that turns the day into a reflection on the many blessings God has given us.

God is the renewing spirit in us, after we have sinned or made mistakes.

God is saying: “Come to me, if you are wholly and committed and wholly focused, this will change every area of your life.”

When you are in Christ, you are a new creation, and they are neither Jew or Greek.  This means the Greeks and the Jews were changed so much by their belief in Christ, the Greek Christians had more in common with the Hebrew Christians.

Bit by bit we become more Christian and less American.

As we seek God first and let Him shape us into who God created us to be.  (The church is a place where new people are being created and recreated.)

1 Peter 2:9  But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We are striving toward holiness, because of what Jesus already did for us.

So, we sanctify ourselves because Jesus sanctified Himself first, for us.  He gave up everything for us, so how can we not give up everything for Him?  That is all the motivation we should need.  With that in mind, you can take on anything.  “I have everything in Christ I will ever need.”

You have nothing I want, and you can’t take anything of value away from me.

Do you know what Christ’s mission was and your mission is?  God bless, dwell on God’s holiness.