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	Living Holy in an Unholy World by Rita Bennett From the CRA Newsletter - Winter 2001
	This article features Digital Footnotes: when you see a footnote indicator like this 3, click on it to go to the footnote. To continue reading from where you were in the text, click the footnote number, e.g., 3. The first of the New Millennium 2001 began for me with an invitation to be a presenter at a Seattle Lutheran Conference called "The Beauty of Holiness." I've been to scores of big meetings in the past thirty years and few of them were brave enough to choose such a title. Usually to get a crowd, more popular topics are chosen. You can fill in the blanks for popular topics here . . . What came to me as I considered my assignment was the topic "Living Holy in an Unholy World" and the biblical quote that came with it, "Be sure your sins will find you out." I looked up the verse in my concordance and found it in the Book of Numbers. One of the things I learned as a teenager in Sunday School was to memorize all the books of the Old Testament. I could even sing them. That was one of the good things I learned, but holiness? I didn't learn much about holiness except for the external kind as the pastor often preached things like, "You should not wear lipstick," or "You should not go to movies," or "You should not go to dances." There were so many should nots, I thought, "What a negative religion this is; it seems to dwell on all the things I cannot do." I don't recommend this as a way to teach holiness to a young person. In fact, Jesus reprimanded the scribes and Pharisees for looking only on the exterior of a man and missing the whole point of holiness in his interior spirit and soul (Matthew 23:25-28). Now I have to say that many of today's movies or T.V. shows I do not choose to watch because of all the garbage words and ideas expressed which can fill one's mind. Following such programs the words you absorbed into your mind will often be repeated in your thought-life and sometimes even be expressed. Fortunately, God is good at throwing out the garbage when you get around to realizing what you've allowed to be put into your heart and soul. Normally the world's standard is "Be as sinful as you can, and get away with as much as you can, as long as you can," but when one is running the highest office of the land, or is a candidate for the President's Cabinet or the Supreme Court, "Be sure they will find your sins out." The problem is someone wants to get you out of leadership so they can get in, along with all their sins, which they will of course try to hide until somebody finds them out. We know how this routine goes on ad infinitum. If you are considering going into politics today, it's a "given" that your sins may be plastered on the front of newspapers, on television, radio, on Internet, in magazines and whatever way the bad news can be sent to the entire world. The world's usual standards change drastically on these unique occasions. BE SURE, SINS WILL BE FOUND OUT So where does this statement come from, "Be sure your sins will find you out"? The twelve tribes of Israel had finally come out of their desert wanderings, and were happily thinking about what it would be like to settle down for a change. When two and a half of the tribes, Gad, Reuben, and the half tribe of Manasseh looked at the land on the east side of the Jordan they felt it would be perfect for (see page 2) their families and livestock. This group had a meeting with Moses and other leaders saying, "If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan" (Num. 32:5 NKJV). Moses quickly responded "Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?" (32:6b KJV) It seems Moses was checking to see whether their real motive was fear of going into the land God promised because of the same fear that was the downfall of the previous generation (Num. 13:31-14:38). God had given the Promised Land to the children of Israel and all twelve tribes were needed to take it together. These two and a half tribes could not just "cop out." Their actions would affect all of Israel. Gad and Reuben struck a bargain, to leave their families behind in Gilead and Jazer while they went over on the other side to fight the battle and then return home afterward. Moses okayed this decision and as a parting shot, warned the East Jordan group, "But if you do not do so, then take note, you have sinned against the LORD; and be sure your sin will find you out" (32:23). God had a plan for Israel to settle in Canaan, the land promised to their forefathers. When people work against God's plans as stated in His Word they get in big trouble. Unbeknownst to Israel, Yahveh's central plan was the birth of a little baby being born through the tribe of Judah, and He, Yeshua, God's Son, was to be born in Bethlehem and be raised in Nazareth, and one day - still to come - to reign from Jerusalem. When the Children of Israel op-posed God's instructions they got in trouble just as we too can get in trouble today. These words from Moses are true for us. In this Day of Grace, the sooner we repent and change our ways, the quicker God's judgment against our sin will be removed. We Believers (the church composed of Gentiles and Jews) cannot afford to walk in unrepentant, sinful (see page 3) lifestyles or stand against God's revealed Word and plans. WHAT IT IS What does it mean to be holy? Holy means set apart for the service of God. That doesn't mean you should come out of the world. You are in the world but should not be of it. Either you're going to change the world or the world is going to change you. The question is who's going to change who? I asked my Hebrew tutor "What does holy, Kodesh (Heb) mean?" He said, "It's being empowered by One who's higher than I." Empowered by One who's higher than you or me reminds us that it's only God who is holy. And it's through His holiness that we can be holy as we cannot do it on our own. People who think they can be holy on their own become what we call legalistic as they try so hard to be holy in their own strength. Yet, on the other hand, we must to the best of our ability be obedient to God. "In Middle and Old English language roots you will see that holy (halig), whole (hal) and health (haelth) have all descended from a common prototype . . . If you are dedicated to God and relating closely to Him, you will become holy, whole, and healthy."1 TEN COMMANDMENTS AND YOUR MARRIAGE VOWS The Ten Commandments tell us ten things that help to make us holy. We find them in Exodus 20:1-17. When one looks at the history of God's Commandments we should know that they were originally ten promises in the marriage covenant between Israel and God. They should therefore become a joy rather than a burden to learn about and to keep. We as Believers in Jesus Christ (Yeshua HaMashiach) are betrothed to God and these are our marriage vows too! We need to check them out frequently to see how we're doing. You might read Dr. Laura Schlessinger's book "The Ten Commandments." She often says following her counsel on radio, "Now go and do the right thing." You know we should tell ourselves to go and do the right thing when we are tempted by the flesh or the enemy. "Oh, these feelings feel so good." But "go and do the right thing" and doing the right thing will make your feelings go in the right direction. Our feelings are in the soul area but the Bible tells us to live above them, "in the Spirit." One thing has concerned me about God's Commandments and that is number 7 says "thou shalt not commit adultery" but there is seemingly no commandment against fornication. Specific definitions show adultery is voluntary sexual union between a married person and someone other than the lawful spouse (usually a married person). And fornication is sexual union between unmarrieds, or can be between an unmarried and a married person. I, as a biblical counselor, from time to time point out the Scripture on what God expects of His people. Recently when taking a Hebrew workshop the teacher told us that the word fornication is not in the Hebrew translation of the Old Testament because the letter "f" in the Hebrew alphabet (first character above) never begins a word. So there are no "f" words in the Old Testament (Tanach); a further meaning to this is that Hebrew is a pure language and one not to be defiled even with this word. I realized from my study of Hebrew this past year that what he said is correct. In fact, in Hebrew "f" at the beginning of a word automatically becomes a "p" (second character above) when the necessary dot or dagesh is added to it. So does this let us off the hook on fornication? No way. The English editions of the Old Testament do use the word fornication of which I found six references, and the New Testament (B'rit Chadashah) gives us many more; thirty-five.2 In most new translations or paraphrases of the Bible, the term "sexual immorality" is used to cover both adultery and fornication. In fact, though I think it's beneficial to have a clear definition for each, yet also both words can be used interchangeably which you can see when you study the Bible references. Fornication in Greek comes from porneia (Strong's #4202). You can see the comparison with the words pornography, pornographic. Fornication apparently covers the waterfront of sexual sins. There can also be spiritual adultery and spiritual fornication and usually the terms are used when God's people are unfaithful to Him. When we talk about holiness there is interior and exterior holiness. In Matthew chapter five, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount takes the essence of the Commandments and gives us a deeper look into the interior sins in our souls from which our outer sins proceed. DID JESUS TEACH THE TEN COMMANDMENTS? Through studying the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, I found more understanding about this seeming dilemma.3 Actually I realized that God's answers were right there clearly in His Word. He's great at answering my impasses. In one powerful verse of Scripture, Jesus teaches 6 of the 10 Commandments of Exodus 20 which I'll list and number for you "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts (10), murders (6), adulteries, fornications (7), thefts (8), false witness (9), blasphemies (3). These are the things which defile a man . . ." (Matthew 15:19-20 NKJV). Earlier in Matthew 15 He teaches another of the Commandments, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God com-manded, saying, 'Honor your father and mother (5) . . .' " (Mt. 3b,4a NKJV). In Matthew 22:37 He teaches another one, in fact the first of the ten: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (1) (NKJV). And another "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve"(2) (Mt. 4:10b NKJV). And finally ". . . the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath . . . Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? To save life, or to destroy it?" "Come unto Me, all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (4) (Luke 6:5,9, Matthew 11:28 NKJV).4 If you had only one book of the Bible, the Gospel of Matthew, you could find all Ten of the Commandments taught by Jesus Himself. I don't know about you but I love hearing how Jesus teaches the Commandments. Notice that most of the time He says "Thou shalt (i.e. you shall)" rather than "Thou shalt not." Jesus also said, "Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these command-ments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:19 NKJV). Quite a warning. Now I encourage you to go through and put Jesus' teaching on the Ten Commandments in their proper order and study them from that perspective, going back and com-paring them to Exodus 20:1-17. 5 The numerical system in Hebrew is based on the letters of their alphabet. For example one is alef (aleph), two is bet (beth), and so forth. Each letter has an ancient pictorial meaning: 1) aleph is first or strength for the ox, 2) beth pictures a home which comes from the word for home, e.g. beit (beith). These pictures connect with the Commandments and also help you to remember their order. This sys-tem will help you repeat your spiritual marriage vows often. See Frank Seekin's books for this in the notes. THE FOUNDATION FOR HOLINESS What we need to know is we are different if we are born again people. Now what does it mean to be born again, regenerated, con-verted, or whatever biblical term you like to use? What are we redeemed from? We are redeemed from being part of the fallen race who turned against God at its genesis. You see, if one was simply born into this world, he or she was born fallen. You've fallen from the glory of God, says Romans 3:23 (Gen. 3:23,24). That's the fact. So to be a born again person means you at some point said "yes" to Jesus Christ as Savior because you realized you could not be in right standing with God on your own. To illustrate, I'll make my left hand a fist. Your hand represents a dead spirit; you were dead in sins and trespasses. And so some-thing had to happen to your spirit and soul on the inside to cure that deadness, that unholi-ness. At some point hopefully you said, "I want to be born anew; I want to be a new creation. Lord Jesus, rescue me!" At that point, God's Holy Spirit overshadowed your dead spirit, breathed life into it and your spirit was born again. It was resurrected from the dead. That's what it means to be a Christian, or if you prefer, a Believer. Now that's the first half of the Good News and when I put my hands together I'll give the second half of the message. It is that God and you have been joined together, forever. So put your hands together and if you haven't been born again, say a little prayer, "Jesus, (or Yeshua Hebrew, or Jesu's Spanish etc.) save me, forgive me, right now. I want to be rescued. I want to be saved." When you pray that prayer, that's something worth cheering about for eternity. Because that means God and you are never going to be separated. Well, you have to unseparate your hands at some point of this illustration, but remember your spirit is always joined to the Lord. You are born from above if you say "Yes" to Jesus (Yeshua) and choose to follow Him. You know the incarnational reality is that God put on flesh and came to earth (Luke 1:30,35; John 1:4). He became man and because He did this, He was so holy, most everybody wanted to kill him and get rid of him, but the plan was that he wanted to die for us because for this reason He was born. He had to give his holy life so that we could be changed from the inside out. If He hadn't given His holy life, we would still be in our sins, in fact, we'd be on the way to hell right now. But thanks be to God we can get off that hell bus, and Jesus will put us on the Heaven bus. And that Heaven bus is taking us to the Kingdom of God. C.S. LEWIS TO THE RESCUE Have you ever read C.S. Lewis's book "The Great Divorce"? It's an easy read and young people really enjoy it too. It's about a group of people who get on a bus and don't realize that they are presently on the outskirts of hell and are going to pay a visit to the outskirts of Heaven. Some of the people are yelling at one another, and trying to kill one another. They are working through their own problems, their hates, and prejudices, and other sins. It gives a really good picture of life's problems and forgiveness, and how we need to become holy and changed by God on the inside, otherwise we may make an eternal wrong decision. Instead of getting off the bus and staying in Heaven, one might get back on the bus and go all the way to hell permanently, as the book shows. I also want to suggest that you read another "faction" (fiction and fact together) book by Lewis called Perelandra. While we're thinking about holiness we also need to consider the tempter and the battle of temptation. This book has the most profound story of temptation I've ever read other than the Bible, and in one way even more graphic than the Bible in that it gives us more details in its temptation story. There's Ransom, a type of Christ, and there's Professor Weston, a type of satan. Then there's the green lady who is a type of Eve. And there's a planet that's a type of earth. Ransom is called by God to go to the planet Perelandra to rescue this lady. He doesn't quite understand all of the ramifications but he gets there in a sort of wooden coffin that by God's power is lifted off from the earth like a rocket to land on this sin-free planet. Ransom gets there first and meets the lady, but Weston arrives in his spaceship shortly thereafter. His goal to tempt the unfallen woman is to bring sin to Perelandra just as it is on earth. But when the possessed Weston gets through with the green lady, "you can be sure she has been tempted." And the temptation is like a drip, drip, drip into her mind. Temptation, temptation, temptation. What a long, drawn-out battle ensues. You wonder when it will ever end! It's incredible but so true. It's a great book to read aloud to your family, husband, or wife. AN INTERIOR PROMISED LAND You know, I believe there is a promised land inside every one of us; it's called our spirits, our souls, and bodies. Spiritually we need to see that we are God's promised land. The blood of the Passover Lamb has been placed over our inner man in eternal protection. We've been called out of Egypt (a type of the world system), and there is a promised land on the inside of us that must be claimed. Though a Believer in Jesus Christ as Lord has a born again holy spirit, yet his soul and body are in varying degrees of wholeness or holiness. We must come to the place where we are willing to fight the battle and march in there and possess the land. There may be giants "holed up" there due to enemies who've gained access over the years of our walking in the world. It will not be easy for you and me to go in and take that land. The truth of the matter is that God has ordained that your interior promised land come under submission to Him. That's what it means to be a committed Believer, and that's what it means to be a person who is going to win victory in his or her life. We can't be those who want to stay on the East side of Jordan and not go all the way through the Jordan waters into the Promised Land. And we can't be like those who only want to claim part of Canaan. "Are you going to sit here and let the brethren go to war?" asked Moses. And are we also going to do warfare for our brothers and sisters even for their promised land? Are we fighting the battle for them spiritually? Are we praying for inner peace in their Jerusalem? Are we praying for one another that we might gain victory over our interior battle on the inside of ourselves? "Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed," says James (5:16a NKJV). If you need more help, get inner healing prayer to strengthen you in these battles.6 Help is available for you. And do get into solid Bible Study to keep applying mind-renewing principles to heal your soul. Develop a life of prayer. Begin each day with the Lord's Prayer (Mt. 6:6-13) and putting on the Whole Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10- 18). Claim the protection of the shed blood of Jesus over your life along with these prayers (Exodus 12:5-13, John 1:29). Do all this first thing in the morning before you leave your house. At night, forgive everyone before you go to sleep (Eph. 4:26,27). Pray for your family and claim God's protection over them. Walk in the anointing of the Holy Spirit and receive the power of the Spirit (Book of Acts). This will get you off to a good start. HOW CAN I LIVE A HOLY LIFE? You can live a holy life through God's holiness and your obedience to Him. By grace you are saved, but by obedience you work out your salvation and grow up in Him. Contrary to the world's opinion, you can be fulfilled, spirit, soul, and body, while you live a holy lifestyle. In fact, that's the only way you will be truly happy now and for eternity. FOOTNOTES 1. Quote from "Inner Wholeness Through the Lord's Prayer," by Rita Bennett, Publisher: Healing People Publishing House, P.O. Box 576, Edmonds, Washington. 2. See "Strong's Concordance" and "Stern's Jewish New Testament Commentary." 3. Dilemma of understanding the correct meaning of fornication 4. Recommended book: "The Basics of Life and Hebrew" by Dr. Frank T. Seekins, Living Word Pictures Publisher, P.O. Box 54700, Phoenix, Arizona 85078-4700. 5. Dr. Frank Seekins in his book "Counting on the Ten Commandments" shows how the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet give a system of remembering the order of the Commandments. 6. There are intensive inner healing seminars being held in Orlando and Ocala, Florida; Middletown, Ohio; Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Woodbridge, Virginia; and Edmonds, Washington to name a few places where the 32 hour "Emotionally Free" ® Soul Healing Course is being taught. PHOTO AT TOP OF PAGE: Christian Renewal Association's 1996 Tour Group at the Jordan River.