The Beauty of Holiness

We are born into a world of sin. This world is in far worse shape than we believe. We are told to look on the bright side. We are surrounded by cheerleaders while we stew in the pot of death. It is like living in the crater of a volcano at night never having seen a dawn. There are plenty of opportunities to trip and fall, no, to be pushed into crevasses by evil unseen beings bent on our destruction, never to be heard of again, having been consumed by the lava into eternal death. We cannot see nor realize just how evil and dangerous the world is unless we have as outside source who is not part of this corruption to turn on the light. The Scriptures, in and of themselves, are not sufficient. They were given to us to point the way to the Truth and only He is able to bring the Light upon the corruption and death and only He can provide the way out. If all we ever saw were shades of grey then when a rainbow appeared it would seem out of this world, supernatural. In the beginning the earth was created with rainbows all around. They were lost with the fall, into unrighteousness, or wrongness.

Yahweh created a perfect earth, pure and right. Everything coexisted in perfect harmony with out even the first hint of conflict and death. All was righteous and good. We are unable to even imagine such a place without Revelation from our Creator. It was a place of Light and Life, eternal Life, until the Fall, then the earth and all of its creatures fell from their lofty position of purity, harmony and rightness to its present state of sin fullness and evil. We went from the pristine beauty of Holiness to the defiled existence of strife and dissidence. Yeshua's purpose in visiting Earth was to provide a way for corrupted humans to voluntarily return to relationship with Him. This results in rightness, that is purity. By embracing His death and resurrection and receiving His righteousness He then can bring us to purity both within and without through His transforming work in us. {1 Thessalonians 4:2 For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus .3 It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.}

The purpose of purity in us, is to transform us into vessels of honor, not dishonor. In ancient times the vessels that were made of gold were reserved to contain the most valuable possessions. They were displayed in a place of honor, a sign of wealth of the owner. As believers, we become vessels for the Lord's purpose after conversion. We begin as vessels of clay, used at best, for general purposes, carrying water for example. The impurities in the clay can even disqualify a clay vessel from holding water for any length of time. The water would have to be poured out immediately to avoid contamination. So such a vessel could be used to transport water from one location to another before being emptied. This type of vessel could not be used to contain wine, for it would spoil the wine. Our vessel is coated with gold because of Yeshua's grace but there is still clay and impurities within. Yeshua desire is to transform us into vessels of pure gold. This is the purpose of the baptism of Fire, for purge out the impurities. The Lord must shape the vessel and then use the gold coating as a form to pour liquid gold into it. The clay must be broken and removed completely before the molten gold can be poured in. Even small particles of clay can contaminate the gold. So careful cleaning is necessary. When the Lord has completed the process we have become the Beauty of Holiness, a vessel that can contains the power and presence of Yahweh. Our old nature will not taint the power or presence. He can then use us safely to carry His love, grace and power to a dying world. If you desire to walk in intimate fellowship with Him and to see His supernatural power used through you then you must become a vessel of Honor, living in the Beauty of Holiness. We must cooperate with the work of His Spirit in us for this to ever have the possibility of occurring. He will take us as far as we allow Him. Decorating the outside is easy but transforming the inside is much more intense. Half of battle is convincing us that we need transformation.

Yahweh's will for us is to be transformed into purity from corruption, both in heart and action. This is what being saved means. We start out with a selfish, self centered heart that is desperately trying to fulfill the demands of our fallen flesh at the expense of those around us. The first hurdle for Yeshua is to reveal to us that we are destined for eternal death if we stay on the path we are traveling. That is no easy task, except deep down inside we know something is wrong, something evil. We come up with a thousand reasons why that is not true provided for us by an evil unseen enemy. This enemy has a plan for our future, to spend eternity taking out his wrath against Father upon us, the ones who were created to be the sons of God. Thank God that He created us with a conscience and that He wrote the laws of God upon our hearts. Otherwise we would have no hope of finding the Truth because we would be completely blind and deceived.

Once we have accepted the idea that we are sinful and in need of a Savior then we have to find out which one. Satan has provided many saviors, anti-Christs actually. All of them in one way or another appeal to our fallen nature. Yeshua, the only true Savior, does not. In fact His plan is to put to death our fallen nature, create in us a new heart in place of our corrupt one, to purge our bodies of their infestations of sin and demons and heal us inside and out. This does not happen overnight. In fact it takes a lifetime. This is why the phrase, he who endures until the end will be saved, is stated throughout the Scriptures. The end, of what, our life on earth in the mortal body. Endures what, the on going purging work of the Holy Spirit in our being. That work shows up in the form of trials and tribulations. Each test exposes to us (and those around us so that they can ask Father to transform us) our sinful nature, so that we can appeal to Yeshua to put it to death and grant us the transformation of new Life. As young believers often ask for Father to help us overcome our old natures. In other words we are going to muster up all of our own strength and win the battle of the flesh and oh yeah if we do not have enough strength, Father please give us some of yours so we can finish the task. This is a little like the brain cancer patient asking the brain surgeon for some assistance in removing his tumor. That is also like asking another brother who has overcome the flesh in the area that is troubling us to lend us a hand if we need it. Overcoming the sinful flesh is not something that we humans can do, neither in ourselves nor for others. It takes a supernatural work of God. Yeshua, chooses the time and place in which He will do that work if we have met His conditions. There are certain conditions that He almost always requires;

first is the recognition and admission that a particular issue is sin. This requires revelation from the Lord and humility on our part.

The second is a willingness to turn around and walk away from that sin permanently.

The third is to resist the sin and the temptation to engage in it.

The forth is to surrender ourselves to Yeshua for His transformation.

Like the brain tumor patient who must put his life in the hands of the surgery team, we must put our life in Yeshua's hands. The degree with which we surrender is in proportion to the freedom He has to work in us. Every believer has seen other believers who have stopped growing. They are stuck in a rut. This is often because they have stopped the work of the Holy Spirit with in themselves, by not meeting His conditions. The Spirit of God will continue to try to persuade the individual to comply but will in time give up and leave the person to his own devices. They become hardened to his voice and His leading. This vessel has been set on the shelf, until it once again cries out to the Lord for help.

The brain surgeon allegory is not complete because the surgeon offers a natural solution to the problem. A better illustration is instead of a surgeon, a man who is sufficiently purified and anointed to carryout Father's will with Father's power, such as John G. Lake was in the early 1900's. While in Africa following the Lord's directions in healing the those who were sick of the bubonic plague he happened upon a group of doctors who were also treating the sick. They asked him if he had been vaccinated against the plague and he said no. They insisted that he do so. So he had them get out a microscope and focus it on his hand while he reached down and wiped up some of the bloody saliva from a man's mouth that had just died of the plague with his other hand. He placed the saliva in his hand under the microscope so that they could watch. As they watched the bacteria that caused the plague in the man, died in his Lake's hand. The supernatural Spirit of Life was so strong in Lake that no disease could attack him because he had been purified by Yeshua, in spirit, soul and body.

Salvation is not a one time event but a lifetime life and death contest. The verse that says: work out your own salvation in fear and trembling implies as much. If we understood what is at stake and how easily that we can compromise and lose our salvation, we would be walking in fear and trembling. (My apologies to the eternal security crowd.) As we yield to His perfecting work in us He in turn fills us with more and more of His Spirit and presence, we become more and more sensitive to His leading because of our purification and we reflect more and more of His light. As His will prospers in our hands He is able to entrust us with more of his power to help His people. He provides supernatural gifts to carry out His supernatural work in freeing others to Know Him and Love Him. The fruits of righteousness { love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance(self control)} grow in us where once was the fruits of darkness {adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, and reveling (partying) }. We walk in more and more light and life and He reveals more and more of Himself and His secrets to us. When people look at us they no longer see the person we used to be but they see reflections of the Son of God, Yeshua. This is righteousness. Someday we may even hear a voice from heaven saying this is My beloved son in whom I am will pleased. This is the Love of God at work. He has made a way that we can be restored to the state of man before the fall; perfect, pure and in harmony with Him, Yahweh, that is, we, the possessors of eternal Life dwelling forever with our Maker. The cost of the short time of purification on earth is very small compared to eternity with Him. This is the Beauty of Holiness.