Cultivating Holiness
(Removing Weeds from our Spiritual Lives)
Leviticus 11:44a
Introduction: As some of you know, I used to work for a lawn-care company here in town. Our company was pretty well respected and we had a contract with Phillips Petroleum Company to take care of the lawns and flower beds around their office headquarters downtown. Now the people at Phillips are very Image oriented and they wanted their flowerbeds and lawns to look picture perfect. When I first started with Hadco, my job was to take care of the flowerbeds around the Phillips Plaza downtown. How hard could that be? I thought I knew how to take care of a flowerbed. Water the beds, pinch and prune the flowers and pull the weeds, no trouble at all. However, I soon discovered that I only thought I knew a lot. One day while I was there taking care of my flower-beds, Wes, my boss, came up and told me to pull a weed. He then pointed at a very pretty purple flowering plant, a plant that I knew we had put in other clients flowerbeds at quite a cost to the other clients. So in my knowledge of the business I informed Wes that this plant was not a weed. However, I soon discovered that by our company’s definition of a weed, that beautiful and expensive plant was indeed a weed. Wes said that plant is a weed because it is growing in a flowerbed where it doesn’t belong and I don’t want it there. So I promptly pulled this very expensive weed and deposited it in my trash bucket.
You see some weeds are very easy to spot. A dandy-lion, or a ragweed I would have pulled without ever being asked. I knew that they were weeds. No matter where they grow they are weeds. What I didn’t know was that even a beautiful expensive plant is a weed if it’s growing in the wrong flowerbed. It wasn’t a bad plant; it was just out of place.
Our Spiritual life can be alluded to as a sort of flowerbed or garden, and this flowerbed is not immune to the problem of weeds. Whether it be weeds that are weeds regardless, or whether it is good things in life that are simply growing in the wrong place. We all must deal with the problem of weeds.
If the Holy Spirit is to cultivate holiness in the soil of our lives, then we must rid the garden/flower-bed of weeds. To experience God’s true holiness we must be "Weed Free" as it were. Today I would like to address the how’s and why’s of being "Weed Free" in order that we might allow the Spirit to cultivate holiness.
I. Identifying the Weeds in Your Garden.
First of all, we must know just what a weed is. There are two kinds of weeds, as I have already stated. There are those things that are weeds because they are destructive and useless, and there are those that are weeds because they are simply in the wrong place.
A. Some Things Are Weeds No Matter What.
The easiest ones to spot, are those that are weeds because the are destructive. As a novice gardener I knew these weeds on sight. In our lives it is much the same. Some weeds are easy to spot simply because of their nature. These are easy to spot. In Galatians 5:19-21 Paul gives us a clear view of some spiritual weeds that are easy to spot. READ GAL. 5:19-21. These are east to spot weeds. Any Christian can see the acts of the sinful nature in their own life as well as the lives of others. Some are more easily seen than others are. But the obviously negative, destructive nature of these acts causes anyone with Christ in their lives to see these acts as the weeds they are.
Again in Colossians3:5 Paul describes some acts of the sinful nature, some obvious spiritual weeds. READ COL. 3:5. Here again Paul gives us some blatant descriptions of spiritual weeds. In gardening, destructive weeds such as this have no place in the flowerbed. They are destructive. They choke out the good plants, they rob the soil of its nutrients and they stunt the overall growth of all of the other plants in the flowerbed. So it is with these spiritual weeds in our lives. Such things as rage, envy, jealousy, sexual impurity, etc. not only are called sins by God, but when these are present they rob your life of the energy and nutriance necessary to grow the fruits of the spirit. These spiritual weeds choke out the areas of your life that are too be healthy and beautiful. Love, peace, joy, kindness, gentleness etc. are choked and stunted by the destructive presence of weeds in your spiritual garden.
B. Some Things are Weeds Because of Misplacement.
Some things are weeds regardless. But, these are not the only weeds in the garden. As my earlier illustration pointed out, some good things are considered weeds when they are found growing in the wrong place. You don’t have cat-tails and cactus growing in the same flowerbed. They clash and in some cases, mixing the wrong types of plants in the same soil can end up stunting the growth of both plants.
Again this principle is easily applied to our lives. Many of the good things we have become weeds when they are not put in their proper place in our lives.
1. Money: Money is a great example. Jesus illustrates this when he talks to the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-23. READ MARK10:17-23. The rich young ruler had much wealth, and that wealth was not bad. Jesus never condemned him for his wealth. The problem was that his wealth was so important to him that it choked out his desire to follow Jesus. His wealth was a weed in his life.
2. Family: Another good thing that can become a weed is family. Understand, God calls wives to submit to their husbands out of love and in the Lord, and He calls husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. However, We are never to put our family before our relationship with the Lord. It’s a tough balance. Jesus said in Luke 14:26-27 that unless we are willing to hate our family and follow him we cannot be his disciples. READ LUKE 14:26-27. Now again, Christ does not want us to hate our families. He was simply emphasizing the point that we must be willing to give up everything in order to be his disciples. That includes family. When family comes between you and Jesus, when it takes a higher priority than God allows, it becomes a weed. These misplaced flowers will cause the areas that God has designed for you to be stunted, and they themselves when in the wrong place will never reach their full potential. There is stunted growth all the way around. Your spiritual life suffers and your family life suffers. Neither reaches their fullest possible state. Yet when in their proper place, both will grow quite nicely.
3. Anything that has a higher priority than God. If we look at Deuteronomy 5:7 we see that anything that takes a higher priority in your life than God is out of place. READ DEUT. 5:7. Other Gods can range from jobs, to hobbies to even the church. Yes, even the church. When you are more concerned with running the church and doing your part than you are with your personal relationship with Jesus, the church becomes a weed in your life. In order for the Spirit to cultivate holiness in your life, you must first recognize that there are weeds in the flowerbed that must be removed.
II. Dealing with the Weeds I’ve Found.
Okay, so I’ve looked and found some weeds, now what? After identifying the weeds, you must decide what to do with them.
A. Some Must be Destroyed.
First, what do we do with those weeds that were easy to spot, those weeds that were obviously destructive? We are to remove them and destroy them. READ EPH. 4:22-24. The idea here is to put off the old sell Remove and destroy the old destructive weeds that have been choking out the positive growth in your life. Colossians 3:5 also backs up the idea of removing and destroying those weeds that are weeds regardless. We are to get rid of all unwholesomeness in our lives if we expect the Holy Spirit to cultivate a harvest of holiness in us. There is no room for these weeds in any area of our lives, spiritual or otherwise. These weeds must be destroyed.
B. Some May be Transplanted.
Next, there are the harder to notice weeds, those things that aren’t bad, but just misplaced. These weeds are hard to recognize because they aren’t always weeds. When in the right place they are fruitful plants that produce a good harvest for us and beautiful flowers that can bring glory to God. So often though we don’t stop to consider WHERE they are growing and we don’t see that they are stunting spiritual growth while they themselves are being stunted. Once we’ve found these weeds, what do we do?
These weeds need not be destroyed, only moved, just like the flower I described earlier these flowers can be transplanted. If we will seek the advice of the "Eternal Gardner", he will show us where and when to move these flowers. You see, if the flower I had to remove at work had been transplanted and put in a flowerbed with the proper surroundings and care, it would have been beautiful, and someone would have been willing to pay a great price for it. So it is in these areas of our life that are not weeds in a destructive sense. God is willing to let us have these flowers if we will put them in their proper places according to his master plan. They must fit into his design for the garden. They can be transplanted making them healthier and the bed they were removed from healthier. God wants to bless us with full growth, not stunted. We just need to follow his blueprint.
C. Why all this Work..
Now that we know we’re to remove the weeds and treat them according to their value, some people may ask, "Why go to all that trouble, my spiritual life seems to be doing fine?"
1. We’re Commanded to: For starters, a good reason to go to all the trouble of removing, destroying and transplanting weeds is quite simply that we are commanded to. READ LEV. 11:44. God calls us to holiness, yet we can never achieve it if we don’t prioritize our lives properly. Any weed in the garden, whether it’s always destructive or just a misplaced flower, will keep us from reaching the holiness God has intended for us. So quite simply, we are commanded to go to all the trouble of identifying and removing weeds.
2. It creates a proper environment for Holiness: Secondly, we need to do our spiritual weeding because a clear flowerbed will produce a healthier environment for the Spirit’s cultivation. READ 2 COR. 6:14-16a. Now this is easily applied to those weeds that are destructive by nature. If these are in the flowerbed, you won’t see much cultivation by the Spirit. Darkness and light cannot fill the same space. One or the other will prevail. As long as you allow these destructive weeds to grow, the Holy Spirit cannot cultivate the holiness God has called you to, thus leaving you in direct disobedience to God. This is not a good place to be.
As far as those weeds that are weeds because they’re misplaced, the best way to deal with this is by illustration. When I worked for Hadco, as I said, my job was to care for the downtown plaza flowerbeds. This included fertilizing the plants. Now, not every plant can handle the same kind of fertilizer. Some fertilizers will burn some plants and others aren’t strong enough to do any good for some plants. If I have two plants that take different extremes of fertilizer in one bed, and I use the heavier fertilizer for one plant, what will happen to the other plant. It gets burned. And if I fertilize light for one plant, then the other suffers from malnutrition. However if they are in separate flowerbeds, I can give each the proper care and both will do well.
In our spiritual lives, the Spirit wants to care for the plants, yet different plants need different care. Thus a mix causes something to suffer. When the plants are in their proper places, both can be cared for properly and both benefit. Thus, transplanting certain weeds in our lives creates a healthier atmosphere for the Spirit to work in.
III. Maintaining the Garden
Now that we’ve identified the weeds, and destroyed or transplanted them so that our spiritual flowerbed is healthy we’re done. Wrong, there is still one step left. This is an on-going step; this is the area of maintenance.
A. Weeds Will Continually Try to Resurface. Even though we may have the flowerbed cleaned out today, there is still work to do. At Hadco, I had to daily remove new weeds from the flowerbeds. Weeds will continually try to pop back up. READ 1 COR. 10:13. & 1 PETER 5:8. We see by these verses that Satan will continually try to sow weeds in our spiritual flowerbeds. The job never ends.
B. It Takes Constant Effort to Prevent Weeds. You must constantly work to prevent weeds. At Hadco, we placed on top of the soil in every flowerbed a layer of material that was used to help prevent weeds. It was a protective layer just below the surface of the flowerbed that prevented weeds from growing. It didn’t stop them all, but it was a big help.
1. Spend time in God’s Word: In our lives, if we will continually dig into God’s word. His word is active and living, sharper than any double edged sword. It is a tool that will help us to maintain the garden and prevent weeds from reappearing.
2. Spend time in Prayer: Spend time communing with him in prayer, we too will have a sort of protective covering that will help prevent weeds. Time with God will help us to keep the weeds from our flowerbed.
3. The more time you spend with the gardener, the more you know about the garden:
Time with God, and continual maintenance will give us a knowledge of the flowerbed that we didn’t have before. The more time you spend working the more easily you will recognize weeds and the sooner you can do something about them. As you spend more and more time with the gardener, working side by side with him in the garden, you will become a better gardener yourself. You learn the work by doing the work. You grow and learn as you keep your spiritual flowerbed healthy for the Spirit’s cultivation.
Conclusion: How can we tell if our spiritual life is growing weeds? By examination. There are three simple questions you can ask yourself to determine if a habit, situation, person, anything, is a weed in your spiritual flowerbed.
1. Is it more important to me than my relationship with the Lord?
2. Has it taken up time that I used to spend with God or time that I should spend with
God?
3. What would Jesus do?
These questions can help you determine if you have spiritual weeds. Once you know something is a weed, pull it. Ask God to help you prioritize your life so that you can remove the
weeds. Then get yourself on a maintenance plan to keep the garden clear.
The Holy Spirit wants to cultivate holiness in your life. Have you prepared the soil and cleared the weeds so that what He plants can grow in you unrestricted? If not do it now.
