Keep sharing good news without ads.
Adult Sunday School Class
All right, so last week we finished a series on the heart. We were studying the different aspects of the heart. And this morning, the series we're gonna get into today, beginning today, in a way, really kind of, the whole series on the heart segues into this because we're gonna begin a, I don't know how long it'll take, a series on the subject of holiness.
Now, right away, that might just, oh, well, oh boy, here we go. But really, this is a very important subject because we're told to keep our heart with all diligence. And the idea of holiness really has to do with that keeping of the heart.
It's an outflowing of the keeping of the heart. And so we're going to focus on that. The basis of this study is a book that's recently come out entitled A Radical and Comprehensive Call to Holiness. It's by two really good authors.
One of them, Michael Barrett, was one of my professors in university and in seminary and appreciated much his influence in my own life. And the other author is Joel Beeky. And both of these guys, very, very well read and very good and thorough in their study.
So this is gonna be a good series. And I hope you'll learn much from it. So several years ago, I was an assistant pastor of a church and I had the responsibility in that role of being in charge of that church's bus ministry.
And they didn't have like a huge bus ministry, but there were a few buses that went out. And one of my jobs was to go out with different people that worked on the bus routes once a week and just do some like prospect calling to encourage children to ride on the bus.
So I went up to this one house and it was like a duplex kind of house, knocked on the door. And this woman came to the door, she was probably maybe 30 and looked pretty rough, like she'd had a rough life thus far and could see evidence in the yard of children being there.
So I knocked on the door, she answered the door and said, you know, we're from Community Baptist Church and we have a bus that goes through that area and would like to know if her children would like to ride the bus.
And she said, oh, you know, I rode on a bus when I was a child. And yeah, and so I got to talking with her a little further and she claimed that when she was riding on that bus as a child, that she got saved.
And that's the way she put it. She said, I got saved. And I said, oh, okay, well, what's your life been like since then? Did you become a part of that church?
No.
You know, I stopped going after a while and then she told me more of her story that, you know, she got into some drugs and all that kind of thing and had three or four children, I don't remember offhand, each from a different father and wasn't now married, wasn't, you know, she had a different guy now and so on and so forth.
And she had not been to church, had no real interest in going to church and didn't really have much interest in changing her life, hadn't been to church since she got saved many, many years earlier. Now, I tell you that story because of the way Beakey and Barrett opened their book, introduced their book, and they make this statement, quote, grace never leaves a man where it finds him.
Grace always transforms the sinner into a saint, a holy person. Grace never leaves a man where it finds him. It transforms the sinner into a saint. Not overnight, to be sure, and not in this life totally accomplished, but nevertheless, in that first part of the statement is what we're going to focus on.
Grace never leaves a man where it finds him. The basic premise of the series that we're getting into is that it is God's will for his people to be holy. Let's look at a couple of passages that bring that out.
One of them is in Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians two, this is not an unfamiliar passage to you, I'm sure, but in Ephesians two, eight and nine, Paul talks about that grace of salvation. He says, by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. But then look at verse 10, all right? So this grace of God saves you and he gives you that gift of faith that you might be saved, you might be redeemed, but then verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We are his workmanship. Grace doesn't leave a man where it finds him. Grace always transforms the sinner into a saint, the saved person God has so ordained that he is to be his workmanship. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
Now another passage that brings us out, again familiar to us, is in Romans chapter eight. Romans eight, verses, you're familiar with Romans 828. We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.
They've been the recipients of his grace. But then there's this chain, call it the golden chain of salvation. It says, for whom he did foreknow, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he predestined, these he called. Whom he called, he justified. Whom he justified, he also glorified. So there's a process that ends in this glorification. And verse 29 talks about the process that leads to and results in the ultimate glorification.
And that is, whom he foreknow, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. It is God's will for his people to be holy, to be conformed into the image of Christ. So, both of these passages, Romans 8, 28, 29, 30, and Ephesians 2, speak of God's electing grace.
And God, in his electing grace, his objective, his objective in this is to make us like his son, Jesus Christ. Now here's the thing, it takes us back to that story of the woman who got saved when she was riding a bus 15 years earlier.
The genuine believer in Christ wants that Christ-like holiness. Regardless of how far short he or she falls of it, of that holiness, he wants it. He wants God to do that work of grace, of ongoing grace in his life.
He wants to be holy. Even if he doesn't know how to articulate it, and even if he doesn't do a very good job pursuing it, there is, in the truly regenerated individual, a desire for that objective that God has in saving a soul to be accomplished.
Now there's a challenge in this whole subject of holiness, in the pursuit of it. And the challenge is that it doesn't come either passively or easily. Now what do I mean by that? By saying that holiness doesn't come passively, I mean that this isn't something where you just say, I'm going to let go and let God.
Let go and let God. As if I have nothing to do with the matter of holiness, development of holiness in my life, and God's gonna do it all. Like he's just going to do some kind of magical zapping. So it's not passive, and it's not, the pursuit of holiness is not easy.
It is not going to be free from struggle. Here are some of the quotes that I thought might be helpful for us to understand that. And you get this. You who are Christ, you understand this. You can relate to this.
This resonates with you. The external enticements to sin so effectively appeal to the inner voice and inner impulses of our own carnal desires. You have indwelling sin. You who are redeemed, you have indwelling sin.
And there is within you these internal sinful desires. And there is a very effective connecting point, a synapse almost, if you will, between the external enticements to sin and those internal impulses that are generated by our own carnal desires.
That makes the pursuit of holiness a challenge. Here's another one. Every victory that we win over sin seems only to increase the intensity of the next battle. Anybody say amen to that? Every victory over sin seems only to increase the intensity of the next battle.
And then thirdly, just illustrating the struggle that is involved in the challenge of holiness. Every defeat, every defeat weighs so heavily on our conscience as we wonder if God will forgive us again.
Ever been there? You know, I think probably every one of us, well, we do. We have besetting sins. Every one of us have, unique to us, not that nobody else has the same area of temptation or struggle, but you have this particular area of struggle and you deal with it, you do battle with it, and you know, you sin, you're tempted and you sin.
You're convicted of it, you go to the Lord in repentance and faith, and you turn from it and you say, you know, I do not want to do this again. By God's grace, I will not do it again. And you claim 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
And by faith, you accept that and you are forgiven, you believe it, you receive it. 24 hours later, boom, you've fallen right back into that same sin. And you're like, what happened? 24 hours ago, I did not want to, I was not going to, I prayed, I begged God not, and all the rest of this stuff, and here I am, here I go again, here I go again.
Can God forgive me? You've experienced that. So that struggle begs a couple of questions. One of them is, how can I achieve victory over sin and successfully live the Christian life? How can I do this?
And the second question is, is it even possible? Is victory even possible? And that struggle then leads to some other, potentially leads to some other problems. One of them is, I can give up. I can just give up.
I can conclude that I can't be holy because I can't quit sinning, and I give up. And you know what? I think that that decision or conclusion can affect our relationships. So, well, I could go on with that, but I don't want too much to cover.
You can give up. Second problem that can come from this is that you're on a constant quest looking for some kind of new idea, some kind of new fad. Maybe there's another fad book that has been written about how you can live the perfect life, and so you chase after that, some book with a guaranteed formula for success in living the victorious Christian life.
A third problem is that you can substitute virtuous character for genuine holiness. Give me an example of what I'm getting at here. I, so the years of ministry that I, the years I've been in ministry, all but our years here in Sterling, I have been directly connected to a Christian school.
And in each of these Christian schools, I think in all of them, the school in different grades and so forth, they had a Christian character award. Some of you might remember this if you've had experience with Christian schools.
The Christian character award. And what's really interesting to me is how many times I've seen, witnessed through the years, the child, the student, that achieves the Christian character award. I mean, all the teachers, the teachers vote on this, and the administration votes on this.
Who is to get the Christian character award? And the person who gets it gains the, has gotten the most number of votes. And so they look at all the kids in school, and they look at the, evaluate the character of the kids in the school and so forth, and they come to a decision.
And it's amazing to me how many times the student that received the Christian character award ends up being a spiritual zero after they graduate and they move on. They become a rebel. They leave the church.
They don't really have anything to do with the church or they don't live much of a Christian life, if any, after that. What in the world happened? Well, there was a substitution of Christian character for genuine holiness.
And the problem, of course, is that we can equate the two. We can assume that because somebody is honest and they're polite and they're kind and they're diligent and they're hardworking and they're truthful and all that, that they are therefore holy.
Really, they may just have good character and they're not the same. A fourth problem that can come from this is that you can look at some Bible character and strive to be like that Bible character or some Christian hero in the contemporary church.
You might look at some pastor or teacher and conclude that that person is holy, that person is godly. I need to be like him or I need to be like her. And I wonder, well, I do know of a lot of people in the last year that were just spiritually devastated when they heard about the scandal of Rabbi Zacharias.
It just blew them away. Thought, well, here's this godly Christian apologist who certainly was a role model of holiness and looked up to him as such. And then to find out the other life that he was living behind in secret, it just devastated many individuals.
And then another problem is that your Christian life can degenerate into the drudgery of doing this and not doing that. It's just like keeping a bunch of rules that I have to do this, I can't do that, and that's the Christian life, that's the life of holiness.
That's not genuine holiness. But Barrett and Beeky point this out. Successful Christian living and victory over sin are possible if we stick to the path that God has laid down for us in his word. And they make this point, and this is the point we're going to develop, that the key to happy holiness, not the drudgery of do this, don't do that, but the key to happy holiness is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That's the key to happy holiness. And this brings up the doctrine that is connected with the whole subject of holiness, the biblical doctrine of holiness, which is sanctification, sanctification. Now, 1 Thessalonians 4, verse three says this, this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus, even your sanctification.
Sanctification is God's will for every one of you who name the name of Christ. It's God's will for you. And doing the will of God is your duty, right? It's your duty to do the will of God. All right, now watch.
Don't miss this. Duty must flow from doctrine. Duty must flow from doctrine. And here's the thing. Here's the point about that with the doctrine of sanctification. The more we understand the doctrines of the gospel, the more we can do our duty.
And it's not a drudgery thing. The more we understand the doctrines of the gospel, the more that we can do our duty, happily do our duty. Now, as I kind of indicated in Romans chapter eight, that passage we read in Romans eight, the gospel involves a chain of inseparable links.
You cannot isolate these links from one another. They are interconnected. There is this chain of inseparable links, and here it is. There's election, regeneration, conversion, union, justification, adoption, reconciliation, sanctification, glorification.
I know I rattled those off. If you were trying to write them down, you couldn't do it. But get this. These links are interconnected. They can't be broken apart. And it is the interconnection of these inseparable links that enables us to do our duty, understanding these doctrines or these links of the gospel is incredibly important.
Again, the links, election, regeneration, conversion, union, that is union with Christ, justification, adoption, reconciliation, sanctification, glorification. That's not important to know all, I mean, to get all that down now, but it's just to realize that sanctification isn't a separate idea or entity that is disconnected from those other links in the chain.
Successful sanctification, successful sanctification depends upon how you see sanctification coupled with the other gospel links in the chain. So sanctification is God's will for us. Secondly, sanctification is the application of the gospel in everyday life.
Here's what I mean by that, all right? The links in the chain again. You've got election, you've got regeneration, you've got conversion, justification, union, adoption, all of these things, right? The only one of those things that is applied in everyday life, that is visible or real in everyday life is sanctification.
Here's what I mean by that. Election is something that took place before the foundation of the world. The Bible tells us that. You were chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. Regeneration is something that God the Spirit does to you inside of you.
You don't even know that it's happening necessarily. It is that impartation of life. That's what regeneration is. Justification is a judicial thing. It's in the courtroom of God, if you will, you are declared righteous.
This is something that God declares. It's a declaration of righteousness, justification. Adoption, you are adopted into the family of God. Do you feel that? Do you see that? No, you don't. It's a statement of fact.
It's a statement of reality. You are adopted into the family of God. Conversion is something that happens instantaneously and you may or may not have an emotional response connected to that. There will be after effects from conversion, but those after effects of conversion enter into the subject of sanctification.
Conversion is the turning around. It's the turning around. Union with Christ. That's something that, again, it happens behind the scenes, if you will. You are baptized into Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
You become a part of the body of Christ by the baptism, by the Spirit of God baptizing you into the body of Christ. And so, but when we come to sanctification, sanctification is the application of all of those other links in the chain in everyday life, everyday life.
Now, get this. Don't miss this. Holiness is not the prerequisite for salvation. It's the evidence of it. It's the evidence of it. In other words, sanctification is the essential and certain effect of the gospel.
So go back to the girl that got saved on the bus. No evidence whatsoever of a changed life. No evidence of sanctification. No growth in holiness, righteousness, interest in spiritual things whatsoever.
Conclusion that you can draw after 13 or 14 years of her praying a prayer on a bus, she wasn't genuinely converted. She was not genuinely saved. Did she pray a prayer? Yes, but was she regenerated? Was she justified?
Was she converted? Was she joined with Christ? Was she adopted into the family of Christ? How do you know? You don't know because she prayed a prayer. You know by virtue of sanctification. The evidence of regeneration, the evidence of all those other aspects links in the chain.
It is sanctification is a certain and essential effect of the gospel. Then thirdly, sanctification is both radical and comprehensive. What do we mean by those two words? By radical, we mean that sanctification deals with the root of your being, which is what, class?
Your heart, yes. For out of the heart flow the springs of life, spring forth all of the facets of life. So holiness or sanctification deals with the root of your being. The word radical comes from a root word radix, which means root.
I wonder if that's why radish is called a radish, because it's a root fruit, you think? Anyway, so it's radical and then it's also, and that came to my mind because we have a bunch of volunteer radishes growing in our garden.
It's like they're all over the place and these little pink bulbs are showing up above the top of the ground. Anyway, radical. And then it's also comprehensive. Sanctification is comprehensive. In other words, it involves every facet of your life.
Every facet of your life. Fourthly, sanctification is essentially separation. Essentially it's separation. And there's a, we can put it this way, a negative and a positive side to this separation. Negatively, it's like two poles on a battery, right?
Positive and a negative pole, they go together. Negatively, sanctification involves being separated from sin. Positively, it involves being separated, being set apart unto God, being conformed to Jesus Christ.
So there's a negative and a positive side of sanctification. And then fifthly, sanctification is three-dimensional. It's three-dimensional. Remember, if sanctification is essentially separation, being set apart unto God, set apart from sin, there's three dimensions to this.
One is positional, positional. This has to do with justification, justification. When you are justified, when you're justified before God, you have been sanctified. That's a past tense thing. You have been sanctified.
You read that in 1 Corinthians 1, verse two, in chapter six, verse 11. You who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. It's a past tense thing. It's a done deal. Your positional sanctification, which takes place at justification, is a thing done in the past.
Look, watch. This is where you are set apart unto God. You're set apart unto God. It is where you are separated from sin judicially. Judicially, what do I mean by that? Think of a courtroom, all right?
You come into the courtroom. You are charged with a capital offense. That capital offense is sin. The wages of sin is death, right? So you're charged with this capital offense of sin, but God in his grace has quickened you.
He's regenerated you. He's opened your eyes, the eyes of faith, and you have seen Jesus as God the Son, God who became flesh, who died on a cross to take the pen, to become sin for you so that you might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and you receive Christ.
You call upon Jesus to save you. You receive Jesus as your savior, and there's conversion and all the rest of that, and at justification, here in this courtroom, you're standing before God the Judge, who's also the God who justifies, the God who died for you, see, Jesus.
You're standing before God the Judge, and the accuser says, this one is guilty of sin that demands the death penalty, and God the Son opens his hands and shows the wounds in his hands and his side, and he says, for this one's sin, I have died, and this one is justified, this one has been converted, this one has been regenerated, this one is saved, and you are, on the basis of the work of Christ, you are declared righteous, you are justified.
You are no longer subject to the penalty of sin. You are set apart from that sin, set apart from its penalty. You have been justified, and furthermore, you are declared righteous, because the righteousness of Jesus has been imputed unto you.
You stand justified before God. So this is the positional dimension of sanctification. You have been sanctified. But then there is, secondly, the practical dimension of sanctification. This is the process.
And so let's look at a couple of verses that bring out the process. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23,.
1 Thessalonians 5, 23, says,.
"'Now may the God of peace himself "'sanctify you completely, "'and may your whole spirit, soul, and body "'be preserved blameless at the coming "'of the Lord Jesus Christ. "'May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.'".
Well, wait a minute, I thought I was sanctified when I got justified, when I was justified. Yeah, positional sanctification. But there's the process of sanctification, here's the second dimension, the process of sanctification whereby God is sanctifying you.
Jesus prayed in John 17, 17, "'Sanctify them by your truth.'". Your word is truth. So Jesus is praying for the ongoing process of sanctification by the means of God's truth. And another verse that brings out this process of sanctification is Hebrews 10, verse 14, which says, "'For by one offering, "'Jesus has perfected forever.'".
Now get the connection here between positional and practical sanctification. Here's the positional, right? By one offering, Jesus has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. There's that practical aspect, the ongoing sanctification process.
So three dimensions to sanctification, positional, practical, and then perfected, perfected. This is another term for the perfected, perfected sanctification is glorification, glorification. So in 1 John 3, verse two, John talks about the future climax of sanctification, where you shall be sanctified.
He says, "'Beloved, now, right now, "'we are the children of God, "'but it has not been revealed what we shall be.'".
All right?
Do you know what you're going to look like in eternity? Do you know what you're going to look like Do you know what you're going to be like when you stand face-to-face with Christ, your Savior? What will it be?
When with rapture I behold him there in eternity. What will it be like? I don't know. I don't know. I do know that what it will be like, it's not like now. See, I am by God's grace because he has sanctified me in the past.
I know that by his grace, he is sanctifying me in the present, but I know that I am not now Christ-like. I'm growing in that Christ-likeness, but I am not like Christ. But 1 John 3, two says this, "'But we know that when he is revealed, "'we shall be like him, "'for we shall see him as he is.'".
So he's looking us out, he's putting us out into the future. He's causing our eyes to look out into the future and to anticipate this third dimension of sanctification. We call it glorification, when we shall be like him, fully, completely like him, when we see him as he is.
Notice the next verse, if you're there with me in 1 John 3, verse two. The next verse takes us back to practical sanctification. He that has this hope in him does what? Purifies himself, even as he is pure.
So that third dimension of sanctification being held out for us, lifted up for us, shown to us as the ultimate end of our Christian life and experience, glorification, being like Christ. Holding that out for us serves as a motivation for this ongoing process of sanctification.
Now, I'll just get into this third main point on your handout. In the New Testament, the idea of the subject of holiness is usually wrapped up in the word godliness. So number three here on your handout, the present ongoing process of sanctification is growing in godliness, growing in godliness.
This is the primary New Testament concept that is brought out. In other words, to live holy is to live godly, to live godly. What is godliness? What is godliness? Well, our writers in a book describe it this way, or define it this way.
It is the sum of piety, practical holiness, or true religion. Godliness is the sum of practical holiness. Let's put it that way. And then they make this statement. Godliness includes the idea of awe or fear in the presence of the majestic God, but it goes beyond that.
It goes beyond a mental awareness to stress the worship and obedience generated by that reverence. In other words, you think of Isaiah's vision in Isaiah chapter six, where he sees the awesome, majestic holiness of God, this thrice-mentioned holiness.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, right? And the prophet sees this, and he doesn't just say, wow, that's really cool. And he is therefore godly. What does he do? He falls to his knees, and he realizes just how different he is from what he sees, that majestic holiness of God.
Oh, woe is me, for I am undone, he says. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. He sees himself as unholy, but it doesn't leave him there. See, he doesn't stay there. God in his grace touches his lips and works in his life and transforms him.
Now, godliness doesn't leave one just in the place of awe at the majestic holiness of God. It begins the transformation process. It begins the growing in Christlikeness process. This is godliness. Godliness, this is godliness.
Now, I'm gonna give you just the first proposition regarding godliness there on your handout. And then we'll pick it up from here next week. But the first proposition is that godliness is focused on Jesus Christ.
It's focused on Jesus Christ. So Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. He says, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. And then what is the whole focus of this mystery of godliness?
And mystery doesn't mean, oh, can I ever discover it? Like it's something hidden. A mystery in the New Testament is the revelation of something. It's God revealing something to us that was previously unknown or unseen and could not be known apart from God's revelation.
So this mystery of godliness, what is it?
Here it is.
God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory. In other words, Jesus, Jesus is the perfect example of true piety, of true fear of God, of true holiness.
The point here is this, that godliness is not something, godliness is not the following of a bunch of rules and principles. Godliness is being like Christ. Now that doesn't mean you don't have it, you don't follow any rules, you do it so on and so forth.
But no, my focus is not on a list. My focus is on a person, you see. It's on a person. And that person is Jesus Christ. All right, we need to end here, come back to this next Lord's Day and go from here.
So our Father and our God, I pray that our eyes would be on Jesus, the author, the perfecter of our faith, for therein is true holiness. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
All right.
