Keep sharing good news without ads.
Dr. Lars Larson
Well, let's turn in our Bibles, please, to 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4, as we continue our study in this book. Here we begin to read of the apostles' instruction, direct instruction, on how Christians might live in a way that they would please God, and that should be our desire, that in the manner that we live out our Christian lives we are pleasing to God.
And in the first chapter, or first paragraph of this chapter, which is contained in verses 1 -8, some of the translations divide the paragraphs a little differently, but we'll call verses 1 -8 a single paragraph, Paul gave instruction and exhortation to increase more and more in the arena of holy living.
You never arrive. Paul was not giving new instruction here, instruction that the Thessalonians had not heard before, for Paul had already taught them in these matters. Rather, he was exhorting them to do more and more in the things that he had already taught.
Them.
And so let us read verses 1 -8, 1 Thessalonians 4. Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more.
And more.
For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
For God has not called us for impurity but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit.
To you.
And so Paul declared to his readers that he was asking and urging them on behalf of the Lord Jesus to take action. That is, he said that his exhortation to them was actually the Lord Jesus himself exhorting them through him.
We see that in verse 1. Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you, and there we have the phrase, in the Lord.
Jesus.
Jesus Christ, of course, is the Lord of his people, and he is the one who leads and instructs his people. Now, the Lord had chosen to do that through the Apostle Paul, but Paul is making it clear that his words that he was writing to the church at Thessalonica were in reality the words of the Lord Jesus.
That was his claim in verse 1. We ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus. Of course, we recognize that the words of the Apostles contained in the New Testament are the words that the Lord Jesus is speaking to us through these men.
This is the word of the Lord Jesus. We embrace this understanding of the word of God just as those in the church at Thessalonica had done so, and Paul described them earlier in chapter 2. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, Paul referring to himself and Silas and Timothy probably, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.
And so here in verse 1 of chapter 4, Paul declared that the words of his epistle to this church were in actuality the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Lord Jesus had inspired the Apostle to write the words that are before us.
These are the words of the Lord Jesus.
They have authority.
Notice the Apostle addressed these Christians at the church at Thessalonica in very familiar terms. Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus. Of course, referring to brothers and sisters in Christ in the church.
He regarded them as intimate friends, even family, family members. And it's true, if we're Christians living rightly, thinking rightly, our relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ are some of the closest we have in the world,.
Aren't they?
We are brothers and sisters in the Lord, and we take that seriously and believe that sincerely. And Paul wrote to them with great respect for them, for he had great regard for them. And we ought to have great regard for one another.
And it ought to shape the manner and the content of our words that we speak to one another as well. He addressed them as brothers. The Apostle both asked as well as urged his readers to follow his instruction.
He asked them, but that wasn't sufficient. He also urged them to heed his words. And the word translated in the ASV here, urge, is commonly translated in other translations otherwise say as the word exhort or even beseech.
I ask you, I even beseech you, brethren, that you take my words to heart. Paul was pressing upon them very strongly that they show regard and readily receive his instruction. He was writing to them about an important matter, so he wasn't just asking them to consider these things.
He was beseeching them. This is important. He was pressing upon them the importance of these words. What was it to which they were to give their attention? Paul wrote, as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.
And so here we see Paul had instructed them in these matters before they had received this teaching in this epistle. This letter indeed instructed them how to live before God, but he had taught them these things before.
He had taught them and they had previously received and they had even previously embraced.
This teaching.
And moreover, they had put into practice his earlier teaching. This was not new to them. In fact, they were doing what he had commanded. He wrote, just as you are doing, I am writing to you things that I have instructed you about in the past, things you know about and things that you are doing, but I am writing about them nevertheless.
He had instructed them on how to walk in order to please God. They received his teaching. They had put into practice his teaching, but now he urged them and asked them to continue in this way of living and that they would do so more and more.
So this applies to every one of us, doesn't it? When you never arrive, you've got more and more to do. Even though you've heard these things, understood these things, maybe do these things, it's.
Still not enough.
We need to do these things more and more. We see from these words that there is some Christian instruction regarding the Christian faith and the way we live that needs to be repeated before us. Paul was repeating this instruction to them.
Even though we've been taught the truth and even though we've applied the truth, we're still in need of being reinforced in that instruction. Repetition is good. Some people don't like repetition, but it's essential, it's necessary.
And so there needs to be a reminder by exhortation. I ask you and I beseech you that you give regard to these things, Paul wrote. Even though you're doing them, even though you know them, you need to do them more and.
More.
And so this can be pressed upon me and upon you as well. And the reason is that our thinking and our living are subject to stagnation. Is that not right?
And erosion.
If we're not increasing more and more, you're probably losing things by degrees. In our Sunday school hour this morning, we were reading from the Pilgrim's Progress how Christian and hopeful entered the enchanted ground.
And this was an area, a place where they were suffering some difficulty and some loss and they were prone to sleeping. But it was not a sleep of rest, it was a sleep of lethargy. It was a sleep in which they were losing things they had formerly adhered to.
The fact is, we tend to fall short of where we should be. We tend to become less attentive and less diligent with the passing of time. And this is true for you and it's true for me. Unless we take specific, direct steps otherwise to increase more and more in these things.
We cannot be satisfied with what we've learned in the past and assume that's going to do us for today. It has to be taught us and reinforced to us because we tend to decay in the degree and measure of our spiritual vitality.
The fact is, we should probably be farther ahead than we presently are of the Christian life. I don't know if there's any of us here that are as far as we possibly could have been if we had been giving all diligence at all times in all things.
We all need to increase more and more. So I suspect that most of us should probably be more advanced in the quality of our Christian life than we currently are. Keith and I were in India. I tell you what, some of the devotion and the zeal of these people would be a good example and illustration for us, frankly.
The writer to the Hebrews wrote, by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. You've come to need milk and not solid food. And that wasn't a prescription, that was a rebuke by the writer to the Hebrews.
You should be teachers by now. He was frustrated. He wanted to tell them about the teaching of Jesus Christ and how he was a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and yet he knew that his readers were dull of hearing.
And so even though the teaching was important, he was questioning their ability to receive it and they were blameworthy for that. By this time you should have been teachers. You need to be taught the basic things of Christ.
But he didn't do that. He went on to teach them about Christ after the order of Melchizedek in spite of the fact it was a challenge to them and a rebuke to them. And so again, Paul had previously instructed these Christians, they had received his instruction, they were even living in accordance with his earlier instruction, and yet Paul saw the need to ask and exhort them to abound more and more.
John Calvin wrote about this in his commentary. They had previously learned what was the rule and method of a pious life. He calls this to their remembrance, as, says he, ye have been taught, lest, however, he should seem to take away from them what he had previously assigned them, he does not simply exhort them to walk in such a manner, but to abound more and more.
When therefore he urges them to make progress, he intimates that they are already in the.
Way.
The sum is this, that they should be more especially careful to make progress in the doctrine which they had received, and this Paul places in contrast with frivolous and vain pursuits in which we see that a good part of the world very generally busy themselves so that profitable and holy meditation as to the due regulation of life scarcely obtains a place, even the most inferior.
Paul accordingly reminds them in what manner they have been instructed and bids them to aim at this with their whole might. May the Lord help us do so. We have much yet to learn, and we have much to have reinforced, because we forget so much,.
Don't we?
Again, there is a tendency to naturally decay and deteriorate in our spiritual vitality and health, and so there must be an ongoing effort to abound more and more, or else that decay will take its toll upon us.
Now, in verse 2, the Apostle appealed to them, For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. He really is asserting once again that the instruction he gave them was instruction that the Lord Jesus was giving them.
He reminded them the instruction he was setting before them was not something new. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. They had the weight and the authority of the Lord Jesus behind these words.
And then in verse 3, Paul became more specific regarding his instruction. He wrote, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. So Paul stated it was God's design that his people would become sanctified.
It's as though he were saying, This is God's end. This is God's purpose for you Christians, that you become sanctified. And that's as far as we're going to get in the passage today. He goes on to talk about the manner or the direction and the form in which that sanctification.
Is to take.
He talks about sexual immorality. We'll begin to address that next week. But we need to understand about this matter of sanctification. And again, it's something I hope that you already know, that you've been instructed.
I know you've been instructed in these matters. But I hope it's something that you still retain and that you do not need to be reinforced.
In.
I hope we come to the place one day when you hear nothing new. That everything you've heard, you've heard before. That would be a good thing, wouldn't it? But this matter of sanctification is so critically important, we need to reinforce it before.
Us.
And so what is sanctification? In this context, sanctification means to grow or increasingly to become holy in one's life. Again, Calvin described the believer's sanctification in this way. That renouncing the world and clearing ourselves from the pollutions of the flesh, we offer ourselves to God as if in sacrifice.
For nothing can with propriety be offered to him but what is pure and holy. And so we're striving to become more sanctified. The basic idea of Christian sanctification is to be set apart by God and for God.
Everything that belongs to God is to be set apart for him. And we read of this throughout the entire Bible. In the Old Testament, we read that the tabernacle was set apart for God. The articles of furniture in the tabernacle were set apart from God.
That is, they were sanctified. The utensils used, the priests themselves who ministered in the tabernacle were sanctified, all sanctified, for God, before God. They were set apart for God and his worship.
And so in the same way, God sanctifies every Christian. He sets us apart for himself. And we are to actively consecrate ourselves, sanctifying ourselves through the means that he has appointed unto our Lord.
Each and every believer is one who has been singled out by God from the human race and all who belong to Jesus Christ have been sanctified. We have been separated from the fallen world, set apart, sanctified in the mind of God from all others.
And we are to continually be sanctified throughout life as Christians. In the mind and purpose of God, we are separate, sanctified from the fallen world. And we read in the scriptures that God has vast and glorious designs for those who are sanctified.
And when we speak of sanctification of the Christian, we should understand that Christians are sanctified in two different ways. And this is important. The scriptures speak about Christians being sanctified both positionally as well as practically.
We are probably most familiar with the idea of practical sanctification. This is what Calvin was describing in the definition we read earlier. Practical sanctification is also addressed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Question 35, what is sanctification? Sanctification is the work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.
That's practical sanctification, isn't it? Practical sanctification speaks about God transforming a Christian into a more holy Christian, one who increasingly becomes more and more like the Lord Jesus.
The Holy Spirit imparts grace to the believer, giving him or her both the desire and the ability to do the will of God, to become more and more Christ-like in life. It's a continual and progressive work through life.
We never arrive. Now Wesleyan's teaching of sanctification, John Wesley taught it and some of the Pentecostal churches teach it, that you can arrive at complete sanctification in this life. And they're wrong.
And that's errant teaching. No you never arrive in this life. But you can become more sanctified than you are. We're to abound more and more in this important matter. And so it's a progressive work, it's a gradual process that God works or produces in us over the lifetime.
It's a work of God's grace in which he performs this work in us. And it's performed solely due to his kindness and his love that he has for his people. And so through the work of sanctification the believer increasingly hates sin and ceases from it and increasingly loves and practices righteousness.
Our sanctification will be complete only when we pass from this life into the next and we're delivered from the presence of sin in our lives. It's a process. And there's always another sin to address, right?
You know, it's like, you know, you knock one down and it seems like two grow in their place, in its place. You're always dealing with something. And really it's only after the course of time you stand back and you see just how far the Lord has brought you.
But it's a process. It's a work of sanctification. Now that's practical sanctification. Positional sanctification, however, is distinct and different. Positional sanctification occurred once for all time for each of us at salvation.
God set you apart when you embraced the gospel, believed on Jesus Christ. He set you apart once for all time. Positional sanctification. Or it could be argued that Christ set us apart when he purchased us on his cross.
We were purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We, we were Christians. Hebrews 10, 14,. For by one offering he, Jesus, hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Here that sanctification is positional.
We're separate from. God has separated us from the fallen world that's under his wrath. And he set us apart for a purpose in order to be favorable to us. What is Christian sanctification like? Well, it's considered sanctification from several perspectives.
First, sanctification is the experience of all true Christians. Let's look at Acts 20, verse 32, Paul had stopped at the port of Miletus and my friend Rick Boefinger and I stopped there as well and visited one day.
It used to be right on the coast, but it's like a number of those cities on the western side of Turkey. The river is filled in with silt and the coastline is a couple of miles away now that we went to Miletus and the ruins where this event took place.
Paul didn't want to stop at Ephesus about 20 miles to the north because that had already silted in. There was no harbor there any longer. And so he made arrangements to meet the elders in the church at Ephesus at Miletus.
And he met them, spoke with them, and he warned them on that occasion. He warned them about their responsibilities as elders and the dangers that were before.
And he said that even some of them would become corrupt in their desires and their thinking respecting the faith. And so they were to guard one another and guard the flock over which the Lord had made them overseers.
And as Paul was ready to depart from them, he gave this parting word, verse 32 of Acts 20. Now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
I don't believe he's talking about positional sanctification here, but practical sanctification. Every Christian is someone who is sanctified. So he urged his elders to be true to God. Notice that this inheritance, ultimately our final salvation, is among all those who are sanctified.
We would argue they only.
Every true Christian is someone, is one who is experiencing a measure, a degree of being sanctified in life. We're set apart by God from sin unto the Lord Jesus. And He's doing a work of grace in our lives.
In another place in Acts, Paul asserted the same truth. In Acts 26, we read of Paul defending himself before King Agrippa. Paul had been arrested due to his opposition, the opposition of the Jewish leaders having rejected Jesus as their Messiah.
And they had leveled a number of false charges against Paul, and it resulted in Paul standing in judgment before King Agrippa, the regional king in the coastal city of Caesarea. In Paul's defense, he described his conversion experience when the risen, glorified Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.
And we read of the Lord's purpose and calling of Paul in Acts 26, 17 and 18. Jesus told Paul, I will deliver you from the Jewish people as well as from the Gentiles to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me.
Salvation is only promised to those who are being sanctified. If someone claims to be a Christian but they're not growing as a Christian, if they're not dealing with sin in their life but still living in sin without any concern for holiness, that's a serious problem.
They probably ought to question whether they truly have experienced the grace of God and the forgiveness of sin if they're not encountering the grace of God and being sanctified from.
Sin.
Sanctification is the experience of all true Christians. And so each of us who are truly Christian in the biblical sense have this ongoing work of grace being performed in our lives, our sanctification.
In fact, again, it's stated so overtly in our text, 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3,. This is the will of God, even your sanctification. Mark it down. The cause of Christian sanctification. What is the cause?
Well, the scriptures speak of the causes of our sanctification in different ways. Again, we can cite the historic confession of faith, the Westminster Confession. Earlier we cited the Westminster Catechism, but here's the Westminster Confession.
First, the moving cause of sanctification is the grace of God. In other words, it's of God's free will and purpose that we're sanctified apart from any merit of ourselves. Not the moving cause, but the meritorious cause is the blood and righteousness of Christ.
Any and all work of Christ is performed due to Christ and what He performed for us through His life and death. And then thirdly, the efficient cause, that is, that which is actually the transforming power that enables us to be sanctified is the Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit is the one who works the work of sanctification in us. Actually, the Holy Scriptures describe this grace of sanctification as the work of the triune God. There is a sanctification of believers by God the Father.
There is a sanctification of believers by God the Son. And there is a sanctification of believers by the Holy Spirit. Jude 1 speaks of God the Father sanctifying His people. Believers have been sanctified by God the Father.
Jude verse 1. It's an act of God's sanctifying or setting apart the believer that took place in eternity. The fallen race was regarded by God even before creation, falling into sin through Adam's.
Fall.
All of humanity is lost. And so God, at that point, sanctified a group of people that He determined the entire world would not perish but that He would save a people unto Himself through Jesus Christ.
And so God sanctified this people. It speaks about Him choosing or electing a people unto Himself, setting them apart, I'm going to save them through Jesus Christ. Not because they were any better than the others or not.
Many of them are worse than the others. But God Himself sanctified His people. Secondly, the Word of God speaks of a sanctification of the believer attributed to the Son of God. And this speaks of Christ's work on their behalf in dying for them.
He set us apart for God through His death. And 1 Corinthians speaks of Christ made unto us sanctification. This is what He secured for us through His life and through His death. Hebrews 13, 12,. Therefore Jesus, also that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
That is, suffered outside the city of Jerusalem on the hill of Golgotha. What the writer of Hebrews is saying to his professing Christian Jewish readers, you can't go back to Judaism and abandoning Christ.
Christ Himself went outside the city of Jerusalem. And if you're going to find Christ, you're going to have to go outside of Judaism and believe Him. He's outside when He died. You have to go outside too and meet Him there.
And so He sanctified His people upon the cross. And then third, the Bible speaks of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in converting the sinner, transforming him throughout his or her life until the day when that believer departs from this world.
And this is found in numerous places. But 1 Thessalonians 2, 13, we read about it earlier, a couple of chapters ago. Paul wrote,. We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit.
When you were brought to salvation, it was due to the Holy Spirit setting you apart, bringing you to encounter salvation. And then Peter wrote about it in 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ's grace to you in peace, we multiply.
There you have the Holy Trinity. You've got God the Father electing. You have the Lord Jesus sprinkling His blood or atoning for them. And you have the Holy Spirit bringing them to faith and obedience.
And so the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers as well. And so the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the life of an elect person, according to 1 Peter 1 and 2, results in his cleansing from sin and his compliance to the will of Jesus Christ.
And so here we see sanctification, it's not just a positional matter, but it's a practical.
Matter.
Yes, it's a work the Father has purposed and the Son is accomplishing, but it's a work that's done by them through the agency of the Holy Spirit. He's the one who sanctifies us. The sanctification of the Holy Spirit begins with the sinner's regeneration.
Regeneration is what we commonly refer to, of course, as being born again. That's what regenerate means. You were generated once in your natural birth. You're regenerated when you're born a second time.
The spiritual birth. And so the Holy Spirit places within a spiritually dead, insensitive, uncaring, uninterested sinner the principle of a holy life. And it's described as a new nature, a new heart, a new man, a new creation.
And this is the first act of God. It's not a response of God to some man's decision or man's action. It's a sovereign act of God. When He comes and imparts life into a spiritually dead sinner who has no desire, no thought, no intention to seek Christ, the Holy Spirit puts a principle of life in and all of a sudden there begins to arise in this man or woman's soul desires that he or she never had, interests that he or she never had, concerns that he or she never had.
And the Lord draws that person as a result of this new birth to the point where he or she embraces Jesus Christ holy as Lord and Savior. Sanctification of the Spirit is not a mere outward reformation of behavior or appearance of conformity to the law of God, say as the Pharisees, but rather it's an internal work of God inside.
It's sanctifying grace, not just restraining grace. The law of God can restrain some and will. We're talking about transforming grace, sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is not the same as the gifts of the Spirit.
Do you realize some people can have gifts of the Holy Spirit and not be born again? There are many in our Pentecostal friends who argue the evidence of being born again by the Spirit is the gifts of the Spirit.
No, no, no.
Judas Iscariot, no doubt, had gifts of the Spirit. The Apostle Paul said, if I had faith to remove mountains and had not love, I am nothing. He spoke about spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts. Yes, every true Christian has at least one spiritual gift imparted to him.
But spiritual gifts can be received and enjoyed by unregenerate people.
Amazing.
And people think or assume that means that they've been regenerated. No, regeneration, being born again, is seen in what a person believes, and how a person reacts and acts toward Jesus Christ and toward sin and holiness.
This is how the new birth is evident in a person's life. And so, we see thirdly, sanctification of the Spirit is evidence in the desires and attitudes of the believer toward God. When a person is born again, there's first a new attitude and outlook of the soul toward God and the things of God.
A whole new life opens up. The couple's not here this morning, but I had a wonderful visit the other day. I won't mention their names. Had lunch with them. And the Lord's opened their eyes. And he was telling me, in a kind of a metaphor, what's happened to him.
And it was a wonderful thing. I used to see things only vaguely blurry and black and white, and now I see them in full-fledged.
Color.
Incredible, as he's talking about, you know, his desires. And although he was raised in a so-called church, the Lord's clearly doing a work of grace in him. And his wife was, in the same manner, expressing these things.
Clearly God is doing a work of sanctification in their lives. It's a wonderful thing to see. New attitudes and outlooks. Secondly, there develops in their soul a true love for God. This one who's born again finds himself delighting in God.
He talks with God. He thinks about God. He wants to talk to others about God. Job wrote of the hypocrite, will he delight himself in the Almighty? As a rhetorical question implied, no, he won't. Will he always call upon God?
No, he won't. But the hypocrite is not an object of the Holy Spirit's sanctifying grace. Thirdly, there develops in his heart and life a compliance to God's will. Not perfectly, but he laments that that is not the case.
He begins to understand and see the presence of an all-powerful God who has a purpose in this world, acting in the affairs of life. He murmurs less. He is distressed less about himself and his relationship to God.
He's more at ease in difficult situations. He is less concerned for revenge and demanding his own rights, for he's come to see that he himself is not deserving of the least of God's mercies. And so there's a conforming of his desires to God's desires.
He finds himself loving the things God loves and hating the things God hates. And that's wholly different than before. Before I was a Christian, I hated the things God loves, and I loved the things God hated.
That all changed. The one being sanctified increasingly becomes a thankful man. Thomas Watson, the Puritan, I love his writings, described the thankful man. As a godly man expresses thankfulness in every duty, he does so in every condition.
He'll be thankful in adversity as well as prosperity. In everything, give thanks. A gracious soul, and that was a term Puritans used to say, a man who's characterized by saving grace, a gracious soul is thankful and rejoices that he's drawn nearer to God, though it be by the cords of affliction.
When it goes well with him, he praises God's mercy. When it goes badly with him, he magnifies God's justice. When God has a rod in his hand, a godly man will have a psalm in his mouth. That's classic Thomas Watson.
I love it.
The devil smiting of Job was like striking a musical instrument. He sounded forth praise. The Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's not natural. That's supernatural. That is a manifestation of the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
The one being sanctified becomes a praying man. He sees his dependence on the Almighty, and so he makes his request known to God. The one being sanctified becomes a man who seeks to be with God's people.
There's an attraction toward them that knits his heart with them. He enjoys and delights in the word of God being preached and discussed. And then the one being sanctified is a man who desires the glory of God.
An unsanctified man only acts holy before others to be seen of others. But the sanctified man shrinks from being seen by men. He desires that God might increase, even if it means his own decrease. His Christianity is not one of outward show, so as to puff himself up in the eyes of others.
He's content to do his good deeds in secret, and see the recipient blessing of God upon his life. And again, this isn't natural. This is a work of sovereign grace. Well, fourthly, the sanctification of the Spirit is evidence in the desires and attitudes of the believer toward Jesus Christ.
Things change when a person is being sanctified. He sees a sufficiency in the Lord Jesus for every spiritual need, and he sees he's got many spiritual needs. But Jesus meets them all. He looks to Jesus for pardon and cleansing for sin.
He looks to Jesus for comfort in his sorrow, strength in his difficulty, for encouragement in his distress. He looks to Jesus to guide him, to instruct him. He looks to Jesus as his prophet. He looks to Jesus to cleanse him from his guilt and pollution, so he looks to Jesus as his priest.
He submits and subjects himself to Jesus as his Lord, and orders his life according to his will, and so he sees Jesus as his King. The person becoming sanctified sees in Jesus all the perfections of grace that he desires for himself, and so he desires and seeks conformity to him in thought, attitude, and action.
And then the sanctification of the Spirit is evidenced in the desires and attitudes of the believer toward the things of the Holy Spirit. Now a word of clarification needs to be made here. It's not because he desires and longs for the Holy Spirit, because when the Holy Spirit is really at work in a person, the Holy Spirit directs the person to Jesus.
And so Jesus Christ is enhanced in his thinking and his value. But they desire to walk after the Spirit, that is, to walk in the way of holiness. They look to the power of the Holy Spirit to enable them to do things commanded of them.
They can't do it apart from his power. And they walk daily as they are directed and taught by the Holy Spirit through the Holy.
Scriptures.
Six, the sanctification of the Spirit is evidenced in the attitudes and opinions of the believer toward sin. Because he sees the Bible as God's word, he approves of what the Bible says about sin and its penalty.
He agrees with the word of God and how it defines sin. The unsanctified man cannot be subject to the law of God. It's impossible, the scriptures declare. But the sanctified man cannot be otherwise but submitted to the law of God, because God has written his law upon his heart.
The sanctified person sees God's laws holy, just, and good. Secondly, the one being sanctified hates sin. He's grieved deeply by it. The world cannot know how the believer being sanctified by the Spirit feels toward the things that the world wants him to approve of and accept and even celebrate.
The world changes, of course. The culture changes its values. In fact, most of the people today espouse certain things that they regard as right that they would have all repudiated 25 years ago. Is that not right?
Well, Christians haven't changed, to speak of. Oh yeah, we probably are affected by degrees, we're probably not even aware to what degree. But they cannot understand how sin is a revulsion to us and grieves us, because it grieves God.
It concerns us. And so they see our disapproval of sin as arrogance, bigotry, ignorance, and that we are the real cause of the problem in the world. They claim we're moved by blind fear and hatred. No, but rather, by the Holy Spirit, we've been made subject to the law of God.
If we had our way, we would conform our thinking, our attitudes, and our action to God's Word, the law of God. God has put that within our soul. The one being sanctified is concerned about his tongue, what he says.
Now, none of us are perfectly right in this matter of the tongue, but when we think about it, we have remorse, don't we? I shouldn't have said that. And so when the sanctified man speaks with his tongue in a way that's not right, he's spitting in his conscience.
The one being sanctified is concerned about his relationship with his brothers and sisters. His own peace is disturbed when he senses that he was the cause of others' peace being disturbed. The sanctified man will seek to break off his old sins and the places and the people that would lead him into old sins.
He strives against sin. The sanctified man loathes his weakness and failings. He longs to be free from the power of sin in his life. If he had his wish, he would never sin again, and he looks forward to the day when Christ returns, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit will be perfected in him.
And so all of these things we described, they cannot be generated by an unsanctified heart. They're all a product of the grace of God operating in a person. Lastly, why is this matter of sanctification critically important?
Because there is no salvation apart from it. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Here is a paragraph by Thomas Brooks, and we'll close with this. Heaven is only for the holy man. And the holy man is only for heaven.
Heaven is a garment of glory that is only suited to him that is holy. God, who is truth itself and cannot lie, has said it, that without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. Mark that word, no man. Hebrews 12, 14.
Without holiness, the rich man shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the poor man shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the noble man shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the common man shall not see the Lord.
Without holiness, the prince shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the peasant shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the ruler shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the ruled shall not see the Lord.
Without holiness, the learned man shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the ignorant man shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the husband shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the wife shall not see the Lord.
Without holiness, the father shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the child shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the master shall not see the Lord. Without holiness, the servant shall not see the Lord.
For faithful and strong is the Lord of hosts that has spoken it.". Well, that about covers it, doesn't it? Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. This work of sanctification is true in the case of every true Christian.
None of us are sanctified to the degree that we should be and could be, but that's why we need to follow the, you know, injunction of Scripture that we have here, that we abound more and more in this matter.
Is that not right? May the Lord help us to do so. May he give us grace, and may we humble ourselves before the Lord and seek his sanctifying grace. Because, again, this is really the only way you can really prove to yourself that you are a true Christian infallibly.
John wrote in 1 John 3, 7 or verse 10, I always forget which verse that is. He said, don't be deceived in this matter. Does righteousness, that's being sanctified, is righteous, that is justified. How do you know if you're justified before God, forgiven of sin, righteous in the sight of God?
How do you know for sure? Don't be deceived in this. He who practices righteousness is the one who is righteous. Sanctification is essential. It can only be done by a work of God, but recognizing your need for that work of grace is the first step, isn't it?
It causes us to be humble and ask the Lord to help us. And we use the means of grace that he has appointed, the Word of God. We read it. We delight in it. We reflect upon it. We talk about it. We hear it taught to us and proclaimed to us.
Prayer as we seek the Lord. Seek the Lord Jesus. Do, may Lord, a work of grace of sanctification. It has to be done. And I know I'm not where I should be. Forgive me of my sin and enable me by your grace to become the kind of man you have determined me to be in Jesus Christ.
May the Lord help each of us to have that kind of attitude, that kind of desire. May the Lord create that in us and sustain that in us. Lest we do as those two in pilgrim's progress go through that land of, you know, what is it called?
Enchantment? Yeah. And we grow drowsy and sleepy and leave off our Christian duty. God have mercy and may he help us. Thank you, Father, for your Word. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us to heed the words of the Lord Jesus spoken to the Apostle Paul, that we would abound more and more in this matter of our sanctification.
And so we humble ourselves before you, our God, and we ask for your mercy toward us and your grace to be manifest to us. And we pray, Lord, if there's anyone here that knows nothing of this work of sanctifying grace, we pray that you give them a desire, our Lord, for this grace.
Be merciful and gracious to that one. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.