The Separation Principle Series

When churches fall into the trap of trying to make people happy, they can become spiritual failures. Now granted, churches should be accommodating to others. They should seek to help others feel comfortable with the love of God. BUT that’s only one of the church’s objectives. A church’s primary objective should be to present God with a holy people.

If you have a congregation full of happy people who don’t live holy lives you’ve got a recipe for disaster. In the Bible, when God’s people disregarded holiness, God rebuked them and punished them.

ILLUS: W E. Sangster, Pure in Heart, XI.: "The purpose of God for man is to make him holy. Not happiness first, and holiness if possible, but holiness first and bliss as a consequence.”

Sangster was right: Christians should be a people who keep themselves separate from worldliness. And if they do it right… will be a happy people.

What do I mean by “IF THEY DO IT RIGHT?”

The Separation principle requires that successful separateness requires the involvement of God. That would seem like a no-brainer, but there are people out there who try to live holy lives without God being involved.

· One way of doing this is when people live their "holiness" like a badge that says “look at me", "aren’t I special?” In other words.. their holiness is “all about them”. Any happiness they have doesn’t come from God as much as it does from the attention they get from others. As Jesus once said “they have their reward” (Matthew 6:2)

· Another way people attempt to attain holiness without relying on God is actually kind of sad. There are people who do their holiness “for” God without doing it “with” God. All of their holiness is based on their own efforts and hard work Oftentimes it’s based upon a list of do’s and don’ts that they expect themselves and others to live by.

But Colossians 2 tells us that man-made rules and regulations can’t make us holy. And there are two reasons why that is true:

1. Man-made rules don’t have the power to make us holy. All you have to do to observe this is drive down the highway. You ever seen a sign that says “55 mph”. What does that mean? It means you’re commanded by law to drive no more 55 miles an hour on that road. So, how often do fellow drivers do that? Yeah.

2. And Man-made rules can deceive people into living their lives for the rules. Kind of like the problem high school officials have found with the ISTEP testing. They are finding that teachers too often teach for the test… rather than teaching other important information.

In the same way, man-made rules make people live their “holiness” for those rules… but not necessarily for God.

If you’re really a Christian you don’t need a man-made list of what is holy and what isn’t. All you need is God’s word. It has the power to make you holy. That’s what Jesus said: “Sanctify them (make them holy or separate) by the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17

If you commit your heart to God’s Word – Scripture – you will learn what God wants of you.

They other thing you need to do is just walk close to God. If you do that you’ll attain His joy and pleasure for your life. That’s what David did, and he wrote: