Holiness Analogy

    This may help to explain to some people why holiness or separation from anything GOD has deemed unfit for us is so important. This is JUST an analogy, I am not saying you should actually do this!

    Imagine you have a glass of water.  It is a beautiful glass of water, the light plays on the surface and sparkles all the way down to the bottom.  It is pure and cool and refreshing.

    Now, let us imagine that you take a very, very tiny drop of urine and put it into your glass of water.  Is it still drinkable?  No?  Oh, but that was only a tiny bit of urine!  How could something so small and insignificant possibly affect that much water?  Surely you should be tolerant of it because your immune system can easily deal with that!

    Now let us add a teensy, tiny bit of manure.  Surely if you can handle a little urine, you can add something else because you are stronger for it!  And this should make you even stronger.

    Oh, so you can't even see it or taste it.  Maybe you have developed a taste for it, you have become accustomed to it.  Here, have some more.  Why not share it with everyone?  They need to broaden their horizons, too, don't they?  You don't even realize your breath stinks.

    You even feel sorry for the people who won't share it with you.  Boy, are they stuck up!

    This is how satan introduces error into our thinking.  It starts out small.  But it will never stay that way.  It has an evil life of its own that insists on taking more and more.  It is pollution.  Jesus called it 'leavening', an agent that helps to decompose or change the substance it is placed in like yeast.  This is how philosophies work.

Matthew 16:11-12
"Jesus said to 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.'  Then the disciples understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 

    When GOD took the Hebrews to the Promised Land, they were instructed to completely destroy the civilizations already there so that their influences and philosophies and paganism could not permeate into them and pollute the way they thought and their worship of GOD. 

Exodus 23:23-24
"23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.
24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images."

Exodus 23:31-33
"31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee."

Exodus 20:1-5
"1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

Exodus 34:14
"For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous , is a  jealous God."

Deuteronomy 4:24
"For the Lord thy GOD is a consuming fire, even a  jealous God."

Deuteronomy 5:8-9
"8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:
9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

    You've heard the saying, "garbage in, garbage out", right?  What you allow into your eyes, what you hear, and what you think, changes you a little bit at a time.  GOD wants you to be a clear, pure glass of water, sparkling in His Light.  Bringing pure, clean refreshment to everyone in the world; to be His envoys and ambassadors.

Isaiah 29:13-14
And the LORD said, "Forasmuch as this people draw near Me with their mouth and honor Me with lipservice but remove their hearts and minds far from Me, and their fear and reverence for Me are a tradition of men that is learned by repetition [without any thought as to the meaning], therefore, behold!  I will again do wonderful things with this people, marvelous and astonishing things; the mouths of their 'wise men' will be closed and the advice of their prudent men will be confusing for lack of understanding."