 Start soon. Okay The recording is on good morning and welcome everyone to this class BC 2009 on Holiness we This is the first time we are doing a course on Holiness so It's going to be interesting and we're also going to be Learning together as we go through this course and I'll introduce the course after we Pray together. All right. Could I please request somebody to? Lead us in prayer and then we will get started. Could somebody pray with us, please? All right Okay, Jals go ahead Thank you so much for this wonderful morning Here in Africa, we thank you That it's I think still the morning in India and you've connected us Thank you for the ability of These bringing the world together in such a spectacular way And for the first time Have such a training You saw it fit for us that we would have it Now Lord that you have allowed us to be here Teachers we are expectant And we can't wait hearing what you have prepared for us as we journey through this semester this course that Lord Jesus you will Anoint our teacher And also an interest that you will use the right vocabulary you use the best methods Also, we'll be able to retain and put in application What we will have studied for the growth of your name and for our good In Jesus name of friend believe amen Amen Thank you All right. Good morning once again welcome everyone I'm just going to Introduce this course bc 2009 on holiness Now I mentioned this on Monday in our welcome Orientation day By the way, just a side note Maxine and Divya You'd mentioned about the Covenants cross and blood course on spring 2021 so I went back to the archives and it was my mistake Now I did not turn the This course back to the students So I had left it like that. You know, so it's not it's automatically graded But I'm supposed to manually Send this course back to the students, which I didn't do and I forgot So I have asked Monica who is our teaching assistant just to do that for us And I'm sure she'll do it sometime this week So those numbers will come to you this course for that course will come to you It's automatically graded, but it has to be manually sent back to the students So you should get it. She should be able to do it this week and you'll get it but thanks for Bringing it up because I completely forgot about it All right, so Back to this course on holiness It's the first time we are doing this subject this course on holiness and The the idea was actually sparked Maybe I'm thinking two or three years ago when we I was actually attending a leaders conference. It was it was mainly pastors and their Leaders people who are serving with them in their various churches across different parts in India And so we had this open time of discussion questions. Uh, you know, so they were asking questions and I think the Topic that was given to me to speak was Holiness, I think that was the topic. So I spoke on it and then there was the QA time and In the question answer time One of the leaders asked, you know said, okay, how do I overcome temptation? and so It it really struck me at that time, you know that Uh, here we are as pastors and leaders who are actually leading congregations and churches and serving people and And and you know, here a very basic question. How do I overcome temptation? So then that's when, you know, it sparked my thought that hey, I need to we need to do something Uh, to make sure that at least our bible college students know how to overcome temptation That they shouldn't find themselves in a place like that where they are, you know, leaders of churches and congregations and they don't know how to live holy and You know this whole aspect of holiness and living an overcoming life So that's what sparked this whole part about this having a course on holiness And so then we came and I came back and I just was thinking through on how to make it happen And so we introduced the course. We we thought about this course Let me just share with you what we're going to cover in this course We have put out the pdf there so you will be able to get it So in this course on holiness Our our objective our whole approach to this course is First of all to get a vision or an understanding of the holiness of god In as much as god is loving god is compassionate god is good god is powerful We must also get a revelation Of the holiness of god. So that's the first part that we're going to first section that we're going to deal or talk about and You know to the best we can because you know our words may not be fully our words will not be able to Communicate or our minds will not be able to fully understand You know the depth and the the width of god's holiness But to whatever extent we can we want to get a revelation of that through the scriptures, of course And then after we understand about the holiness of god In that we also want to emphasize that Ultimately god wants his nature to be reproduced in us Which means He wants his holiness to be reproduced in us so That's dealt with in section one on the holiness of god And our worship of god must take place in the realm Of the beauty of holiness right so we want to talk about that Then in section two We want to talk about another very important aspect of living a holy life, which is repentance and The reason we are dealing with this whole aspect of repentance is because perhaps in the church Especially in the Modern church the contemporary church not much is spoken about repentance You know, I know in the traditional Pentecostal churches Repentance is like you probably hear it every Sunday But in some of the contemporary modern churches That emphasize a lot on the goodness of god and on his love and mercy, which is all important Perhaps we are not talking about repentance And the importance of repentance and the power of repentance in the life of a believer in fact It's almost like Repentance is not needed in the life of the believer, you know, it's kind of moved to that Swung to that extreme So we need to bring that back And you know and and and understand What repentance is and how important it is In the daily life or in the life of the believer the day to day life And then so we spend a little bit of time on that and then in section three Is where we deal with the How do we live An overcoming life, you know, basically to answer that question. How do I overcome temptation? So I know god is holy. He wants his holiness to reproduce to me I understand the the role that repentance plays in my journey towards holiness And if if if repentance is not there, it's almost like a roadblock Towards our progression into holiness But then There is this side, which is What god has given to us to live victorious to live the overcoming life and Walk in holiness So we want to just get into the practical side of that In understand how temptation comes how deception comes And then how we overcome the flesh the world and the devil. So That's basic, you know, an overview what we're going to cover in this course on holiness Focus on the holiness of god A section on repentance and then a section on living the overcoming life and you know, and I want to remain open As as you know as students ask questions And maybe raise up some questions, you know, we may you know may add those Those aspects into the course As we go along Is everything clear so far any questions We all know what we are going to do in this course We are with you pastor Okay, good. Okay. Thank you All right, so I I hope you know, this will be our good journey for all of us You know, it's something we are doing for the first time, but it's also a learning learning thing for all of us. Yeah now So for each of the sections, I will provide you the course notes. Basically, it's a study in scripture on these three aspects and I will you know, there are some books out there not some books, but many books out there on holiness and Repentance and so on so repentance itself is a big doctrine. So there are theological books on it I might just share a couple of them with you On the on the classwork section, maybe I don't want to dump everything on your just pick pick a couple of them that might be useful to read And I will give them to you under these are books by other authors that you could if you have time It's good to read just to get you know, get a perspective on on this whole area of holiness And you know for us as especially for us as christian ministers Our people are preparing to serve God in some way Holiness is very crucial very important While we recognize that we are only earth and vessels And it's the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit Yet at the same time As we will see in our journey through the scriptures You know, God has called us To this place of holiness. So it's it's non-negotiable. It's not like Okay, an optional thing, you know It's not an optional thing living a life of holiness And so that that will become clear to us as we go through scripture So let's get started and as always feel free to Ask questions and bring up points for discussion because That will be useful and it's also It'll also help us in help us think through on areas we may be missing out In this course So we've put out the pdf there for the section and you know I'd encourage you to download that and follow So in this section on holiness what we will start off with Is first we will focus on God himself on the holiness of God trying to from scripture trying to get some understanding What is this? holiness aspect of God Right, so chapters one and two focus on that then we Slowly transitioned from The revelation of God's holiness to Seeing his holiness reproduced in us So We see in scripture that God wants his holiness in us And he calls us not just to a little bit of holiness. He calls us to a place where Holiness is perfected in us. That means it's fully Um, it fully occupies us, right? So he calls us to perfect holiness Uh, how how has God set that up for us to look at it? And then Here's why why is it important, you know, it motivates us. Why should we? pursue personal holiness Uh, we talk about that and then we leave us in tempers six with the fact that everything that we do Should come out of this place Of holiness, right? We worship God in the beauty of holiness and everything else You know the work we do as volunteers. So we're called as volunteers Our ministers of God Everything we do as ministers of God should really flow out of this place Of holiness. So we leave us with that thought here in this section Then we will move into the section on repentance, which I will give you another set of notes And then we will get into the last section of overcoming. How do we personally live? overcoming lives So let's get started now in this introduction You know, we're just going to make statements here that kind of you know gets our thinking started Here about the holiness of God so the bible In the bible both the old and the new testaments God says he is holy and His holiness Is his nature I mean, that's who he is, right? It's the very nature of God and I thought I wanted us to think about is And we will find this in scripture That God's beauty Is referred to as holiness So, I mean if you want to think about it in natural terms, you know You look at the handsomeness of a man or the beauty of a woman And you know, it may be expressed in their appearance whatever way So just translate that to God that God's beauty meaning the Aspect of God that should actually attract us to him And the aspect of God that should make us stand in Wav of him Is his holiness Just like when you see a very handsome person So wow that guy looks great or that person woman looks so pretty. I mean, it's that's a wav thing But now look at God The beauty of God Is this holiness That means the holiness of God should make us stand Should first of all attract or draw us to him and also Uh make us, you know feel in awe Of a wow, this is God Right the beauty of God Is his holiness Now when we talk about holiness in the sense of who God is it's his very nature It's his absolute perfection Which includes, you know, just absolutely pure Sinless righteous truthful faithful now God himself is the standard for holiness I mean, you know There's no the standard that you know, he is perfection and What we are trying to do to the best we can Is to get a revelation Of this of the holiness of God and to whatever we can. I'm not saying we're going to be able to comprehend it Or explain it but to the best we can from scripture We're going to try to get a revelation of this perfection of God The other point we will emphasize is that holiness is At the very core of God's nature which means every attribute of the nature of God Is mingled with holiness And we must never see any attribute of God apart from holiness That means We know God is love Yes, God is love, but his love is mingled with holiness We know God is a good God But his goodness is mingled with holiness You know God is a generous God Bountiful God But his generosity Is mingled with holiness What does that mean? It means That in his goodness Or in his love Or in his generosity He will never do anything That violates his holiness He will never do anything That's very important because sometimes We tend in our way in our thinking and sometimes even in our preaching and teaching We tend to Present the goodness of God or the love of God Or the generosity of God or any other attribute of God We tend to present it or we tend to think about it Outside of his holiness like you know, we don't always think that hey Holiness is at the core of his nature and every attribute of God is actually undergirded by holiness And so sometimes The danger in separating that is We think oh God will be generous to me even if I want to do something wrong. He cannot Or God will be good to me when I want to do something wrong No, because every attribute of God Is undergirded is mingled and it's governed by the holiness of God Because holiness is at the core of his nature. God is holy The third Another aspect that we're going to discover and and this is an introduction So I'm just giving us an overview of what we're going to be covering Is that Only when we get a correct revelation Of who he is Can we respond correctly to him right so Our revelation of God will determine our response toward God or Our picture of God Will determine our posture before God If we don't get a revelation of the nature of the of the holiness of God Then our response towards God or our posture before God Will not be one of reverence Or maybe I should put it in a positive way When we get a revelation of the holiness of God Then our response toward God will be one of reverence because holiness The holiness of God it just Makes us stand in awe of God and this Causes us to be reverential towards God But when we don't get it when we don't have that revelation Of the holiness of God and how great he is then our response is diluted you know, we We understand about his goodness. We understand about his love We understand about his power We understand about You know his provisions all these things are good. We need a revelation of all of these Aspects or attributes of God and therefore we respond correctly towards God But we must also have a revelation of the holiness of God So our response towards him can be one of awe and reverence and also Our revelation of the nature of God Will draw us to a place where We allow his nature to be reproduced in us And of course when it is reproduced in us it will be revealed through us other people will see it So that's why having a revelation of The holiness of God is so important because it determines our response It will then determine whether we will Come to this place of welcoming that aspect of his nature to be reproduced in us And therefore can be revealed through us other people will see that we are a holy nation We are a people who live in holiness But it all starts with this revelation A connecting part Is that everything about God is holy You know and as we will see you know when the angelic beings worship They say holy, holy, holy that means completely holy thrice holy and it means therefore that Everything about God is holy his name is holy He speaks in holiness he dwells in holiness And therefore everything about his creation that is aligned to him must be holy He dwells in holiness So holiness is the standard for all of his creation And everything that is not aligned to that standard of holiness is evil It doesn't fit in his presence And He must be hallowed Because he's so perfectly holy Or he must be referenced we could say He must be feared and honored Because he's so perfectly holy Then we will learn That God calls us He invites us to partake of his nature Which is to partake of his holiness Now the bible says God is love We're supposed to walk in love God is merciful We are to be merciful God is holy We are to be holy Means holiness is basically God's nature reproduced and revealed in us So holiness is not about me trying to Somehow come up to the level of God Which is impossible of course But holiness is me Yielding myself to God So that his nature Can be reproduced in me Revealed through me. So it's more of a yielding To who he is So he's his nature Is reproduced in us And revealed through us So we become holy Because he sanctifies us So here's the other thought So holiness As we understand it It simply means to be set apart Just means to be Set apart So What God is really doing Invoking his holiness in us is Bringing us to this place Where all of our being Is set apart for him And he Imparts this to us He Not only gives us his nature But he also empowers us to Be in this place or the state Or move into this place Of being set apart Because in this world it's not easy Because there is the pull of the world of course There's the pull of temptation that that's actually pulling us Away from being set apart to God Demptations are there the world has its attractions and The devil comes and puts out his arguments and etc etc So there's the pull of why do you want to be set apart for God? Come on the side but When God is working in us He not only imparts his nature Which is holiness But he imparts to us The state of being holy that means the ability To move into this place of being Set apart for God He gives that to us and we will see how he wants to impart that to us And that's what overcoming life is about learning how to receive that Grace that empowering Say that again say that again or be imparting his holiness Hey, I didn't hear it too well Okay So I was just trying to explain this statement So okay, let me back up So Holiness, what does it mean? It means to be set apart. I'm talking about from our perspective right From our perspective. What does holiness mean? It means to be set apart for God How does God do this in us? He like we have been saying before He imparts the quality of holiness that means the nature his nature He imparts that to us But he not only imparts the Nature of holiness to us the quality of holiness or the partaking of his nature But he also empowers us To be set apart to come into this so to the state of being holy which is being set apart He empowers us for that So like I was saying We all feel the pull of the world That means there is you know, there is the opposing force so to speak The attraction of the world The world is pulling us temptations are pulling us All kinds of influences are trying to corrupt us and say why you want to be set apart you come on the side So that's where as people we struggle Right and even ministers of God struggle Because there's the pull of the world But what we must understand in our learning to live holy Is that God gives to us his nature Which is holy or holiness And he gives us the empowering To be set apart or to be in the state of being holy And he does that to us By his word by his spirit and through divine discipline. We will learn about that Okay, but he gives us that is it clear Charles? Yeah, it's coming. It's coming. Thank you pastor Okay Thank you. Yeah, we just think about these things. Okay. Let it just just think about it. It'll slow it'll come Okay so So for us now we're talking about from our perspective. Okay from our perspective To live holy Up to being holy and we're going to emphasize all these things. I'm just we're just in the introduction now It's kind of an overview It's really we embrace the fact that we are completely his We are set apart right That means I'm completely his And if we really embrace that fact Then the spontaneous result is living holy so in everyday life When we face the pull of the world When we face the temptations that the devil throws When we face, you know the lies and the deceptions of the enemy He's trying to move us out of this place of being holy Now he wants to move us out of this place of being set apart for god And so of course, you know that the pull of the world is there the temptations of the enemy are there But when we embrace the fact That I'm completely his then the pull of the world And the temptations the power of the temp the the temptations that Come against us Have automatically lost their power because what we have done is embrace the fact And we belong to him so Holiness for us. I'm talking about from our human perspective Is us embracing the fact that I completely belong to god every part of me belongs to god so when I Recognize and I celebrate that That all of me belongs to him the most holy one Then His holiness is reproduced and revealed in me so I purposely put recognize and celebrate it's it's holiness is not Uh a burden something, you know the traditional And I and I and I and I you know, I use the word Pentecostal because You know in traditional Pentecostal approach, it's like holiness becomes a very regimented Enforced kind of thing, you know, you only have to wear white and you only have to sit like this And you only have to eat like this. You can't go to the movies. You can't Do this you can't do that and it just becomes so burdensome So holiness a life of holiness Is something people dread But I want us to come to a place Where we recognize holiness is something to be celebrated It's not to be dreaded It's not to be it's not a burdensome thing. It's a celebration that I just belong to god I just belong hey all of me belongs to the most holy one so sin Evil has no place in this thing So a life of holiness Is a recognition and a celebration It's not a burdensome thing. It's not a You know, oh no, I've got to live holy. No, it's like god. Thank you. I can be yours I can belong to the most holy one I can be set apart for the most holy one And when we come from that place Cleansing Sanctification and consecration of every part of us Comes spontaneous So our desires Our affections our passions And just every other part of us, you know dreams or hopes or mind or body or thoughts words deeds Everything everything about us is simply about Being hallowed unto him set apart for him Uh keeping it honoring to the one who is the most holy one So it becomes a celebration of god himself now I know it's easy easily stated but in Practice as we will see in our last section on living the overcoming life It is a process It is a process and As uh peter puts it, you know in first Peter 4 he says We are striving against sin. So there is a there is a Striving against sin and Sometimes for some people it is quite challenging Right. So it's this process happens step by step But god works by his word his spirit and divine discipline And he makes us a holy people to our god. So that is, you know, the second and third sections when we talk about repentance and we talk about overcoming you know We understand god is at work and It happens as a process where we become a holy people unto our god and like we said all ministry All ministry worship and everything else we do Flows out of this place of holiness. It must take place in the beauty of holiness And we will make some statements later on That if it does not take place in the beauty of holiness It cannot be acceptable to god And that's a strong statement All ministry must take place In the beauty of holiness If it does not take place In the beauty of holiness It cannot be acceptable to god because god is absolutely holy And we will see scripture where he adorns his house with holiness It's like, you know, you go to somebody's house and you see how they've decorated their house You know, what they really like is what they'll really put up, you know, maybe they like Lots of colors and maybe so they put up a lot of colors in their home. Maybe they like, you know, maybe some people like a lot of Handicrafts and so you'd see a lot of handicrafts hanging around their home Maybe some people like a lot of paintings and so they put up a lot of paintings Maybe some people like a lot of plants, you know, garden things So there's a lot of things but the bible says god adorns his house with holiness Now it's got to god is like, hey, my house is adorned with this Holiness thing this perfection That's why we're saying every form of worship and service must take place in the beauty of holiness For it to be acceptable to god because god dwells in the beauty of holiness Okay So i'm just going to pause here. Let me see if there are any questions on the chat any Any questions here? Okay, let's see now Charles Asked a question So the attributes of god are all intertwined and none of them can be singly removed from him And he remains complete. Is it right? Yes, Charles. So All the attributes of god God is you know, it's part of his nature right But what we were intentionally emphasizing is That every attribute of god that we speak about His love his goodness his power His kindness or generosity or his mercy every aspect Is intertwined with holiness So He will never exercise any of these attributes Outside of holiness. That's kind of what we were emphasizing Okay, Kennedy and having difficulty getting class links um Having difficult getting class links Okay, is that okay, Kennedy? You got it now or Yeah, since yesterday, I've been that mean but i'm not able to get the link I could i'm being assisted by taroon. So he's gonna send me the links Oh, oh, well, you're not getting it as an email. Is it is that the problem? No, no, that's a problem Okay, so kennedy if you um if you connect to every classroom uh Then what happens is your email id is automatically registered as one of the students and then you get notifications Okay, so then the um other thing I can think of is if you go to the um the menu on the On the right, let me just show this Yeah, there's a settings there Let me just show it to you So if you go Towards here the sandwich menu And then you go down here to settings So you click on settings and then you have to turn this on It received email notifications, right? So just check in your classroom settings if you've turned on receive email notifications Because if that's off then you won't get the emails, right? So you have to go to class your classroom settings go there And so that's the only other thing I can think of that Maybe the reason why you're not getting and just have a look Thank you. Thank you All right. Next question from christopher Please give us a few real life examples of setting us apart for god um so in practical life for example Suppose i'm sitting in a room where you know people are just Saying all kinds of jokes No, there's nothing wrong in joking. There's nothing wrong in having fun laughing but Suppose the jokes are bordering on being indecent valga you know then I Immediately disengage from that why just give an example because Ephesians chapter five verse four Ephesians five four says is talking to us believers and he's saying Neither foolish neither filthiness nor foolish talking Nor course Justing now that's old english word I mean old english words. I'm reading from the new king james. Uh, it says which are not fitting but rather giving of thanks Ephesians five verse four So just one scripture here says, you know, don't engage in foolish talking or course Justing that means this indecent fun to engage So at that moment you say, you know what? I am set apart for god And I do not want to partake in this Now the other people around you may be christians Maybe believers and they don't mind making these kinds of jokes But that moment you say no I'm set apart for god. I'm going to disengage I'm not going to be a participant of this What are you doing? You're setting yourself apart for god because you know god doesn't approve of it And that's not right and the scriptures are telling us as christians as believers not to It's not fitting for us Right, so like this there will be so many things whether it's in the behavior or then the thought life. Maybe A thought comes to you in your mind. Nobody else knows it only you know it. It's in your mind That moment you say no, I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to fantasize I'm not going to be part of it. Why my whole being including my thought Including the realm of my imagination Is set apart for god. It's holy Right, so whether it's in thought in word indeed We are setting ourselves apart for god Is that okay christian? Let's just do the other questions um Divya Everything about god is holy And also here's the beginning and the end But if someone asks how did evil come into being How can one answer so the question is how did evil come and god is holy? now here is someone to think about God is holy any created beings These were angelic beings But each of these beings The angelic beings and us humans Are created as free moral agents. He didn't create us as robots That means he's given us the power of a free will and what we understand From asia 14 and is equal 28 is One angel sinned He was one of the ark angels meaning high ranking chief angels What was his sin? It was a sin of pride But how did pride come Through self deception so The first thing that opened the door To evil was self deception So how do you know it and asia 14 if you read it carefully? it says That this ark angel Lucifer son of the morning said I will ascend I will be Like the most time Right, so this is asia 14 worse 13 for you Have said in your heart What was that self deception? So the devil need didn't you know lucifer didn't need the devil To deceive him. There was no devil But what happened self deception? He said I will I will and I'm not reading all of that But if you read asia chapter 14 was 13 and 14, that's what we see Right What opened the door to evil self deception What was the first sin pride? And then everything happened So the biggest thing we have to be careful about as believers yourself deception Okay Okay, we already out of time Thank you, first Yeah Okay, and the scripture references was as a chapter 14 was 13 and 14 we're out of time. Let me see now Get back What exactly do you mean by the phrase in the beauty when you talk about worship and service needs to be on the beginning Of course, we are all sinners. So we're talking about attitude So very quickly But and we will get into this but in the in the in the chapter number six, right? We will get into the details of it, but very quickly it should come from a posture and a place Of holiness That means My hard attitude must be reverential And must be in a place that recognizes God as holy holy. That's the posture The place Is I am Set apart I am living holy Right So we were sinners We are not sinners. We are saints That means holy ones the word saying simply means holy ones. So God doesn't see you as a sinner God sees you as hagi us a saint a holy one So that's your place So from that place From a posture and a place of holiness is where Worship and ministry must come. Okay. That's in a nutshell. We will pick it up In chapter number six, we will get into the details of it. Okay Okay, okay, okay, okay Okay All right So one last question. Let me shake how can sin enter into Lucifer's heart where there is no No sin. Yeah, so remember what we're saying is it is self-deception. That means You are deceiving your own self Right, so you don't need somebody else to do it. It's just basically it's wrong thinking. We are thinking the lucifer thought wrong self-deceived and that's what led to is Doing what he did. Okay. I'm going to stop now because you need to have time to take a break and join the other class Can somebody please say a two sentence prayer and And close and dismiss us please. We'll continue this next week I'm praying I have with Father we bless you this morning for this wonderful session that we have had with you We continue to pray that Lord We keep us in the place of holiness and cause us to Reflect the beauty of your holiness in all our ministry It is just my team you clear and give you glory and thank you for answer clear In Jesus name we pray amen Amen. Thank you. Nice. Thank you everyone. God bless you. Sorry for rushing off Um, I've been asked what's your question? No Okay, God bless you all. See you again next week. Thank you. Bye now. I'm stopping