You see, the question is not whether or not this man recognizes he is a sinner. The question is this: “While I have been sharing the Gospel with you, has the power of God so regenerated your heart that you now hate the sin you once loved?” And then if they say, “Yes, I know I’m a sinner,” then we say, “Well, would you like to go to Heaven?” Have you ever had anybody go, “Why, no, I’d just rather go to Hell.” Everybody wants to go to Heaven; don’t you realize that? Absolutely everybody wants to go to Heaven. They just don’t want God to be there when they get there. Men love Heaven; they don’t have a problem with Heaven; it’s God they hate. And so the question is not, “Do you want to go to Heaven?” The question is this: The God that you have hated, ignored, despised, show no thankfulness toward, has He so worked in your heart that now you esteem Him and desire Him? The Christ Who shed His blood for the souls of men.
Has God done such a work in your heart that He’s now precious to you? If we get them to say that they’re a sinner, and we get them to say they want to go to Heaven, then we ask them this question:
“Well, would you like to pray and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart?” You know, I just don’t see anywhere….I use satire because the prophets used satire. It’s a biblical thing to do, but I just don’t see anywhere where Jesus walks up and says, “You know, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Now, does anyone want to ask Me into their heart? I’m standing out here all day, and there’s no door handle on the outside. If it’s going to get opened, you’re going to be….” Jesus Christ owns the door. If He wants to knock it down, He will. You see, it’s just got to the point of absurdity. You could do a comedy on this. And many foreign brothers in the countries in which I preach and travel make so much fun of American evangelicals and Southern Baptists and say, “Oh, God, please never send them here.” But it is a call to repentance and to faith and to maybe have to work with a person. You know, I have preached the Gospel to people and seen people seemingly gloriously converted in a moment’s time just like that, and they’re still walking with Christ. But I have met other people that I have sent home and they have suffered through this thing for months until God revealed to their heart that they were born again.
You see, God is going to do a work of separation and He is going to do it. He is. In the life of every one of His people, as we’re going to see here in a moment, He says, I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and all your idols. The moment God begins to work in a person’s life, He begins separating them, but, listen to me, separating them, not just from a wicked world but separating them to Himself. There are many men in the name of religion who have separated themselves from all manner of vile things and yet they are lost, lost, lost. Because it is not just a question of do you hate that which defiles and that which is wicked. You can do that for pride’s sake, but do you love Him?
Let me share with you something about holiness. You want to really mess up somebody really bad, a guy who’s preaching on holiness, you want to mess him up, say, “What is your definition of holiness?”
And for the most part, most men will say, “God is without sin. God is pure. There is no evil in Him. There is no darkness.”
And then go, “Okay, thank you. That’s your definition of holiness?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your definition of righteousness?”
“God is without sin. God is holy. God is pure.”
Well, which is it? Do you realize how much we confuse those two ideas? I would submit to you that holiness does not mean primarily that God is morally pure or that God is light or that God is without sin. Holiness means that God is unique, that there is none like the Lord. There is none like Him. He is totally and completely separate. I always ask young people, I’ll say, “Well, what’s more like God—an archangel in the presence of God, worshiping Him in glory and power, or bacteria, floating around in your toilet?”
And they’ll always say, “Well, an angel.”
I say, “No, neither. An archangel in Heaven is no closer to God than bacteria floating around in your toilet, because there’s none like the Lord. He is not like us, just bigger. He is not like us at all.”
It is not quantitatively larger. It is qualitatively different. There’s none like Him. His name. That is why I always get onto Englishmen who work with me. You’re always talking about God and country. That’s blasphemy. God and king. Blasphemy. You don’t put God in a conjunctive relationship with anyone unless it’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What does that have to do with separation? Absolutely everything. To be holy is not to be a little evangelical Pharisee who crosses every T and dots every I and makes inferences into laws and presses them on everyone else around you.
Holiness is to be separated unto God, to be immersed in God, to be passionate about God, to be wild about God, to think about God, to be God besought, to be consumed by God. That is holiness and everything else breaks forth from that because, if there’s any other foundation laid, it’s not a proper one. You can do all sorts of things in the name of Christianity and be a million miles away from God and His will.
So this idea, again, of self-denial is not this person grudgingly doing right things in order to go to Heaven. Sometimes, I’ll go out visiting with my pastor, and we’ll go see somebody that hasn’t been in church for months and months and months, and knock on the door and the person will receive us very, very well, be very, very polite. Begin to speak with him about the things of God, and he’s automatically drawn to the duties of church, and he says, “You’re right. I know I need to get back in church.” How many of you have heard that before? “I need to get back in church, and I need to get my kids in Sunday school, and, yeah, I need to read my Bible, and I need to….” He’s lost. God is nothing but bad medicine to him that he takes only not to die. If I go home tonight and make it home, my wife’s waiting up for me, and she’s standing there at the door. And I walk in and I just give her a big old kiss, and she says, “Well, what’s all that about?”
