[Scott Delamater] Hopefully, most of you are familiar with a balancing scale. You've seen a balancing scale at some point in your life. It's one of those scales that has an arm on it, right, and there's plates on either side. And if I put something in over here, it's going to do this kind of thing. Hopefully, everybody understands that idea. I was thinking about this thinking I don't know that I've ever actually used one of those. We see them, you know, you see Lady Justice holding her scales and it's very simple concept to understand. And maybe in Chemistry class, somewhere, we would have used something like that. I don't know.

But it's a pretty simple idea, right? You have a fulcrum here and you've got a beam, right? And you got these plates and you put a weight in one side and you balance it out by bringing up the other side. Everybody with me? Okay. Balancing scale. Let's turn over to Ephesians 4 because there's a picture painted here that is very much related to this idea of a balancing scale. Ephesians 4:1. Paul says, "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you are called." It says, "I want you to walk worthy of the calling with which you are called."

The word worthy there is very interesting. It's axios, right? You can hear the word "access" in there somewhere. It literally means to bring up the other beam of the scale. That's literally the word. It means… it has this picture of a scale, a balancing scale in mind. And it means to bring up the other side of the scale. So something heavy has been placed on the one side. And the idea is you're going to put something in over here that is going to bring up the other beam of the scale. When he says we're to walk worthy, he's saying we're to balance this out. We're to be balanced against something. We'll talk about what that something is in a little bit.

In Strong's Commentary, it says, it's a drawing down the scale, right? It's the idea that you're putting something in. Something has already been put in on the one side. Now, you're going to put something in and draw this side down. Bring up the other beam. That's what he's saying here when he's telling us to walk worthy of our calling with which we are called. What is this calling with which we are called? We just talked a lot about this at the Feast of Tabernacles.

A quick review if you go over to 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy 1:9. He says he… in the NIV, it says, “He has saved us” God has saved us “and called us to a holy life.” He's called us to live a holy life, “not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace…” His purpose is something we talk a lot about at the Feast of Tabernacles. 1 Peter 2:9, you don't have to turn there. You’ve probably heard it several times over the last month. "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession." This is what He has called us to. He has called us to be a holy nation, to be kings and priests as we talked about or a kingdom of priests.

But “He's called us to a holy life," is what it says. That's our calling. That's the calling He has called us to. And He tells us to walk worthy of it. So how then do we walk worthy of this calling to which we are called? Let's look at an example. Let's look at a biblical example of somebody who was weighed. Hopefully, you're with me on this. Daniel 5, Daniel 5, because this is somebody who is very famously weighed in that sense. All of this imagery that we've been talking about this balancing scale really comes in here in Daniel 5 because we have an individual who was very much weighed in the balances as it says. And it didn't really go so well for him.

Some background, we're going to talk about Belshazzar. Belshazzar was a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. So he was a king. He was, sort of, a ruling regent, really. His father was a king but he was ruling there in Babylon and he was doing something interesting. Daniel 5:1, "Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand." And what's interesting in the context here is that the army of the Medes and Persians was sitting right outside the walls of the city.

Here, he's throwing a big party. Babylon's having a big party because they think they are indestructible. The city had stood for 1,000 years and nobody had ever assaulted the city, invaded the city. They were pretty confident that they were safe. You could imagine if your city had been around for that long and been untouchable, you'd be all right with an army sitting out there. There are some stories, some other accounts, some extra-biblical accounts that… historical accounts that talk about people on the wall, sort of, mocking the army sitting out there in the field saying, "We're going to be fine for a while. You guys are going to disappear."

So, here they are inside of the city and they're pretty confident in what they've got going on. And so he decides to have a party, throws a big party. In verse 5, here in the middle of the party, "In the same hour the fingers of a man's hand appeared and he wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote." So this is where it gets a little bit ominous for him and he realizes something's not quite right here. And we see in the following verses that he's struck with deep fear, and he trembles and he shakes. He doesn't know what's going on.

Now, let's skip down to verse 25. It says… "This is the inscription that was written by that hand that he saw: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN." And as Daniel goes on to explain, he says, "God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it. You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; and your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians who are sitting right outside of your walls." It's interesting here because the… a few of the commentaries, Expositor's Bible Commentary points out that the way that these words could have been written to a lot of those who were viewing them would have potentially just looked like the weights that you would use in a balancing scale, depending on where the accent marks were and whether vowels are present or not.

This could have looked very much like a mina which was a weight that they used, a heavier weight for balancing — a mina, a shekel, which was a smaller weight, and a half shekel. So it could've looked like a descending order of weights. A mina, a mina, a shekel, and a half shekel. And that is how they… this was before they had coined money. So, this is something where they're weighing things out to see how much things are worth. Literally, balancing out the scales. And if you convert all of these as best we can into weights today, what you end up with is a mina and a mina, assuming these are on the one hand that would weigh about 4.5 pounds. A shekel and a half shekel, which would weigh a little less than an ounce on the other side.

So it's potentially painting a picture here saying, "Here's the weight that has been placed on you. Here's the responsibility, the accountability, the expectation placed on you, King Belshazzar. And here's how you fared against that," right? He didn't really bring up the other beam of the scales. There was an expectation there based on his position and he didn't bring it up. He was found wanting. But, why? “Why?” we say, right? We know that there was a sequence of events that God was working out here that Babylon was going to fall. That the Medes and Persians were going to rise, right? And, maybe, sometimes, we take for granted that, well, it just had to happen this way. God was going to do this.

But there's a reason that it happened and Daniel explains why it happened. Go back to verse 2. Because there's a very particular reason that he was weighed and this was the tipping point if you'll keep going with me on the scale analogy. This was the tipping point for Him, the thing that pushed Him over the edge where God said, "That's it, we're done here." Verse 2, "While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them."

These have been taken roughly 50 years prior to this. So they've been sitting… presumably, sitting away. And he says, "Well, let’s… hey, let's bring those things out." Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been in Jerusalem. And the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold, and silver, bronze, and iron, wood, and stone. So we see that here, Belshazzar is taking the holy things of God and he's bringing them in and using them for a party. He's taking the holy things and he's making them profane. He's making them common treating them as common goods.

It's interesting when you look at the timing on this. This is a little bit of a sidebar, a little bit of a speculation. But there's this old tablet with cuneiform writing on it called the Cyrus Nabonidus Chronicle. They explained some things that happened at this time. And multiple sources will point out that this old tablet says that the army entered Babylon on Tishrei 16 on the Hebrew calendar. On the 16th of Tishrei is… they would have come in and they would have occupied Babylon on the 16th of Tishrei. Which is interesting because Tishrei is the seventh month, which means the 15th day of the seventh month, which is the first day of the Feast of the Tabernacles is, potentially, when Belshazzar is holding his party. Potentially, it's possible, you know, this is obviously something that we just will have to wonder about.

But it's possible the reason he pulls these things out, that he brings all these holy things out of the temple is because he realizes, "Hey, we're having a party. It's the first day of this… these Jewish people have this big thing, right? They've got this Feast of Tabernacles thing that they do. Let's bring out the good stuff. Let's bring this stuff out of the temple. Let's bring the holy things." And here, he's got them but he's using them for a very common purpose.

Verse 18, let's go to verse 18 in chapter 5. And so, we might look at it and say, "Well, you know, he was a pagan king. He didn't know… he just knew these were some things that were conquered, you know… why is he held accountable for this, right? Why is this something that God's coming down on him so hard for?" Notice what Daniel points out here in verse 18. "O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father a kingdom and majesty, glory and honor." He uses father in the sense of ancestor there. He was… Nebuchadnezzar was his grandfather. “And because of the majesty that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him.”

Verse 20, "But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. Then he was driven from the sons of men, his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and appoints over it whomever He chooses." So he recites a little history here. He goes back and he reminds Belshazzar of some of the history.

And in verse 22, he says, "But you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this." He says, "You knew this. You understood this." He knew he had the lesson there before him that God appoints whoever He wants. He learned, could have learned, should have learned from Nebuchadnezzar's life that God puts those into power, that he was there, that he had been called with that calling in that sense because God had ordained him to that. God had put him in that position. And he says, "You should have understood this. You knew all of this." And even in spite of that, he lifted up his heart against God and he didn't discern between the holy things and the common things. He knew that God was a powerful God, a holy God. And still, he took the holy things and he used them for a common purpose.

Verse 23, he says, “…They brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know,” and then notice the indictment and remember this. We'll come back to this in a little bit. He says, "the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified." He holds him accountable for this in a sense that he should have known God holds his breath in his hand. God appointed him. God called him to this in that sense. He put him in that position. He said, "You should have recognized that. You should have recognized that God controls all of your ways and you have not glorified Him."

And so even though, yes, he's a pagan king, even though we know he didn't worship God, God still holds him accountable for what he should have known and what he should have been able to do with that, and what he shouldn't have done, right? More the profaning of the holy things. Let's go over to Ezekiel 22 because we see this called out specifically as a trait that God was really unhappy about with His people. Ezekiel 22:26.

So Ezekiel 22:26, God is coming down on the leaders here in Israel and He singles out the priests in verse 26. And He says, "Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things." These are the ones that are supposed to be the most holy ones in all of Israel who are supposed to exemplify holiness, who are supposed to be able to teach holiness. He says, “They've profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and the unholy." It might say profane in your translation. "Nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean." It says, "Their job was to teach that. They were supposed to teach that and they didn't do that either.” “And they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths," from His Holy Days, "so that I am profaned among them.

He wanted these people to exemplify holiness and, instead, they just made it more confusing. There wasn't really any holiness necessarily being presented or being displayed or being taught. It was all just, sort of, “Well, everything's all right. You're okay, I'm okay. God's all right with us, right?” This mentality is not too different from what we see in our world today. There's a lot of this thought going on, right? That, well, you know, “God's okay with me and we're okay and so, you know, everything's okay. Everything's kind of holy because, you know, well, I accepted Jesus Christ and so I'm holy, and we're all holy, and this church is holy, and what we do is holy. And, you know, you can worship on whatever day you want because, really, they're all holy. And, you know, once you're holy, it's just, kind of… everything's just holiness overflowing.”

But that's not how it is, right? That's confusion because He's saying here, there has to be a distinction between what is holy and what is unholy. Everything can't be holy or else, you lose the whole concept of holiness. So what do we… that begs the question, what do we really mean by the term "holy?" We're talking about holiness. What do we really mean? We're saying something is holy. This a big concept, I mean, you can write a whole book on what it means for something to be holy. So we're going to take a very big idea and try to distill it down, right, into something that is meaningful for us.

There are a lot of definitions. One of the more common definitions goes something like this, it's “something that is holy is something that is set apart by God for a special purpose.” That's a definition that I actually really used to like. That really helped clarify some things for me, right? That, “Oh, it's set apart by God for a special purpose.”

There some components there that are really meaningful. It's not a bad definition, but as you start thinking about it more and more, it's an incomplete definition because God Himself is holy. And so, now, you, sort of, wrestle with this idea. “Well, has God set Himself apart for a special purpose?” I mean, maybe you could sort of go with that.

You get into some problems when you start thinking about Pharaoh in Egypt. When you think about the Assyrians, what He calls “the tool of His anger,” right? They were set apart by God for a special purpose, right? But were the Assyrians holy? No. Were the Babylonians holy? They came in, God set them apart for a special purpose.

But the Babylonians weren't holy. They clearly didn't learn about holiness. Maybe Nebuchadnezzar got it there by the end. But if we look through… we have a lot of material on our website about holiness. If you look for holy and profane, you'll find probably 10 sermons on the topic.

We have articles galore about this topic and they're all very sound. And, again, we're trying to take a big idea and distill it down. If you read through those and you listen to some of those sermons… I guess, the best way that I could, sort of, synthesize some of that together for me in my head for summarizing this big concept. Something that is holy is something that actively expresses attributes of God or of His character. That's the definition I want to work with today.

Something that is holy is something that actively expresses attributes of God or His character. And this can apply to people, this can apply to places, this can apply to things. We know that there were many things in the Old Testament that God called holy because those things expressed some attribute of His character. Those utensils and the glasses, and everything that Belshazzar pulled in and used at his feast, those things were holy because there was something about them that expressed some attribute of God. That were able to show or reveal to those who were willing to see it, some attribute of God, of His character. It was instructive in that sense.

And so, you know, that’s… holiness can apply to ideas. When we talk about love, that idea, agape love. When it says “God is love,” that idea of love is something that is holy. It is an attribute of God's character. We see actions that are described as holy. A holy kiss, it's not something we practice today, fortunately, I think, for me. Maybe you're the kind of person who would be okay with that. But there are… in that sense, things that are holy express some attribute of God, of His character. It doesn't mean that a holy thing becomes God. It doesn't mean God is in that thing.

And if you've ever watched Pocahontas, right? Well, “God's in the rocks and in the trees, and in the…” no, it's not that, well, now, the rocks are holy, and the trees are holy, and all this stuff is holy, right? God's not in them in that sense. God wasn't in those utensils that Belshazzar pulled out for that feast. But they were holy because they expressed something about God. They taught about God. Now, when we contrast holy and unholy, right? When I say unholy or profane, in our vocabulary that naturally goes to wickedness. We go, “Oh, well that's unholy, that's profane.”

But, really, the word in at least in Ezekiel and a few other places here where we talk about something being unholy or something being profane, we're not talking about wickedness. We're just talking about something that is common, right? When you think about David going to… David went to one of the priests and said, "Give me some bread" And he says, "I don't have any common bread." He's not saying, "Oh, I don't have any poison bread for you." He was just saying, "I don't have any common bread. I just have the showbread." Right? It was profane bread. It's the same word here. He's saying, "I don't have any common bread."

If you look in Ezekiel 42… let's go over that one, Ezekiel 42:20. We're in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 42. I think the end of Ezekiel is fascinating because there's a whole temple described that has never been built. That is a future temple that's described in detail and is really pretty amazing but we're not getting into that. Just getting into the fact that here in Ezekiel 42:20, God's describing the dimensions of… well, Ezekiel is describing the dimensions of a temple that he's being shown in a vision. It says, "He measured it on the four sides; it had a wall all around, five hundred cubits long and five hundred wide, to separate the holy areas from the common." That's the word for profane, the holy areas from the unholy.

It wasn't that those areas were bad and we'll burn them all with fire, right? It was just… that was the common area. There was the common area and then there was the holy area. Now, where we get into problems is if you take something that is holy and you profane it, if you make it common if you treat it as common. Well, now, that's a problem. That's what Belshazzar did. That’s… we see examples of that: Nadab and Abihu, Uzzah. We see others who took something that was holy and they made it common. They treated it as though it was common.

Now, to profane something is a problem, right? But something being profane is not a problem. In fact, most things are profane, right? This lectern is profane, our chairs are profane. Most of the things that we do, we have six profane days in a week. And then God gives us a Holy Day, right? So six of those days are common. And God says, "Go do all of your work, all of your common work." Our jobs generally are not holy. Our schools are generally not holy. Our errands as we're running around doing things, they're not holy, right? Those are not holy things those are common things. But, again, we don't want to take something that is holy and profane it.

So then, the big question then is, in all of these common things that we do, and that we're around, and that we're surrounded with because there are a lot of common things. Again, now, there are wicked things as well, right? There are definitely things that when we talk about profane in the English language, we tend to think of as wicked, right? There are those things. And, obviously, we should not be a part of those.

That’s not necessarily what I'm talking about today. But when we're doing our common things on our common days during the week, are we holy in the process? Because that is an expectation. We are holy. God calls His Church holy. His people are holy. And in fact, the word that's most often translated saints in the New Testament is literally just the word for holy.

When Paul says, "I'm going to go minister to the saints," it could literally be translated, "Oh, I'm going to go minister to the holy, to the holy ones." We are holy. So then, as we go about our common activities, are we holy in the process? Do our lives then express something about God's character? Do our lives reflect His character?

Do they show something? Can people look at our lives and see an expression of God? So remember the indictment against Belshazzar. “The God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways.” He says, "You have not glorified." That was the indictment against him. And that's an indictment that we don't want to hear, certainly, as having the opportunity to be future kings, future ruling priests. We don't want that indictment, right? We want this.

Go over to 1 Peter 2, 1 Peter 2 because this is really the opposite of what Belshazzar did. 1 Peter 2:9, "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,” we're supposed to be a holy nation as His Church, “His own special people,” and here's why, "that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." So He tells us we are to be holy so that we will proclaim His praises in that sense that our lives will demonstrate the goodness of God, the character of God, the qualities of God not because we are anything great but because God, living in us through His Spirit, which is what makes us holy, right, it is a Holy Spirit. It is in us and so we are a holy people.

Our lives then need to reflect this. Our lives must glorify God. We have to proclaim the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. So when we talking about “walking worthy of our calling,” Ephesians 4, where we started. If we think about walking worthy, what Paul's really talking about, there is holiness.

He's saying, this is something that our lives should express. If we're going to walk worthy of the calling, right, the calling that we have that's been extended to us is pretty weighty, right? You might think of it this way if we're thinking weights. The blood of Jesus Christ is what sets us apart, what sanctifies us. It's what redeemed us so that God would even put us on the scale, okay? So He puts us on the scale and that's what opened it up to us.

The thing on the other side of that scale is the character of Jesus Christ, right? It's His character. That's the other thing… that's the thing that we're trying to, sort of, balance here, right? Not that we know in this life that none of us are going to fully walk as Jesus Christ walked. But that's where it is, that's the weight, that's what's on the other side of the scale… the beam that we're trying to bring up, right?

We want our lives to express His character. And He's saying, “That's holiness.” Walking worthy of our calling means that our lives are going to reflect the character of Jesus Christ. We have to be holy. Notice, he says "walk worthy." He doesn't say, "Make a good confession and you're set. And now you're holy people."

That's justification. We are justified, right, not by anything that we have done but because God is good and gracious. And because Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for us, right? He says, "Okay, once that thing has happened, right, once you have been justified, once you've been put on the scale, this is now walk worthy of that calling. It's a walk, it's continual.”

It's something that's ongoing. It's the rest of our lives. It's what we're doing. It's just a continual endeavor. And so our job, then, for the rest of our lives is to be growing in holiness, is to be expressing more and more and more of His character in our lives, is to have that reflected.

I have a little bit of homework for you, then. Because I'm going to go through a couple of things. But here's the bigger homework if you like homework and there will be a quiz on it… never. Go take a look at all of the things that God calls holy, that God says are holy about you, about us. The expectations that God has that certain things should be holy. Go look at all of those things that God calls holy and see how instructive it can be to help us discern the holy from the profane.

We can look at those things and say, "Oh, this is something that is set apart that reflects something about God.” Right? And we can see that he calls certain things holy for a reason. And we can evaluate for ourselves, “Okay, do I handle those things as holy things? Or do I… am I a Belshazzar where I just, sort of, this is all the same, this stuff's really nice, let's pull it into my party, right?” Where we take the things that are holy and now treat them or use them as common.

How do I handle those things that God calls holy? That's your homework if you like homework. Because I think as we do that, I think, as we learn to discern those things that are holy from the things that are common. And as we learn to handle those things as holy, then our lives are going to begin expressing more of that holiness.

We're going to be able to grow in expressing the character of God. We're going to be understanding more and more about His mind. Why does He say these things are holy? We learn to understand how He thinks and then we begin to reflect that in our own lives.

So, I'll go through a couple of these things. So, we'll consider, you know, how does God express… how do certain things that He calls holy express His attributes? And then, how do I handle them? One of the big things and I think the thing that was called out in Ezekiel against the priest was His Sabbath. That's the easy one, so you can check that off your list.

But God calls His certain Days holy. He says there's a certain time that is holy. Why is that time holy? God has set it aside for a particular thing. And He said, "Use this other time for your common things. Here's how I want you to use this time." And He describes a lot of how He wants us to think about this time and approach this time, and treat and handle this time.

Isaiah 58 has a lot to say about how we handle the Sabbath, how we handle His Holy Days, His fasts, right? These things are holy. How do I handle it, right? How do I approach it? How do I enter into it?

These are just things that we can evaluate for ourselves and figure out… learn a little bit about ourselves. Again, we talked about the fact that he calls the Church holy, He calls His people holy, right? So, everybody that He is working with, everybody that is led by His Spirit is holy. It means there is something different about the people that He is working with than the people that He has not. Does it mean… “Well… I'm holy,” right?

“I'm good here.” Right, that's not what it's for. That's not why He has called us to be holy. But it does mean that there's a great responsibility on us, not just individually but collectively to be expressing the attributes of God, the character of God, right? In how we interact with each other, right? In how people see us interacting with each other, right? Jesus Christ said, "They'll know you're My disciples by the way that you treat each other." Those things are… it's a way of expressing holiness.

One more, our children, our children are holy, right? Even though they don't necessarily have God's Spirit in them, God is working with them and He says, "These children are holy." And it's probably not a very politically correct thing to say but that means that there are some children who are not holy, right? If there are things that are holy, it means there are things that are not. And God says our children are holy.

1 Corinthians 7:14. He calls that out. Let's go over to that one because that one's interesting because it implies both, that the children are holy and that the marriage is holy. 1 Corinthians 7:14, it says, "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife." Sanctified, by the way, is a verb form of the word, "holy" so everywhere that you see the word sanctified, it means “making holy.” It's sort of an active thing.

To sanctify is to make something holy. If you go look at the words and their roots, they're side by side. One's the noun and one is the verb. To sanctify just means to make holy. "The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now, they are holy.”

So the way that we treat our kids, not just your own children but the children in the Church. The way that we treat them and handle them, it should be as though they are holy because they are. God says they're holy to Him. There's something that is set apart about them that is not true of all children in the world. So there's something there for us to be careful with, in terms of how we handle them, in our example to them, in our interactions with them.

The list goes on and on, in terms of things that God calls holy. There are a number of other things He goes through and He says these things are holy. And we, then, get to evaluate for ourselves and say, do I treat these things as holy? And if I don't, then it's a great opportunity to learn something. It's a great opportunity for us to be able to learn more about the character of God. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 6.

2 Corinthians 6, toward the end of the chapter, verse 16. He has a lot to say that the Corinthians about holiness, about sanctification because they were right there in the thick of all of the pagan influence that was around them. They weren't so different from us. And he's talking to them about living holy lives, about being holy people, about reflecting godliness.

In verse 16 it says, "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God." Again, he's saying, you're something that is holy and you can't profane that. To profane that, to make that common, to mix it with… certainly with wicked things is wrong. Even to mix it with common things is wrong because he's saying the temple of God is something that is holy.

We can't take the temple of God or its instruments or any of that and make it common. That's what Belshazzar teaches us. But he says "You are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will dwell in them.’" That's what makes us holy. His Spirit living in us. “'I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be My people.’ Therefore, ‘Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’” That's quite a promise.

He says, "Come out and be a holy people." And He promises to us that He will be a Father to us. That we'll be His sons and daughters. “Therefore,” in verse 1, chapter 7. “Therefore, having these promises…” and this is where we'll conclude. He says, "beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."