(Josh. 5:1, 13-15)

Today we are going to talk about holiness. We are going to talk about how God expects those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ are to live differently from those who do not follow Jesus Christ. We are continuing the series called "The Journey of a Faith Walker" from the book of Joshua. We have discovered that God invites those who follow him to be people who act in faith and how that God will use ordinary imperfect people if we will demonstrate faith. Today we want to see how that there are to be certain marks of distinction that identify us as believers.

Joshua 5 is a very important chapter for the story of the book but is very strange to us. The background of the chapter is that the nation of Israel has already crossed the Jordan River and is poised to attack the city of Jericho. The attack on Jericho will be the first battle that they will fight. In order for them to have God’s blessing on them God tells Joshua that all the males must be circumcised before they go into battle. As strange as this may sound to us it was an essential action for the people. The reason was that God had determined that circumcision was to be the mark of consecration for the nation of Israel. During the time that they had been wandering in the wilderness they had not performed this ritual on those who were now about to begin the battle for Jericho. Therefore to insure success this was to be done to mark their distinction from everyone else around them.

As we think of what it means to be Christian today what are the things that mark us as being distinct from everyone else? Christian writer Ron Sider said in a recent interview that the most troubling thing about evangelical Christians today is "a scandalous failure to live what we preach." He points to the most recent polls that show that evangelical Christians live identically to those who claim no faith at all. We get divorced just as often, our youth are only 10% better when it comes to not being sexually active, at least 1/3 see nothing wrong with premarital sex, we are more prejudiced, especially Southern Baptists, we are just as physically abusive in our homes and when it comes to the material we give only 4.2% of our income. It points to the hypocrisy, he says, of our trying to tell others how they should live when we are not even coming close to living what we say we believe. (CT, April 2005, p. 70-72)

So what is the answer? One thing that is essential is a return to a conviction about what it means to be holy people! I realize that saying that brings up all kinds of negatives and distortions in our mind. We want to immediately say that what it means to be holy to someone may mean something different to someone else so we can’t really define it. Fredrick Buechner says though "I think we belong to holiness, even when we're not even sure it exists." Chuck Colson said that, "Holiness is not following a set of rules" but that "holiness is conforming to the character of God" and that "faith in action is true holiness." Whatever you may or may not think about your being holy you know down inside you that you are called as a Christian to be different.

What does different mean? The dictionary says "distinct, separate, not the same, out of the ordinary, unusual." Should not God-followers, then, be different? Should we not be distinct, separate, not the same, out of the ordinary, unusual? That’s what I want us to talk about today.

God reminds Joshua in verses 1-8 that he has always wanted his people to be different (Josh. 5:1-8) He has always desired that his people be set apart. He desires that there be a distinguishing mark upon them. When the Hebrews crossed the Jordan to occupy the Promised Land, God marked them through an act called circumcision. God said to Joshua, "Use knives of flint to make the Israelites a circumcised people again." (Joshua 5:2, NLT). Joshua did as the Lord commanded him and ordered the circumcision of all the males of the tribe.

I realize it is hard for us to see the importance of this today but because it is such a prominent idea in the Bible it is important for us to understand it. Circumcision is a procedure that we find performed on males in the Bible for a distinct purpose and is practiced today for medical rather than religious reasons. In ancient Israel this act was ritually performed on the eighth day after birth. (Leviticus 9:3). The father usually carried out circumcision using a flint knife. The reason for its use was for physical hygiene and as a tribal mark of distinction. Its most important function was as a rite of entry into the Jewish community of faith. In the Old Testament the origin of the Israelite practice was founded upon the circumcision of Abraham as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham (Genesis 17:10).

Circumcision was an outward sign of inward obedience. It was a physical act wrought with spiritual meaning. For Israel it was a very important means of marking their identity as the people of God. It revealed the covenant relationship that God had with his people. Joshua set aside a whole day to perform mass circumcision. And God was pleased. God adopted this ancient rite to show that his people were consecrated and dedicated to him. It was his way of marking his people, to show that they were holy.

It was later used as a figure of speech in both the Old Testament and New Testament to describe the distinctiveness of God's people. Paul would say in Romans 2:29, "…true circumcision is not a cutting of the body but a change of heart produced by God's Spirit." A circumcised heart referred to the human intellectual-emotional-spiritual center, where decisions were made, as able to participate in God's covenant. It was a call to radical spiritual surgery where the spirit was broken, the heart was open, and the will was submissive to God. It provided the true identity of God's people. It was a way that they would represent God to the world. God made it clear that he wants his people to be set apart.

After Joshua had fulfilled all that God had asked him to do we read that God said, "Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery in Egypt." (Joshua 5:9, NLT) There was something that was transacted between God and the people by their current obedience to his command that altered their past. In God’s eyes as long as they were in Egypt there was a sense of their being stained or marred by their relationship to Egypt. For forty years they had lived with that distance between themselves and God’s full blessing. Now that they had applied this mark of distinction they would forever be designated as his special people. Their obedience was a symbolic way of separating them from those around them.

In the same way, God calls his people to holiness today. As long as we allow the baggage of our own culture to define us or identify us then we have yet to experience God rolling away our past. The only ceremony we have today that symbolizes outwardly our separation from those around us is the experience of baptism. In a very dramatic way baptism marks our life as uniquely belonging to God as well as the washing away of the sins of our lives. A holy person is not an odd person, but a distinct person. A holy person has a quality about their life that is separate. Their present lifestyle is not only different from their past lifestyle, but is different from the lifestyles of the unbelievers around them. They are real, genuine and authentic. They represent the likeness of Jesus Christ to a watching world. But making the decisions that take you to holiness will often take radical painful steps.

On Saturday April 26, 2003, Aron Ralston set out climbing in Blue John Canyon near Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah. It was to be a one-day hike. But as he used rock-climbing gear to negotiate narrow canyons, the unthinkable happened. Ralston pushed his arm into a crack in the canyon wall, and an 800-pound boulder shifted, pinning him.

He tried using a dull pocketknife to chip away at the boulder—without success. He tried to rig a makeshift pulley with ropes to lift the boulder—that failed as well. After three days, having gone through most of his three liters of water and his food, he decided to sacrifice his arm to save his life. First bending his body in order to break his wrist bone, he proceeded to use his knife to amputate his arm just below the right elbow.

Amazingly able to remain conscious, the 27-year-old climber applied a makeshift tourniquet and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor. "I'm not sure how I handled it,'' the mechanical engineer-turned-adventurer said, the stump of his right arm in a sling. ''I felt pain, and I coped with it. I moved on.'' According to Sheriff's Department Sgt. Mitch Vetere, Ralston would have died if he had stayed in the canyon. '''He had a will to live.'' (Associated Press 05-02-03)

Your choices about what you are willing to remove from your life for you to be holy may seem like performing surgery on yourself. But if it depends on surviving spiritually or not it is necessary. We have been commanded to live a holy life—energetic and blazing with holiness. Someone once said, "We may choose a married life or a single life, but it is not left to us to choose whether or not we live a holy life." Holiness, to be different, is not an option. It is mandatory. It is what marks us as God's followers. God calls his people to holiness.

So if God has called us to live holy and distinct lives why don’t we do that? The reason is that when you come right down to it we are afraid to live different lives. The problem is that we don't want to be different. Why? One reason is that we have preferences but few convictions. A preference is an option. A conviction isn’t! You see we prefer conformity rather than have a conviction about being different. We also prefer our idea of holiness rather than seek a conviction of what it really means. As a result we don't like the idea of holiness because, we think, it communicates an attitude and displays actions that have become known as "holier-than-thou." Jesus despised this type of mentality and morality in the Pharisees, and we agree with him. Yet what happens is we use our bad example as an excuse for not living a life that is wholly God’s. Consequently we say "No, thank you" to holiness.

Andy Stanley recalls when he was in the in seventh grade, that the school tried to scare them to death about using alcohol. "We saw a film about a party where students danced and listened to music. One guy invited his friends to the back room for drinks, and another guy passed out. They couldn't revive him, so they called the ambulance. He is rushed to the hospital where someone calls the parents. Mom was crying. Dad was crying. The doctors stuck needles in his veins and tubes up his nose. The moral of the movie was ‘Don't drink alcohol or they'll stick needles in your veins, tubes up your nose, and your parents will cry.’ We were convinced that none of us would ever drink alcohol if that's what they were going to do to us."

"Then they brought in another film, whose plot was basically the same, but the moral this time was ‘Don't take drugs.’ Another time, we got to look at and touch the lung of some poor soul who had smoked all his life. The object was, ‘If you smoke, your lung will look like this, and kids will touch it.’ We were convinced there in the seventh grade that none of us would ever smoke cigarettes. "Another movie is still shown today in driver-education courses. Photographers have filmed the scenes of car wrecks before the paramedics get there. From accident after accident, there are shots of cars and bodies and people who are mangled and dead. I thought the moral of that movie was, ‘Don't ever get in a car.’"

He concludes, "We seventh graders were convinced that under no circumstances would we ever drink, smoke, take drugs, or drive recklessly, if at all. Yet, soon after we entered high school, most of my friends were smoking. Just about everybody was drinking, and I lost several of my friends to drug overdoses." He asks, "How could we be convinced that something was deadly, unhealthy, and unwise, yet not act on our beliefs? What happened to my friends in the seventh grade also happens to us." (Andy Stanley, "Preference vs. Conviction," Preaching Today #98)

Today many of you are involved in things that a year or two ago you never dreamed you would do and yet your gut reaction to the idea of being holy and different as a Christian makes you uneasy and afraid. The reason is that we have preferences but we are afraid to have convictions. We don’t have convictions because we fear being different.

Joshua has obeyed all that God has asked of him and he assumes that the people are now ready for battle. They were ready but Joshua was not. In verses 13-15 of chapter 5 Joshua encounters the presence of God though an angel. Joshua asks the angel, "Whose side are you on?" The angel responds that he isn’t on anyone’s side that he has come to take over! He tells him that the very ground he is standing on is holy ground. It is as if the angel is telling him, "Your holiness is something that you carry with you. Because you have encountered me your distinction will go with you also!" When Joshua would go into battle he would go with the knowledge that he was a different man.

In the same way because we are different people we should go out into our world with the conviction that we are different people. God’s people should think and act differently. What does it mean to be different? It means that we think differently, live differently, love differently and speak differently. Our minds are occupied with different thoughts. Our lives are living for different things. The love we have is at a different level and the words we speak have a different meaning.

Malcom Gladwell writes in his book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" about a test that psychologists give called the Implicit Association Test or IAT. The test determines just how our unconscious mind is shaped by the world around us in ways that we may not realize. By using a series of words and images the test shows that unconscious attitudes maybe utterly incompatible with what we say we believe. For example you may not think of yourself as racist but when you see a series of words and images that present challenges to your perceived view of yourself compared to others of a different race you discover that you are more racist than you believe. Gladwell who himself is half-black was shocked to see his own prejudice when he took the test. Why? Because the culture that we live in is predominately influenced by a white culture. So without our consciously knowing it we are shaped by our culture to think of our white culture positively and those of other races negatively. ("Blink", p.83-85) What’s the point? The point is that we often fail to realize just how much the world influences the way we think, act, speak and demonstrate love. The proof is that what we say we believe we don’t do. God’s people should think and act differently

Today the world has a desperate need for people who are different. There is a mark about their lives that sets them apart. Living such a way, like circumcision, will not be easy; in fact, at times it will be painful. But it will make a difference.

Rick Ezell tells a story about Maggie. Inauthentic Christians had poisoned Maggie's perspective on faith. The church she had grown up in had been confusing. People said one thing but did another. They appeared very spiritual in public but were abusive in private. What they said and what they did never fit. When she finally returned to church, she needed gentleness. She needed to be able to ask questions. She needed respect. But most of all, she needed to see people whose actions matched their words. She was not looking for perfect; she was looking for real. She needed to hear real people talk about real life, and she needed to know if God is—or can be—a part of real life.

She wrote a poem about her heartfelt sentiments, the sentiments of a spiritual seeker, toward those of us who are Christians. Imagine that this precious person is speaking directly to you.

What Maggie needed were people who displayed a holiness that was real and genuine. People who were different, not for difference's sake, but to represent Jesus to them. People who would pay the price of living distinctively. Sometime later, Maggie gave her life to Jesus. When asked why she crossed the line of faith, she replied, "I just met a whole bunch of people who were like Jesus to me. That's all it took."

We need people who will be Jesus. We need people to be Jesus in their homes, in their schools, in their office, in their relationships and in their political responsibilities. I will tell you we need people to start being Jesus in First Baptist Church. We need people who will be different. People who live a vibrant faith even though the rest of society thinks they are different. People whom, as Erwin McManus calls them, are "barbarians" for the cause of Christ.

One does not get that kind of faith except through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is the one that calls us to stand out of the crowd, to be distinct, separate, unusual. He calls us to be different.

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org