Be Holy

 

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered at Pilgrim Reformed Church on Sunday morning, the 24th of May, 2026 - Pentecost Sunday.  If all went well, a recording of the service may be available on our YouTube streaming channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@pilgrimreformedchurch1992/streams for the older services or https://www.youtube.com/@pilgrimreformedchurch3115/streams for later services.]

Today is Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the day when God made His own Holy Spirit available to all who will believe in His Son and follow Him.  By our belief, the Spirit makes His home within us and we are made holy.

That’s a word we hear and use a lot in our Christian faith: holy.  It’s most often applied to God and Jesus and, of course, the Holy Spirit.  The most saintliest of people may also be called holy.  And maybe because of this highest degree of use, we may be hesitant to apply the term to ourselves.  That might change, though, if we understand just what it means to be holy.

We just need to remember that from that first Pentecost on, God in His great grace made us holy.  We just need to stay holy.  The Apostle Peter, one of the recipients on that day of Pentecost, brings a little clarity in how we can stay holy.  Please listen and follow along to a passage in the opening chapter of Simon Peter’s 1st letter to the early church, verses 14 through 25, where he encourages us to obey God.  I’ll be reading from the Easy-to-Read version of our Holy Bible again this morning…

14 In the past you did not have the understanding you have now, so you did the evil things you wanted to do. But now you are children of God, so you should obey Him and not live the way you did before. 15 Be holy in everything you do, just as God is holy. He is the one who chose you. 16 In the Scriptures God says, “Be holy, because I am holy.”

17 You pray to God and call Him Father, but He will judge everyone the same way — by what they do. So while you are visiting here on earth, you should live with respect for God. 18 You know that in the past the way you were living was useless. It was a way of life you learned from those who lived before you. But you were saved from that way of living. You were bought, but not with things that ruin like gold or silver. 19 You were bought with the precious blood of Christ’s death. He was a pure and perfect sacrificial Lamb. 20 Christ was chosen before the world was made, but He was shown to the world in these last times for you. 21 You believe in God through Christ. God is the one who raised Him from death and gave honor to Him. So your faith and your hope are in God.

22 You have made yourselves pure by obeying the truth. Now you can have true love for your brothers and sisters. So love each other deeply — with all your heart. 23 You have been born again. This new life did not come from something that dies. It came from something that cannot die. You were born again through God’s life-giving message that lasts forever. 24 The Scriptures say,

“Our lives are like the grass of spring,

and any glory we enjoy is like the beauty of a wildflower.

The grass dries up and dies,

and the flower falls to the ground.

25 But the word of the Lord lasts forever.”

And that word is the Good News that was told to you.

--1 Peter 1:14-25 (ERV)

Let us pray…  Father God, thank You for giving us the faith to believe in and follow Your Son Jesus, and for sending Your Holy Spirit to live within us.  By Your grace and mercy, and by Jesus’ selfless sacrifice, we are forgiven and saved.  Thank You for helping us understand the wrongs we did in our past so we can keep from repeating them.  Please help us stay clean and holy.  Remind us of our real need to obey You and Your Son.  Help us be more like Jesus in all aspects of this life.  This we pray in the beautiful name of our Lord Jesus.   Amen.

John Brown, a nineteenth-century Scottish theologian, is quoted as saying, “Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.”

Now I dare say none of us can truly think as God thinks.  After all, His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.  But we certainly can try to see things as He sees them, see people as He sees them, treat others as Jesus treated them.  And we can make God’s will our will, by obeying His word.

Evangelist D. L. Moody once noted that, “A holy life will make the deepest impression.  Lighthouses blow no horns, they just shine.”  When we do as God wills, when we follow the example Jesus set, when we are obedient to our Lord, it will show and other people will see it.  We don’t need to blow horns, or stand in the spotlight.  We just need to shine God’s love in our daily walk to make that deepest impression.  This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Peter reminds us that now we are children of God.  Now we understand and know the evil things we have done and are capable of doing.  We humans truly are capable of incredible evil when we fall under Satan’s sway.  But now we are fully aware of this and it is more important than ever to obey God and His word.

It is of the utmost importance that we remain holy in everything we do.  As evil swirls and swells around us, we must remain holy.  God commands us to be holy because He is holy.  And He chose us to be holy.  So maybe we need to look a little more closely at just what it means to be holy, what is required of holiness.

As it turns out, being holy isn’t as tough or highfalutin as we sometimes make it out to be.  Don’t we usually associate the term as being morally flawless, morally and spiritually pure, saintly, something we lowly sinners could never attain?

Well, to be holy is simply to be set apart, separated from the common crowd for a special purpose.  Of all the people on this earth, God set us apart to believe in and follow His Son.  God made us holy.

Of course, it’s up to us to stay holy.  There are a few requirements that, while not easy, are quite doable.  We must try to be morally clean, pushing for goodness, the highest integrity and righteousness in all we do, and by this, reflect the character and actions of our Lord.  And oh by the way, righteousness is doing what is right in God’s eyes, doing His will, doing as He commands.

To be holy we must be wholeheartedly devoted to our God and His Son Jesus, showing their love in our interactions with others, humbly treating others with love and respect.  And we must be purposeful in following the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit as He leads us in the right direction, adhering to spiritual principles instead of selfish human, worldly desires.

I think the Apostle Paul summed all this up quite nicely in his 1st Letter to the Thessalonians when he wrote in the 4th chapter, the first part of verse 3 and verse 7…

3a God wants you to be holy.  7 God chose us to be holy. He does not want us to live in sin.

--1 Thessalonians 4:3a,7 (ERV)

God wants us to be holy so He chose us to be holy.  So we must stop living in sin.  I did say it wasn’t easy.

Paul follows this up in the 1st four verses of the 6th chapter of his letter to the church in Rome when he writes...

1 So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us more and more grace? 2 Of course not! Our old sinful life ended. It’s dead. So how can we continue living in sin? 3 Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ Jesus when we were baptized? In our baptism we shared in His death. 4 So when we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and took part in His death. And just as Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father, so we can now live a new life. 

--Romans 6:1-4 (ERV)

You’ve heard me speak of baptism before, and the symbolism of full immersion baptism.  When we are dunked under the water, we die and are buried with Jesus.  And then when we are raised up out of the water again, we are raised to new life in Jesus, we are raised from the dead just as Jesus was.

This is the analogy Paul uses to explain why we must not continue sinning if we are to remain holy.  We have died to our old, sinful life, and been reborn into this new holy life, the life God wills us to live.  We must repent, turn from our sinful ways and turn fully to God to remain holy.

Like I said – this being holy stuff isn’t easy, but it is doable, if we set our mind and our heart to it.  It requires a purposeful approach to living in this world without conforming to the world, as Paul puts it a little further on in that letter to the Romans.

Not continuing to live in sin is more difficult than one might think.  Sure, none of us is likely to murder anyone, nor are we likely to lie, unless it’s something like saying we’re fine when we really feel miserable.  But sometimes we get angry.  Sometimes we say things, hurtful things, without thinking first, without considering how it might impact anyone who hears us.  Sometimes we hold hurtful thoughts in our hearts just because someone doesn’t look like us or think like us or believe in and support the things we believe in and support.  Sometimes we hate the sinner as well as the sin.  Sometimes our moral compass slips a bit.

This is why I say we must be purposeful in everything we think, do, and say every second of our waking life.  We must strive to be morally pure at all times, being truly selfless, self-sacrificing, and unconditional in our love.  We were taught the Golden Rule early in life.  Now it’s time to apply that rule in our daily walk.

Take time to be holy.  In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Let us pray…  Almighty God, thank You for making us holy.  And thank You for sending Your Holy Spirit to us to help us remain holy.  Sadly, Father, pure evil permeates this world we live in.  Satan holds sway over so many of the people we meet with, work with, come across in our daily walk.  Please give us the ability to better discern evil from good.  Please give us the courage to face each trying day.  Please remind us to take time to be holy.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment so that each of us can speak to You through Your Spirit within us, promising to be more obedient to Your and our Lord’s commands, and seeking Your help to do so…

Lord Jesus, thank You for showing us the will of God in how You lived Your mortal life among us.  And thank You for the path of righteousness You blazed for us to follow.  Sometimes, though Lord, we stumble and trip up over the blocks Satan placed in our way.  Sometimes we stray off the path, lured by the devil’s bright and shiny toys.  Please help us remember that our Father God set us apart to follow You and Your example.  Of all people, God made us holy.  Please help us stay holy.  Help us show Your love and God’s love as we reach out to others, sharing Your words and Your works, telling them all about You.  Help us carry out the mission You gave us, seeking the lost sheep and leading them to You.

Holy Spirit, please shield our minds and our hearts from Satan’s lies and the world’s empty promises.  Guide us around all the devil’s traps and snares.  Help us see though his temptations.  Help us keep our focus on the things of heaven and the needs of others rather than on anything this world might offer.  All this we pray in the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.