Wednesday, July 26, 2023 PM

So let me begin with a word of prayer, all right? If you would, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the blessing of this day. Thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together tonight, not only to share a meal together, but to be fed from your word.

Lord, we pray that you would open the eyes of our hearts, that we might grow in grace and grow in Christ. Thank you for your faithfulness, for your goodness, for your mercies that are new every morning.

And we pray, Lord, that you would be exalted, that Christ would be glorified in our time in the study of your word tonight. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, okay, so I need your input here, all right?

So I want you to think of your typical two to three-year-old okay, so just your average, normal toddler, okay? Two to three-year-old. So what are some characteristics that are common for a normal two to three-year-old?

Lou Anne.

No.

No, okay, okay, okay, okay. Standing up everywhere, rocking, usually places where they're not supposed to be standing up,.

But yeah.

And they can run well.

They can run, okay. And usually, are they running to you or away from you?

Just everywhere.

Yeah, running every direction, okay. Cheryl, aha, bumps, scrapes, okay. What else?

Tantrums.

Tantrums, oh, okay.

What?

Okay.

New words.

Okay, learning new words, yeah. Sometimes good, Lisa. So yeah, they're messy, but they're always good about cleaning up, right? So curiosity, both good and, curiosity is both good and bad, okay. Would that go along with being like messy?

Messy, yeah, okay, okay. Stuff their mouth full, okay. Joyful, yeah, they're sweet. They do give hugs, yeah. Anything else? Selfish, sort of relates to the whole no thing. Anything else, Lisa? Trusting, okay.

All right, well, we're gonna stop there, all right. So, a lot of those up there are positive things, right? Trusting, we'd say that's a good thing. Joyfulness, curiosity within limits is a good thing.

Learning, I mean, talking, learning new words. You want that sort of inquisitiveness and a desire to learn. They're part of that phase, but would you want your kids to stay that way?

No, I'm happy.

No, you know, so it's one thing when we see some of these things in a two to three year old. Okay, that's part of the developmental process. You know, you just kind of expect that you're gonna face some of these issues when your kids are that age or your grandkids are that age.

And so, you can kind of take a deep breath and say, okay, this is just kind of the way it is and we're gonna work through this and it will eventually pass, okay?

You know, we're in for a lot of problems, right?

It's both good and bad. We expect to see those in two to three year olds. But what if those things like tantrums, what if that shows up in your 43 year old? What if stuffing your mouth full is something that's characteristic of a 43 year old?

Okay, is there a problem here? Yeah, okay. There are behaviors that, and we would call those childlike. There are things that are part of a, perhaps a time period in someone's life, but we expect that to pass and not be a part of their lives later.

We call that behavior childish, right? So, when these negative things persist in someone's life, we would say that that reveals a lack of what? A lack of maturity, right? A lack of maturity. That they're exhibiting childish behavior rather than mature behavior.

And so, legitimate issues notwithstanding, one's birth carries with it expectations of growth and maturity, right? So, let's kind of transition. If one is genuinely born again, is there a reasonable expectation of growth and maturity?

Yes, just like we have those reasonable expectations physically for children to grow in stature, but also to grow in wisdom, okay? That's a reasonable expectation. That's also a reasonable expectation for the Christian life that if one is genuinely born again, we should expect them to grow and to mature.

The Bible has a term for that, sanctification. The process of growing up, the process of growth as a follower of Christ. And scripture is pretty clear that sanctification is expected of every Christian.

It's not an option. That is supposed to happen if one has been genuinely born again. So, I wanna talk tonight a little bit about sanctification, sanctification. What is sanctification? Sanctification is rooted in the word holy.

Well, what do we know about holiness? Well, where does holiness come from? It comes from God because God is holy. Think of Isaiah chapter six, verse three. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. Revelation chapter four, verse eight repeats that very same thing.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. One of the essential characteristics of God is that God is holy. And because God is holy, God calls his people to be holy, right? In Leviticus chapter 19, verse two, and we're gonna look at a lot of different passages of scripture here tonight as quickly as I can get us through them.

Leviticus 19, verse one says, and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy. That is picked up in the New Testament in a number of places, but one in particular in 1 Peter chapter one.

Peter says this, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.

God is holy, God's people are to be holy. And so this is where sanctification comes in. You see here in the root of sanctification, this idea of sanctus, the Latin, and relates to the Greek, hagiosmos, I misspelled that, holy.

Hagiazo is a Greek word for holy. And so hagiosmos is holiness. And sanctification is our English word that we get from that. It's related also to the word saint, which just means one who is holy. So Christians are called saints.

And so to be holy, to be a saint, it carries with it the idea of being set apart. So when we say God is holy, is God separate and distinct and unique and set apart from everything else and everyone else?

Yes, there is one God and he is the holy God. So God is holy, he is set apart. And we as his people are called to be set apart, to be different people and to live differently each day. In this world, because we are God's holy people.

We're not to be conformed to the world, but to be different from the world. So we've been set apart for special use by and for God. And there's a great illustration of that, again, back in Leviticus. I'm sorry, not Leviticus, in Exodus.

In Exodus chapter 39, you have this whole chapter that talks about the garments for the priests. And it goes through all the description of the garments that they are to wear. The blue, purple, scarlet yarn that's gonna be made into a finely woven garment for ministering in the holy place.

And it goes through all of that. The ephod, the breastplate, the breast piece, all of that. And you get through all this description of the garments for the priest. And you come to the very last element of what they were to wear.

You come to verse 30 in Exodus chapter 39. It says, and they made the plate of the holy crown of pure gold and wrote on it an inscription, like the graving of a signet, holy to the Lord. And they tied it to a cord of blue to fasten it to the turban above as the Lord had commanded Moses.

What was the last thing to be put on?

That turban.

And what was the last thing attached to that turban? That gold plate that says, holy to the Lord. It was that thing that was to sit on the head and was to signify that this whole person is set apart for God, for God's use.

Again, back in 1 Peter, Peter takes up on that thought in chapter two and says of us, of every believer, 1 Peter chapter two, verse nine, but you are a chosen race, a what? A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So we are called to be priests of God. As priests of God, we are holy to the Lord. We are to walk in holiness. That is sanctification. Sanctification is one of the blessings of salvation. I thought of this illustration, I think it works.

If it's off, you tell me, but I think it works. So if you think of your life as a Christian, the beginning point of it is what the Bible calls justification, okay? It's an event that happens once and it happened in the past when you were saved.

And in Ephesians chapter two, verse eight, Paul puts it like this. Says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith. So justification tells us that we have been saved. It is a past event. And when God declared us just, okay, again, I think of Ephesians two, eight, and we'll talk about this a little bit more in a minute.

We have been separated. We've been separated from, make sure I get my notes right here, from the penalty of sin. You've been justified. You're no longer held in a guilty state for your sins because you are justified in Christ.

He's paid for those sins, okay? So that's justification, that's the beginning. The end is glorification, right? Glorification. And Acts chapter 15, Paul is preaching. Acts chapter 15, verse 11, he says this.

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus. We believe that we will be saved. Paul is looking to the future. So as justification is a past event, glorification is in the future.

And in glorification, there's also a separation. In this case, we are separated from the presence of sin. Will there be sin in heaven?

No.

And we look forward to that day. In between, okay? In between is sanctification, okay? This covers the whole of your Christian walk, the whole of your Christian life here on earth. First Corinthians chapter one, in verse 18, it says, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

So here is a blessing of salvation that is being realized in the present. We are being saved. And in sanctification, there is separation from the power of sin. Now, does that mean that we don't sin? No.

But we now have something within us, someone actually, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to overcome sin, not in our own strength, but in the strength that God provides. And so we're not under the power of sin like we were when we were lost.

We have a helper. We have the Holy Spirit. And so in sanctification, in this present time, God is working out our salvation. Prior to salvation, we were separated from God and we lived for the world. But having been saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we are now separated from the world and we live for God.

That is sanctification. One other thing about this sanctification or this holiness, and I'm sure you know this already, but it's a good reminder. The holiness that we have as believers in Christ is both positional.

What we have is part of that legal declaration of justification. Romans 3, Paul talks about how we have been justified by faith in Christ. And so we are indeed right now holy. That's why we can rightly be called saints.

We are in Christ, the Holy One. Therefore we are holy, positionally in Christ. But sanctification relates to another element of our holiness, and that is in this world, in this life, our holiness is progressive.

It is something that we are growing in. We are growing in holiness. As we are called, Ephesians chapter five, one says that we are called to be imitators of God. Well, what did we learn early about God?

God is holy, right? And so if we're being imitators of God, what should characterize our lives? Holiness, as God's dearly loved children, right? Children, when it's a child, usually mimic parents. Parents, both good and bad.

We're called to imitate our father. We're called to imitate, be imitators of God. And we're called to grow up into him who is the head, that is Jesus Christ. Listen to these familiar verses from Ephesians four.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints, the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So this holiness, this sanctification is progressive. It's something that we grow in as we more and more imitate God, as more and more we grow in Christ-likeness, as more and more we put sin to death.

We are growing in holiness. I was struck this week in, this summer I've been reading with Cheryl doing the Summer Bible Reading Challenge, and we read 2 Peter a couple of days ago. And I was struck in reading 2 Peter, knowing that I was gonna be talking about this tonight, how much of 2 Peter relates to sanctification, and particularly the progressive element of sanctification.

In fact, that's where 2 Peter begins. You get to chapter one, verse three, where Peter says, add this to this, and to this, add this, and to this, add this. And then he says, and if these qualities are yours and increasing, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your walk with Christ.

And Peter comes back to that several times in different ways throughout 2 Peter. So this idea of sanctification, of growing in holiness, of growing in Christ-likeness is key to 2 Peter. And in fact, 2 Peter ends with a verse that very directly speaks to sanctification.

2 Peter 3, 18. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Grow.

Grow in holiness. Grow in Christ-likeness. So, I'm halfway through the lesson, and I'm out of time. And this always happens to me. Just ask people in my Sunday school class. I never get through a lesson the way that I think I will.

And that's okay. So I can hang on to this, and we'll come back to it, because what I wanna talk to you, when I get a chance, is to just talk to you about how does sanctification work? How does sanctification work?

So I've given you kind of the theology of sanctification. When I come back at some point in the future, I wanna talk to you about how does sanctification work? How does God help us to grow in holiness?

How does God help us to become more conformed to the image of Christ? And so I think I'll have some good things to share with you on that. But we're gonna stop for now.

All right.

So we wanna take a minute to pray. And we're gonna pray.