Wednesday, March 1, 2023 PM

Sanctification as Growth in Christ

You know how to stretch it? We're ready to start with our devotion tonight. I'm going to continue to share with you on the subject of sanctification or growth in Christ. That's what I shared with you last time.

I want to share some more on that tonight and I've got a couple more topics on sanctification that we'll go over in coming Wednesday nights. One will be growth in the church. We grow individually and we grow communally.

We'll talk about that one night. And then we'll talk about our two natures. We're born once, we're born again. And we have two natures. We'll talk about that one night. And then testing and temptation.

God doesn't tempt anyone, right? But He will test us. He will test us. What's the difference and how does it work? And all of these topics have to do with sanctification or growth in Christ. Growth in Christ.

So, let's pray and we'll start. Father, I thank You and I praise You for Your Son, the Lord Jesus, and the salvation that we have in Your Son, the Lord Jesus. And I pray, Father, that as I share tonight, that we might come to understand Your Word.

That we might come to a deeper understanding of what You've done for us in Your Son, the.

Lord Jesus.

That You feed us and nourish us from Your Word and indeed cause us to grow. After the image of Your Son, in His name I pray, Amen. The last time I shared, I explained that sanctification was growth in Christ.

And that as a Christian, it is God's plan from the very beginning, okay, to make us after the image of His Son. That He might be the firstborn among many brethren. That's Romans 8, 29. And in 2 Peter, he reminds us that we should grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And it's important to know who this is that we're getting to know, that we're growing into. It's important to know this person. Again, it's a person-to-person encounter, face-to-face. And tonight, I want to remind you that whatever method you use to, let's see how Michael put it one night, you know, the Holy Spirit comes like the wind into a life.

And if you don't have your sails up, you might miss it, okay. And so what we're talking about here is, hey, get your sails up, okay, because He's coming. The Spirit is moving. I remember Vernon Denny Johnson shared with us one night about their work with the Palika Indians and their translation of the New Testament.

And, you know, it was almost ready, you know. And they said, you know, there's, you know, the Holy Spirit is moving amongst the tribe and moving in our work. And we're having trouble keeping up.

And I thought, wow.

But the Holy Spirit is at work within us. It's an inside job, if you will, to make us after the image of Christ. And our job is to cooperate in every way. And I think the last time I shared, I left you with two thoughts.

One, our focus must be on Christ. He is the end goal. He is the tell us, the aim, is what we are headed for. Our focus must be on Christ. And the best way to do that is to spend time with Him. Remember, the people you spend the most time with are the ones you pick up from and you build habits and a character from.

So I want to look at 1 John, if you want to turn there. 1 John.

1 John.

When you spend time with a person, we have a word for that. Or when you spend time with a few friends, it's the same word. It's what? Fellowship. Fellowship.

Yeah.

Fellowship with God and Walking in the Light

1 John, chapter 1, I'm going to start at verse 3. That which we have seen and heard, now he's speaking of his experience with Christ, okay? That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship.

With us.

Now notice, right off, he's talking about fellowship with fellow believers. Tells them of Christ for the purpose of bringing them into the fellowship, okay? And he goes on, okay? We proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.

And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Not only is our fellowship one with another, it's with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, okay? With the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Verse 5. This is the message that we have heard from him and declare unto you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. God is light. Remember, he's the one who said, let there be light, is the one who has shown in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, okay?

The light that he puts out shines into our hearts and gives us the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Again, the focus is on Christ and the focus is on a person-to-person relationship, okay?

This is the message we've heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him, now notice, how does John describe the Christian.

Life?

He says, it's fellowship with God. It's fellowship, okay? If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, now John, he doesn't pull any punches, we lie and do not practice the truth. We walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth, okay?

If we say we have fellowship while we walk in darkness, you know, we lie and do not practice the truth, we really don't have fellowship with him. But verse 7, if we walk in the light, now you see, we have been born again into a spiritual realm and this is the realm with which we live in.

This is the realm with which we experience. This is the realm which we come to obtain knowledge in and the realm in which we love, the realm in which we have desires and the realm in which we have this fellowship, okay?

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

And then verse 9, if you haven't memorized this, I encourage you, memorize 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse.

Us.

He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I tell the fellows at the Grace Rescue Mission, listen, you've been born once, you've been born again, and now you're growing and you're growing in a family.

And in a family, when there's disobedience in the family, when a child disobeys, the fellowship is broken. The fellowship is broken. Now does it mean that the child is no longer a member of the family?

Does it mean the child is no longer related to the parents? There's no way you can get unborn, okay? No way you can get unborn, okay? Every single cell, well, every cell in your body comes from your parents.

You are part of them. And when a child fails, when a child disobeys, the fellowship is broken, but the relationship is still there. Something has to be done, though, to restore the fellowship. What is it?

The child must come to the parents, okay, and ask forgiveness. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. You said it was wrong. I did it. I'm sorry. I was wrong. The child asks forgiveness, okay? What does the parent do?

One or two things, okay? One, the parent forgives. Two, there may be some additional discipline or some, well, I'll leave it at that. But you see, the forgiveness, okay, restores the fellowship, but the relationship is always.

There.

I hope you see that. And the forgiveness is possible because God is just and because our sin debt has been paid. Because God is just, you see, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, okay?

If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so this confession, okay, and forgiveness restores the fellowship, keeps the fellowship moving, okay?

Maturity, Discernment, and Constant Practice

Now, I want to look at Hebrews chapter 5, Hebrews chapter 5. As we grow, as we grow, Hebrews 5 verse 11, about this we have much to say. And it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

I'm going to put these words up here. This is dull of hearing. You have become dull of hearing. Grace covers all of this. About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, in other words, you ought to have grown in your Christian life, in your Christ likeness, to where you should be teachers by now. But you're dull of hearing.

You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God, okay? You need someone to teach you the basics again, okay? You need milk, milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled, these people are unskilled, they have no skills, unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child, he is a child.

But solid food is for the mature. These people over here are mature, they have grown some, they can eat some solid food. For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

They are trained, trained, they exercise, physical exercise is good, but spiritual exercise is good for this life and the life to come, right? They're trained, okay? And these people, okay, they need training, okay?

They need skills, and they need to graduate from milk to solid food, and you know, they should be teachers by now, but they have picked up some bad habits and have not grown in the faith very much, and they are dull of hearing, okay?

Dull of hearing. Now I want you to see something here, okay? For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Part of our spiritual growth has to do with distinguishing good from evil, and this comes from constant practice, okay?

Constant practice. It comes from imitation, okay? Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. Imitate me as I imitate Christ. First John, third John, excuse me, says, I mean imitation, it's a good word, okay?

Beloved, third John, verse 11, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God. Whoever does evil has not seen God. First we begin to imitate. You know, it's like building a habit.

It's like exercise. It's like training. I had a math teacher tell me one time, he says, listen, math is learned through the end of a pencil, okay? Through the end of a pencil, over and over and over, you know, until the pencil gets shorter and shorter, you know, and it, you know, finally got in, some of it did.

Constant practice, just like Olympic training, okay? Now, I was raised in a church, a few churches, let me put it that way, two or three. They were all Baptist. Put yourself at ease. But over and over, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, you know, as I look back, you know, over my Christian life, okay, in the church, I was reminded that I could do nothing to save myself, which is true, right?

We can do nothing to save ourselves. Hey, he is the savior, not me, not you, okay? He is the savior. He saves us, okay? And I was reminded of that week after week after week. And sometimes people would ask me, did you give up anything to become a Christian?

No, I didn't have to do anything. I mean, I was taught year after year after year that you can do nothing. Okay, that sounds good to me. So, justification, if you will, the idea of it, the thought, the concept, justification was drilled into me, I got it, okay, I'm saved.

But sanctification somehow got lost in the shuffle. It took, you know, a long time before I began to realize, God expects something of me. God expects something. He saved me for a reason, okay? And I keep reading these scriptures, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that, you know, grow, walk like this.

So, you know, I must be supposed to do something. So, that's what sanctification is all about, okay, growing in Christ, being obedient, all right, and it involves constant practice, training. Now, I never heard that growing up, you know.

Maybe you've heard of spiritual disciplines, you know, which are as old, let me put it this way, they're as old as the church, okay, spiritual disciplines. You can take some of those up and they will help you grow.

I will say this about the spiritual disciplines, take them up, if they work, great. I encourage you, build into your life habits, okay, that cause you to come closer to know Christ. Now, that will involve reading the scriptures.

Now, the last time I shared with you, I may have said something about reading the scriptures through every year. I hope I didn't discourage anybody. If you do that, keep it up, but don't ever forget, you know, the goal is not to read through the scripture in the year, the goal is as you're reading through the scripture to become like Christ, what He loves, to find out how He lived, to find out what He expects of us, okay.

In the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, a couple of fellows who are following John the Baptist start to follow after Christ. I think one of them's name was Andrew, and he turns around and he asks them a question.

Now, and this is the very first thing that Jesus says in the Gospel of John. He asked them a question. He didn't ask them what they believed. He said, what do you want?

What do you want? What do you want?

As you read through the scriptures every year, what do you want? As you come to this Wednesday evening meeting, what do you want? When you go to church on Sunday morning, you go to Sunday school, what do you want?

When you, you know, go to the church service, why are you there?

What do you want?

He wants to know what you want. Do you want what He wants? Are you sure you know what He wants? Are you sure you know what He wants? Are you learning who Christ is? And are you taking up the same habits that formed His life?

You know, He didn't accumulate a lot of stuff. He did make friends, really close friends, of a few people, about 12, okay? And He taught them all He knew, which was the Father, right? He gave them His life, His time.

Taught them the Father's ways. Taught them the Father's will so that they got to know the Father through the Son, okay? And as we grow as a Christian, okay, we are to take on the very same characteristics of Jesus, right?

That's what it means to be Christ-like, take on the same characteristics as Jesus. He was a people person, right? That's what interested Him.

People.

He wanted to share who the Father was with other people. To bring them into the kingdom, okay? To bring them into the kingdom, okay? And so, I encourage you tonight, okay, think about ways, okay, that you can grow as a Christian.

Imitate Christ. He is the example. He is the way, the truth, and the life. If you want to know the way, He's the way. If you want to know the truth, He's the truth, okay? Again, focus on Christ, alright?

And practice so that you know the difference between right and wrong, so that you know what is important and what's not important. The whole Bible is important. The whole Bible is important. But some parts are more important than others, okay?

People over here know which parts are more important than others. These people over here, they don't have a clue. Do you see what I'm saying here? This requires discernment, okay? And that's what Hebrews chapter 5 here speaks about.

For the mature, for those trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil, or what's important and what's not. What's more important and less important. And the Holy Spirit is the one that keeps us on track.

You know, as we take up these activities, and we'll get into those, okay, in later sessions. As we take up these activities, He keeps us on track. Just like the teacher in the classroom comes around and watches you as you learn how to draw or work subtraction problems, or whatever you're doing, you know, she keeps you on track.

The Holy Spirit within keeps us focused on Christ. That's His job. Make us like Christ, okay? Our job is to practice. Practice.

Train. Train.

Okay.

It's time to stop.