Alright, if you take your Bibles
and turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. And we'll be looking at verse
11 this evening. And the title of the message
is, Sanctified by God. Sanctified by God. The Scripture says in verse 11,
And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified,
but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the
Spirit of our God. These three things that the Apostle
mentions in this passage of Scripture are true of every child of God. You who are children of God,
you who are saved by the grace of God, you are washed. You are sanctified. And you are justified. This is true. of you. This is true of everyone who
believes in Christ. The apostle begins this passage
and he says, And such were some of you. And he's talking about
sinners, the sin. Such were you. And he he says,
You by nature were born sinners. Look up in verse Nine, he says,
know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom
of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor adulterers,
nor effeminate, that's homosexuals, nor abusers of themselves with
mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers,
nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And listen,
such were You. That's worse, some of you. You and I by nature are sinners. We are born spiritually dead,
spiritually blind. We were by birth sinners. Scripture says that the carnal
mind is enmity against God. The carnal mind, the natural
mind, is completely and utterly set against God. This was our nature when we entered
into this world. And therefore, by nature, we
were adulterers, rebels, idolaters, thieves, liars, and all other
sorts of vile sinners. This is not by any means an exhaustive
list of what we were by nature. If we were not these things outwardly
in the body, we definitely were these things in our minds, in
our imaginations, and in our hearts. But now, I like the word but
in Scripture. It's a conjunction of mercy. But. Now you have been saved. And such were some of you, but
you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified. You who are believers in Christ
have a new heart that is holy. and lives only in love for God
in righteousness. Therefore, Paul says, such were. That's past tense, isn't it?
That's past tense. These sins were the course of
our life, but now we have a new nature. We have something that
has changed in us. If anyone confesses to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, but actually has no change in themselves,
has no change in their life, something's wrong with that type
of conversion. Something's wrong with that. But we who are believers have
a new nature that's a gift of God's grace. Now, the old man doesn't go away,
does he? When we were born again of the
Spirit of God, the old man that was vile and corrupt is still
vile and corrupt. He didn't change. But rather, we were given a new
nature that was created of God. This is the miracle of salvation. Circumcision, the scripture says,
availeth nothing but a new creation. Now that's availed something.
A new creation. A new nature. And this new nature rules over
the old. The new nature rules over the
old. There is in every believer now
two natures. And they are at constant war
with each other. The new nature is set up to rule
in the heart, but the old nature still will not bow to the new. They are at constant war. Galatians
5.17 says, For the flesh lusteth. Walrath. against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to
the other, so that you cannot do what you would. What would
you do? You who are believers in Christ,
what would you do? We would be righteous. That's
what we would be. We would be holy without sin. We hate our sin. We despise our
old nature. But because of this constant
warfare, we're not able to do what we want to. And because of this conflict,
the Lord has given us His Word. For our strength and our comfort,
for our joy and our peace, the Word of God, which contains God's
peace, God's mercy, God's kindness, and it's all found in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This book is all about the Lord
Jesus Christ. And if we desire peace with God,
if we desire comfort in our hearts and strength to overcome the
old man, then we'll find it only in God's Word. I like this part of this song.
It says, you fearful saints. Are you fearful? You fearful saints, fresh courage
take. The clouds you so much dread
shall soon break in blessings on your head. What then makes the difference
between you You who have two natures. You who are born again
of the Spirit of God. What is it that makes you different
from those who only have one nature? We know this. The Scripture says, Who maketh
thee to differ from another? Or what hast thou thou hast not
received? We know this, that it is God that makes us to differ. It is God. God makes the difference. You
and I are sinners, even as others, but we are washed, but we are
sanctified, but we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and by the Spirit of our God. If any sinner of Adam's
race is to be saved, it must be He must be the recipient of these
three graces. First of all, you must be washed.
Are you washed? If you have a new nature, and
that nature is created of God the Holy Spirit, we know this
about you. You are washed. You remember that picture in
Ezekiel? I believe it's chapter 16, of
the infant cast out. The Scripture says that he was
polluted in his own blood. And then we read of God coming
by and He says, Behold, it was the time of love, and He took
the child. And the Scripture says, And I
washed thee from thine own blood. washed us. We were by nature like Naaman
the leper. You remember him? He was the
captain of the host of Syria. Very important fellow this man
Naaman was. He was a mighty warrior. He was a conquering hero. He was celebrated by the people
of Syria. Even the king loved Naaman. The only problem is Naaman was
a leper. Naaman was a leper. And he had heard about a prophet
in Israel who was able to heal him. And he took off to Israel
to find this prophet. And when he got there with his
big crowd and entourage, in a hero type fashion. He come to this
poor little hut where the prophet lived. And the prophet did not
even come out to greet this man. And Naaman was offended at this. He said, I thought surely that
this man would have come out and laid his hands on me. I'm
sure he would have come out and said some wonderful words about
me and then healed me of my leprosy. But that's not how it happened.
The prophet didn't even give him the courtesy to come out.
He wasn't that important. So the man of God told him what
to do. He said, you'll wash seven times in Jordan and you'll come
clean. And Naaman went off in a big
haste, mad, angry. How dare you tell me to wash
in a muddy river when there are plenty other places I can go? You remember how the servant
said, if he would have asked you great things, wouldn't you
have done it? All he told you to do was to be washed in the
Jordan seven times. Is that too much to ask? And
so he, in humility, comes back and he washes in that Jordan. And just as the prophet said,
he came out the seventh time with skin like a child. Pure! Washed of his leprosy. The gospel message of salvation
is the same. We are like Naaman the leper. And the Scripture says, Go to
Christ. Come to me, you that are heavy
laden, and I'll give you rest. Come unto me and be ye saved. All the ends of the earth. I
am God and there is none else. The Scriptures are clear. Come
to Christ. Believe on Christ. Trust in Christ. And you will be washed from your
sin. Everyone that comes, everyone
that comes to Christ by faith, not one that comes to Christ
as a sinner in need of cleansing, goes away empty. They go away cleansed. Cleansed. Zechariah 13 says, In that day
there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness. And that fountain, my friend,
is open. That fountain right now is open. And the thing that flows from
this fountain is not water, but blood. Blood. It is the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all our sins.
When we are washed, The gospel message, friend, is a singular
message. It's only about the blood of
Jesus Christ. Do you realize without blood
there is no gospel? Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sin. There's none. Behold, the blood
of Jesus Christ is a fountain open And all who are washed in
the blood of Christ come forth clean, pure. Now you can be baptized in a
pool of water until your hands turn into gills and fins. That won't wash you from your
sins. Baptism will not wash you. And
no amount of religious exercise will wash you from your sins.
Only the blood of Jesus Christ that was poured out of His body can wash away sin. It was by the sovereign free
mercy of the Father who was not willing to impute our sins to
us. But in grace imputed our sins
to His Son." This is a matter, this is a very legal matter. The Lord Jesus Christ took our
guilt. It's a miraculous matter. Because
I don't know how anybody could ever remove guilt. Only God can
remove guilt. If you've actually done something,
now you may be somehow acquitted, You may have someone take your
place in jail, but one thing they can never do is remove your
guilt. But yet God, only God can do this. He took our guilt,
and He put it on His Son, and He took His righteousness, and
He put it on us. And so Christ paid the debt for
our sins. He suffered the hell and justice
of God for our sins so that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. In Him. By His death. By His
blood. And you that have been washed, I think of my children. Always
use them as illustration. Yes, they're always the closest
to me You're one of the hardest things in the world is bath time They don't they don't ever think
that they get dirty again did not take a bath last week Sure,
I don't need another one Yeah, you do So do I, so do you. We need those things because
we're constantly getting filthy again. One thing about this washing
is that you never get filthy again. I'll tell you this, your conscience
does. This is what was pictured when the Lord washed the disciples'
feet. He said, you need not be washed, save your feet only.
What that pictured was our conscience. As we walk through this world,
the dirt and sin of our life in this world get on our feet,
get on our conscience. And we become defiled in our
conscience. And we go to the Lord and say,
forgive me of my sins. I confess them before you. And
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanses our
conscience from dead work. But yet one thing about the Lord
Jesus Christ's death is, when He said it was finished, it was
finished. When sin was eradicated, sin was eradicated. It was gone.
In the eyes of God and His holy justice, God, seeking for our
sins, cannot find them. Because they're not there. They're
gone. They're washed. They're completely
washed away. God says, I, not you, Not you,
not me. God says, I have blotted out
thy transgressions as a thick cloud. God blotted out your transgressions. With what? Blood. The blood of His Son. We were polluted in our own blood,
but through Jesus Christ, we have been completely and absolutely
washed from all our sins. Have you been washed in the blood? If you've been washed in the
blood, you have great cause to rejoice. You have great courage
to take, because your sin is gone. It's gone. Second of all, you who are believers
in Christ are sanctified. In the Scripture, this word sanctified
has three meanings. It means to set apart. When God
set apart the Sabbath day, the Scripture says He sanctified
it. He set it apart for Himself. You think about the firstborn
of Israel. The Lord says, set apart the
firstborn of Israel unto Me. Now, why would He do that? Well,
both of those picture the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sanctified,
set apart for the work of God. He is our Sabbath. We don't have
a Sabbath day that we worship on. We worship on Sunday. The Sabbath is a Saturday in
the Jewish law. We worship on Sunday, the first
day of the week, because that's the day that the Lord Jesus Christ
rose from the dead. But Jesus Christ, He is our Sabbath. He is our rest. And also, He
is the firstborn, isn't He? Scripture says that He might
be the firstborn among many brothers. He's the firstborn of God, set
apart for the work and service of God. And Jesus Christ Himself,
in John 10, 36, says that the Father sanctified Him. That word
means set apart for His work. Secondly, the word sanctify means
to regard as holy. To regard. Scripture says to
us, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Now what does that
mean? That means to regard God as holy. If we sanctify the Lord, are
we making the Lord more holy? No. No. We are just acknowledging
His holiness. That's what the Lord Jesus was
teaching us when He taught His disciples to pray. He said, when
you pray, pray this, Our Father which is in heaven, hallowed
be Thy name, sanctified be Thy name, holy be Thy name. Did we make His name holy? No.
We recognize His name to be holy. So that's what the second time
the word sanctify, that's what it means to regard as holy. And the third meaning of the
word sanctify is to actually make holy. To actually make holy. This sanctification is an actual
change of nature. And we who are saved and washed
by the blood of Christ, we are set apart by God for His holy
use. We are declared by God to be
holy and we are made holy. When God sanctifies us, He sets us apart for His use. He declares that we are holy. And then He makes us holy. All three of those apply to God's
sanctification of His people. This work of sanctification is
completely the work of God. It's completely the work of God. Just as redemption, washing you
from your sins, that was a work of God. Is that not clear to
us? That that's completely and utterly
the work of God through the blood of Christ? What about justification? We don't justify ourselves. It's
completely the work of God. Well, so is sanctification. Don't
be confused or led astray with this word. Don't
be afraid of it. This is a blessing for you. You
who have been washed, you are also been sanctified by God. First of all, you are sanctified
by God, the Father. You are set apart by God the
Father in election. This is clearly the purpose of
God the Father in salvation, to choose and elect people out
of the fallen race of Adam. And by His eternal decree, He
sanctified us to be holy and without blame before Him. He
sanctified you. You who are believers in Christ,
you have been set apart by God. You have been chosen. Chosen
by God and set apart for His holy use. Before the world began. You were sanctified. You were
sanctified. Blessed be our God and Father
who by grace set us apart to be vessels of mercy. Hath not
the potter power over the clay to make one vessel unto honor
and another to dishonor? You that believe, you have been
made a vessel of honor. God has made you a vessel of
honor and he set you aside for his holy use. He reveals this to us in the
matter of Jacob and Esau, the children not yet being born,
neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God, according
to election, might stand for Jacob have I loved, Jacob have
I sanctified, have I set apart, but Esau have I hated. If God the Father would not have
sanctified us to be holy, you and I could have never done anything
to make ourselves holy and fit for the kingdom of God. There
would have been no hope for man. Second of all, we are sanctified
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Go to Hebrews chapter
10. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 10. Scripture says, by the witch
will. By whose will? By God's will. You are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. By the will of God. You are sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus once for all. By the will of
God, we are made holy through the blood of the Son. Believer, let us glory in the
offering of Christ that was so satisfying So satisfying to the
justice of God, He only had to do it once. What in the world
have we ever had to do once? And we probably did it once,
it wasn't worth doing again. It was horrible. I know this from experience.
That's to be true of me. I know it's true of you. But
this, our Savior, once, offered Himself, once satisfied the justice
of God for us, and thus sanctifying us by His holy blood, by His
holy offering. We should glory in this one offering
for sin. See the contrast of true sanctification
and holiness with that of the lie. They who believe the blood
of Christ is necessary for salvation and yet try to add their offerings
or their sacrifices in order to sanctify themselves before
God, they are not saved. Period. If we try to add anything
to the precious holy work of the Lord God in the Trinity of
His persons, then we are not sanctified. We are not washed
and we are not justified. This is why men strive to bear
the yoke of the law, thinking to sanctify themselves or make
themselves more holy and acceptable to God by the exercise of religion
or works. The Pentecostal sanctification
is what they call the second blessing. They believe that when
a man believes and is baptized, his total sin nature is eradicated
and he doesn't sin anymore. That's Pentecostal sanctification. The legal is sanctification.
This is accomplished by changing fleshly behavior, by starting
or stopping habits, by becoming more involved in religion and
morality. This man has a form of godliness,
but denies the power thereof. And his sanctification is rooted
in touch not, taste not, and handle not. That's the sanctification
of a legalist. But the most dangerous form of
sanctification is that of what men call progressive sanctification. It's the most dangerous because
these men profess to believe that salvation is by the grace
of God and yet they defile the sacrifice by trying to sanctify
themselves. They put their hand to the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ and they've defiled the sacrifice. They say this, Now this is their
saying, it's not mine. They say that sanctification
is progressive righteousness or progressive holiness. Which is to say that the holiness
that God imputes, the righteousness that Christ imputes to a believer
is not really true righteousness. That is to say that holiness
that we have, that is given to us by God, is not true holiness,
but must be accumulated or added to in order to be truly holy. You've got to put your work into
it to make it holy. The Scripture teaches no such
thing. Sanctification in the Scripture
is always attributed to God. It's something God does for us. But you are sanctified in the
name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. And I'll
tell you, when we read men, we find some men and read their
books You may get some good things out of it, but when they part
from the Word of God, we must part with them. I don't care
who they are. We must part with them. This
matter of sanctification is vital to our salvation, and it's either
the work of God completely, or it's the work of man. There's
no middle ground. It's either of grace, or it's
of works. Believer, We being in Jesus from
eternity were always holy according to the election of the Father.
And this was manifest that we were holy by the shedding of
the blood of Christ once for all who redeemed us to reconcile
us to God by His death. And now, now, we have experienced
the sanctification of God. We who are believers in Christ
now experience the sanctification of God. Because sanctification not only
comes by the Father setting us apart by the Son procuring it
by His blood, setting us apart, making us holy by His blood.
But this is also an experience because the Holy Spirit comes
and quickens us, gives us new life, and creates in us the holy
nature. This is sanctification. You who
are believers in Christ, you are set apart by the Holy Spirit
who has quickened you to life. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 13, the apostle says,
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. How? Through sanctification of
your best efforts. Is that what it says? No. Through sanctification of the
Holy Spirit and belief of the truth. These are necessary. The new birth of the Holy Spirit
sets us apart by giving us the two natures. The nature that
we have is sin, but the nature He gives us is holy and cannot
sin. Believer in Christ, we confess
our sin and we desire to be holy. The new nature rules, but the
old nature will not bow. It's a struggle that continually
occurs within our own self. This is a manifestation of God's
sanctification. of the Spirit. Do you struggle with your old
nature? Is it your desire to serve and
love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and yet you find the principle of sin that mars
everything you want to do? Friend, that's great evidence
of sanctification. That God has put in you a nature
that has not been there before. A new nature. A nature that believes
on Christ. The scripture says that which
is born of flesh is flesh. You want to know how to eradicate
the old man? You want to know how to get rid of him? Die. That's it. It's the only way
to get rid of it. Death. This old man will hang around,
this corpse will hang around our necks until it falls off
into the grave and then we'll be what we want to be. Holy. We'll be as we really are. Holy. Holy. And so as we travel through this
life Believer in Christ, we grow in the grace and knowledge of
Jesus Christ, but we do not grow in holiness. We do not become
more holy. You're as holy right now as you'll
ever be. In heaven, you won't be any holier
than you are right now. As He is, John said, so are we in this present world. Now, I'll tell you what, you
and I may grow in understanding of that holiness. We may grow in the understanding
of God's grace to give us such holiness. We may grow in the grace and
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as to what it took to accomplish
that holiness. But the more we know of this
holiness doesn't make us holier. You see, you are either holy
or you're not. There is no middle ground. You
can't be partially holy. If you're partially holy, you're
a sinner and you're lost. We do not become holier, but
we do grow in the graces of the Holy Spirit. All of these graces of the Spirit
we grow in causes us to love Him more. Isn't that true? You that learn more of His love,
do you not want to love Him more? I want to love Him. I've not
begun to love Him. I want to love Him and I haven't
even started. But you know what? The more I
love Him, that does not change His love for me at all. He's always loved me. And He'll always love me the
same. He'll never change. God cannot love us more than
He already has. And He will not love us less.
The more we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, as we grow in grace, we believe
more. We have stronger faith in Christ. But does our growing in the grace
of faith, does that cause Him to give us more righteousness? Or more favor with Him? No. No. It's His faith anyway. His faith
is given to you. to grace. And therefore, we cannot
progress in sanctification or holiness, even though we may
grow to understand God's greatness, the greatness of God's work.
Are you washed? Are you washed in the blood of
Christ? That is, do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ absolutely
and completely alone for all your hope and forgiveness of
sins? If so, you're washed. Sins are
gone. Are you sanctified? If you sanctify yourself, you're
not sanctified. But friends, if you have been
sanctified by God, you are sanctified. You who believe have this confidence
because God chose you, God redeemed you, and God called you, and
God will keep you. Because He has made you holy. And lastly, we who are washed
and sanctified, we are also justified. What does it mean to be justified?
I'm going to give you one word. Innocent. Innocent. That's what it is to be justified.
It means not guilty. You who are believers in Christ,
you are not guilty. Wait a second. I know when I
sinned because I was there. I know! I'm guilty! No doubt. You are. In the eyes of your
conscience, in the eyes of yourself, yes. But in the eyes of God,
your guilt has been removed from you and placed on His Son. And
His innocence has been placed on you. What a What a gift that God declares
us to be justified. If God has done this for you, then you and I should have great
confidence in Him. We should take great comfort
in His work on our behalf, because He washed us, sanctified
us, and justified us. And friends, one day He'll glorify
us. He already has, but I haven't
experienced it yet. One day I will. And praise God
for it. I pray that the Lord blesses
to your heart. This stand will be dismissed in prayer.