With The Perrys - Holier Than Thou

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Holiness is a big topic in the bible. It's intimidating for some because of its associations with hell and damnation but what if we saw holiness from a new perspective? One that recognizes God's holiness as the evidence of His eternal beauty and how it is His holiness that makes Him absolutely trustworthy. Listen in as Preston picks Jackie's brain about holiness in anticipation of her new book, Holier Than Thou. www.holierthanthoubook.net Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up with y'all? What's up with y'all? I don't like that one. Give us another one. Okay. All right. What's good? Man, that's terrible.

That's very 106 apart. Okay, okay. It's your boy, Preston Perry. How you doing? That's even worse. That's 1999 Rap City. But that's okay. If you want to be a BETT spokesman, we can do that too.

Hey, Saints. I'm joking. Hey, St. Hey, Saints, Nates. Oh, wow. How you doing? That was fluffy. Anywho, I hope y'all are doing well.

and swell. I just ate some funnions. So I'm actually pretty glad that you're not close to my face. I'm very glad because they smell like socks right now. Yeah, funions stink, but they taste good. They'll mess the roof of your mouth up. But they'll bless you. I think if you give them a chance. Whoever

who created them? Who thought, you know, let's make chips that taste like onion powder. Because they don't taste like onion, they taste like onion powder. Aren't they made with like onions? Let me look at it. I feel like it's made with onion powder. Okay. Enrich corn.

meal all right oh it's cornmeal vegetable oil that's literally second on the list which means it's a very prominent ingredient salt salt corn starch sugar cornflower buttermilk maltodextrin onion powder monosodium glutamate hydrolyzed corn protein dextrose which is sugar garlic powder okay yeah so it's basically garlic powder onion powder and a bunch of stuff that it kill you basically in essence and you just destroyed the bad sure did sure did that death tastes good hello that's a word there uh what we talk about today we're talking about something that's very very very very dope and it's your second book yes yeah i'm so proud of you thank first of all for completing the book um and you one of those authors who don't have ghost writers no shade to people who do

have ghost writers yeah but you write all your your your your words in the book and I've seen you labor and study and come back and study and say present and sit down and catch. I want to tell you what I wrote today over and over again. And I think that your book is going to be great. I think it's going to bless a lot of people. Holier than thou is the name. Very creative name. I always.

I didn't come up with it. I know. I wish I did. But you approved it. Yes. My editor came up with it. You're special. And so what is holy than thou and why did you write it?

It's a book. You know what I mean You said what is And I wrote it Because to me I think the best books Come out of curiosity On the part of the author Like I think we should write about what we want to know

Or what we already know You know like I think if you're curious Or you're already an expert Then write that thing And so for me I was just curious about holiness And I think it started with the question of if God is holy, then that means he can't sin. If God can't sin, then it means he can't sin against me.

If he can't sin against me, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is? Yes, it should. Right. But I don't think we think about holiness in those terms usually. And so, yeah, it's kind of like a way for me to use this book to investigate that idea. Yeah. Speaking about, thinking about holiness in those terms, I think, I mean, you know how it is when you first become a Christian. Right.

And when you first say holiness, you know, you think about Hail. Sodom and Gimor. Wrath. You think about, you know. Brimstone. Yeah. You think about, man, God sending a plague on, you know, the Egyptians and Pharaoh.

You think about, you know, God opening up the ground and swallowing people, right? Which is an aspect of God's holiness. For sure. But what is it about your book that you feel like will challenge people to think about holiness in a different way? and not just those those ways well everything you described is negative right like and so i think that's a part of the problem is that if you frame holiness only in terms of negativity then even the way you see god when the scripture says that god is holy then you see god is negative you know what i'm saying like you you only see him as judge uh but holiness is bigger

than that um the definition of holiness it literally just means uh separate or to set something apart. And so we are holy when we are set apart from the world and wickedness and unrighteousness and set apart to God, right? However, when you apply that to God, it actually becomes interesting because it's like, who was God set apart from? He set apart from everything that exists, which means that he is different than everything that exists, which highlights two aspects of God's holiness, is that,

God is morally pure and God is transcended. When I was growing up, and I think even now when I hear messaging around the topic of holiness, it always just lands on his moral purity so that God can't sin. He's righteous. He's good and all of that, which is a thing. Like that is a part of holiness. Like you're holy when you live in a righteous life. But that's not only it.

God's holiness is also that he is unique and distinct the way he is. exists is differently than everything exists primarily because he is the only one who was not created. Everything that's alive now is contingent or derivative. God is the only being that that cannot be said of him. So holiness is just bigger than what we've made it out to be. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that because I think that we have to start seeing how special and unique God is when we think about as holiness. Yeah. Because I know when I first became a Christian, you know, a lot of people try to,

not, not, well, yeah, they did. They tried to, like, scare me into obeying God. Yeah. You know, they tried to scare me into, like, obeying the scriptures. Or if you do this, you know, God is a righteous God. He's a righteous judge. You know, you know, all of these scare taxes, when you think about God in that way, him being transcendent and him being unique in holding and set apart,

you see someone that you should worship and not fear. Right. There's a reverence that I think having an understanding of God's holiness should elicit. But it's really like, man, if he is morally pure in every way and completely unique, then he's really beautiful. He's beautiful because imagine a being that can only do good. Yeah. Can only speak good.

Can only be wise. Can only tell the truth. Can only be gentle. Can only be kind. Can only be just, right? That's literally one of the safest beings that exist. And that's God. But here we are more willing to submit and trust Satan than God because oftentimes we frame the behavior and character of God as if he's the evil one.

and Satan is the trustworthy one. I think that's what was happening in the garden. You know, it's like, oh, you won't die. You'll be like God, knowing good and evil. At that point, she believed that Satan was telling the truth and that God was the liar. And I think that's the problem with our unbelief is that we stop seeing God as he is and we start to see him through the lens of just lies. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts that's coming into my mind.

But I mainly want to ask you questions because you're the one that wrote a book about this, so you're an expert now. I'm not. I hope you know that. But my question to you is, yeah, for the person who say, yeah, that sounds good. But what about the moments in the Bible? What God, like, literally did some things that was crazy. None of us can really, you know, have an explanation for.

For example, you know, God tells them to leave this place, Sodom and Gimore and not look back. And Lott's wife looked back. Lott's wife looked back. And immediately she's turned into a pillar of salt. Uh-huh. It's like, God. like, okay, she looked back, but it wasn't that serious. Right.

You know what I'm saying? Like, or when God's like, you know, opened the earth and people were swallowed, you know, like. Cora, yeah. Like, so how, how would you say to the person who says, man, yeah, that sounds good, but how do you explain God giving drastic punishment to sins or to things that didn't look as sinful? Well, one, I think any time we say that something. isn't as sinful. We're speaking from the vantage point of a sinful individual.

Our measurement of sin is indicative of how low we understand God's holiness. Come on, you better talk to us. If God is the most righteous being, you will ever meet spotless, without wrinkle, without blemish, any sin is the worst sin.

Ooh, period. Yeah. And so something like Lot's wife, the thing is she was warned. It's not like God be out here smiting people without actually telling them that's going to be a consequence. Like they said, go, don't look back, period. And she broke God's law. So that's that.

But also, I think we should say, you should praise the Lord that he is just. You know, like. Also. Because we've seen what it's like to observe. injustice, you know, like whether it's a black boy killed for doing nothing. And then a cop is not implicated for it. He just goes free. You got Breonna Taylor who was murdered in her home.

And who got charged for it? Nobody. Yeah. That's unfair. That's unjust. That's unfair. That's unjust, which really literally means unrighteous. To be just is to do what is right.

Right. And so imagine if the Lord of the universe, who is sovereign over the world, did not care about sin and therefore did nothing about it. Would he truly be trustworthy? Yeah. When you look at the Holocaust and you see all the things that happen, six million Jews murdered. And you're saying that these people who committed these crimes would be able to stand before God and God would say, you good. No big deal. Yeah.

That's not a good God. Yeah. That's not a God that should be worshipped. That's really good. And so I think part of the difficulty is we want justice for everything else until that justice falls on us. So this, this is, this is really good. I think what I hear, what I'm here you saying is because God is holy and he's set apart, right? He's not, he's so not like us.

For him to turn Lot's wife into a pillar of assault is him being universally, universally consistent with his whole. holiness with his righteous judgment because the same God who turned you know lots wife into a pillar of salt would be the same people who would judge the people who murder the people at the holocaust or the same people like god is consistent because he is holy and so i think that like yeah because sometimes we look at sins and we say man god i didn't take all that yeah like uhza when he touched the ark and he dropped it yeah but it's like no he's a consistent god but i think that also god being all knowing and all wise and his ways not our ways, sometimes he chooses to act out justice in ways that he doesn't choose in other ways,

right? And sometimes he chooses to show mercy. Right. And so what would you say to the person who say, well, why does God choose to show mercy here, but not here? The truth is he chooses to show mercy most of the time, which is why when he judges, we're actually shocked. Oh, my gosh. Like, he's so patient. Like, he's so patient that we're then surprised when, you're, And he lifts his hand and does what a righteous judge is supposed to do. Because at the same time that you have Sodom and Gomorrah being judged, you have Lott being rescued. At the same time that you have Egypt being judged, you have Israel being rescued. Why were they rescued and not Egypt?

They both were born after Adam. They both were sinners. But as God said, I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion. Why in the world, after David abuses his power, sleeps with bad. Sheba gets this woman pregnant, kills her husband, then Nathan comes to this man and says, you know what, you're not going to die for that. The Lord has put your sin away. That's actually unjust. That's a problem. If God is able to forgive David without David having any consequence for his sin. And so what we really have is that God has a problem if he is showing

mercy and compassion and forgiving people without a penalty being paid, which is the beauty of Jesus Christ coming because Nathan can say, God put your sin away from you because he knew, well, he probably didn't know, that Jesus would absorb that for him, right? And so it's in Christ where God is actually showing ultimate compassion and justice because then he takes on the sins of Israel, he takes on the sin of David, he takes on the sin of Lot, and he bears the penalty for himself so that God can show himself to be the just and justifier of those who have faith in Jesus. And so God has always been more compassionate than he's been judge. That's really good. You know what? I can tell you wrote a book about this.

I read about it for a while. Yeah, that's good. I feel like in some church context, even now, and especially when I was growing up, like what people presented as holiness was really, really just legalism. Why do you think that that's, why do you think that's the default? You know what I'm saying? That to be holy is to not have fun and, you know, just kind of be a monk. Why do we do that as people? That's a good question. I don't know. I think my first guest is, I think that we have a wrong view of God, right? Because God is this transcendent, eternal, holy God, but he has come and he has condescended and came and became a man and lived amongst us. And so I think a lot of times we look at God in this very high, lofty way, not understanding all the

ways he came and became a man. And Jesus, I don't think that he was uptight. I don't think that he was legalistic. And when you look at the life of Christ on earth, you don't see him giving half of the restrictions that a lot of these holiness churches give. He was actually even correcting the Pharisees for how strict they were. And so I think it's just a really big, you know, like, I think it's just churches being unbalanced and how we see like, you know, my grandmother used to say, don't be too heavily minded when you know earthly good. I used to rebuke people for saying that when I first got said.

Yeah. I was like Colossians tells us to be heavenly mind. But it's, but I get it now. I get the principal. No, but it's so true. She's not saying, don't think about heaven. Right. But she's just saying like, man, like right now you're here on earth.

Right. Right. And God knows we're sinners. God knows we're going to fall, but it's a throne of grace to come to in our time of need to repent. And though he's holy, he's also gracious. And so grace is never an excuse for our sin, right? But there is grace there, right? And so even when we sin, like I think true grace prevents us from sinning in the first place. But when we do happen to sin because we're sinners, comes to the throne of grace with God, is that we're, my sinned. find help in our town of need. And so I think that I think that some people lean the other way sometimes. They see God. They only want to humanize him. Yeah. And they don't see him as big, transcended, holy, somebody who can take your life right now if he wanted to because he is the creator.

That's scary. It is scary, but he has the right to, right? But in his grace, he chooses not to do in a lot of ways. But at the same time, you have these, you have people on the other side who just, I think what it is is I don't think God has become personal to a lot of people. I think that when, I think that when you, not to minimize God or not to treat him like he isn't a big deal, but it's something about when this holy and his righteous God becomes personal to you and you are in a relationship with him. I think a lot of times people, they think about God in these high lofty way.

ways in these holy ways and we forget that he's also a god who came and dwelt amongst his creation and i don't know am i making sense yeah you're you're basically saying that people there's two pendulums or there's a pendulum swing uh that like leads to two extremes which is god is so lofty that people are kind of rigid and strict in the way they engage with him and the way they engage with their neighbor. But the other pendulum swing is that God is so near and so personable that they actually become more what's liberated in the way they do anything where there are no restrictions because there's grace, grace, grace, and there's love, love, love, and he's my friend and my buddy.

So what I think about God, I don't, I don't only think about him as this high lofty God who just sits on his throne and look down upon me like he's, you know, like he's like, you know, he is a perfect God. But like, no, he came, he condescended. He came down and he became a man. And so I can relate to God in a way that I couldn't relate to him, you know. But me relating to him in that way does not make me minimize who he is eternally, right? And so I think that it has to be a balance, right?

Yeah. It has to be a good balance. And I think that when you lose the balance of two, you fall on one side of the extreme. Yeah, I think what's missing on both ends is, faith. I say faith because the legalist has a high view of themselves and thus a low view of God because they believe that their works will be on the same level as God, that their works are sufficient. On the other end, the person who is liceae inches, which they just kind of do whatever they want to do and just tack it under the banner of grace, grace, grace, and love, love, love.

That person also has a low view of God because they don't see. see that God in his love still has boundaries, still has restrictions, still has commands that he's called us to obey even in light of him being a super gracious God. And so I think you need faith to tether yourself to both worlds, which is, man, God's standard is very high. And it's a standard that I cannot reach. Yet at the same time, he has called me to work and to do good and to love people and to love my neighbor and to obey. But it's through his grace that I'm able to actually, walk in godliness and so no i can't attain that standard but it's that it's the fact that jesus christ came that i can and so there there's this balance of obedience yet not legalism

yeah yeah i agree with that but do you think also for the legalistic person do you think that it's always them having a low view of god do you think that possibly they have a a high view of God, but just think that they can't live up to God's standards. So the next best thing is to compare their righteousness to other people. Does that make sense? Because I think that if people cannot live up to God's standards and you're mad about it or you feel, you know, you feel some type of way about it, I think the next best thing is to compare yourself to other flawed human beings. Yeah. But again, I think they think they have a high view of God.

the Pharisees, for example, and the Sadducees. I think they really did think that they had a proper understanding of God through their reading and expertise in the law until Jesus came and shattered all of their paradigms to show, no, you're actually a whitewashed tomb. You're actually not as perfect as you think you are. So there's that, but you also have folks like Isaiah who in Isaiah 6, he has this vision of God. Isaiah among the people was more righteous than them. He was living out God's commands. That's why he was a prophet being able to speak into, hey, y'all need to stop.

Y'all need to repent. But it was before God high and lifted up at the throne, where now the same word that he's used for people, he applies to himself, which is, whoa, I am a man of unclean lips who lives amongst people with unclean. So I think having a high view of God gives you a low view yourself. A real view of yourself And light of the people that you live with

Where the only comparison you make is between you and God And thus now you're not self-righteous or mean You actually see the everybody on the same playing field Yeah, yeah Okay, so for the person who's saying Okay, I get this, God is holy He has a right to be holy He has a right to act out as justice

How he sees fit All sin is serious to God I get all of this But how is thinking about God's holiness Going to help me love him more Amen. Great question. Thanks. Because that word faith is a big deal. If God is good all the time and all the time, God is good. If God is pure, if God is unique, if God is special, if God is kind, if God is patient, if God is just.

And he's all these things like always. It's impossible for him to change. It's impossible for him to become less than himself. If all of that is true, then he's worthy to be believed. And I think, not I think, there are two parts in scripture that really motivated my thinking of this. One is in Jeremiah two, where God, through the prophet, says, what worthlessness or injustice, it could be translated that way. What injustice have you found in me that you left me and went after worthlessness? where God uses or brings up his worthiness as incentive for the reason they should stay. Jesus does the same thing in John where he says,

can any of you convict me of sin? If not, why don't you believe me? What he's saying is, if I am sinless, then everything I say about myself, this world, your heart, and the world to come is absolutely true. And if it's absolutely true, why aren't you believing me? And so I think in both instances you have God positioning himself as a holy being and therefore it's futile not to trust him. Yeah, that's really good.

And so that's why it's helpful because it's like, man, he's good. Yeah, that's really good. And that's one of the reasons why I love the Book of John so much. A lot of scholars refer to the Book of John as the Subnoptic Gospel. And it basically is just saying that the gospel of John is different than the other gospel. because it's clear that John is trying to highlight that Jesus is God. But in all of his efforts to let people know that, you know, I'm the Messiah, I am God, every time the Pharisees had beef with them, they could not pull anything bad out of him.

Yeah, they had to lie. He consistently revealed his holiness and how he is set apart and how he is different, right? And every time they accused him of blasphemy, accused him of this, he asks questions like that. You know, and I think the same thing applies today. Like, we accuse God of so much. But it's like what you're basically saying is like the same thing that God, Jesus told the Pharisees, it's like, what evil have you seen in me?

You blame like the state of the world on me. You blame how your culture is on me. You blame you getting sick because of me or you being in a bad relationship. You blame so much on me, but if you actually look at the person of Jesus, right, the one who has come down, you really, there's no fault in him. He is holy and perfect and righteous. And so when we fall in love with that God. And I understand how those who went through immense suffering can hear this and say, but my father died, but I was raped by my family member, but my husband abandoned me. but I've lost three children to miscarriages.

But I have friends who are in, you know, countries where they are being murdered for the faith. Like, but. And I think these hard, negative things do make faith in God as good a challenge. Yeah. But I think the ultimate challenge is we have to believe what God says about himself, not what our experiences want to define him as. Because I think that's our tendency is that how we feel about God

and what we see in the world begins to determine how we define him. But God defines himself. Right. You know? And he has to find himself. And so if Jesus, it says that Jesus has made him known.

Literally Jesus has exegeted him. If Jesus has revealed God, then it's Jesus who's had, who has the right to decide how we understand God. So that means that all of our experiences and all of our suffering submit to what Jesus has revealed. If God is good, then he's good all the time. If God is wise, then he's wise all the time. You know, like there are no if, answer, buts.

And so I get the sensitivity, sensitivity of the suffering, but I think we just have to be committed to what Jesus has said and not what our mind wants to tell us. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's that. Well, thank you. Jackie Hill Perry before the breakdown. It was really, really good. I have so much more to say, but I wrote, you know, 40,000 words in the book about it.

And our podcast is only 30 minutes. I know. Yeah. All right. So about a book. Thanks. Peace.