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The following article was written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss concerning the issue of "Holiness".

What would you say gives a local church a powerful witness for Christ in its community?

I think some would answer that question by saying, "Well, if you have a great kids' program." Some might say it's the music program, or it's the praise and worship team.

One of the greatest preachers who ever lived and one of the greatest pastors who ever lived, Charles Spurgeon, said this about the local church: "In proportion that a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful."

Now that's true. We ought to be motivated to see our churches be holy. Great to have the kids' programs, the youth programs, the music programs, but what about the holiness program?

Well, I guess it's easier to have children and youth programs than it is to have holiness because you don't have a program that makes you holy.

If holiness is the gift of our greatest witness, we have to ask the question: Can we honestly say that our local churches have a powerful witness for Christ in their community? That should be something that concerns everyone of us as children of God.

Some of you have heard me talk about the epidemic of sin in the church today. You know it is something that is very much on my heart. I hope it's on your heart.

I get letters, e-mails, calls, reports constantly, and that is no exaggeration, about open blatant sin going on within our churches - the lack of holiness.

I've asked myself, "Why?" Why does there seem to be such an epidemic of sin in the church today? Well, I think high on the list of reasons would have to be the fact that for over a generation the evangelical church, by and large, has abandoned preaching on sin and on holiness. You just don't hear much of it today.

Now, we don't mind preaching on sin or holiness as long as it doesn't get too specific, as long as nobody names sin, as long as they preach on sins of other people. But if they get to our sins, then they are meddling. We don't like that. "That's legalism," we're quick to say.

We don't like preaching on sin or holiness. As a result, we've tip-toed around many passages in both the Old and New Testaments that proclaim the holiness of God, God's hatred of sin, God's wrath and judgment against unrepentant sinners. When's the last time that you've heard a sermon on the wrath of God?

When's the last time that you've heard a sermon on the final judgment of God? We would rather focus on references to God's grace, His mercy, and His love. We need to be preaching those things, but we haven't been quite so eager to preach or hear preaching on the wrath and the judgment and the justice of God.

As a result, we've promoted something that we call the Gospel, though it really isn't. A gospel that says it's possible to be a Christian while at the same time stubbornly refusing to deal with practices or behaviors that we know to be sinful.

We've accepted the philosophy that it is ok for Christians to look and think and act like the world. We've made it an offense to confront people over their sin, to admonish people over their sin, either privately or, if necessary, publicly. Sometimes I think, if only we were at loathe to commit sin as we are to confront it.

But that's private. That's their business. Don't get involved. If some people hear about the whole subject of church discipline; for example, that's enough to bring about a lawsuit today.

Now, less you think I'm overstating the case, let me just give you some illustrations, and I could multiply these many times over. I got an e-mail from a graduate of one of this country's most respected Bible colleges.

She told about how God had dealt with her on the whole thought that holiness is more than a manner of keeping man-made rules and the God who had been dealing with her heart about that issue. She talked about how today's 25 year old Christians casually go to bars, and she addressed a number of other issues from modest attire to what is appropriate conversation for mixed company.

Then she said, "When the television show Friends was hot... It was very hot among 20-something Christian women, which was a marvel to me with the overt sexual content of that show." She said, "I had two Christian roommates who watched it weekly." Just as this was troubling to her, it ought to be to us.

I know of a Christian mom who is active in the life of her church, who shared how she and her accountability partner meet weekly to watch a particular reality show on TV that's filled with sexual innuendos while the husbands take care of their kids.

Then she got upset when a friend in her small group asked her how this could be consistent with her profession of being a Christian. She thought that was so inappropriate and rude of her friend to even raise the question.

I subscribe to a weekly on-line message illustration service. Every week I get ten new message illustrations. What's amazing to me is that up to 50 percent of those illustrations some weeks are drawn from profane movies.

Are we regularly using those movies as sources for sermon illustrations? I'm thinking to myself. Are pastors encouraged to get in their pulpits on Sundays and use these illustrations from movies that are profane, blasphemous, immoral? Are they encouraging people that it's ok to listen to these movies?

Some people would say, "Aww...they're just connecting to the world." I say get your heart disconnected from the world. Get it connected to the kingdom of God and you will have a far greater impact on the world than if you are just like the world.

One of the things that should concern us most about the way that the church is so accommodated to the world is the impact this is having on our young people. I have some friends who lead in their home a Bible study for teenagers who go to their daughter's Christian high school. These students would be considered "the cream of the crop."

Recently, in that study my friends distributed a set of lyrics to several popular songs and asked those young people to discuss if they agreed or disagreed with the message to that song and the behavior that it was advocating.

Three of the songs, as I understood it, had lyrics that were blatantly offensive. For example, one was a song by rock star,Eminen, who sings in graphic terms about murdering his mother and is accompanied by an endless stream of profanities. After analyzing the words, the kids decided, as they discussed the facts, that some of this behavior really was very awful, and some of the language was very awful.

Then they were asked, "Would you continue to listen to the song even if you disagree with its message?" With two exceptions, those kids said, "Yes, we would continue to listen to this music even with these kinds of degrading messages."

My friends who saw this happen were just so grieved. They knew I was working on a book on holiness at the time so they wrote to me about what had happened. Here's what they said.

"Our hearts are breaking. This is one lost generation. We adults and the church have failed to pass the baton of holiness on to the next generation. Frankly, we don't blame these kids. How can they aspire to a life of holiness when they haven't been presented with a standard of holiness in the home or from the pulpit?"

Now, I've thrown out several illustrations here. I have others in my notes that I won't take time to share. But you need to understand that these kind of examples are not rare. I am reading these kinds of things, hearing these things all of the time.

That would be cause enough for concern, but the reality is that this kind of twisted thinking about right and wrong has become characteristic of a growing number of evangelical believers, and it's even being promoted in some cases and defended in the evangelical world.

I don't know if you know the name Vance Havner, but he was an old-time preacher. He had a way with words. He said something many years ago that had a prophetic ring to it. He said, "The world and the professing church first flirted with each other, then fell in love, and now the wedding is upon us."

The church marries the world. What does God's word have to say about that? Psalm 85 verse 13 says, "Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps." Holiness, a pathway of holiness.

Isaiah chapter 35 describes the millennial kingdom of Christ that will one day be on this earth. It says in verse 8, "And a road will be there. It will be called the Holy Way. Those who are unclean will not travel on it, but it will be for those who walk in that way."

Ladies (and Gentlemen - emphasis mine), our job between now and the return of Christ is to be preparing a highway of holiness. We need to see the world and the church get a divorce. The church once again needs to be a pure bride of Christ so that she can have the impact that God wants her to have on this world.

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The following article was written by Nancy as well and is a Biblical example of "Holiness".

We've been talking about how there is a tendency in our generation for the world to encroach into the church and for the church to become more like the lost world.

There's a man in the Old Testament that I really admire. His name was Nehemiah, and he was a man who refused to get sucked in by the allure of the world. Here's a man who never got accustomed to sin, even when everyone else around him had become desensitized. He was a man who had the law of God written on his heart.

Nehemiah was one of the Jewish exiles living in Persia about 400 years before Christ. He led a group of exiles back to Jerusalem to repair the demolished temple.

Fourteen years later, Nehemiah, still in Persia, received word that the walls of the city of Jerusalem were still in disrepair. The temple had been rebuilt, but the walls were in disrepair. So, Nehemiah left his comfortable job, and he made the 900 mile journey to help his fellow Jews rebuild the wall.

Now when they got to Jerusalem, you'll remember that they faced some fierce opposition. In spite of the opposition, the walls were finally rebuilt.

Nehemiah became the governor of Judah, and along with Ezra the priest he turned his attention to rebuilding the spiritual walls and foundations of the hearts of the people.

Nehemiah and Ezra were involved in a time of revival where the people repented of their sin, and they returned back to God. Now as a part of that revival, the people made a covenant with God. They agreed to several things.

Number 1: They would not intermarry with the unbelieving nations around them.

Number 2: They would not buy and sell or conduct commerce on the Sabbath.

Number 3: They would support the needs of the temple and of the Levites.

Now after serving in Jerusalem for 12 years, Nehemiah returned to Persia for some period of time. We don't know how long. Scholars think that it may have been about a couple of years.

When he returned back to Judah, he was shocked to discover that the people had broken the entire covenant that they had made with God. Well, Nehemiah was extremely distressed, and he boldly confronted the people over their back-slidden condition.

The most serious offense in Nehemiah's eyes involved one of those opponents of the work of God. His name was Tobiah. He was an Ammonite - Tobiah the Ammonite.

He was the man who years earlier had done everything he could to oppose the work of God in rebuilding the new wall, but over the years the people had gotten to know Tobiah. They had established a relationship with him, and they gradually let down their guard.

They had begun to socialize with their former enemy. That had led to more intimate relationships, including marriage ties, between Tobiah's family and the family of Eliashib, the priest.

Unbelievably, by the time Nehemiah returned, this sworn enemy of God, Tobiah the Ammonite, was actually living in the temple. Hard to believe. This was in direct violation of God's command that no Ammonite should ever set foot in the temple.

God had an issue with the Ammonites. There was a clear law to this effect. Now, here was Tobiah the Ammonite, an enemy of God, now friends with the Jews and living in the temple. A room had been given him there by the priest.

Now, I'm sure that change of affairs didn't take place overnight. It happened in the way that sin always encroaches into the people of God. Most likely it was one little compromise, that led to another, that led to another. The priest and the people had found ways of justifying those little compromises.

What happened was that a spirit of tolerance ultimately became elevated over a spirit of truth. I can imagine them saying, "You know, Tobiah's not really such a bad guy. His family fits in so well here. We shop with his wife. It doesn't seem right to tell him that he can't stay, just because he's not a Jew." Whoops! "We don't want to be legalistic about this."

You can just imagine how this developed.

So, godless Tobiah moved into the temple, and, amazingly, the people keep right on doing church, playing church. They're not the least bit troubled over the state of affairs. It's not bothering them, but to Nehemiah, who cared deeply about holiness, this was unthinkable. He was furious!

What did he do? You can read about this in the book of Nehemiah (chapter 13). He physically hurled Tobiah and all his possessions out of the temple. Then he gave orders to purify the rooms that had been desecrated by God's enemy. He called the priests and the people to repent for their sins.

Now, why were those offenses such a big deal to Nehemiah? Why did he feel like he needed to interfere in other people's lives? Why did he make this his business? Why wasn't he content to just obey God and leave others alone?

It was because Nehemiah was compelled by a mission, a passion for the glory of God to be displayed in God's people. He had a heart for holiness. That put him in a tiny minority even among other believers.

But, you know, Nehemiah didn't seem to notice. He didn't seem to care. He wasn't trying to win a popularity contest. All that mattered to him was that the holy name of God had been profaned. He longed for God's name to be hallowed once again.

Now, there are some striking parallels between the story of Nehemiah and the church in our day. I think that you probably see what some of them are. There are lots of people today, who call themselves believers, who are churning out a lot of religious activity. But we have rewritten the law of God, and we've turned it into a license for sin.

In effect, we have prostituted the grace of God. Titus said that the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness. It doesn't give us a license to sin. It helps us to live lives that are free from sin.

So, in our churches today we have a spirit of tolerance, in so many cases, that has triumphed over a love for truth. Now, in a sense, we've got Tobiah living in the temple. You say, "What do you mean? What's 'Tobiah', and how's he living in our temple?"

Think about some of the enemies of God that we have let come into our churches: lust, greed, materialism, anger, selfishness, pride, divorce, deceit. Little by little, we let down our guard.

Beyond that, here's something else that concerns me. We've worked so hard to make lost people and back-slidden people feel comfortable in our churches that there's very little conviction of sin.

There's not a lot of life transformation going on in those people. There's not a lot of repentance going on in those people. There's not a lot of manifestation of the presence of a holy God, who isn't there, because He can't live with them.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should try and alienate unbelievers in our churches or that there isn't any virtue to being relevant. I'm saying, if relevance is your goal, if that's your objective, then you may get a crowd, but you may lose the presence of God.

When the fire of God's presence is in our lives and in our churches, people will be drawn, not because of our programs, not because of our entertainment, but because God is there, the consuming fire and presence of a holy God.

I'm not saying that we should make unbelievers uncomfortable in our churches intentionally, but I'm saying sinners should be uncomfortable in the presence of a holy God.

I'm saying that sinners will never be truly converted until they have experienced the conviction of God's Spirit. That's not comfortable. Our greatest effectiveness, our greatest weapon is found not in being like the world, but in being like Jesus. That is vastly different than the world.

So, in the midst of the state that we find the church in today, my question is, "Where are the Nehemiah's of our day? Where are the saints who live like saints? Where are the believers who care deeply about holiness, the ones who eyes are filled with tears and who's hearts ache when they see an unholy church partying and entertaining herself to death?"

"Where are the people whose knees are sore from interceding, pleading with God to grant the gift of repentance to the church today? Where are the Christian leaders with the compassion and the courage to call the church to be clean for God?"

Now, I'm not suggesting that you be critical or that I be critical about that. We need to lift up the hands of our Christian leaders and pray for them, but one of the things that we need to pray is that God will give these men courage.

You know, the church has been waiting for the world to get right with God. When are we going to realize that the world is waiting for the church to get right with God?

When we, the people of God, humble ourselves, when we pray, when we seek God's face, when we turn from our wicked ways, then the world will have a reason to know and to believe that our Gospel is true and that our God is real.

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So, does "Holiness" play a part in your life? In your church?
Let's talk about it!