Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my seventeenth episode. Tonight I’m going to present a sermon on holiness and the hierarchy of values. The text we will be working with is Psalm 51 and I will be in the New Living Translation. But before I get into that, I’d like to take a moment to update you on where I’ve been and what I’ve been working on. As many of you know, I recently returned from Indianapolis where I met with professors and fellow students at the Haggard School of Ministry. I must admit, I was skeptical of what I would experience there. I am pleased to say that my skepticism was wrong and it turned out to be a fruitful five days of learning and discussion.
There is a point that I brought up during the meetings that I feel is so important I’m going to mention it here. On the fourth day of meetings we watched a video that is called The Parable of Punchinello. Punchinello is a puppet and the puppet maker is Eli. It’s an allegory for God and his created humans.
Punchinello is ugly and not particularly good at anything. He gets rejected by his puppet peers. Punchinello becomes very sad and feels like he isn’t worth anything. Then he goes into the puppet workshop and meets Eli, the puppet maker. Eli tells Punchinello that he is special and that he loves him because he made him. This gives Punchinello new found confidence and he goes back into puppet society and realizes that it doesn’t matter what others think of him. The Parable of Punchinello is meant to teach children that they are special. But in my opinion it falls short by failing to explain to them why they are special.
This sounds like a small mistake, but I would present to you that this mistake is the root of many of our problems in the west. In many cases, it isn’t that children or people feel as if they are not special. It’s that they have forgotten why they are special. They’ve forgotten Who the source of their value is. This void has been filled with each person’s self. The consequence of this is that each person considers themselves the arbiter of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood. They are the judge. This is the heart of why we are plagued with political correctness. This is why the vocabulary of so called hate speech is growing by the month. We are special but not because of ourselves – because we are made in the image of a Holy God.
In Indianapolis, the theme of the meetings was biblical holiness. That is what I want to talk to you about today. So what is holiness? Just to give you a little bit of background on the idea of holy – it is not exclusive to the Bible. The Near Eastern traditions and the pagan religions do incorporate the idea of holy. In these traditions, holy is characterized by: majesty, vitality, otherness (something that is not of this world) and compelling fascination.
The Bible is different from other worldviews in that its concept of holiness also includes morality. Morality is the reason why God is not a mere reflection of ourselves. In pagan religion, they believed their rituals would extend to the actions of the gods. For example, if we do enough rituals we can make the gods rain on our crops. In the Bible, morality is what shows us God’s character. Holy morality is manifest in the Mosaic Law – the Old Testament. The Mosaic Law shows us who God is, and allows us to know who we are in relation to God.
We know of God as being holy. In that context, holy means to be without sin. God is sinless. Not only can we know that God is majestic, full of vitality, not from this world, and that he inspires a sense of compelling fascination. But because of the law we can also know what God would do and what God would not do. We know what God approves of and what God does not approve of. This mode of thinking is the same way that you are able to know anyone in your life. That’s why you trust people whom you know well – you can predict what they would do or what they would not do.
So the law shows us God’s character as holy and sinless. The entire corpus of the Bible tells how fallen human beings, like us, can share in the character of God. Effectively, it is instruction as to how human beings can become holy. Now, here’s where things get slippery. Over the course of time, there have been two camps that have developed out of this. In one camp, you have people who say it’s all about grace and since we can’t be perfect we should live however we want. In the other camp, there are people who are obsessed with avoidance of sin and comparing themselves to others. These Pharisee-types would say that if you are not sinless then you are not saved. Think holier-than-thou.
True biblical holiness is actually somewhere in the middle, and we’re going to use Psalm 51 to describe it. Psalm 51 is David repenting of his sin with Bathsheba. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, King David saw Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop and thought it would be a good idea to sleep with her. Bathsheba was the wife of one of his generals. Needless to say, that got messy. So we open Psalm 51 with verses 1-6:
Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just. For I was born a sinner — yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. But you desire honesty from the womb, teaching me wisdom even there.
I want you to notice who is taking action in these verses. It is God who has mercy because of God’s unfailing love. It is God who blots out the stain of sins because of God’s great compassion. It is God who washes David clean and it is God who purifies him from sin. It is God who is saying what’s right and God who is judging. It is God who desires honesty and God who teaches David wisdom. All David has to do in these verses is recognize that his sin is rebellion. We see more of this in verses 7-12:
Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me — now let me rejoice. Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
David calls on God to purify his sin and wash him clean. It is God who gives back joy. It is God who removes guilt. It is God who creates in him a clean heart. It is God who renews a loyal spirit. It is God who makes him willing to obey. All of the work is done by God. That’s why David is especially concerned that God should not remove His Holy Spirit from him. Because David understands that it’s the Holy Spirit who sanctifies him – who makes him holy.
So here are the first things about holiness that I want you to remember. Prevenient grace. Prevenient grace is why I’m standing here right now. Prevenient grace is why I survived the things I needed to survive in order to understand my need for Christ. That’s why King David is saying that God desires honesty from the womb. He wants every last one of us to come to Him. Next is faith. We are saved by grace through faith alone. Our only job is to recognize our sins for what they are – sins. Sub-optimal modes of being. Actions that are disordered and miss the mark. That is what it means to repent.
This seems straightforward, but remember the camp where it’s all grace and we can’t be perfect so let’s live however we want to? In this camp it is common for people to say that sinning is okay. But when you justify a sin – when you say a sin is not a sin – you alter the morality of your god. Remember, morality is how we know who God is. If you take away the law or throw out the Old Testament then your god becomes a reflection of yourself and your own opinions. In the all grace camp, God is love but God is not holy.
Over in the other camp they have the opposite problem. God is holy, but God does not love you. The measure of your faith is determined by your performance at avoiding sins. In this camp, God won’t save you unless you are perfect. Like the Pharisees, the better you are at avoiding sin, the more self-righteous you become. Before long you’re out persecuting other people because they are failing to live up to the law.
So we know that the all-love-and-all-grace camp has lost their ability to know who it is they are worshiping. To these believers, God is just an image of their own ideas. We also know that the all-holiness-and-all-performance camp is worshiping a tyrant whom they can never live up to. So where is God?
The true and real character of God is holiness and love. When it comes to God, you cannot separate holiness and love. We need the law to know who God is and who we are in relation to Him. But we can’t enter into a love relationship with the law. We enter into a love relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This is what it means for us to be holy. We are made holy by being in a love relationship with God.
What do I mean by a love relationship? It turns out there is an interesting way of conceptualizing this. It is called the hierarchy of values. Every person has a hierarchy of values. Without one, it would be impossible for you to perceive anything. You literally could not understand your environment. I can prove this to you. Would you all please close your eyes? Keep them closed and tell me what color shirt you have on today. That’s probably pretty easy for all of you. Now keep your eyes closed. This morning I added a flower to the flower pot by the door of the sanctuary. Tell me what color that flower is. You’ve walked past that flower pot many times and you never noticed the new flower. You didn’t notice the flower because the flower is not important to you. You can open your eyes now.
That is how the hierarchy of values works. You know the color of your shirt because your shirt ranks higher in value to you than does my flower. You have to filter things out that are not relevant to your values because there are simply too many facts to observe in any given environment. Now I want you to imagine a pyramid. At the top of this pyramid is the spot that is the highest value in your hierarchy. Whoever, or whatever you place in that spot is God to you. Since value is necessary for perception, then whatever or whoever you place in that spot will define how you see the world. That top value cascades down the rest of the ranks and determines how you live. If you put God in that spot, then he will rewire your values so that you will share His holy character. If God is not in that spot, then it is impossible for you to be holy.
When I first heard people saying that I need to submit to God – I didn’t know that this is what they meant. If you tell someone to submit to God, they might be afraid that they will lose the other things that they value. But let me tell you this. If God is not in that top spot for you right now, then someone else or something else is. If you’re worried about being a slave to someone or to something, just remember that God is the One Who sets you free.
Anything other than God that you put in that spot, including yourself, is of the world. What do I mean by the world? Romans 3: 10-18
As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous — not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” “Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies.” “Snake venom drips from their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “They rush to commit murder. Destruction and misery always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace.” “They have no fear of God at all.”
This is a picture of the world without God. This is the world that you have the capacity to create if you put yourself on the throne of your own heart. Think about this. If you wanted to, you could easily destroy your own life and the lives of everyone close to you in the next ten minutes. You know how you could do that. It would be easy. The path to destruction is wide.
Now flip that around. How could you cause that same amount of benefit to your own life and to the lives of everyone close to you in the next ten minutes? That road is not so obvious. That path is narrow. But if you enter into a love relationship with God by putting Him at the top of your hierarchy of values, He will show you how to do it. You will begin to notice flowers all over the place that you didn’t see before.
I tell you this because being your own boss is an illusion. Being your own person and serving yourself is not as straightforward as we commonly think. I’m not here to say that free will isn’t true. But I am saying that free will does not extend quite as far as we sometimes imagine. Consider: you wake up in the morning and you walk over to your window. You look outside and you see that it is raining. You didn’t choose the rain. But the fact that it is raining is going to determine what kind of clothes you select that day. The rain is an influence on your free will.
Or maybe you just get off work and you’re having a particularly good day. Then on your way home someone cuts you off on the highway. Your mood goes from good to something else. Even it’s just for 10 minutes. That’s 10 minutes of the day where your decision making is going to be consistent with a mood that is something other than good. The rainy weather and being cut off on the highway are two obvious examples of your free will being influenced – now let’s look at one that’s not so obvious.
The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of. That’s right, the brain is more complex than black holes and gravity. Remember, size is not an indication of complexity. There are 100 billion neurons in your brain. A neuron is a cell that transmits nerve impulses. So when I tap on your shoulder your neurons help in the process of making you aware of it. Now, each of these 100 billion neurons makes thousands of connections to other cells. There are more of these connections in 1 cubic centimeter of brain tissue than there are stars in the Andromeda galaxy. Your brain chemistry plays a fundamental role in influencing what you say and what you do. But you don’t think about all of your neurons when you’re out there making decisions.
The point is that the bulwark of your free will – the fortress of your free will – is your ability to choose what or who you allow to influence you. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are above influence. It’s more likely that you are being influenced in ways you can’t even imagine. But God knows this too. God wants to be in the top spot so that he can rewire your influences. That is what it means to be led by the Holy Spirit.
This brings us to verses 13-19 of Psalm 51:
Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you. Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves; then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness. Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you. You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. Look with favor on Zion and help her; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will be pleased with sacrifices offered in the right spirit — with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will again be sacrificed on your altar.
David knows that if God occupies the top spot in his hierarchy of values then good works will naturally follow. But it’s important to notice that submission comes before works. God doesn’t want your favors. God doesn’t want your charity for others. God doesn’t want your atonement rituals or your religion. God wants you. God wants you to love Him because He loved you first.
I want you to take a second and think about the person you love the most in this world. Now think back to the last time you fought with them. During the fight, you may have disliked everything about them. But your love for that person was sitting outside of that fight and untouched by it. All these years, your love for that person has been untouched by time. Your love for that person feels eternal and lives on – despite all the trials and struggles you’ve endured alongside them. Even if that person has passed away, your love for them has not.
That is what God wants from you. That is all that God wants from you. Love God like that. If you stumble, let Him pick you up. If you struggle with a certain sin, have faith in Him that He will see you through it. Don’t try to conquer it without Him. If it’s hard for you to give up a sin, then repent of it and wait for God to act in your life to rid you of it – once and for all. God works on His own time and your job is to have faith that He is with you always – even to the end of the age. Loving God and aiming up. That is what it means to be holy.
So here’s what I want you to take away from this message. Moral posturing is dangerous and you should beware of it. What I mean by moral posturing is comparing your character to the character of others to determine your holiness or their lack of holiness. You could be 100% accurate in your assessment of their behaviors and how they are missing the mark – but you’d still be in danger by the fact that you are assessing them. I think these types of lateral comparisons are bad because they cause you to shift your focus away from God.
There are only two possible outcomes when you do this. First, you could get lucky overcome a certain sin by your own effort. That would lead to pride. Pride would lead to you condemning and judging others. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for doing this very thing. He also told us in Matthew 5:7 God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
The second possible outcome is that you get unlucky and you fail to overcome a certain sin on your own effort. Then you get to drown in your guilt. Your guilt will prevent you from having a loving relationship with God. I can’t love God because I’m not good enough for God.
Holiness is best reserved for the relationship between you and God. Vertically. God is the only one who knows the motives of your heart. We are called to be salt and light. Salt to preserve what is good and light to guide the world. In my estimation, this objective is most effectively obtained in two ways. First, stand up and speak up for what is true about God. This means good teaching and knowing the Bible. Second, be silent about your own character and about the character of others. In 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul tells us to live quiet, humble lives minding our own business. Your quiet, humble life filled with joy and peace of mind will do a better job of leading people to the light than any amount of virtue signaling. Holiness is you being in a loving relationship with God.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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