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God is holy and He gives us righteousness to become holy. Righteousness is the power to remove the sin in us and to begin to obey Him. We need to start obeying and doing what He wants. If you want to walk in holiness you have to obey and do His will, and be a servant to Him. In God’s view a servant, when he has certain things to do, doesn’t need to be thanked. A servant is just expected to do what he is required to do without any thank you. I don’t know if God has ever said thank you to me, but He says thank you by blessing me. And He blesses according to my obedience. Most people don’t understand God. In this day and age we don’t want to damage anybody by demanding them to do things a certain way. We tell everyone good job, whether or not they do a good job. But you would never hear God say that. You do a good job when you do it well. What good is it for you to labor but at the end get taken down and don’t make it? Do you think God is going to say “Good job”? Is that what it says in the Bible? No, it says you didn’t finish it; you didn’t stay with it to the end. In holiness you come to a place of adulthood where you are expected to operate in a manner that you were taught by the Lord and not by man. What is truth? Truth is absolute. You don’t have any other excuse. You don’t have any other way. Truth is truth. Now how do we get truth? Jesus is the Spirit of Truth. He came full of truth and grace. And the Holy Spirit took the things of Jesus; the character of who He is, which is truth, to give it to the people on the earth. But He has to give it in the way that the Son says to give it. So for you to get truth you have to have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes us beyond righteousness into the character of holiness. That’s why He’s named Holy. He isn’t named righteous, He’s named Holy. Holy is that I’ve come to a place of absolute, and that absolute is God is my God and Father because the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father are one. If the Holy Spirit is in a place and everybody obeys the Holy Spirit, then we become one. In oneness you are conscious of other people and you want to help when there is a need. The greatest manifestation of the Holy Spirit is that you are aware of people in need and you’re willing to help them. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. In holiness you become one. Mark 1:8, I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. John the Baptist cleansed the outside with water, but the Holy Ghost cleanses you on the inside. The Holy Spirit is holy. He’s going to take you from righteousness, the beginning of obedience, to total obedience. And being perfect is fully obeying the Lord. Without that you’ll never be holy. The Bible says that without holiness no man shall see God. So holiness is pretty important. If you’re not going to be obedient you will never see God. The thing that activates God is your desire to become holy; to become fully trustworthy and fully obedient unto the Lord. With that character you will go places with God. Without that you aren’t worth anything. Most people don’t know who God is. God is a loving God but He expects you to grow up and to be what He placed in you to be. And if you’re not doing what He intended you to be then there is a void in what He wants to accomplish upon the earth and that doesn’t make Him very happy. It says in Hebrews that God has no pleasure in those who draw back. Do you know what that means? He made the earth for His pleasure. He takes pleasure in you being obedient and seeing accomplished what He already ordained from the foundations of the earth. So this verse is extremely powerful. John says, I baptize you with water, but Jesus shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. Jesus didn’t baptize anybody with water. His commission was to baptize you with the Holy Ghost, for you to become holy that God might have pleasure in you. Romans 1:3-4,Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. If you want to please God and move mightily upon the earth, you have to be holy. Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power. Why did He have power? Because God had pleasure in Him. So in holiness you have the power of the resurrection in you. No one can change this word of God and accomplish it some other way. When I’m in charge of something, I am concerned about the end product, and if you can find a faster way to do what I want done, it’s ok. But that’s not the way it is with God. God says, This is the way I want it, and this is how I want it done. That’s the difference between man’s way and God’s way. I know we are taught to be polite and that’s good, but don’t expect God to thank you for doing something that He asked you to do. If you are a servant that’s just your daily requirement. God doesn’t thank me for what I do, but He loves me. When He loves me He shows favor to me. That’s the way He thanks. Romans 6:18, Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. Once you become righteous then you usher yourself into holiness by the Holy Spirit. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. So you see, we must come to a place that righteousness is the start of holiness by the removing of sin, but it’s not complete until we come in to total obedience and become perfect. And to be perfect in Him is to do His will and do it the way He wants it done, as servants. You are either a servant of God or you’re a servant of satan. One of the two. Can you see how precious the blood and the water are? They help you to become holy because it washes you inside and out. Jeremiah 1:17 Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. For, behold, I have made thee this day a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land… Did you ever stop and think how hard it would be to go to the land of Jerusalem and teach people who were under the law the New Testament? They were set. And because they did it over and over again they became religious and it took the Holy Ghost to break that for them to become saved and a few did. I want to tell you, we are in the same position today as back then. Back then many were the servants of satan, not the servants of God. And we have the same thing today. Many of the people are servants of satan thinking they are servants of God. And so verse 18, For, behold, I have made thee this day a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee. To deliver you. Does that mean they are going to come after us and we have to find a place to hide? That’s what happened in the early church. They lived in caves and everywhere else to hide from those who wanted to kill them. And so to be holy is not to be popular among men. It’s to be popular with the living God. That’s the difference. And then we can fight against the wickedness. Hebrews 10:9, Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. We are sanctified through Jesus’ death once and for all. We go through levels and different areas of sanctification, but once a part of our being is sanctified, if we maintain it we don’t have to be sanctified again. We are sanctified through Jesus Christ, through His blood and His water that was shed on the cross and there is nothing more that God can do for you in getting rid of your sin if you don’t apply the water and the blood and then begin to walk in righteousness unto holiness. 2 Chronicles 31:18 And to the genealogy of all their little ones, their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, through all the congregation: for in their set office they sanctified themselves in holiness: Each one of you have a genealogy. And you’ll find that just because there are two brothers or two sisters in a family doesn’t mean they are the same. So that means that each one has a genealogy in God. And it says, even throughout all of the congregation, each one of you have a genealogy that God made for you. Every one of you that has a genealogy in God, you have a set office. Each one has a job to do, and in your office of what you have been assigned to do, you are to sanctify yourself in holiness in that office. That’s personal and that is your call therefore every one is required to set up your office with God to sanctify yourself in your call, in your holiness. That’s way back in the Chronicles. They knew that. If you look at David’s lineage, they didn’t care if there was an eight year old boy that was from the genealogies of David, put him in as king. Now we would have a fit today, but you see, they understood that that eight year old was worth more than anyone else because they carried the genealogy of an office that they were to rise up in their office and become holy in that thing. Our job is to set up our own office with God in holiness, rising up and being what we are supposed to be, and when we have accomplished that then God gives us a place of authority. I’ve never complained with God that He didn’t raise me up when I was a small child. Think what I could have done. No, my job that I had to do required a lot of experience and a lot of things that other people in their office won’t have to do. So I believe that I was raised up at the age in my forties at the right time. Now you say, well that was just the priests. No, the next verse says, Also of the sons of Aaron the priests, which were in the fields of the suburbs of their cities, in every several city, the men that were expressed by name, to give portions to all the males among the priests, and to all that were reckoned by genealogies among the Levites. So the Levites were to do their thing too. And that establishes the fact that the whole congregation had their set office. That’s a personal God. God is a personal God. He will establish you in your set office if you pursue Him in righteousness unto holiness. Abraham was credited as righteous because he believed and obeyed. But that didn’t make him holy yet. That made him come to a place that holiness is achievable. That’s a pretty powerful thing. Isaiah 35:8, And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. The highway that we’re making for all to come down in the great revival that is coming is a way of holiness. The unclean and those that are always making mistakes will not walk down this highway of holiness. God is not looking for someone that says they want Him but they are always making mistakes. It doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what your office is, it doesn’t matter where you’re at, you must obey God. That’s all there is to it. You must obey God. That’s the Spirit of Truth. Now there is also connected to truth a period of grace, but you do not live under grace if you continue to err. The proof of it is right there in that verse. Those that err will not walk down the highway to holiness. Sometime you have to grow up and obey. If you really love someone it’s really not that hard to obey them. Isaiah 63:15, Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? Are they restrained? What is going on here? Often I speak this to the Lord. And guess what He says? Nothing. He won’t say anything. So what do I have left to do? I have to really put on my glasses and clean up so I can see clearly what is causing God’s holiness not to come on me. And guess what? If you look hard enough you will find it, and when you remove that His holiness comes back on you. He’s absolute. And if there is uncleanness in an area, why should He pollute His holiness on me? He’s given us righteousness; that is, the power to remove what’s offensive to Him, so that His holiness can come on us and teach us the ways of holiness. You will never get anywhere with God without holiness. He’s made every provision for us to do it but we as human beings want our way no matter what. Verse 16, Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants’ sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The people of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. We are thine: thou never barest rule over them; they were not called by thy name. And now in chapter 64 starting in verse 8, Isaiah has his glasses on, and he has it tuned in, But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. There’s the reason right there. Verse 7, And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. God wants a people that will walk in holiness because it’s the holy people that will make the way for the salvation of the lost. It won’t be done through a bunch of gimmicks; if you just say a few words you’ll be saved. That isn’t going to cut it. That thinking is so wicked, so unrighteous, so unholy. We as a people have cheapened the sanctity of the living God that looks down from heaven in holiness looking for a people that He can take pleasure in. How is your office? Is your office set in order for the Lord to come and to release upon you His will upon the earth? Or does it still need a little work? That’s your question between you and God. 
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AuthorLarry Troyer |
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