How do you prepare for marriage? In this message, Scott Brown answers one of the most important aspects of this preparation. In one sense, it is not important to prepare for marriage but to prepare to be set apart for the Lord in holiness. Holiness prepares you for everything. Therefore, an unmarried person must be prudent to avoid living in a holding pattern till marriage. On the contrary, fruit-bearing ought to be at the forefront of the mind of the unmarried. Scott describes how unmarried people take dominion. 

I felt it was appropriate to begin these meetings with a call to love the holiness of God. That's what we'll be talking about during this whole session. You know, when we were singing, it just struck me like a freight train how much we need God to be holy, how much we need a holy God. Our sins are so great, we are in such need of His purity. We're in such need of His ministry of holiness toward us.

We need a holy God more than anything else. And I pray that as we go on in the evening, I could be a help to you tonight to really appreciate maybe even more His holiness, to embrace it, to love it, to cherish the fact that God, that God alone is holy. And so I wanna bring you some texts, just some brief texts. And then I would like to walk through some of the elements of God and His Holiness Isaiah 48 verse 17 thus says the Lord Your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. I am the Lord, Your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go." It is His holiness that is the guiding light of our lives.

Then, 1 Peter verses 14 through 16, "'As obedient children, not conforming yourselves "'to the former lusts as in your ignorance. But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct because it is written, be holy, for I am holy. And then Isaiah 35 verse 8 which speaks of holiness as a road that you walk. A highway shall be there and a road and It shall be called the highway of holiness The unclean shall not pass over it but it shall be for others if you would like a 20 message exposition of that verse We did a conference on that verse about eight years ago called the Highway of Holiness. And then finally I want to read a verse that explains something that is really so wonderful to me and It really comes out of the experience of the martyrs they were They were killed for the Word of God every time you preach the Word of God you're really preparing people for persecution and for their death and this is what we find in the martyrs and in Revelation chapter 6 verses 9 and 10 there's this this remarkable scene of the martyrs who are under the altar of God.

And what you find them saying is this, how long, oh Lord, holy and true. After all the suffering, after the pain of their death and looking back at all the things that happened to them as they were persecuted, what's the first thing that they think? Lord, holy, you are true. Lord, you're wonderful. Everything you did was right.

Everything you told us was true. So with those texts, I want to show you where I'm going, just so you'll be able to track it here on the screen. I want to first of all talk about why holiness, and then I want to speak about why pursue holiness. And then I want to say that the consequences are very profound for those who pursue holiness those who pursue holiness will see the Lord and holiness is the essential purpose of God in salvation and then that the entire objective of salvation is to undo holiness and then I want to try to define holiness That it includes both justification and it includes sanctification and then I want to give four illustrations of holiness and The first illustration is the likeness of Christ the second is childlike obedience The third is non-conformity to former lusts. And then finally, holiness is a crucifixion.

It's a crucifixion to the world. So, what does that have to do with singleness? Nothing except everything. You know, since most of you are unmarried, I'm assuming that you are in one way or another preparing for marriage. And what I'm gonna say could be easily misunderstood.

But preparing for marriage could be a real trap for you. Having your whole focus on getting married could be a real trap. I talked to a young man once and he had marriage on his checklist. He had a checklist. He got the job, he's got the cash, He's got the church check.

He can take responsibility check and He checked all the boxes He had all the credentials. You know he had it. He had everything on paper ready for marriage, and then he fell into a discouragement because he realized the Lord revealed to him he was preparing for the wrong thing and He was doing all those things so that he could get married. And the way he tells it, he he did all those things because he had made marriage an idol in his life. And it distracted him from the kind of life that God actually had designed for him.

And he realized that he was preparing for the wrong thing. It's easy to fall into, you know, what should I do to prepare for marriage? Trap. Instead of how do I serve the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? How do I look at the face of Jesus Christ and be transformed into His image?

So, If any of this gets close to you, stop preparing for marriage. Just stop it and fix your eyes on Jesus Christ. Marriage will not fix you. I heard somebody say that the single you will be the married you. So if you're focusing on your wrong things, then you will be preparing for the wrong things.

So there's nothing better in life than holiness. And it's the most beneficial thing. Holiness prepares you for absolutely everything. So why holiness? Why holiness?

Because God is holy. That's why. You shall be holy, for I am holy. The Creator of the universe, the designer of your body and your personality, He is holy and holiness is the central quality of God. That understates it, But it's the quality and the attribute of God that sums up all the other attributes.

Holiness is his defining characteristic. It is his beauty. Holiness is not some separate category of doctrine. You can't isolate this doctrine from all other doctrines. You can't isolate it from the perseverance of the saints or heaven or hell.

Holiness is the irreducible principle from which everything proceeds. Holiness is embedded in every doctrine. Holiness is higher, it's deeper, it's wider than all the other doctrines, and it just swallows up all the other doctrines. Here's how Jonathan Edwards explained it. "'Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing.

Men are apt to drink in strange notions of holiness from their childhood, as if it were all a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing. But there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties, tis a divine beauty." Why holiness? Because God is Holy. God is love.

He's the epicenter of all love. He's the headwaters of everything that's good. He's the fountain of all happiness. He's the beginning of all things. And this is the end for which God made the world is to make sinners holy and to bring them into His holy mountain.

And so holiness is such a beautiful thing. We need a holy God. We need a holy God. We need a God that is so different than we are, so that we could somehow acquire some of His beauty. So stop preparing for marriage, if you are, and prepare for holiness in every way you possibly can.

Why? Why should we pursue holiness? Well there are many reasons. I'm just gonna give you a small number of reasons why we should pursue holiness. The consequences are so profound and the first consequence of pursuing holiness is that those who pursue holiness see the Lord.

They see the Lord. They see less of themselves and they see more of Him who is holy. Hebrews 12 14 says it like this, Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. You have to understand that if you are not holy you will not see the Lord. You will not see the most beautiful thing in the universe.

You will not see the most life giving thing. You will not see the most hapifying thing. You will not see the most wonderful thing. And that is God in His holiness. To see the Lord, what does that mean?

To see the Lord is to be transformed to be like Him. To see the Lord is to be beautified by Him. In 2 Corinthians 3 verse 17, the Apostle Paul tells that church in Corinth, he says, Now the Spirit of the Lord, now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." You will see His face. You know, I've had such a delight over the last few months to preach through the book of Revelation.

And there's a phrase in the book of Revelation that is so astounding to me. They shall see His face. They shall see His face. There's nothing more wonderful than that. And there are few messages more vital for the health of the church and the individual compared to this one.

And something every person must understand, if you are not holy, You will not see the Lord. You will not see His face. What a tragedy that would be. The only truly life-giving face will be deprived of you if you lose Him while you're preparing for marriage. Why pursue marriage?

A second consequence. Not only will you see the Lord But the essential purpose of God in salvation is holiness. The Apostle Paul taught that to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 1.4. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. God sent His Son to make sinners holy.

This was the purpose of the sending of His Son. He chose us because He wanted to beautify sinners. And everything He's doing in your life is for holiness. Every joy, every trial, everything that's come into your life has been designed by God to make you holy. Holiness is the purpose of Christ's sacrifice.

That's why the Apostle Paul said, this is what this is the will of God, your sanctification. We are being made holy. And so holiness is God's motive for salvation. Third, the third consequence. Why?

Why should you be holy? The entire objective of salvation is to undo unholiness. The entire objective of salvation is to undo unholiness. 1 John 3 verses 8 through 11 has this phrase, For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil in your life, progressively, one day at a time.

Give him all the ammunition so that he can destroy the works of the devil in your life. There's so much ammunition in the Word of God. There's so much ammunition launched in prayer. Give Him ammunition. Give Him the powder so that you would be mortifying the flesh.

God so desires to rectify the deeds of the flesh and to mortify the flesh. He's destroying parts of us and He's remaking us. You know, this matter of remaining sin can be a difficult one for us to understand. There's a very common misconception that faithful Christians hold, and it makes life very hard for them, and that is that it's the idea that the more you're being sanctified, the less you'll be troubled by your sin people have that idea the more that you grow in the Lord the less you're gonna struggle with sin that's a common idea it's a misconception And the idea is that you're going to somehow get past your struggle from sin. You're going to put it all behind you.

And it's a terrible misconception. Because as you grow in the Lord, as you read His Word, you don't feel more righteous. Your knowledge of God is growing. Your knowledge of his holiness is expanding your your knowledge of your sin is growing Your conscience is being shaped by the Word of God and less by your own corruptions. And the more years you live, the more pride you see.

And as you grow in grace, you see how much more you need to grow in grace. And so you might not feel better about yourself, but you will feel something else. You will feel so delighted for what God has done for you. You will feel so delighted that He sacrificed His life for your sins. You'll feel so delighted that He put your sins as far as the east is from the west.

That He threw them behind His back. That He stomped upon them. That He put them in the bottom of the ocean. You'll be so thankful what He has done. And as you're growing in grace, you'll always have to remember the massive implications of His sanctifying death on the cross.

Holiness is the most important thing in the world. Edwards again in his book Religious Affections said, he that sees the beauty of holiness sees the greatest and most important thing in the world. And I'll just say all is lost without holiness. All justice is lost, all goodness is lost, all love is lost, all morality is lost, all peace is lost, all harmony is lost, all restoration is lost without holiness, but everything is gained by holiness and by beholding the face of a holy God and his holy son the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's why we should pursue holiness.

Now, What is holiness? What is holiness? Well, there are many ways to speak of this and I'll try to focus on the simplest way. Holiness is spoken of in the Word of God under two categories. The first category is justification and the second category is sanctification.

Justification is pardon for sin by the free grace of God. It's a legal act of finally making a sinner holy in the eyes of God. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have been saved, and you love to do His will, You are holy in the eyes of God. He has made you holy. He has justified you by faith, and then there is sanctification.

That's the effect of that pardon. When you're pardoned from sin, you're progressively rooting out sin. Justification is a one-time event. Sanctification is an ongoing process throughout the life of the believer. Justification refers to positional salvation.

Sanctification refers to progressive sanctification. And holiness is to be separated for God. It is to be separated from sin. You know, from time to time, someone will come and ask me what they need to look for in a spouse. And it's usually in the context of, hey, I'm really interested in somebody.

What do you think of her? And my first question is, is she holy? Is she a holy woman? Because holiness is the golden key to everything in life. If you marry a holy man or a holy woman, it will be well with you.

Horatius Bonar said it like this, holiness extends to every part of our persons, fills up our being, spreads over our life, influences everything we are or do or think or speak or plan, small or great, outward or inward, negative or positive. Our loving, our hating, our sorrowing, our rejoicing, our reading, our writing, our going out and our coming in our whole man in every movement of spirit soul and body is designed to be made holy. It's very interesting you know the whole theme of Leviticus is holiness, you know, holiness to the Lord and, you know, the apostles quote Leviticus in this matter of holiness. But the whole idea that you encounter in the book of Leviticus is that everything in life from the beginning to the end is designed to be made holy. And the idea is that sin has affected everything.

And therefore, everything needs to be seen in the light of a sacrifice which points to Christ, points to the holy of holies. And it's interesting because the strangest things in Leviticus require sacrifices. There are sacrifices for things that aren't even sinful. There are sacrifices for childbirth. There are sacrifices for menstruation.

There are sacrifices for touching a dead body. There are sacrifices for certain kinds of diseases. Is it sinful to bear a child? Is it sinful to menstruate? No, it's not sinful at all.

But what the Lord is disclosing in the book of Leviticus is while not any of those things are particularly sinful, they are all designed for holiness to the Lord. And your pots, your pans, the bridle on your horse, everything, everything is designed for holiness to the Lord. And your pots, your pans, the bridle on your horse, everything, everything is designed for holiness to the Lord. Everything. There's nothing in your life that does not need to be sanctified by God.

Even the lawful things. And I think the implication is there's actually sin in everything that you do even the lawful things that you do there's sin even in the good words that you speak there's some sin in it so what what is holiness It is justification and it is sanctification. Now, I want to give you four illustrations for what this looks like. Four illustrations. And the first is the likeness of Christ, the second is childlike obedience, and the third is non-conformity to former lusts, and the fourth is crucifixion to the world.

So these are illustrations, So what does it look like? I want to draw from a couple of passages of Scripture. First Peter chapter 1 verse 14 addresses them, "...as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, be holy, for I am holy." So the first illustration of what holiness looks like if you want to know, it looks like likeness of Christ. Be holy for I am holy. Holiness looks like the life of Jesus Christ.

The believer pursues holiness through the likeness of Jesus Christ. And the truth is that we are at any given time becoming like somebody or something. We cannot escape it. Now, it's very unprofitable to look to other people as an example of holiness. Imitating others is not what Peter is commanding.

I think one thing he's saying is, don't look for good examples, look for Jesus Christ. He's telling us to look to God, to look to the Lord Jesus Christ, for He and He alone is holy. Our holiness is not proved by how similar or how different you are from others, but how similar or how different we are to the Lord Jesus Christ. So we cannot build our idea of holiness by thinking I'm not like that guy or I'm not like my dad or I'm not like that legalistic person. Forget that.

Look to Jesus Christ. Stop looking at people to understand what holiness or unholiness looks like. The Bible does not lead us to compare ourselves with ourselves and the apostles spoke of this in 2 Corinthians 10-12, for we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves, but they, measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. So becoming Holy does not include a quest for good examples. The Apostle John in 1 John 2, 6 said that he who says that he abides in him ought also to walk just as he walked.

When we take the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day, we're told to examine ourselves, not other people. We're not looking for good examples. We are imitating the only one who is holy. Somebody said the pursuit of holiness is the pursuit of Christ. Seeing God.

You know the Lord Jesus Christ was the happiest of all the disciples and in Hebrews 1 verse 9 it's very clear that Jesus Christ had the oil of gladness above all his companions because he hated lawlessness and he loved righteousness. That's why he was so happy. Are you happy? The holy person is a happy person. Now I realize we struggle with all kinds of sins and latent troubles in our souls.

Well, Jonathan Edwards said, holiness is happiness, and God desires to make His children happy. There's a really neat book back on that book table by Nancy Wilson. She just wrote it called Single and Satisfied. And she talks about how unattractive worry is. And she goes on and on, you know, she talks about you're so filled with anxiety.

And she said, being anxiety ridden is like taking ugly pills. And she said that kind of worry is just self-centeredness and she talked about just resting and trusting in God and rejoicing in Him and cultivate the beauty of the Lord and quit taking those ugly pills. Holiness creates beauty. That's why we read about the beauty of holiness in the Bible. It's a beautiful thing.

You know next year we're gonna have a conference in this place, the Lord willing, on the subject, knowing God. I can't wait to do that conference. But there's nothing better for the driving out of the uglification of your soul than to know God. The second illustration, the first illustration is Christ-likeness. The second illustration of holiness is childlike obedience.

Childlike obedience. Obedience has fallen on hard times. People think obedience is legalism and that's just an idea from the devil. But we are called in 1 Peter 1 verse 14 as obedient children. The believer pursues holiness through obedience.

If you want to be holy, obey the Lord. That's the idea. In 1 John 2, verses 3 and 7, John says, Now by this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in Him.

By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself, ought to walk just as he walked." You know, one of the most offensive things that you can say to modern Christians is this. You don't seem to have any desire to obey the Lord. You must not be a Christian. They say, oh no, but I accepted Christ.

No, but I feel His Spirit. But do you obey the Lord? It's very unpopular to bring that proposition to people. We all know that we disobey the Lord. But the Bible says that holiness comes through obedience.

Now you know young people are pretty much all the same. They reevaluate everything as they get into their late teens and their 20s and later on. And they question the things that they were taught in their families. And sometimes they feel like, oh, my parents were so tight. They over-rotated on that doctrine.

Or they were too restrictive on this and and often they strike out on a completely different path and usually it has to do with things like music or you know some form of entertainment or something like that. And whenever I hear that, I always ask questions. Does the change you're talking about represent a greater pursuit of holiness? Does the change that you want to make, make you more careful to obey the Lord? In the Bible we're told to be careful to obey.

Be careful. Be nitpicky about your obedience. Don't be loose about it. Does that change cause you to even more mortify yourself to the world? Does that change cause the more death of self or less, does that change lead you into more purity?

Does that change lead you to place fewer things before your eyes that defile you? Does that change make you more different from the world or does it make you more like the world? So I'm fine with young people making changes but you must ask those questions. What's the trajectory of those changes and those decisions? And don't use your parents as an example.

Use the Lord Jesus Christ. Use His Word as an example. Does it make you pursue more of holiness or less? And this really brings up the whole idea of Christian liberty. And The kind of liberty that I have been referring to is not the kind of liberty that the Bible speaks about.

Christian liberty is an entirely different thing. The great confessions of faith, the Westminster confession, and the Baptist confession of 1689 speak of what Christian liberty is And there's a beautiful, you know, dense paragraph that defines what it means to have Christian liberty. There are 13 things that the Baptist Confession mentions that define Christian liberty. First, freedom from the guilt of sin. Second, freedom from the condemning wrath of God.

Third, freedom from the rigor and the curse of the law. Fourth, freedom from being delivered from this present evil world. Fifth, freedom from bondage to Satan. Sixth, freedom from dominion of sin. Seventh, freedom from evil afflictions.

Eight, freedom from the fear of the sting of death. Number nine, freedom from the victory of the grave. Number ten, freedom from everlasting damnation. Eleven, freedom of free access to God. Twelve, freedom in yielding obedience to Him.

And the last element of freedom from the law relates to the fear of God. Freedom from slavish fear. Not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and a willing mind. Now that's freedom. That's a holy freedom.

And the question I think that could be asked at a time like this at this point is, is there any area of your life where you are drifting to less of the things that are holy? Is there? Is there anything? If there is, repent and turn toward the Holy of Holies, the Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice and turn to the most beneficial thing in the world. Turn to His Holiness.

The third illustration is not conforming to your former lusts not conforming to your former lusts. That's in verse 14 you have these two words not conforming not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as In your ignorance The key word here is not conforming and the believer pursues holiness through nonconformity to former lust. It's a very interesting word that the Apostle uses here. It has to do with patterning after, not patterning after. You know, not conforming, not becoming like.

And the word conforming is the exact same word that the Apostle Paul uses in Romans chapter 12. And do not be conformed, not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So to be holy is to turn away from the ways of the Gentiles, to no longer walk after the former lusts that were yours. You know, in 2 Kings, the Lord corrects the people.

He says, do not walk in the statutes of the nations the statutes of the nations they're everywhere don't walk in those statutes Jeremiah said do not learn the way of the Gentiles Rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love And the fourth illustration. Crucifixion. Crucifixion to the world. Paul the apostle gives the Philippian church a sense of what non-conformity looks like. It looks like crucifixion.

And he gives this illustration of the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. What does it look like? It looks like crucifixion. In Galatians chapter 6 verse 14 he says, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world." So it's the cross. If you believe in the cross, you need to understand what you're believing in.

The cross is a deliverance from worldliness and shameful living. It's crucifying you to the world. Now, the cross was a very appropriate means to put Jesus to death. The cross kills its victims. The Romans used crucifixion to make a powerful statement.

And here's the statement. If you defy this emperor, you will die. The cross kills you and the cross stops a man in his tracks. The cross takes no prisoners. The Romans changed you by killing you.

The Romans silenced you by killing you, by crucifying you And that is the image of salvation. And the cross had one purpose, to neutralize and finally dominate and terminate the contrary person. The purpose of the cross was to kill. And the cross causes sinners to die to the world. The cross kills the old man.

The cross ends one life and begins another. In St. Corinthians 5.15, Paul told the Corinthian church that the cross separates man from his old life. And he who died for all, that those who live, should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Tozer said the cross separates a man from himself.

He said the cross separates you from humanity. He said the cross separates you from culture. And I would just say the cross separates you from your friends, from your movies, from your rituals, from the things you watch. The cross separates you from everything ungodly. And that's why the Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2 20, you all know this verse, He told the Galatian church that when you're crucified, you're not the one who lives anymore.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." If you come to the cross, you are coming to an amputation. And that's why I'm so concerned when somebody comes to me and says, hey, I'm really interested in that girl. What do you think of her?

The only thing I care about is, is she holy? Has she been crucified to the world? Has she been separated? Now, here is, here's the truth about this. It's the worst part of you that dies.

It's not the best part of you that dies. It must die. And it's the worst part of you that dies in this crucifixion. So to be a Christian is to have your whole relationship with the world changed and you think differently the things that you used to boast about they no longer matter The attraction of the world no longer matters to you. Your whole world view has changed." Ritter-Bosse, the commentator, he says, the glory of the world is absolutely radically objectionable.

It is dead, obliterated. This is what it means to come to the cross of Jesus Christ. You die. The old man dies. And your whole guidance system in life is altered.

That's why John Owen in his famous book Mortification of Sin, He said, do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be killing sin or it will be killing you. But that's not all. The world crucifies the believer.

The world is crucified to the believer by whom the world has been crucified to me. The world crucifies you. The world rejects you. The world cuts you off. You're a dead man.

You're no happiness to the world. I like what the commentator Matthew Poole said, I'm going to paraphrase it. He says, I don't care anymore for the world than the world cares for me. Because the world crucifies you. And this can be both literal and cultural.

Some will literally be killed and others will be culturally murdered. They'll be eliminated. Vanity Fair does not want you in their town. No. Why are we surprised about cancel culture?

We should not be surprised at all. It should not be shocking. These tech companies are just doing things that are consistent with their nature. They don't want you in their Vanity Fair. They don't want your voice.

They don't want your platform. The world crucifies those. If the algorithms can't silence you, erase you, make you invisible, the institutions will silence you. If the institutions can't silence you, the economic systems will silence you. You are an aroma of death to death to the world, but an aroma of life to those who are being saved.

That's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 16. So stop preparing for marriage. Prepare to see the face of Jesus Christ. The most important thing that you must know about yourself is in your relation to this highway of holiness. And if you're not on a trajectory of holiness, you should have no expectation that you are headed to heaven or that Christ will save you.

Are you on that highway? And what does that highway look like it looks like likeness of Christ it looks like Christ's childlike obedience it looks like nonconformity to former lusts and it looks like a crucifixion to the world. Now if you're wondering you know how your life is going to turn out how your life is going to turn out if you are a holy man or a holy woman. I'll give you a glimpse of what it looks like. I'll take you to the throne of God in heaven where all the beings, the millions and millions of beings, they're bowed down before God, and they're saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

They're saying, Lord, you are so wonderful. They can't stop saying how wonderful He is. They are unalterably happy. They are unceasingly praising God. They can't get it out of their system.

They'll do it for all eternity. And all they want to say is, oh Lord, you're so good. You're so wonderful. And even if you're a martyr who is abused by this world and killed you will say what the martyrs say under the throne, oh Lord. And that word that is used there in Revelation 6 is the word despot.

And the martyrs are saying, Lord you're the best despot that I ever knew. You were such a good ruler of my life. They say, oh Lord, holy. They're saying, Lord, You are so perfect. You are so wonderful.

We can't get enough of You. All our sorrows in the past are nothing. And they say, Oh Lord, holy and true. Lord, You always told us the truth. You always said it the way it really was.

You told us about ourselves. You told us about our world. Lord, oh Lord, you are holy and you are true. And when you get to the end of your life And you have the holiness of the Lord and you've been brought in to His holy heaven. Here's what you're going to say about your life.

You're going to say, Lord, you did everything right with my life. Everything that happened in my life was right. It was perfect. The timing was perfect. The trials were perfect.

The timing of my marriage was perfect. The timing of everything was perfect. Lord, you are so perfect. You are holy. And that's why it is so important that we understand that holiness is the best thing you can ever know.

We need a holy God to rescue us, the unholy. Praise the Lord for His wonderful plan to make holy. So be holy. Would you pray with me? Lord, You are beautiful beyond description.

You are perfectly pure. You are perfectly good. You are holy, O Lord. I pray that with all of us, all of us would abandon the littlest thing that distracts us from holiness. And that we would see this pursuit as our only pursuit, everything else, falling by the wayside.

Amen. You