To open this morning, let's stand
and sing hymn number 11 from the Spiral Bound. Hymnal please. Hymn number 11. With broken heart and contrite
sigh, A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry. Thy pardoning grace is rich and
free, O God, be merciful to me. I smite upon my troubled breast
With deep and conscious guilt oppressed Christ and His cross
my only plea O God, be merciful to me No works nor deeds that
I have done Can for a single sin atone To Christ the Lord
alone I plead O God, be merciful to me And when redeemed from sin and
hell With all the ransomed throng I dwell My raptured song shall
ever be God has been merciful to me. Good morning. The last stanza of that
hymn we can sing now. We don't have to wait until our
raptured soul is in glory. God has been merciful to me. He delights in showing mercy
and we live off of his mercy. Someone asked what's the difference
between mercy and grace? Mercy is God withholding from
us that which we deserve. We deserve judgment and hell
and the Lord Jesus Christ bore the penalty of our sin if we
might know the mercy of God. Grace is God given to us that
which we do not deserve. And that's the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given us sonship. He's made us kings and priests,
the Bible says, the children of God. What manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the
sons of God. What a blessing. What mercy.
He has shown mercy and we live on that mercy. Rejoice in that
mercy. I hope the Lord will convince
us of that this morning as we look to the book of Colossians. If you'd like to turn with me
there, we finished our study of the book of Acts a couple
of weeks ago. And in the closing verses of
that book, we saw that the Apostle Paul spent two years in house
arrest in Rome. And that in that home that he
preached and no man forbade him, not only did he preach, but he
wrote letters. The book of Ephesians would have been written during
those two years when Paul was under house arrest. The book
of Colossians was written during that time. Hugo preached last
week on the book of Philemon. That would have been written
the same time. And all of these letters were sent out by Timothy
and they carried them to the various churches. And so this
is the letter that was sent to the church at Colossae. And I
want us to think this morning about what it means to be a saint. what it means to be a saint.
Notice in verse two, to the saints, to the saints. Let's pray together. Our heavenly
father, we pray that you would give to
us the spirit of grace and mercy, that we might rejoice And my
dear son, believing Lord that you have made your people, saints,
sanctified, set apart, holy. Lord, we ask for your spirit
to bless your word to our hearts. Pray, Lord, that you would show
us once again how completely satisfied you are in the accomplished
work of thy dear son to put away our sin, and that we're able
to come into the throne of grace with confidence, knowing that
we shall have from thee help in our time of need. Lord, we
are a needy people. We're so prone to forget and
to look away, and we thank you for this time of worship, Pray
that you bless it for the good of our souls and for the glory
of Christ. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
an ambassador, a spokesman, one given the revelation of the gospel
and one who penned infallibly the Word of God. One of the things
that's interesting is we find out at the very end of this letter
that Paul also sent with the letter to Colossae a letter to
the church at Laodicea. He said, he said to the church
in Colossae, he said, when you read this letter, also read the
one that I sent to Laodicea. And when the church in Laodicea
reads their letter, make sure that they read the one that I
wrote to Colossae. The church, the letter to the
church at Laodicea doesn't exist. We don't, we don't, the Lord,
the Lord chose not to preserve it. What he did preserve is the inspired
word of God. And so what am I saying? Paul was a man just like you
and I, and everything he said and everything he wrote was not
divinely inspired. Had the letter that he wrote
to Laodicea been divinely inspired, the Lord would have put it in
his word. And, but what God did preserve in his word was divinely
inspired. And so we have the infallible
word of God given to us by God through this apostle, Paul. By the will of God, he became
an apostle, not because he chose to become one. The Lord arrested
him when he was breathing out threatenings against the church.
He was at enmity with God, and the Lord stopped him. And, Lord,
what would you have me to do? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus,
whom thou persecutest. And Saul of Tarsus changed to
the apostle Paul. Lord, what would you have me
to do? And Timothy, or Timotheus, our brother, to the saints and
faithful brethren in Christ, which are at Colossae. Now, Colossae
is the same word that we get our word colossal from. Colossae
was a very large, important industrial city. And yet by the time that the
Apostle Paul's writing this letter to them, it had become a much
smaller town, but they still preserved the name. What I want us to see here is
that Saul, one to be desired, that's what his name means, You
remember King Saul in the Old Testament, the scripture says
was head and shoulders above all the other men. And everybody
wanted to be like King Saul. Saul of Tarsus, he said, I excelled
above my peers when it came to my knowledge and to my power
and to my understanding. And yet just like Colossae had
to be reduced to a small town, Saul of Tarsus, the one who was
to be desired and looked up to and coveted, had to be made Paul,
which translated means little. And this is the first evidence
of our sanctification. This is the first evidence that
the Lord would make us small. and that we would come to see
that our sanctification, our redemption, our wisdom, our righteousness
is not by our own merit or by our own achievements, but it's
all to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So sanctified. That's what this,
see in verse two, the word saints, this word is also translated
sanctified. It's also translated holy. It means to be set apart. It means to be set apart. Every
single one of us are three distinct individual people. Every single
one of us. You are the person that you see
yourself to be. You and I are the person that
other people see us to be. And you and I are the person
that God sees us to be. The first two are a distortion
of the truth. We don't know ourselves very
well. And the image that we present to other people is not accurate
to who we really are. But the person that God sees
us to be is an accurate, truthful depiction of who we are. You know, the Lord said, if you
know the truth, the truth will set you free. And obviously,
the first understanding of that is that if we know Christ, who
is the truth, that he will set us free from the bondage, the
penalty, the power of our sin and give us life before God. But that principle applies to
everything in life, doesn't it? If we know the truth, something,
then we're not confused by all the lies that surround whatever
subject it might be. And so it is with who we are. Oh, if we could see ourselves
as we really are. As we really are. As God sees
us. Someone says, well, well that's
the way God sees us in Christ. Well, The way God sees us in
Christ is who we are. It's who we are. You see, the way we see ourselves
and the way other people see us is not really an accurate
image of who we are, but the way God sees us is. And I so
hope that the Lord will impress on our hearts this morning what
it is that he is telling us about ourselves in terms of who he
sees us to be. We're so prone to think too highly
of ourselves. or we're prone to wallow in the
mire of our own sin and think too lowly of ourselves. Pray the Lord will cause us to
see what this matter of being a saint is. You know, in the
world, a saint is a special elite group of super spiritual individuals
that have achieved a level of sanctification and righteousness
that would be impossible for you and I to ever achieve. That's
what religion refers to when they say, oh, saint so-and-so
or saint so-and-so. That's not how God reveals saints,
every one of his people, every one of his children, everyone
for whom Christ died, everyone that God chose in the covenant
of grace, everyone that the spirit of God calls out of darkness
into his marvelous light, God calls them saints. He says, you're
holy, you're sanctified, you're set apart. Listen to what Paul
said in 1 Corinthians 4, but with me, It is a very small thing that
I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment at all. Yea,
I judge not myself, for I know nothing by myself. Yet am I not
hereby justified? But he that judges me is the
Lord." Is the Lord. That we could, you know, faith
is really In every part of our salvation, faith is believing
what God has revealed. It's being in agreement with
God. And that we could be in agreement
with what the Lord has revealed about who we are. Paul said,
it's a very small thing that you would judge me. And I don't
dare judge myself. I'm not a good judge of myself.
God's my judge. And whatever he says is true.
And then Paul goes on to say, I am what I am by the grace of
God, by the grace of God. The Lord has to take that which
is colossal and make it very small. He has to take the Saul's
and turn them into Paul's. And when he does, we come to
realize that our holiness, our sanctification, It's not by merit. It's not by anything that we've
achieved or anything that we produced. It is by the grace
of God. And yet we are what we are by
God's grace. Daniel, when he saw the Lord
said, my comeliness, my strength, my ability has been turned into
corruption. And then the Lord goes on to
say, I've made you comely in my comeliness. This imputation of righteousness
that we have in Christ is not just a character trait that somehow
is detached from us. It is who we are in the very
sight of God. Isaiah, when he saw the Lord,
said, woe is me. Woe is me, I'm undone. I live
among a people of unclean lips. I've got unclean lips. And the
Lord took a hot coal from off the altar, picturing the judgment
of God on the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary's cross, and touched
him on his lips and said, there, there, you've been made clean.
You've been set apart. You've been sanctified. You've
been made holy. Sanctification is the sole gift
of God in the tokens of his loving grace. It is wholly unconnected
and independent from any of man's merit. We did not merit our sanctification. He that sanctifieth, that's God,
and they which are sanctified are all as one, whereby he is
not ashamed to call them his brethren." Oh, when God gives sanctification,
it brings not a somehow to false humility where we drag around,
you know, it brings a true humility knowing that that we are what
we are by the grace of God. We live in a world where everyone wants to be a
Saul. They want to be esteemed and desired after, and that's
what we are by nature. What a grace it is when the Lord
enables us to see that we are holy, we are set apart, we are
the children of God, all by God's grace, not by our merit. You
know, I thought, has the world ever known a generation that
is more self-promoting and men-pleasing than the generation in which
you and I live? I thought, no, man really hasn't
changed. He's always been the way he is.
We just have the means to be better at it now than we used
to be. We used to only be able to promote
ourselves to a few people around us. Now we can promote ourselves
to the whole world. What insecurity that demonstrates
that we would need the praise of men. Brethren, we have the
praise of God. We have the praise of God. What does it matter what a man
thinks? What's it matter what you think
of yourself? What matters is what God says we are. Let him that thinketh he stand,
take heed lest he fall. Oh, we are so prone to think
too highly of ourselves. And yet the person that we are
in Christ is a son of God, a daughter,
a child of God. How can you get any higher than
that? If a man thinketh he know anything,
he knoweth nothing as he ought to know. We were talking about
this before the service, how knowledge puffeth up. We live
in a society, again, where knowledge is so highly exalted and men
boast in and take pride in how much more knowledge they have
over someone else. When it comes to the gospel, We don't understand anything
we believe. We really don't. How can I understand
this idea of being a saint in the sight of God, being holy,
perfect as he is, so are we in this world? How can I understand
that? I look at myself and you look
at yourself and you think, I'm no saint. God says you are. To the saints at Colossae. to those who have been set apart
and made holy. James, when he speaks of humility,
he says, when you come into a room, take the low seat and wait until
you get promoted to a higher seat. Don't take the preeminent
place of attention and power and glory. The Lord says, better it is to
be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil
of the proud. God resists the proud and he
gives grace to the humble. The Lord humbles us and causes
us to see that this matter of sanctification is not something
we produced. It's not something we earned.
It's not something we deserve. something given to us. Yet it
is who we are. It is who we are. First Samuel chapter two, verse
eight, the Lord raises up the poor out of the dust. He lifted
up the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes and
to make them inherit the throne of glory. Yes, we're sinners, left ourselves. We have no righteousness. We have no merit with God. But in Christ, we've been raised
from that dunghill. We've been set up and made kings
and priests of God, the children of God. Behold, what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. And yet it's so true. This is
what God says. This is how he sees us. I have raised you up from the
dunghill to set you among princes and to make you inherit the throne
of glory. You know, false humility and
religious piety is man trying to produce in the flesh what
God must do in the heart. We see it in ourselves, we see
it in others, don't we? People putting on airs of humility
and, well, I'm just a sinner in a dumb hill, just wallowing
in my own guilt and my own shame. God's lifted you up from that. He's made you to sit as kings
and priests. And yet at the same time, what
I've been, What I've been trying to say is that true humility
and exaltation are two sides of the same coin. True humility. Acknowledging
the fact that what I have, I have by the grace of God. And yet
what I have is, is glory. What I have is Christ. What I
have is righteousness. What I have is sanctification.
What I have is perfect holiness before God. Not based on anything
that I've done. Well, this is a paradox to the
unbeliever. How can you be humble and be
a child of God at the same time? And yet it's where we are. It's where we are. The word sanctified is used in
the Bible in two senses. In one sense, it's used as something
that has been set apart for the service of God. The temple was
sanctified. The articles of worship, the
instruments of worship were anointed and sanctified. They were set
apart to be used for holy purposes. And when the Lord speaks of us
being sanctified, being saints, that's one of the senses in which
he speaks of us, that we've been set apart. The seventh day of creation in
Genesis chapter two was sanctified and set apart as a memorial of
our rest in Christ. The firstborn in Exodus chapter
13 was to be set apart to the service of God. The priests were
set apart. We've been looking at Samson
and the vow of the Nazarite that was given to him from birth.
He was set apart to the service of God. John chapter 17, the Lord Jesus
Christ said, I sanctify myself that they might be sanctified.
We can't sanctify ourselves, but he has. He has sanctified
himself that those in him might be set apart. The second use of the word sanctification
or holiness is to be made holy, to be made perfect, to be made
sinless. And that's what the Lord means
when he says to the saints, to the saints, you're not your own. You've been bought with a price.
You've been set apart for my service and you've been made
holy. This is how I see you. It doesn't
really matter how you see yourself. It doesn't really matter how
other men see you. What matters is what God says
we are. 1 Corinthians chapter six. If you'd like to look with me
here for just a moment, 1 Corinthians chapter six. Verse 11, Paul's talking to these
Corinthians and the way they were before they heard the gospel,
before the Lord's called them out. And he says, and such were
some of you, but you are washed. You are sanctified. You are justified
in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. Justified. And that doesn't mean it's just
if I'd never sinned. Justified means that we never
sinned. Never ever. Not in thought. How can that be? to be found
in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
righteousness, which is by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am sanctified, justified, never
have sinned in the sight of God, holy, perfect. It's who this been written to
the saints, to the saints. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 at verse
23. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And that word there, if you have
your Bibles open, is not H-O-L-Y, it's W-H-O-L-Y. Holy, completely,
perfectly. Not one part of us is unsanctified. And I pray God, your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless until the coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are. God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. While you're there in 1 Thessalonians,
look over to 2 Thessalonians, chapter two, verse 13. But we are bound to give thanks
always to God for you brethren, beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief in the truth. Now Habakkuk tells us
that God's eyes are too pure to look upon iniquity. How's God gonna look on me and
you? with perfect holy eyes, unless he makes us perfect and
holy in Christ. Set apart and made holy. By God the Father, by God the
Son, by God the Holy Spirit, this is who we are. He began a good work, Philippians
chapter one, Verse six, being confident of this very thing,
that he which hath began a good work in you will complete it
to the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's going to keep us. So he's made us, he can't fail. Whenever sin threatens it, he
restores it. They shall revive, saying the
Lord as the corn and grow as the vine, Hosea 14 seven. Because
I live, you shall live also. Oh, that the Lord would deliver
us from the lies that we tell ourselves about who we are. from the lies that we are so
influenced by in terms of what other people might think of us,
and just believe what God says. You are my children. I've taken
you out of the dunghill. I've lifted you up. I've made
you priest and king. You are holy. You are set apart
by his grace. unmerited favor, and by his mercy,
giving to the Lord Jesus Christ all the punishment for our sin,
so that we can be made holy. For by one offering, he hath
perfected forever them that are sanctified. That's why God calls
us saints. He's not trying to boost our
ego. God's not trying to boost your ego, and I hope I'm not
trying to do that right now. I'm speaking to you what God
says about who we are. By one offering, he hath, past
tense, perfected forever them that are sanctified. What a difference this would
make if we had the faith to believe God. about what he says we are. Hebrews chapter 10, verse one. The law cannot make us perfect.
The term of that passage, Hebrews 10. Verse one, for the law having
a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the
things can never, with those sacrifices which they offered
year by year continually, make the comers there unto perfect. No sacrifice that we make, no
work that we perform, Nothing that we do can make us perfect
in the sight of God. Yeah, look at verse 10. Then, verse nine, then said he,
the Lord Jesus Christ, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He take
it the way of the first that he may establish the second by
the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once and for all. That's glorious. Now this is what God says, my
duty and responsibility is just to declare what the Lord says.
This is who he says you are. You know, children are greatly
influenced by the image that their parents give them, are
they not? You know, you beat a child down
and they're going to grow up with a very bad image and it's
going to result in a lot of bad behavior. Conversely, if you, it's probably
more of a problem in our culture, tell children how wonderful they
are when they need to be corrected, then you're going to raise a
brat. But my point is that children
are influenced greatly by the image that their parents give
them. Is it not such with us? If we're the children of God,
are we not greatly influenced by what God, this is what God
is saying to his children. This is what he said, this is
how I see you. In both cases, whether it be
being set apart for the purpose of God's glory and service, or
whether it be the imputation of the righteousness of Christ
making us perfectly holy, both of these are absolutes. In other words, they cannot progressively
get better. This idea of, Michael, you spoke
on this last Sunday, progressive sanctification, that you get
better and better and holier and holier and less sinful. That's
not it, not at all. How can sinlessness become less
sinful? How can perfection become more
perfect? He can't. It's an absolute. And if God has set us apart for
his service, is he going to withdraw that? The gifts of God are without
repentance. God doesn't change his mind because
we've become unworthy servants. He has set all of his children
apart to worship him, to serve him, and to love him. And when
we stumble and fall in that, He picks us up and puts us back.
Why? Because He sanctified us. He
set us apart. He's made us holy. He's turned Saul's into Paul's,
and he's brought down the colossal righteousness that we once thought
would earn us favor with God. You know, that's the greatest
expression of pride. You know, we live in a world
of arrogance. The Lord said, I'll bring down
your arrogance. The greatest expression of arrogance is thinking
that we can stand in the presence of God based on our own righteousness. That we can answer to God. That we can say to God what Job
said to God. Let me bring my case before you
and I'll prove to you that I'm worthy. Is there any more arrogant
thing than that? Humility is understanding and
believing believing that all my righteousness is in Christ,
but oh, what righteousness I have in him. Oh, what boldness I have
to be able to come before the throne of grace. What acceptance
I have before God almighty. To the saints, Everything in this book written
by God to the saints. Saints. Amen. All right, let's take a break.