Tape 5 - Sanctification Through the Blood

The Problem of Spiritual Laziness and Shallow Christianity

Most Christians do not like to dig. Most Christians are so intellectually lazy that they want the pastor to get everything in the Bible summarized and get in a big ladle on Sunday morning and pour it down their throats.

And then if a few happen to drop back by Sunday night, maybe something else will sprinkle out on them and they'll have something else to digest. And then on Wednesday night, maybe by just a word of prayer or something, the heavens will shake and a thunder will roll and the lightning will flash and God will give them a vision or something that'll make them automatically and immediately a perfect Christian.

I have found in my own Christian life that I cannot exist on what I get in church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday. In fact, I'm in church far more than all of you put together. Do you know I go to church more per year than all of you put together go per year?

I'm in church every day. Sometimes I'm in church three times a day. Sometimes I preach at church twice a day. I'll be in India next year for a month and preach four times a day. And yet I find I still can't exist on that.

I have to have some time when I get into the meat of God's Word and I'm grateful for those of you that have been coming every night to study something and these are the deep things of God's Word. Not that I have it in my mind.

I'm not saying that at all. It's available. I've just done a little study on it and I want to convey to you what God's put up on my heart as a truth from his Word. But I am saying that most Christians do not like to get past anything out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the book of Acts.

And yet they don't even know those and if you really studied those books they're gonna run you from one end of the Bible to the other because you can't understand them until you understand the rest of the Bible.

Because it's one book. It's a unity. Sixty-six books about one personality, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so but they hang around on the little simple things, you know. They like to talk about forgiveness of sin and they like to talk about John 3 16 and they like to sing songs I could get sweeter every day and sweeter than the day before and the old rugged cross and they don't like to learn new songs.

They don't like to read a new scripture. They don't like to pray new prayers. They're just lazy and if you really wanted to use a good word, you'd say they live in a backslidden state. A backslidden state.

Any Christian who doesn't want to study God's words got heart trouble. He's got something wrong with him. If he doesn't, my Bible says you got to devour this book. You've got to eat it. You've got to digest it to get what God really wants and I find the more I learn about it the happier I get.

And whenever I don't study it, then I get grouchy and I get irritable and I get irritated with myself and others when I don't stay in this book. Well, we've talked about being reconciled to God. We talked about being reconciled to God that we were separated from God and through salvation.

Redemption, we call that one word redemption that incorporates all that God does for us. But whenever we received Christ as the Lord and Savior of our life, instantly, we were not separated any longer.

We were brought back together with God. We could have fellowship with him. We could have communication with him and then we talked about after reconciliation that there was a cleansing process that occurs and it is constantly, perpetually, always occurring in the life of every Christian.

He's constantly being cleansed. Tonight, I want to talk to you about a very difficult subject for some people. For most, it's not, but there are some who are hung up on the word sanctification. There are those who believe that sanctification is some second blessing.

It is some working of grace subsequent to salvation that it happens somewhere out there in the future once you can give up smoking, drinking, cursing, and once you can do all these things, then you'll get sanctification and it'll happen sometime when you're down begging for it, asking for it, pleading for it.

Somebody's putting hands on you to give it to you and all these sorts of things. They have all kinds of ways, but that's not what the Bible teaches. I don't believe. Let's look at Hebrews 13 with verse 10 and let's read a few verses together.

And I told you that Hebrews is the New Testament book that is the equivalent of the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. Leviticus being the Hebrew word for Yikra and the Hebrews being the Greek word Hebrews.

All right, and verse 10. Don't get heavy with you. You're having trouble reading English. We have an altar of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned without or outside the camp.

Wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Now when they took the meat, the tabernacle, and the blood of those beasts, the bodies of the beasts that were not to be consumed, some of them had to be consumed by the priest and there were just literally hundreds and hundreds.

Don't think they were just a handful of priests back in the Old Testament. There were literally hundreds, yea, thousands of priests. Thousands of them and they would have a feast over the food that was offered as a sacrifice.

After it had been offered they would take certain, but some of it wasn't. Some of it was taken out and it was burned outside the camp of Israel. And so Jesus, so that he might fulfill and be the type, he went out also, verse 12.

Wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him outside the camp bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

You'll find many references in the Bible to a holy city. Verse 15. By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to share, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

Now I'll just direct your attention to verse 12. Wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Let's pray again for a moment. Father, we thank you for the Spirit of the Lord that teaches us.

We thank you for the illumination you give us. We thank you for the enlightenment that comes. We thank you for the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. If we confess our sins and get the sin out of our life, then Lord we know the Holy Spirit can spend his time teaching us rather than convicting us and drawing us and trying to purge us of our sin.

If we keep the sin out of our life, then you can spend that time with us teaching us and guiding us. And so father I pray that you would purge us. We thank you for the pardon that is ours. We thank you that we have been reconciled unto thee.

We thank you that we are constantly being cleansed because we are constantly being sprinkled with the blood of the Lord Jesus by the ministry of the Holy Spirit by faith. And father we have faith in that blood and your word does tell us that we are sprinkled with it.

And so fathers we look into the subject of how you sanctify us as Christian people. I pray that you'll teach these people something that will help them in their Christian life. Father bless all of our hearts together and we thank you for it because we do believe it and we ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus until he comes.

Amen. To the superficial observer, it might seem that there's little difference between cleansing and sanctification. If you were with us last night as we progress into the message, you'll see a difference.

But at the very start you won't see much difference between the word cleansing, being cleansed from your sin, and being sanctified. But there is a little difference and there isn't much because it is quite similar.

The two words mean almost exactly the same thing. But the difference is tremendously great and tremendously important. Cleansing has to do with the old life and the stain of sin which has to be removed.

That has to do with the cleansing that we talked about last evening. Sanctification concerns the new life and that characteristic of it which must be imputed to it by God. You can't get it by doing. You can't get it by doing.

God has to impute it or give it to you. Just like he imputed righteousness to Abraham because he believed God. Now a definition of sanctification that I like to use is this. It means a union with God.

Joining with God. Unity with God. And it is the peculiar fullness of a blessing purchased for us by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now the distinction is very clear from the scripture between cleansing and sanctification.

The Bible tells us in Ephesians 5 25 that Christ gave himself for the church that he might sanctify it having cleansed it. Having first cleansed it then he sanctified it. If a man therefore purge himself from these he shall be a vessel unto honor sanctified and meet for the Master's use.

2nd Timothy 2 21. Sanctification is a blessing after cleansing but very close to the same thing. It's illustrated in the Old Testament by the priest and the Levites. Most Christians think the Levites were the priest.

They were not. You need to study your Bible. Most people say well the Levites they were the tribe of priests. You better study your Bible. Priests and Levites were different. Were different. Not always are they the same.

Some Levites got to be priest. But just because you're a Levite you might be just a guard on the gate. It took 20 grown men, 20 adult men to open one half of the gate in the temple. One half. 40 men if they would open both sides of the gate together.

That's how large they were. But what is the difference? Let me give it to you. The Levites were lower in position than the priest in the service of the tabernacle. There is no mention whatsoever of the sanctification of the Levites.

Not one time do you find the word sanctification being used. There is no mention of sanctification. But the word cleansing is used five times in Numbers the 8th chapter where it talks about the order of the Levites.

In contrast to that, the consecration of the priest, the word sanctify, sanctification, it's used many times in reference to the priest. Exodus the 29th chapter, Leviticus the 8th chapter and other passages.

And there was also a close connection between their consecration and the sacrificial blood. For a Levite to be consecrated, reconciliation was made for sin and they were sprinkled with the water of purification for cleansing.

But they were never sprinkled with blood. Never were the Levites sprinkled with blood. But the priest, the blood was sprinkled upon them before they bathed for the purification. There was a more personal and intimate application of the blood upon the priest, separating them because they would be types of Christ.

Now as we seek to understand what I'm trying to say to you, let's look at about three things. What is sanctification? And that sanctification is exactly why Jesus died for you, is sanctification. Nothing else.

Sanctification. And that it can be obtained through the blood of Christ. What is sanctification? So I'll try to summarize a little bit what I told you last evening for our visitors and then give you something new for those who've come along with us again this evening.

To understand what sanctification is, we must learn what the holiness of God is, for he alone is the Holy One. And we mentioned that last evening. God's holiness is often spoken of as his hatred for sin.

When people say, well, what do you mean by God being holy? They say he hates sin. That's a very superficial answer. It's a very shallow answer and it's not the answer at all. We talk about his hostility to sin.

That is merely a statement that God's holiness cannot bear sin. But it does not define holiness for God. I'll give you a definition. Holiness is that attribute of God because of which he always is and he always wills and he always does what is supremely good.

Because of which he desires what is supremely good in his creatures, he also bestows all that is good upon them and that is the holiness of God. Because of that holiness, he hates sin. Hating sin is not holiness.

Hating sins is a result of being holy and that is the holiness of God. Now, God is called the Holy One in Scripture, not only because he punished sin, but because he is the Redeemer from sin and the curse of it for the people.

It is his holiness that moved him to redeem sinners. Now, both the wrath of God we talked about last evening, about the wrath of God and the love of God, both the wrath of God which punished sin and the love of God which redeems the sinner come from the same source, his precious holiness.

Holiness is the perfection of God's nature. Holiness in a person, now get this carefully, if you'll understand this, you can understand sanctification. It is not difficult at all. Holiness in a person because we are stumped.

Now, when the Bible says be ye holy as I am holy, that stumps most Christians, that terrifies them because we know that we can't be holy like he is. There's no way in the world while you're on this earth that you can be as holy as the Lord Jesus Christ and you can never be as holy as God.

You ought to forget it. You can't do it and you'll drive yourself nuts trying to get there. You just can't do it. You say, well, wait a minute. Now the Bible says be ye holy. It does say that, but what does he talk about?

What is it saying? It's simply this, holiness with God is perfection of his nature. Holiness in a person is a disposition, an attitude that is entirely in agreement, entirely in agreement with that of God and which chooses in all things to will as God wills and as it is written, as he is holy, be ye holy.

You make your attitude and your disposition, your personality is wrapped up in doing all that God says and in everything striving to please God and that is holiness because as far as we are concerned, it is our disposition and our attitude and you can't be holy any other way.

Most people say, well, we'd ought to be like Jesus. You can't be like Jesus. There's just one Jesus. You can't ever be like the Lord Jesus. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. You can be a mirrored image of Christ.

You can be a little Christ. The word Christian is the diminutive. It's just like cigar and cigarette. E-T-T-E is the feminine suffix for the word cigar and it means little cigar is what it means and a Christian, I-N is a suffix and it's diminutive if you know your English and it means lesser than Christ but like unto.

Cigarette is less than a cigar but like unto and a little Christ, a Christian, is lesser than Christ but like unto. But always lesser than and never exactly like him. You just can't make it. I know people who go in the mental hospital.

They go nuts trying to be because they can't be like Jesus because they can't be like Christ. You don't have to be like him. You got his righteousness. He gives you that. He gives you that. Well, it's just that holiness in us is nothing else but oneness with God.

The sanctification of God's people is effected or brought about by the communication to them of the holiness of God. You get God's holiness and the righteousness of Christ put to your life, put down to your account when God reads it because of your faith in Christ.

And if he doesn't give it to you, you can't get it any other way. You certainly never be able to earn it. We've talked about that too much already. Now, first of all, the way of obtaining sanctification, God has to bestow it.

First of all, the first and simplest meaning of the word is separation. Now, that's the one everybody knows. We talk about sanctification means separation. That which is taken out of itself at God's command and placed aside or separated as his own possession and for his service that is a holy service.

It doesn't mean separation from sin only but from all that is in the world. Now, we only know about sin, separating from sin. But it is separation from all that is in the world even from what may be permissible.

Paul said, all things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify. There are some things in life that there wouldn't be anything wrong with doing them but you can't do them because it makes your testimony of no effect and it makes your witness of no effect and it causes someone else to stumble.

And if it's a football game or a baseball game, pool, or anything else, you better give it up. And there's nothing wrong with a football game. There's nothing wrong with a baseball game. And there's nothing wrong playing pool if you play it in the right location.

You can't go down there where everybody else goes and do it. But you see, there are many things that we can do. Drinking cokes, nothing wrong drinking a coke. Nobody's approved it to me. But if it causes somebody else to stumble, I bet he's willing to give it up.

Paul says, if my eating meat will cause somebody to stumble, I'll give it up. Somebody's honestly, sincerely, seriously seeking an answer for their life. And as we start, all things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify, and it's just a separation from all that.

This separation unto sanctification is always God's work as he draws us out. You shall be holy unto me. I have separated you that you should be mine. Leviticus 20 verse 26, the man whom the Lord shall choose shall be holy.

You find that in Deuteronomy, our number 16 -7. Thou art holy people unto the Lord. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee, Deuteronomy 7 -6, but separation from sin, that's not all that's included. If the separation is to be of value, then something else must take its place.

Man must surrender himself willingly and heartily to that separation. To that separation. Now separation also means, and here's where we get the nitty-gritty of it, it means personal consecration to the Lord.

Personal consecration, not just separating yourself from sin. Say, I don't believe you'd go rob a bank. You wouldn't go rob a bank, you wouldn't steal. I don't believe you'd go out and shoot heroin. I don't believe you'd do all those things.

But just because you don't do those things, don't make you sanctified in the Lord, don't make you holy in your life. You see, because indifference and pride. Now I had a church in Georgia not too long ago.

They were talking to me and they said a big thing about liquor by the drink and liquor by the drink past and all this stuff. And this church wanted me to come there for a revival and they said, well you can come to our church but you can't stay in the Holiday Inn.

I said, why can't I? He said, well because they serve, they got a lounge there. I said, well you go to the grocery store and they sell beer. You go into a restaurant and they sell drinks there. I said, I'm going to go you one, you got deacons that smoke.

And there's no difference in smoking and drinking. No, there's no difference. I'd say I'll go you another one. If you got pride in your life, you're just as guilty as a guy who drinks. If you're Christian, there's no difference in pride than that.

You read your Bible. God says a disobedient child is just as guilty as a murderer. You better read your Bible. He puts them both right there together. But you see, we like to get big sins and little sins and you know that as well as I do.

And that's what we do. We separate. But no, no. Consecration to the Lord is a part of sanctification. It can be ours only when it takes up its abode in the depths of our personal life and will. God sanctifies no person against his will.

God will not set apart any person against his will. God will not just force you to do it. God's not going to just make you consecrate it. It takes effort. You got to work at it. You got to work at it.

You got to stay with it. It's available. It's already there. Separation and consecration are together. Only the preparation for the glorious work that God will do as he imparts his holiness to the soul.

That we might be partakers of his holiness. Hebrews 12, 10. We become partakers of his holiness. There is none within ourselves. He just gives us his as a child of God. Now it is in personal fellowship with him and partaking of his divine life that sanctification is obtained.

As the Holy One, God dwelt among the people of Israel to sanctify his people. Exodus 29, verses 45 and 46 and others. And as the Holy One, he dwells in us. It is the presence of God alone that can sanctify.

True sanctification is fellowship with God and his dwelling in us. So it was necessary for God in Christ to take up his abode in the flesh and the Holy Spirit should come to dwell in us. So that leads me to say that sanctification was the object for which Christ suffered on the cross.

That's what he was striving for. That's what he was going for. And that's what he gave his life for. Most people say, no, he gave his life to get us forgiveness of our sins. You don't know your Bible.

And yet that's all we preach and teach and sing about is we get forgiveness of sin and that's all there is to the Christian life. But there's far more than that. This is plainly stated. We just read it.

Hebrews 13, 12. Jesus suffered that he might sanctify his people. Now that's true or false. The central object of the coming of our Lord Jesus was that he might sanctify his people and that they might be holy and without blame, which is sanctification.

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4. How Christ attained us in and became our sanctification. You can find that in John chapter 17 verse 19. For their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified through the truth.

And time and time again Christ said, I'm trying to sanctify my people. I'm trying to sanctify you. But we think it's just getting rid of our sins and just get that on. That's just reconciliation and pardon.

But there's cleansing and sanctification and we got some more to talk about this week. Blessings that we get through the blood of Christ. Talk about the power that comes to you and the victory that comes to you.

And how you have fellowship with God moment by moment and all there is so much. It was because his sufferings and death were a sanctification of himself. He says for their sakes I sanctify myself. What did he do by sanctifying himself?

Jesus, I told you, I think I preached this to you. Jesus never come to die on the cross. He never came to die on the cross. He didn't come to shed his blood. He came to do one thing. What was it? Say it with me.

He came to do the will of God. He himself said so. He said I must be about my father's business. He said I did not come to do my own will. I've come to do the will of. They said, Lord, you're hungry. Why don't you eat?

He said, I have meat that you don't know anything about. What was it? It was to do the will of God in the garden of Gethsemane three times. That's where the battle was won. Not on the cross. The battle was won there.

He said not my will, but he had subjected himself to the will of a father. Now incorporated in the will of God was, of course, the central thing, the cross and the shedding of the blood. Because there could not be forgiveness of sins without it.

But Christ came primarily to do the will of God. He said so himself. And so in doing so, he was set apart and so personally consecrated to God that Satan himself couldn't shake him in the wilderness temptation.

And we ought to do the same things. He said I sanctify myself that I might sanctify you, that I might set you apart so that you might consecrate yourself to me in sanctification. Sanctification. Separation and consecration make up the word sanctification.

In his temptation, he must maintain his sanctification, show perfectly his will, was surrendered to the holiness of God. And as we have seen, true holiness in man is the perfect oneness of his will with that of God's will.

When your will becomes the same as God's will, then you'll know what holiness is all about. Through all our Lord's life, from the temptation onwards, he had subjected his will to the will of the Father and had consecrated himself as a sacrifice to God.

This sanctification of himself has become the power by which we also may be sanctified through the truth. And this is the perfect accord with Hebrews 10, verses 9 and 10. I come to do thy will, O God.

And then it's added, by the which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. To do the will of God. Hebrews 2 .11,. For both he that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one.

You become one with Christ. When you become one with Christ, then the sanctifier and the sanctified become one. That makes you holy. That makes you holy. You gonna tell me that that won't make you holy?

You bet your life that'll make you holy. When you become one with Christ, when you forget your selfish dreams, when you push aside your own selfish ambitions, when you push aside everything you want to do, or I want to do, and I just say, now Lord, here I am, I'm yours.

I'm yours 24 hours a day. And that'll bring holiness into your life. And it'll bring sanctification into your life. Not a great experience, it's already there, it's already happened, it's already taken place.

All you got to do is realize it to enjoy the blessings of it. People don't enjoy the blessing of it because they don't realize it. The unity between the Lord Jesus and his people consists in the fact that they both receive their life from one Father and both have a share in the same sanctification.

Jesus is the sanctifier and people become the sanctified. Sanctification is the bond that unites us with Christ. Therefore, Jesus also suffered that he might sanctify his people with his own blood. Reconciliation, getting back into the presence of God after separation, getting a pardon from the guilt of our lives, getting cleansing from the stain and the pollution of sin, all have great value but they all point to one thing and that's sanctification.

Sanctification. How long does it take it to happen? Just like that. Just like that. The moment the blood of Christ is applied to your heart and life. It's there. It's there. It's just that simple. It is God's will that every person who is marked by the precious blood should know that it is a divine mark, that this blood calls him to an undivided consecration, to a life holy for God, and that this blood is the promise and the power of a participation in God's holiness that we might believe and understand that Jesus also suffered that he might sanctify his people with his own blood.

And the reason we don't have it is very simple. And here it is. Most Christians think they are here to raise a family, to have a home, to have a job, and to go through this merry little life doing what they want to do.

And on the end, somewhere down the line, they're supposed to join a church, and they're supposed to worship the Lord occasionally, and they're supposed to do this and that and the other, when our primary purpose on this earth is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and to reach people, preach the gospel to every creature, and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and make disciples of them.

And that's the only reason that God has left us on this earth. And we have turned around and taken what God said to do first, and we give that to him last. And that's just whenever we have time to do it, and we do what we want to do.

And I told one of the young men the other night, the big philosophy today is eat, drink, and be merry. And I got a good answer for that. Anytime you find a person who wants to eat, drink, and be merry, all you'll have is a fat, grinning drunk every single time.

And that's so true. And that's the one saying, eat, drink, be merry. And on they go. But dear people, that's not. Now, how do we obtain sanctification by the blood? Well, how do you get it? An answer to the question in general is that every person who is a partaker of the virtue of the blood of Christ is also a partaker of sanctification.

If you've been saved by the grace of God, if you yourself have personally invited Jesus Christ into your life, if there's been a time in your life that you had that personal experience with Christ, you and him, just you and him one on one, nobody else did.

I mean, some other people could be there and all that, but it's a confrontation between you and Christ, and you confessed your sins and repented of your sins, you turned away from that old life, and you received the Lord Jesus Christ, you invited him into your life, you asked him to come in, whatever you did there, and you had that personal experience with Christ, if you've had that, then the blood of Christ has been applied to your life, and you have sanctification.

It is there. You have been separated by God. You have been separated from this world for a particular purpose of consecration to him. Now, the sad lack is not that you haven't been set apart. You know that.

You just hadn't got consecrated. You've been set apart. You know that you belong to the Lord. You know you're saved. You know you're not lost. You know you're not on the way to hell. You know that you belong to the Lord, and you're a child of God, and you're part of the bride of Christ.

You're part of the church, the universal church. You know you're part of the body of Christ. You just hadn't consecrated yourself. That's the big problem right there. Well, in proportion, as a person lives in close and abiding contact with the blood of Jesus Christ, he continues to experience increasingly its sanctifying effects.

The sanctifying effects of the blood of Christ will grow greater in intensity and take over more in degree of the dominion of your life as you abide in Christ and walk close to him. You ought to be a better Christian today than you were a year ago.

You ought to read more of your Bible today than you did last year. You ought to be praying more now than you did last year. You ought to be closer to God this year than you were last year. You ought to be closer to God this week than you were last week.

You ought to know more about the Bible, know more about the Lord. You ought to be doing more for the Lord this week than you were last week. You ought to grow something. You ought to grow. If you don't grow, you backslide.

You don't stay in one spot. Either grow or you backslide, one of the two. You can't just stay in one spot. But as I said last evening, you'll never know you're backslidden. You'll never know it. Somebody else will have to tell you.

We never see it. Somebody walks up to me and says, Man, I think you're a backslider. Boy, wouldn't that tear you up? My preacher does it every once in a while. My pastor, because I'm there about twice a year, and he don't get to do it often.

But when I'm there, he seems to get around to that sermon sometimes. I don't understand it, but usually that's the one he's preaching on, something about backsliding or something. And yet we never see it.

We just won't see it. It'll happen and get you before you know it. But like I say, I know you don't have that problem, so you pray for me. Don't pray for yourself. Just spend your time praying for me because I have problems with those sort of things.

And I know you folks don't. Well, I've been around, son. I've been Christian for now 30 years. I've been Christians long, and you are years old. Yeah. I just hope that whenever I've been a Christian, if the Lord doesn't come soon, which I hope he does, I wish he'd come tonight, but if he doesn't, and I get on up in the years like a lot of people, for most of the Christians I meet, I hope and pray to God that I never get as hung up as they are.

I hope I never get so traditionalized and so programmed and so ritualized like most of them that I meet. Now, I meet a few that are not. I meet a few people. Let's not tell you an old lady. She's 88 years of age, and that's the happiest woman.

I mean, she's just happy in the Lord. Just, boy, just gone. I mean, every time you see her, you think she's on something. I mean, you think she's sedated or something every time you meet her, but she's just happy in the Lord.

Just loves the Lord, and she's an invalid. She rolls around in a wheelchair in a nursing home down in Sarasota, Florida. Been praying for me twice a day for about the last five years. Twice a day. She writes me all the time.