Help with Being Holy: What is Holiness? Do I Need It?

Leviticus
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: Leviticus 19:1-2
June 26, 2022

Leviticus 19:1-2: Now the LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy."

Sermon Outline

1. God says, "I am holy."

  • The meaning of "holy”

  • First: God's holiness means he is separate from us

  • Second: God's holiness means separate because he is superior to us

  • Third: God's holiness means he is different from us

  • Fourth: God's holiness means he has no evil in himself

2. God sometimes declares certain places and objects "holy"

  • Moses and the burning bush

  • Other objects, places, and times

  • These things are not ethically holy

3. God sometimes sets certain people aside to be "holy"

  • Levites

  • Israelites

4. God not only declares Christian believers "holy" -- he commands us to be holy

  • God's demand for holiness seems unattractive

  • God's demand for holiness seems scary

  • God's demand for holiness seems impossible

5. Three thoughts in response

  • Regarding holiness as unattractive

  • Regarding holiness as scary

  • Regarding holiness as impossible

Benediction

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24: May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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