John 17:17-19 - A Prayer For Sanctification

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. One of the most important men in the modern era, if you want to talk about impact or things that have have been shaped or changed, the world has been changed on the influence of this man, it's probably Henry Ford.

One of the most important men in the Industrial Revolution in his early, sort of, he didn't invent the automobile, but his contribution really made it mainstream. From his earliest age, he was a boy who was fascinated with engineering and mechanics and steam engines.

And as a young man, he joined in Thomas Edison's engineering firm and worked there for a little while before he, sort of, systematized and mechanized the development of the automobile to get it out to the masses.

Now, today, if you think about everything that your life has, every way your life has changed because of the car, it is substantial. The way that you eat is entirely affected upon being able, people being able to transport your food across country in refrigerated vehicles so that we can buy it and eat it.

Like, every aspect of your life is different. Suburbs exist because of cars. Before that, it was small farms, and you'd have to raise the amount of food or barter for the amount of food to keep your family alive.

Now, with cars, you think about all of the things that have changed. Our consumption habits, our hobbies, our health care availability, we are blessed.

Probably,.

Number one place to live in the world for health care, even though health care has got a bad name recently, a good place to live for health care is in the Boston area. We're blessed. We can travel there.

We don't have to saddle up the horses to go down to Boston with our sick. We can do that in ambulances and planes and everything else. Even the way that we interact with the church has been, in fact, has been impacted by Henry Ford.

You think about it. 150 years ago, almost no one in this congregation would call this church their home. Almost no one. I live very close, comparatively speaking, to many people in this room, and I'm 17 minutes away.

150, and that's in a car. 150 years ago, I'm not saddling up the horses and going from Central Hill, Lowell, down to Chelmsford. I'm probably finding a church in my neighborhood, and you think about how the advancement of technology has helped us in that way, because in Massachusetts, there's not a lot of faithful churches to choose from, and if you are beholden to the church in your neighborhood, well, maybe you get the green-haired lady Episcopal preacher down the street, or maybe you're in the Roman Catholic Church, and that's the only church that you and your family can reasonably get to on a Sunday morning.

Praise God for the advances of technology. They come with extreme downsides at times, but yet they also come with some blessings. So we're thankful that you're here and that you drove here. If you walked here, well, praise the Lord for you.

My only point in sharing that is that one man and his big idea can change the world. That everyone after him now is living differently because of his idea, because of this powerful concept that was brought to the market.

Well, Henry Ford actually is small potatoes when you think about the biblical men who changed the world. There's two that come to thought right away, Adam being the first. Now, there's one man who changed the world.

It was definitely Adam. From living in a perfect garden paradise with a beautiful bride, the prospect of having children and generations and subduing the earth, and then for it all to come sort of crashing down in Adam's sin so that Paul would say that death and rebellion and sin have been transmitted to us through Adam.

If there's one man who changed the world, especially for the worst, it was Adam. And yet, that's not the only man in Scripture. There is the second Adam, the true and better Adam, Jesus, who is in the process of changing the world one salvation, one redemption, and sanctification at a time.

Today, we're going to learn about how Christ is changing the world and how Christ, when it's all said and done, will have preeminence and all glory and the world will be utterly different because of him.

So if you will, I want you to turn with me to John 17, to the great high priestly prayer of Jesus that we've been walking through. We're in verses 17 through 19 today. We're going to look at just three verses and we're going to be talking about sanctification.

How is it that Christ finished work on the cross sets men and women apart and ends up changing them? How is it that Christ's life is going to end up changing the world? And it's going to be through sanctification.

So if you will, read with me in John 17, verse 17 through 19. Jesus praying here. He says, Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have also sent them into the world.

For their sakes I sanctify myself that they themselves also may be sanctified in the truth. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, so much in this passage, so many promises, so many things that we can cling to and we can see.

Lord, I pray that that we would understand this morning just very simply what sanctification is. What it means that you have sanctified us. What it means that you have by your own authority, power, and will have sanctified yourself and sanctified us and how that is good news.

Lord, help us as your people to see these things, to understand them, and Lord help us as your people to grow more in love with you, more faithful. Lord, help our hearts to become increasingly tender and Lord, help our lips to become increasingly thankful.

Lord, the great evidence of salvation is increasing humility and tenderness. Lord, help us to be a tender, humble, joyful, worshipful people. By the power of the Holy Spirit in us, by the gospel of Jesus Christ alone, and by the will of the Father.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Now the word for sanctification in this passage, and in many passages, is a word called hagiatso. It kind of sounds Japanese when you say it that way. I just heard it and I was like, hagiatso.

The word is used three times in this passage. Jesus says, sanctify them in truth. Jesus says, for their sake I sanctify myself. And then he also says, so that they would be sanctified in truth. Now this word hagiatso, it means to be set apart.

It means to set something aside to make it more suitable for ritual purposes. That's what they call the BDAG lectionary. It's the one that all the seminarians and nerds love most. It is the creme de la creme of Greek lexicons.

It says to set aside something to make it more suitable for ritual purposes. Now a more simple definition comes from another lexicon, the lexem analytical lexicon, which says when something is removed from common and secular purposes and it's given holy significance and it's subject to special treatment, it has become sanctified.

Jesus prays that you and I would become sanctified. That we'd be removed from the world at which we live and that we would be set apart for a holy godly purpose. No longer living under the power of the world and the flesh and the devil.

No longer a slave to sin. Although we sin, but no longer a slave to sin. That we would be hand-selected, hand-chosen, set apart by the will of God for the purposes of Christ. Now in the term sanctification, the vast majority of people, the vast majority of pastors, the vast majority of sermons you've probably heard on sanctification, is that it's an ongoing process and that's certainly true.

But sanctification actually has two components to it. There is what's called a positional sanctification and there is a progressive sanctification. So I'm using terms now to create categories in our mind.

What is sanctification? Well, it's a two-part work. It's positional and it's also progressive and not progressive as in the modern version of that term. Now, what is progressive sanctification? Well, that just means the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit of God in you to make you more and more like Jesus every single year, every decade, from the moment you're saved into the moment that you die.

It is the work of the Spirit of God to start cutting away the parts that are you and I and to start bringing to life the things that are Christ. If you remember John the Baptist, when John the Baptist, they came up to him and he said, I hope that I decrease and.

That Christ.

Increases. What a great example of progressive sanctification, that you and I, the part of us that is flawed, sinful, worldly, and broken, that that would decrease over time and that Christ would increase so that increasingly our spouses, our family, our children, our workers, and everyone that we encounter would see Jesus on us and less of us.

It's sort of like a caterpillar when it crawls into its little cocoon day by day, and maybe it doesn't even notice it because it's happening slowly, but day by day, it's changing. It's being formed into something so that when it crawls out of that cocoon, it's an entirely new creation.

By the time that you are finished on this earth, dear brother and sister, I pray that the difference between you now and the difference between you then is the difference between an ugly worm and a beautiful monarch butterfly, that the Spirit of God would do that work in you.

And that is what he's saying, that we would become less like the worm we are and more like Christ. Now, there's biblical examples of this term being used for progressive sanctification. Look, for instance, at 2nd Corinthians 3, 18.

The word says,. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the Lord the Spirit. So from one degree of glory to another, we are being transformed by the power of God.

Not your power, not your hard work, not your discipline. Maybe you're disciplined and you can do, you know, keto or carnivore or whatever diet you can come up with. There's so many nowadays, I can't even keep up with them all and it makes your head spin.

But maybe you're disciplined and you can do that. It's not about you. It's over the course of your life that God is not making you self better through your pop psychological methods. No, it is about the Spirit of God sanctifying you and making you holy.

Setting you apart for the Master's purposes. Another example is 1st Thessalonians 4, 3 through 4. 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 and holiness and honor.

The will of God for us is that we be sanctified. I've lived in the church long enough to know that that has not been talked about enough.

I raised my hand.

I was at a campfire at this Christian camp when I was 12 years old and they were playing the songs and I said I've decided to follow Jesus. Were you still following Jesus? No. But he saved me back then.

It's his job to save. It's my job to sin and we make a great team. That's the kind of attitude that has been pervasive in the American church. But here it says that it's the will of God to sanctify us, to set us apart, to shape us, to mold us and to make us more like Jesus.

So the brothers and sisters if we are not and I don't mean day by day because you're gonna have days you're gonna have days where you you have some setbacks. All of us do. Expand your time horizon and ask yourself if season by season, year by year, decade by decade, being in relationship with the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, is it changing you?

Because it should and it does and the scripture says that he will. It's a great confidence when we look at our life and we say I had nothing to do with that. That patience that is permeating in my heart when I'm driving home on the road, everyone in this church knows that I don't like traffic.

But that patience that's starting to percolate in me is not from me. When I was in the army, my job was to drive my commander through the streets of Baghdad. This was 18 years old and goats were on the highway in Baghdad and that's normal.

And you had to watch out for men who would drop bombs in between you and your person that you're following so that every moment you had to be within a couple inches of the person that you were following or else you could get an IED.

That's where my fearfulness and anxiety for driving in traffic sort of came from and over years I'm repenting of that and saying Lord, please help me to be joyful and to worship when I'm on the road. Because I want to see the growth of the Spirit of God come in my life.

I don't want to live in old patterns of sin. None of us should, right? Again, this is the most common way what we think about sanctification, but it's not the only way that we should think about sanctification because there's also another view called positional sanctification.

Where the believer is set apart in their status as being holy in God's sight. And this is not something brothers and sisters that we can improve. This is a status that has been conferred upon us by God.

It's a permanent status. It is a status that's given us through Christ and his finished work on the cross. It is given to you by faith in Jesus and you cannot improve upon it. It is fixed and it is permanent and it is definite.

Romans 8 .1 There's now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. You have what Christ has given you and it has completed the work. And yet in one sense, you're still growing in the work. You've moved from death to life.

You've been set apart. You're no longer dead. You're no longer a slave to sin and yet you still struggle with sin. You see how both of these work together? You've been moved and sanctified as you're being sanctified.

Positionally and progressively. Hebrews 10 .10 gives another example of positional sanctification. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. When were you fully sanctified?

When Christ died on the cross. And when will you be fully sanctified? When you meet him in glory. Both are true. 1st Corinthians 6 9 through 11 says this, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were, past tense, washed. But you were, past tense, sanctified. But you were, past tense, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of God. So brothers and sisters, as you are growing in grace, remember that the growth has roots and.

The roots are something that were given to you in Christ.

That can never be ripped out if you're truly in him. So that sanctification is both a past event and it's an ongoing present event. And now let's peel back a layer and let's go one layer deeper in that.

Sanctification is something that happens immediately in our salvation where we are positioned now in the kingdom of God. And it's something that happens over time as we follow God, which is a great mystery to say the least.

Paul himself understands the delicacy and the intricacies of this mystery. And I think Paul uses another metaphor to explain this really well. When Paul says that this is a mystery of the gospel, he's talking about marriage.

And I think marriage is the perfect example to describe positional and progressive sanctification. For instance, on your wedding day, if you're married, and if you're not, maybe it'll happen someday. I'm not God, so I don't know that.

Maybe you won't. I don't know. I'm just kidding. On your wedding day, you were fully married. There's nothing you can do to improve upon it. You don't turn in a marriage license 2 .0 to get to the second level.

You're married. You can't improve upon the status, whether you're married for one day or a hundred days or 50 years. If you're married, you're married. You cannot improve the status. It is a legal binding thing that is true of you so long as you are together.

And yet, your experience of marriage can be dictated by your behavior in marriage.

If I.

Do things that I knowingly know get on my wife's nerves, should I be surprised when there's tension? If I don't act like Jesus in my marriage, should I be surprised when my experience of marriage is not great?

In the same way that your marriage cannot be improved, but your experience of marriage can be improved by your love and your service and your care for one another, is the same way that your sanctification is a status that cannot be improved, but your experience can.

As you sin,.

You are not, if you're a Christian, losing your salvation. But you are losing the experience of the joy of it. You are losing the fellowship with God. You are quenching the Spirit of God. And that word quench in Greek means to take water and pour it over a campfire.

Many times we're not happy in God because we have chosen to live in disobedience to God. Why, brothers and sisters, would we ever want, when we have a Savior who gave everything for us, why would we want to give the bare minimum just so that we could eke our way through this life and experience Him in the most minimalistic ways?

Why would we do that when He's offered us joy and pleasure forever? And in obedience to Him, there's pleasure. And in walking with Him, there's pleasure. And in understanding and reading His Word, there is pleasure.

There is pleasures forever for those who trust and walk with Christ. Why would we cut ourselves off from that? In one way, God does this by causing us to open up the Word, to pray, to set ourselves apart for Him.

And in another way, He does it without our help entirely. He sanctifies us by Christ on the cross. It's kind of like an infant. I've never heard of an infant applying to be in a particular womb. Like there's an application process and the infants say, you know, I think this one will be good.

In the same way, God, by His own will and pleasure, assigned a womb for every infant that He decided to raise to life and implanted them in that womb. And that's sort of an example of positional sanctification.

We have been brought to life by the power of God, not by our own will, not by our own pleasure, and implanted in Christ. That's what John 17, 19 is talking about, the positional sanctification. John 17, 17, however, is talking about the progressive sanctification.

It says, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So in some ways, again, you were already sanctified and yet He's saying that His Word will bring greater sanctification, greater joy, greater pleasure, greater passion for God, and greater peace in God.

What He's saying is that we must not only rely upon the status that Christ has given us, but we must also continually be sanctified so that we can grow in deeper and deeper pleasure of Him. In one sense, we've arrived, but we haven't arrived.

It is a two-part work. Now just for the moment as we close, I want to talk about three additional points to sanctification. Those two points are important, positional and progressive, but now let's build upon that just for a moment.

The first thing is sanctification is not for Christ and for His benefit. It's for our benefit and for our sake. That's what He says in verse 19. He said, for their sakes, He's praying to God, for their sakes let them be sanctified.

Jesus became the only perfect human being who's ever lived. Born of a perfect birth, born of a virgin, every moment of His life lived in total, utter perfection up until the moment that He breathed His last breath and said, it is finished.

He lived, He died, and He was buried in absolute, total perfection. His active and passive obedience, maximally infinite, so that He is in a class all by Himself, so that His life and death and resurrection are the definition of perfection.

And the Bible says that you're in union with Him, that you're in union with the One who is absolute and total perfection, which means that you, like the baby that's implanted in the mother's womb, receive the nourishment from that mother.

And if Christ is perfection, you receive His perfections. If Christ has blessings forevermore, you receive His blessings. If Christ has gifts to share with His church, if you're in union with Him, He shares those gifts with you.

If I were to snap my fingers and be in perfect union with Shannon today, and I mean full, perfect, spiritual union, I would inherit all of her mess, and she would inherit all of mine. And that would be probably really bad for us.

Thank God there's some distance between two human beings, even in the intimacy and the joy and in the beauty of marriage, thank God there's some distance that we don't have the kind of union with another that we have with Christ.

Because it'd be dangerous for us. Imagine even the most beautiful, sweet, little, rosy, chunky, little baby, if you were in that deep of union with that child that you were in union with Christ, you would inherit all it's in nature to.

Praise God that God has given us union with Christ. Because that in union with Him, all His goodness, all His kindness, all His patience, love, grace, mercy, and joy belong to you. You are downstream of His blessings if you're in union with Him.

That is for our benefit. It wasn't for Christ's benefit that He came to this earth. This wasn't for Christ's benefit that He left the joys and the splendors of heaven. It wasn't for His benefit that He came to a people that was as hard-hearted as us, and He said, how long will I put up with this generation?

That wasn't for His benefit, when all the angels of heaven obey Him instantly. It wasn't for His benefit that the Father was pleased to crush Him. It wasn't for His benefit that He marched up the hill of Calvary, and the cross itself was so heavy for Him that it collapsed, made Him collapse under its weight.

It wasn't for His benefit that His body was laid open. It wasn't for His benefit that He went down into the depths of Sheol for us. None of it. Except for the fact that in it He gained great glory. Because in it, He gave you great mercy, and in that, for your sake, you are in union with Christ.

You are sanctified already, as you're being sanctified by the Spirit of God, for your sake, for your benefit, for your good. Amen. Number two, sanctification is fueled by the Word of God. Progressive sanctification, especially, is fueled by the Word of God.

You cannot have a growing life as a Christian without the Word. How often do we think that we can walk through the deserts of this life without a canteen of water, as an example, and yet we do it all the time without the Word.

I'll read it tomorrow. I'll do it another time. We have moments where we haven't even opened the Bible in months. How can we do that? God, Jesus says that His Word is truth.

Sanctify them in truth.

How can you live in a world full of lies and grow in the depths of grace that God wants you to grow if you're not.

In the Word?

Every one of those 66 books are written for your benefit so that you would grow in the grace of Christ.

In the same way,.

You can think about the Bible as sort of like heaven's umbilical cord. If you be severed from that, you starved to death. But if you are connected to the Word, if you're in the Word, you will be fed, you will be nourished, you'll be sanctified, set apart for the Father's glory.

Brothers and sisters, I know we live in the richest country that has ever existed, and I know that unless you're on some fad diet, we're not skipping meals here. Why is it that we care so much about feeding our body when all it does is produce waste instead of feeding our soul that produces fruit for eternal life?

Do not live without a relationship and a commitment and a plunging into the depths of the Word because it is good for you. It is for your sake and you'll be malnourished without it. The third and final thing that I'd like to talk about is sanctification continues and propels us towards mission.

Sandwiched in between these like a beautiful hamburger on two brioche buns right there in verse 18 is sort of a point that if you are positionally sanctified, if you've been put into the Father's Kingdom, if you've been bought and paid for by Jesus Christ, if you have been sanctified and if you are being sanctified, then you are a sent one.

There is no Christianity that is a sitting church. There is no Christianity that's a quiet, private Christianity. It just doesn't exist. One of the primary evidence is that you really are who you say that you are, that your confession is not empty, that you really are a Christian, is that you are being sent.

Jesus said, as you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

He says, I have done that.

He also says in Matthew 28 that all authority in heaven and earth is mine. So the king with all authority has said that he has sent us. Brothers and sisters, do you obey that command to be sent? And again, it must be without words.

Jesus has not hired us to be his pantomimes, to play charades and culture and hope that people notice. He says, your word is truth, and I've sent them with your word. It's the word of the gospel that's the power of God.

It's not our kind deeds. It's not our it's not our pats on the back. It's not our Christian goodness. It's not any of that. The word of God is the power of God to raise the lost soul to life. Brothers and sisters, are you sent?

Yes. Are you going wrestle with that? Are you sharing the word of God? Are you sharing the truth of the word of God with those who you know? Do they know you're a Christian? We talked about this earlier.

And if not, why not? And if not, will you? We were called to share the gospel. This is not just the job of the twelve apostles. This is not just the job of the first century church. This is the job of every blood bought Christian in this room who's been indwelled by the spirit of God, who's been given power from on high to go to your Jerusalem, your Judea, your Samaria and to the ends of the earth, declaring the gospel of Christ.

If they fire you, so what? Praise God for that. If they speak all manner of evil against you, so what? Bear with the consequences, because you know that you have been called according to a purpose and that no one can take anything actually from you.

So what?

What if they think less of you? They probably already do. They just haven't told you. Honestly. Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me and my words, I will be ashamed of you. Jesus said, I've sent you into the world to be my witnesses.

If Jesus is the one who's bought and paid for us, if God is the one who sanctified us, the Holy Spirit is the one who has indwelled us, and if his word is what is shaping us, then will we be sent and will we share his word?

And will we, with Isaiah, say, yeah, here I am. Send me. Will we cry out with the rocks that never tire of praising Jesus? You see, I think from this passage, we learn that the natural consequence of a Christian who is being sanctified is mission.

It's not a preference. It's not a gift for a select few. It's for all of us. As we began our time today, we talked about how Henry Ford changed the world. And in some ways he did. He gave you an overpriced ball of metal that cost way too much, that cost too much to fuel in Biden economy, cost way too much to insure.

But yet it plays Bluetooth over or plays your music over Bluetooth. What a blessing. You can buy a Bluetooth player for like 20 bucks. The changes that are so much bigger come from Jesus Christ. Imagine a church.

Imagine a church in America that took serious the gospel of Jesus Christ, took serious that we're being sanctified by him and left this place and left churches all across this country with so much joy that nobody could stop us.

Our brother in Tennessee, imagine him going into the courtroom with a smile on his face. Why did you do it? Because I love Jesus. Come what may. That is how the world was turned upside down. That's how the apostles turned the world upside down.

They joyfully told everybody about Christ. Yeah, they got beaten for it. Yeah, they they got ostracized for it. They turned the world upside down and made the Roman Empire come crashing down like a plane.

The most powerful empire the world had ever known bowed the feet, bowed to the feet of Jesus, because a few people who no one will ever remember their name told people about the only name that can never be forgot.

Let's pray, Jesus.

I pray for us as a church that we would that we would experience the Holy Spirit's power and sanctification. Lord, I praise you that we already have at the cross of Christ. You sanctified us. You you set us apart.

You you purchased us for your purposes. And Lord, also. In our life, we're growing. Lord, I pray. That we would grow more in love with you, more submitted to you, more passionate about you, more joyful because of you.

And Lord, I pray that all who've never heard will hear from us. It's in Jesus name, we pray. Amen.