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Adult Sunday School Class
In the last several weeks, we've been studying the subject of holiness, and we know from the scriptures that it is our calling to be holy. We saw last week in 1 Peter 1 that God calls us to be holy because he is holy.
He says, be ye holy even as I am holy. And we also have seen in 1 Thessalonians 4 -7 that God's will, the will of God for you, is your sanctification. So there's no question, but as believers in Christ, followers of Christ, we are called to holiness.
But the Christian life, a Christian life of holiness, is something that needs to be cultivated. Like a garden needs to be cultivated. You can't just throw seeds in a garden and dirt in a garden and not have something done to the ground to prepare the soil to keep weeds out and all the rest of that stuff.
You've got to cultivate that garden for it to grow well. And likewise, when it comes to the growth of holiness, the growth of our Christian life, there is some cultivation that needs to take place. In other words, to be called to holiness is to be called to cultivate spirit-worked holiness by diligently using the means that God has graciously provided.
When we think about this call to holiness, I want us to first of all understand what holiness means. I want to remind us what holiness means. Holiness is like two terminals on a car battery. You've got a positive and a negative, right?
And you need both of those things. You've got to have the starter cables, the cables connected to both of those terminals. You take off one or the other, you're running down the road and all of a sudden one of them comes off, the car is going to stop sooner or later.
So we need both of these negative and the positive. Negatively speaking, holiness means to be separated from sin, to be separated from sin. And I think usually when we think of holiness, that's what we think about.
We think about what we have to stay away from, what we have to avoid. There have been some Christian groups that have majored on all the things you need to avoid to be holy. But there's the positive side too, and the positive side of holiness means to be consecrated or dedicated to God and conformed to Christ.
Both of those things, be conformed to Christ. So that positive and the negative, separated from sin, consecrated to God, and conformed to Christ, when you put those two things together, you put the two poles of the battery together, you get the scope of holiness, and we can summarize that, that's the scope of holiness.
Separation from sin, consecration to God, conformity to Christ makes holiness comprehensive, all-inclusive. So, in the first place here on your handout, I believe, you have this scope of holiness. Personal holiness requires wholeness, W-H-O-L-E, wholeness.
In other words, it's a call for the involvement of our entire heart, and let's go back to our last Sunday School series, right? So God will accept me more, so I'll gain more of God's acceptance. It's like the child who feels like, thinks that he's got to perform a certain way in order to gain the love and affection of a parent, and he or she will do what she does in order to get the approval and the pat on the back from mom and dad, and not understand, the child doesn't understand that you're accepted as my child no matter what.
You say, you're my child. This is God's attitude toward us. 1 Corinthians 1 .30 tells us, among other things, that Christ is our sanctification. Christ is our sanctification, so our acceptance with God is a settled thing, and it's settled in Christ Jesus.
However, that does not negate, that acceptance with God that is settled, does not negate the requirement to pursue and cultivate a sanctified condition. We have a sanctified status. Our sanctified status is that we are set apart in Christ Jesus.
We are sanctified in Christ Jesus. That's our status. But for example, Hebrews 12 .14 tells us to pursue peace with all people and holiness. Pursue holiness without which no one will see God. And what the writer of Hebrews is talking about is the pursuit of a sanctified condition, a sanctified condition, a condition of our life, how we're living, what our life is like.
All right, so this call to holiness is a call for all of us. What then must be cultivated? What must be cultivated? 1 Peter 1 .16, again, we looked at that last week just as a reminder. God says, be holy, what?
What's the rest of it? As I am holy. You be holy, God says, as I am holy. So one of the areas that needs to be cultivated is an imitation of the character of the Father. We need to imitate, we need to cultivate in our Christian life an imitation of the character of our heavenly Father.
So we imitate His righteousness. We imitate His integrity. We seek to think God's thoughts after Him. So just as an example, you think about all that's happened in this past week, and it has been a horrible week to deal with what's going on in our world and with our country and with our nation's leaders.
It's been incredibly difficult to process all of this. But here's our challenge. You watch the news, you listen to the reports that come across on the news, and you hear what the talking heads say about it.
But your challenge and my challenge as Christians is to ask ourselves, what does God think about.
All of this?
What are God's thoughts about all of this? So Thursday night, or Wednesday night, I mean, when we saw the Corrie ten Boom thing, Dan mentioned this this morning in our prayer meeting back there, he was reminded, and we reminded us of the quote of Corrie ten Boom when she says, God does not have problems.
He doesn't deal in problems, He has plans. So that's a way of thinking God's thoughts. He has plans. So all this stuff, there's a plan. Now you and I don't know what that is, but here's what we do know, that though God does not deal with problems, God doesn't have any problems, He has plans.
He nevertheless, in His plans, uses problems, right? He uses problems, problems in this world. So think about these things that are going on in our world and in our lives through the grid of God's thoughts.
What are God's thoughts about these things? So that's one way of imitating the character of the Father. A second thing that has to be cultivated is conformity to the image of Christ, conformity to the image of Christ.
I think you're probably familiar with Philippians 2, Philippians 2 verses 5 through 8, Paul is dealing with some people who are selfish and a little bit conceited and so forth. And he says to them, look out not only for your own interests but also for the interests of others.
And then he goes on to talk about imitating or being conformed to the image of Christ. He says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. What mind? The mind that said, even though I am in the form of God, I'm not considering it robbery or a thing to be held onto to be equal with God, but Christ says, I will make myself of no reputation, I will take on the form of a bondservant, I will come into this world in the likeness of men, and being found in the fashion of men, I will humble myself and become obedient to the point of death, even across death.
Let this mind be in you. So this is Christ. And the challenge in cultivating holiness is to conform to that image, not one of pride and selfish ambition and conceit, but one of humility and submission and so forth.
And third thing that needs to be cultivated, Romans 8, Romans 8 verses 5 and 6, is submission to the mind of the Holy Spirit. So Romans 8 verses 5 and 6 says, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. So we live according to the Spirit, we're not only going to mind the things of the Spirit, we submit ourselves to the things of the Holy Spirit.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring our minds in submission to His mind. Let me show you this. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 Corinthians 2, and look at verses 9 through 12. There's a limitation to our natural ability to perceive things, to understand and comprehend.
Verse 9 brings that out. Verse 9 says, eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. So even though you come to faith in Jesus Christ and you love Christ for what He's done for you, and all He's done for you, and you love God who has so marvelously loved you, you love Him because He first loved you.
Even though that is true, even though you love Christ, even though you love the Father, the eye doesn't see and the ear doesn't hear, it doesn't enter into your heart all that God has prepared for you.
So how do you discover those things? Verse 10, God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?
Even so, no one knows the things of God except the spirit of God. And we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
So the spirit of God has been given to us to bring our mind into submission to His mind, to give us the understanding and the comprehension of all that God has provided for us in Christ Jesus. So we need to cultivate imitation of the character of the Father, conformity to the image of the Son, and submission to the mind of the Holy Spirit.
Okay, this is what we need to do. That brings up the good question, doesn't it? How do we do this? How do we cultivate it? It's like I tell you, okay, you need to cultivate your garden if you're going to have a good bumper crop in your garden.
Well, okay, wonderful. How do I do it? Well, you need the right kind of tools, right? You're going to cultivate a garden, you need the right kind of tools. And likewise, if we're going to cultivate holiness, we need the right tools.
And I want to give you seven of them here. Number one, tool number one, know and love the Scriptures. Know and love the Scriptures, the Bible. Make no mistake about it, the Bible is God's primary road to holiness and spiritual growth.
There are folks who, you know, God has graciously brought them to Christ, they've come to know Christ, and they have a measure of appreciation for the Word, you know, they're faithful in church and all the rest of that stuff.
But they don't really, they've never really developed an appetite, a love for the Scriptures. And so, you know, other than, you know, what they get on Sundays, that's about it, you know? That's about it.
And, you know, you will certainly grow. You will certainly, any interaction with the Scriptures, you will grow. But it is the love of the Scriptures which fosters a knowing of the Scriptures that really produces the fruit of holiness in a person's life.
So let me give you, this is under number one here, of knowing and loving the Scriptures. Let me give you five R's related to knowing and loving the Scriptures. This is free, okay? I don't think I have this on your notes, but five R's.
Number one, R number one, read it, read it. Number two, receive it, receive it. What's the difference between reading and receiving? By receiving, I mean be teachable, be teachable. Again, you know, you can come to Sunday school, you can come to the Bible study time, you can come to the service, you can open up your Bible and read your Bible on a daily Bible reading schedule every day to check off, you know, I got it read, I got it read, I got it read.
But receiving it means I want to be taught, teach me. I sit myself under the authority of the Scriptures and under what the Bible has to say that I might change, you see, be teachable, receive it. R number three, reflect on it, reflect on it.
Here I'm thinking about the idea of meditation. Number four, rehearse it. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And the idea, of course, you know, Scripture memory, bringing back to mind the Scriptures, the truths of Scripture, rehearsing them over and over again in your mind.
And then number five, relish it, relish it. This has to do with the affections, it has to do with the loving of the Scriptures. Just relish in the Word. So tool number one, know and love the Scriptures.
Tool number two, allow the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper to be a means of grace to strengthen your faith in Christ. Neither baptism nor the Lord's Supper is a means of grace in the sense that you can, God uses those things to save your soul, not at all.
But they are a means of grace or can be a means of grace in the sense that both are intended by God to point us away from ourselves and point us to Christ. Both do that, right? Think about baptism. What does baptism symbolize?
That I go under the water, I have died to the old self. How did I die? I am crucified with Christ. I am under the water, I am buried with Christ. I'm brought up out of the water. I have been raised with Christ to a new life.
You see, the whole focus is on Christ, the whole focus is on Christ. So every time you reflect upon your own baptism and every time you see a baptism, let this be a means of grace to point you to Christ in what Christ has done for you and what it means to be in Christ Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection.
And same with the Lord's Supper, we'll have the Lord's Supper next Sunday morning and when we partake of those elements, what are we doing? You do show the Lord's death till I come, Jesus says. Do this in remembrance of me.
They turn us away from ourselves and they point us to Christ. And if we are conscious of what we're doing when we're partaking of those elements, we're paying attention and we're reflecting on the work of Christ, it will be a means of grace.
It will help to cultivate holiness. Tool number three, Romans chapter six, regard yourself as dead to the dominion of sin and as alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6, 11 says, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
And what this is talking about is the fact that as a believer in Christ, sin no more has dominion over you, it does not reign over you. Before you came to Christ, you had no choice but to sin, you had no choice but to follow the dictates of your sin, your sinful ambitions, your sinful nature, your sinful idols and all the rest of that stuff.
So when you come to faith in Christ, you are dead to sin, you are dead to its dominion, you are dead to its reign. So Barrett puts it this way, he says, although sin no longer reigns over us as believers, we still have an active duty to fight against it, to fight against sin.
Charles Bridges, who wrote an excellent book on the subject of holiness, he said, quote, it is disastrous to confuse the potential for resisting sin, which God provides, with the responsibility for resisting sin.
That is ours. The responsibility for resisting is ours. So let me suggest a couple of things here concerning the matter of regarding yourself dead to sin's dominion and alive to God. We need to cultivate a hatred for sin, I mean to hate it, not to mollycoddle it, not to just be indifferent to it, and it is an increasing challenge, isn't it, in this world?
As the degeneration continues, I mean, it is often the case that the degeneration of a culture, of a society, it can be gradual and you can go through cycles of speed, of rapidity in its downward spiral, its downward trend, and there is a tendency to just stay a few steps behind in what we tolerate, in what we overlook, what we accept, but what we really want to do is we want to cultivate a hatred for sin, and don't confuse that with a hatred for the sinner, no, a hatred for sin hates sin because of what it does to the sinner, you see.
So I think, for example, of this whole, currently, this whole transgenderism stuff, and I read the other day about a mother, and I could just feel the heartbreak of this mom who had absolutely no idea that her 13-year-old daughter had decided she wanted to identify as, she didn't want to identify as a boy, she wanted to identify, what's the term, pansexual or something like that, so the mom had no idea, but the daughter had gone to school, gone to school, whoever at school, at a public school, and said she wanted to have her, she wanted to have her gender changed to non-binary, that's what it is, non-binary, she wanted to have her gender changed to non-binary, and she wanted to be referred to as they or them, a 13-year-old kid, and the mom had no idea this was going on at the school until, I can't remember exactly how it came out, but the mom finally found out that this was going on at the school, the school never even talked to her, notified her, never brought her into the equation or anything, and she found out the daughter would have been able to get all kinds of treatments and so forth to go down that path, and it would be so easy to look at this child with a sense of animosity, like, what in the world is the matter with you?
Are you sick? But think about the heartache, think about the heartbreak that this sin of our society, of our culture, has brought upon this little girl who has been caught in a trap devised by the sinful culture and sinful people behind this whole agenda, and what it's done to her, what it's done to her family, what it's done to her relationship with her mother and so forth, and fortunately the story went on to say that when the mom got a hold of it, she went on the offensive, and she, this was in Florida, and Florida just recently passed a parent's rights bill that prohibits the school from going along with that kind of stuff at the behest of a child without notifying the parents and bringing them into the picture, so it was a good thing, and she was able to arrest this thing and get her daughter back on track, but a hatred of sin doesn't mean you hate the sinner, it means you hate what sin does to the sinner, and that can include yourself, and it should.
I hate the sin because of what it does to me. Another thing to do regarding being dead to sin's dominion is to look for your heart idols. What are the idols of your heart, those things that you are inclined to gravitate to, to lift up, and to take you away from Christ?
Look for your heart idols, and then another idea here is to strive for daily repentance before God. Never, never, never get to the point where you think you get to the end of the day, and before you lay your head on the pillow at night, never get to the point where you think, I don't need to say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, because you do, and so do I, and if we can cultivate that, if we can strive for that kind of daily repentance at the end of the day to realize, regardless of whatever victories I might have had today, I am at the end of the day an unprofitable servant.
I haven't done all things well. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Tool number four in your toolbox for cultivating holiness, pray and work in dependence upon God for holiness. Pray and work in dependence upon God for holiness.
David in Psalm 51, that penitential psalm, you remember, after Bathsheba and Uriah stuff, in verse 10 he said, he prayed to the Lord, create in me a clean heart, O God. There's the prayer aspect, right?
There's the prayer aspect. Holiness and prayer are inseparable. They're inseparable. I'll not really make much progress in the cultivating of true holiness without also cultivating some growth in my prayer life.
And by the way, in Barrett's development of that idea, he made this statement, and I want to share it with you because I think it's something we need to be aware of and be encouraged by. He said, the most prayerful often feel themselves to be prayerless.
Let me give you an example of this. Do you find yourself in the course of a day frequently just breathing out a prayer? I mean, you may not even be conscious of it all the time, but like, oh God, help me with this.
Lord, I need you. Lord, deliver me from temptation, whatever. It's just like in the course of the day, you're struggling, you're working on a work project, for example, and you're just struggling with it.
Lord, help me to get this done. Help me to figure this out. That's a prayer. That's a life of prayerfulness. That's praying without ceasing, you know? But we tend to think of, you know, if I have a prayer life, that means I've got this amount of time blocked out after I read the Bible for a while.
I have this block of time where I just pray. And that's good. It's valuable. But don't confine yourself. Don't put yourself in the box thinking that I've got to have that as expansive as possible in order to be prayerful.
And when we don't have a huge block of time set aside to pray, even though we may, even unconsciously throughout the course of a day, be shooting up prayers to the Lord, we're more prayerful than we think we are.
So Barrett made the point that, he says, the most prayerful often feel themselves to be prayerless. And he goes on to say, the most holy often regard themselves as unholy. And I've mentioned that because, again, I think we need to realize that the more we grow in holiness, the more we realize we need to grow in holiness.
The more we realize how unholy we are. And yet that's part of growing in holiness. So holiness and prayer are inseparable, but holiness and work are inseparable as well. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, 7, exercise yourself unto godliness.
He uses that gymnasium terminology, exercise yourself unto godliness. And Jonathan Edwards, a great American theologian in the colonial era, when he was a young man, 17, I think it was, years old, he wrote a series of 100, I think it was 100, resolutions.
Here is one of them. He said, resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be. Never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.
But that brings up an interesting point, the point of failing, however unsuccessful I may be. Look, fighting, fighting against sin and the lack of success are not contradictory. They're not contradictory.
Failing is not the same as being a failure. Barrett makes this point. He says, the godly man will persevere through his failures. Failure does not make him quit. It makes him repent of them more earnestly and press on in the spirit's strength.
So don't be discouraged by failing. It doesn't make you a failure. If in failing you are then repentant, it's accomplishing a good work. We won't go on with this. We'll finish up the last few tools next Lord's Day.
But yeah, we're called to cultivate holiness. So let's make the following prayer our prayer as we close today. Oh Lord, grant that we might cultivate holiness today, not out of merit, but out of gratitude.
And may we cultivate that holiness by your grace through faith in Christ Jesus. Sanctify us, oh Lord, by the blood of Christ, the spirit of Christ, and the word of God. Our Father, who art in heaven, make us as holy as pardoned sinners can be.
In this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, very good. We've got about a dozen minutes before the morning service.
