We're about a minute early, but
everybody's here and ready to hear. So let's open our services
this morning with hymn number 33. Good morning, and let's all
stand together. Number 33, the hardback hymnal. Stand up and bless the Lord,
ye people of his choice. Stand up and bless the Lord your
God with heart and soul and voice. O high above all praise, above
all blessing high, who would not fear His holy name and laud
and magnify? Oh, for the living flame from
his own altar brought to touch our lips, our minds inspire and
wing to heaven our thought. God is our strength and song,
and His salvation ours. Then be His love in Christ proclaim,
with all our ransomed powers. Stand up and bless the Lord,
the Lord your God adore. Stand up and bless his glorious
name, henceforth forevermore. Please be seated. Good morning. We pray the Lord
to give us the grace to do that this morning, to bless His holy
name. We've come here to worship our
God. What a blessing it is that the Lord has brought us here
and that He has promised to meet with us. And that's our hope. We're going to be in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 for
our Bible study this morning. I want to thank Robert for the
message last Sunday and for Michael. I listened to both of them twice
and was very blessed, as I know you were. Thank you. The brethren
in Tennessee send their regards and thought we had a good meeting,
so I was very, very thankful. uh... this coming week i'll be
back next sunday but this coming week i have one more planned
uh... todd and reynaldo and uh... are going to go down and visit
the churches in mexico uh... before uh... before when a leaves
when is leaving july the third come back to houston to be with
their kids and grandkids so uh... this may be our last time to
go down and visit with them so uh... pray for us right now to
be translating for todd and i as we preach and uh... Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on His Word. Our Heavenly Father, we are thankful
that You've brought us once again to this place. We thank You for
Your good providence that has ordered our steps and caused
us to desire to be here. We ask, Lord, that You would
bless this time that you would open our eyes, that you would
open thy word and reveal to us the glory of thy dear son. We
we thank you that what you open no man can shut. And so, Lord,
we we trust that you will cause us to be able to worship you. We are dependent upon thy spirit
to that end. Lord, we thank you that the throne
that we come before is a throne of grace, not a throne of law. We thank you that we have an
advocate, one who has satisfied all the demands of thy holy law,
and one who stands in our stead for all our righteousness. We
ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I've titled this study from 1
Thessalonians chapter 4, Your Sanctification. Your Sanctification. Now, the word sanctification
is the same word from which we get our word holy. It means to
be set apart, to be consecrated. The first time that it's used
in the scriptures is in Genesis chapter 2 when the Lord finished
His work. He rested on the seventh day
because the work was finished and He made holy the seventh
day. He set that day apart as the
day of rest. Now we know that that day set
apart is a picture of the rest that we have in the Lord Jesus
Christ who has finished the work and the scripture says in Hebrews
chapter 4 that actually the work was finished before the foundation
of the world. God ordained it to be finished and it was done.
When the Lord Jesus Christ gave up the ghost on Calvary's cross,
he bowed his mighty head and said, it is finished. He came to do the Father's work,
to accomplish the salvation of his people. What a glorious hope
we have in a successful Savior. We don't worship a God who's
doing his best to get folks saved. We don't worship a God who makes
an offer of salvation to be accepted or rejected by man. We worship
a God who has accomplished the salvation of His people. And
so the Lord Jesus Christ was set apart, the day has been set
apart, the hope of our rest is set apart, and all of God's people.
The Scripture says, He that sanctifieth, that's the Lord Jesus Christ
who consecrated Himself, and they that are sanctified, that's
who he died for, are all as one, whereby he is not ashamed to
call them his brethren. so our union with christ is is
because he has set himself apart listen to what michael you know
preach from john chapter seventeen uh... last sunday and uh... verse nineteen says and for their
sakes i sanctified myself that they might be sanctified through
the truth So the Lord Jesus Christ is able to sanctify Himself,
set Himself apart. We can't set ourselves apart.
He has to set us apart. And He does that by the truth,
the truth of the gospel. As we are enabled by His Spirit
to hear and believe, He sets us apart. He consecrates us as
His own. Now that which God sets apart,
He sets apart for His glory, for His use. He owns it. And He purifies it and cleanses
it. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11 says,
And such were some of you. Now the previous verses speaks
of a licentious lifestyle as a Gentile and he says, and such
were some of you, but you are now washed, you are sanctified,
set apart, you are justified in the name up of the lord jesus
christ and uh... by the spirit of our god so this
thing of sanctification is a it's a it's an it's a absolute there
cannot be degrees in it uh... it is it is what we are in Christ,
when God makes us to believe the gospel, He sets us apart. I knew a man one time, and you
know that the Puritans were probably the most prolific writers of
everybody that that has written over the centuries, and most
of them believed in what was called progressive sanctification. And they wrote a lot about it,
and a lot of people today pay more attention to what the Puritans
had to say than what say at the scriptures. i'm of the opinion
of uh... preacher i heard say one time
he said uh... he said you know the word of
god sure does shed a lot of light on them commentaries and uh... and that's the truth so our concern
is not what the puritan said uh... not what some dead theologian
has said but what does god's word say and uh... and so i want us to look at these
verses consistent with all of scripture I know a man one time
who preached 90 consecutive messages on sanctification. 90 messages. His church finally fired him.
Asked him to move on, go somewhere else. And this was a reformed
Calvinist. A lot of y'all know who I'm talking
about. uh... and uh... uh... what was he doing
he was trying to cover every conceivable sin that a believer
could get caught up in and so hate that because that's that
was his understanding of sanctification sanctification has to do with
the way in which you live your christian life and uh... he didn't understand it for what
it was and so uh... The only way to preach 90 messages
on sanctification is to put men under the law. This is the conclusion
that most people come to when it has to do with the doctrine
of sanctification. I knew another man and this man
also is in our history together, who made this statement. He said,
he said, what does sanctification have to do with the particularity
of the atonement? What does sanctification, what
does how you live your Christian life have to, this is what he
was saying anyway, have to do with the fact that Christ died
particularly for his elect and made them acceptable in the sight
of God? Sanctification, that's a whole
other subject. Oh, no, it's not. No, it's not. sanctification
and uh... and an atonement are inseparably
linked it is the atonement that makes us sanctified it is the
atoning work of the lord jesus christ on behalf of his elect
that sets us apart and makes us bought possessions of god Sanctification, properly understood, will cause a child of God to
not want to sin. To not want to sin. Lord, to
see what God has done in setting you apart for his service and
for his glory for his it is that is the thing that that causes
the child of god to say oh lord ordinary restrain my flesh lead
me not into temptation don't let me don't let me shame the
gospel uh... our believers concerned with
how they live the hour board do we want to be obedient to
yes Do we fear our flesh shaming the gospel and taking away any
opportunity that we have to be a credible witness? Yes. Yes. Is that sanctification? No. No. Many believe that sanctification
has to do with the flesh becoming more perfect, more holy. That's not sanctification. The thing that needs to be understood
about our flesh is there's nothing holy about it. And there's nothing
that will ever be holy about it. Regeneration doesn't change
your flesh. The Lord said to Nicodemus, that
which is of the flesh is flesh. The flesh profiteth nothing. When the Lord saves you, He doesn't
somehow sanctify your flesh. No, the flesh has to go back
to where it came from. The earth is crying out for the
flesh to return. This flesh has to be made incorruptible. It has to be made holy, but it's
not going to be made holy until it dies. That's why the grave
could not hold the Lord Jesus Christ. The grave could not hold
him because his flesh was holy. He was made in the likeness of
sinful flesh, but he was without sin. And so the grave was forced
to release him, to let him go. Why? Because his flesh was holy. He was perfect. And our flesh
is not going to be made holy until we're given a resurrected
body. So, our flesh is flesh. Brian, you read in John chapter
4, the woman at the well, when she went back to Sychar and she
said, come, meet a man who told me everything I ever did. That's when the Lord saves you,
He reveals to you that everything you've ever done is nothing but
sin. And he also reveals to you that
everything you are in the Lord Jesus Christ is nothing but righteousness,
nothing but perfect holiness. Now there's our two natures. We have one nature that cannot
sin. We have another one that is nothing
but sin. And this matter of sanctification has to do with who we are in
Christ. Now, do we grow in grace and
in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes. Yes. And as we do, as we do, we fall
more and more out of love with ourselves, and more and more
in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. Does the flesh get better? No.
No. The more we see of His grace,
the more we see of His glory, the brighter the light gets,
the more of our own corruption we become aware of, don't we?
and the more we loathe ourselves. You know it was 25 years after
the Apostle Paul's conversion when he wrote the book of Romans?
You suppose that when he said 25 years now he had grown in
grace and in the knowledge of Christ. 25 years he had been
preaching the gospel. And what was the conclusion he
came to 25 years later after his conversion? In me, that is
in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. We know the law is holy,
but I am carnal, sold under sin. When I would do good, evil is
ever present with me. Now that's your flesh. You came
here this morning, I came here this morning, with hopes of worshiping
God. That's why we're here, isn't
it? And yet, in the 20 minutes that we've been meeting, you've
already had so many unholy thoughts pass through your mind. You've
already been distracted from the very thing that we came here
to do, haven't you? Why is that? Because of your
flesh. When I would do good, When I
would worship God, when I would pray, when I would read the Bible,
evil is ever present with me. I can't get away from it. Oh,
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Thanks be to God. Through Christ
Jesus, I am free. There is now, therefore, no condemnation.
Why? Because I'm holy in my substitute. I'm holy in Christ. There's no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We looked at that Wednesday night.
Walking after the Spirit is not some higher life of sinlessness. It's not It's not living a life
where you've got your head in the clouds and you're superior
over other men. Walking in the Spirit means that
you have the Spirit of God enabling you to discern spiritual things. You can see the truth. You can
hear His voice. You can taste of the sweetness
of His grace. You can smell the aroma of the
gospel when you hear it and the stench of self-righteousness
first in your own life and then when you hear it in religion.
You you feel after him, don't you? You've got spiritual senses
when you're walking in the spirit, enabling you to pursue those
things that are of Christ. So. This matter of being sanctified. Notice in verse 13 of chapter
3, "...to the end that he may establish your hearts unblameable
in holiness before God." Now there's my sanctification.
Unblameable in holiness before God. How's it going to be? Is it going to be because I've
Because I've somehow buffeted my flesh and learned to, you
know, people that promote progressive sanctification, churches that
do it. All they can do is crack the
whip of the law or compare themselves to themselves or compare themselves
to one another. And so what you end up with,
you end up with hierarchies of holiness within the church. And some people are more holy
than other people. And then you have those who believe
themselves to be the most holy disciplining those who are less
holy. It's not right. It's not right. It's not sanctification. As we grow in grace and in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, well, another example, the Apostle
Paul. Early in his ministry, he referred
to himself as the least of the apostles. and then later in his
ministry he referred himself as the least of the saints and
then towards the very end of his ministry he referred to himself
as the chief of all centers all centers now that's progress that's
that's regressive sanctification it but it is it's it you you
see more and more of your sin does that Does that give us a
license to sin? No, it's the one thing that restrains
our flesh from being what it would be. I remember as a young boy, you know what, I'm not going
to give that example. I'm not going to even tell. I hesitated
and then when I started I thought, no, no. You really... if you just can't
stand it, ask me later and I'll tell you. God has made Him to be unto us
our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. That no flesh should glory in
His presence. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
holiness. He said, I set myself apart,
and Father, I set them apart in the truth, the truth of the
gospel. Christ Jesus the Lord is our
sanctification. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, we
are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth. God chose you. God sanctified you. God gave
you faith to believe the gospel. God gets all the glory. We thank
God for you because of what God has done for you and in you. Ephesians chapter 1, this matter
of sanctification is a work of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. Ephesians chapter 1, blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings, all spiritual blessings. What
is our spiritual blessing? Do you see your holiness? Only through the eyes of faith,
only if you look into heaven, if God opens the windows of heaven
and you're able to see that you've got an advocate seated at the
right hand of the majesty on high, then you know that he ever
lives to make intercession for you and you have holiness before
God in him. That's the only way you're going
to see it. You look at your own life. You see, that's the problem
with progressive sanctification. People have you looking at your
life in order to determine whether or not you're sanctified, whether
or not you're holy. Now only one of two things are
going to be a conclusion. You're either going to become
a lying hypocrite, a lying hypocrite, which is what a lot of folks
in religion are because they profess themselves to be something
they're not. They pretend to be something.
They compete with one another. They intimidate each other. So if you look to yourself for
your sanctification, you're going to become a lying hypocrite or
you're going to become so overwhelmed with guilt and shame that you're
not going to be able to look up if you're an honest person. So we don't look to ourselves
for our sanctification. Look to Christ. He is our sanctification. God has chosen us in Him before
the foundation of the world that we should be holy, sanctified,
and without blame before Him in love. Now how are you going
to be holy and without blame before God in love? Only in Christ. There it is. Again, you're looking to your
substitute. You're looking to the Lord Jesus
Christ for all your holiness. For all the lack of your condemnation,
there is now therefore no condemnation. The law can't condemn me. The
accusations of the law have been silenced. The law can no longer
say, guilty. Why? because Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness. He satisfied the demands of the
law. He's my holiness before God.
He's my sanctification. And then we're also sanctified. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
10. Verse nine. Then said he, who's
speaking? The Lord Jesus Christ. Lo, I
come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that
he may establish the second. What did he take away? The condemnation
of the law, that he might establish the second. The law was given
by Moses, but grace and truth came by the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the Lord speaking, he said, Lo, I came to do thy will,
O God, to satisfy all the demands of your law, to take away the
condemnation of the law, and to establish grace, sanctification,
holiness, and righteousness for my people. Look what he says
in verse 10. By the witch will we are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Could that be any more clear? We are sanctified through the
offering of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ once for all. You
can't add to it any more than you can add to the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. What I'm saying to you is that
if you're in Christ, you're as holy as you're ever going to
be, righteous as you're ever going
to be. You can't get any more holy. and you can't become any
less. Look at verse 14. For by one
offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. This is the, this glorious truth
is the thing that God uses to cause us to hate our sin. You see, when we see what we
are in Christ, perfect, sanctified, holy, the truth of that reflects
the light of the gospel of His grace back on our old man, and
we hate Him? We hate Him. And we cry out, Lord, Lord, keep
me. Restrain me. Lead me not into
temptation. Deliver me from the evil one. You see, it's the light of the
glory that we have in Christ that causes us to loathe ourselves. Is that not, Daniel said it like
this, when I saw him, my comeliness, my strength, my beauty was turned
into corruption. And what we, what we hate, we,
we, well, let's, Turn with me to 1 Peter 1. I want to look
at one more. We've seen that we are sanctified
by God the Father. We are sanctified by the Lord
Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1 at verse 2. We are the elect. We didn't elect God. He elected
us. You did not choose me. I chose
you. We are the elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
now that word for knowledge does not mean that god in his omniscience
was able to look down through the quarters of time and see
who would choose him and therefore chose them based on the goodwill
that he saw in them no this word is the same word that's described
in the very first mention of it when Adam knew his wife and
she conceived and bare son. This is a loving, intimate relationship. God chose a people, loved them
with an everlasting love, elected them according to his foreknowledge,
according to his grace, through the sanctification of the Spirit. Through the sanctification of
the Spirit. Now the word here in the King
James is unto. Also it is for and by. This is the obedience of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's how we're sanctified by
the Spirit of God, by the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. You're not sanctified by your
obedience. You're sanctified by His obedience and by the sprinkling
of His blood through the ministry of the Holy Spirit set apart.
Set apart. The regenerate child of God has
no inherent holiness within himself. He must look at the Lord Jesus
Christ for all of his righteousness. And the one he sees him, he understands
more clearly what not only Daniel said, but what David said. When
he said in Psalm 51, my sin is ever before me. Lord, I can't
say anything. But what Paul said in Romans
chapter 7, in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. To will is present with me, but
how to perform that which is good, I find not. I've got to
have Christ. I've got to have Him. It's what
Job saw. When Elihu came and preached
the gospel to Job and Job's eyes were opened and he saw the Lord
and what did he say? Behold, behold, I see something
I've never seen before. Job, Elihu was angry at Job because
Job justified himself. Job thought he wasn't worthy.
He thought he was living a better life. He thought he was holy
enough to where these things shouldn't take place. He misunderstood,
didn't he? When he heard the gospel, behold,
I am vile. The same thing Isaiah saw in
Isaiah chapter 6. I saw the Lord high and lifted up in the year
the king Uzziah died. And then what's the first thing
out of Isaiah's mouth? Woe is me. I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I
live among a people of unclean lips. There's nobody holy. There's
nobody holy except him. My eyes have seen the king. I'm
going to die. His holiness is going to consume
me. And then what happened? The seraphim
took a coal from off the altar and touched his lips and said,
your sin's been purged, been taken away by the fiery wrath
of God's judgment that fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
cross. All the sins of all of God's
people have been purged, taken away once and for all by the
sacrifice of himself. I would ask those who would hold
to progressive sanctification, are you more holy now than you
were in the past? And if a person says yes, all
they're doing is confirming what God said when he said, the heart
is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked, who can know
it? If a person believes themselves to be more holy, less sinful
now than they were in the past, they've deceived themselves. The physical corruption of the
body. is crying out for a new body. This mortal body has to
be made immortal. And it will be. Our sanctification, this matter
of sanctification, it's so important. It may be the most important
thing. It's what causes us to long for a new body. Lord, I've got sanctification
in Christ and the light of His grace and glory is doing nothing
but exposing the corruption of my old flesh. Lord, I need a
new body. I need a new body. And the older
I get, the worse it gets. And I've got to have a new body,
a resurrected body, an immortal body, an incorruptible body.
And we long more and more. to see him as he is and be made
like him, don't we? Psalm 16 verse 10 says, it was
not possible for the pains of death to hold him. When you and I go into the grave,
Our bodies are going to decay. Our body from dust, you came
to dust. You're going to return. That's,
that's, that's the natural order. That's, that's what our bodies
have to do. His body wasn't, wasn't corruptible and the grave
couldn't hold him because his body wasn't like our body. He
was able to sanctify Himself. John 17, verse 19, we have to
be sanctified by the truth that He reveals to us. Furthermore, verse, verse one of chapter four.
Furthermore, then we beseech you brethren and exhort you by
the Lord Jesus Christ that as you have received of us, how
you ought to walk and to please God. So he would abound. So you
would abound more and more. Now we live more and more in
a culture like this culture would have been in Thessalonica. Godless. lawless culture uh... you go over there today and go
to the ruins of these cities uh... the remains of uh... there
there were well prostitution was actually practiced in their
religion openly it it dot and that people didn't
didn't know that that's how they grew up uh... taking advantage of one another
and uh... and defrauding one another for
your own profit and benefit that was part of culture so paul's going to instruct them
on two issues look what he says For you know what commandments
we gave you by the Lord Jesus Christ. For this is the will
of God, even your sanctification." He's not saying you're going
to become more sanctified. He's telling them to look at
their sanctification as the the motivating factor, if you
will, of walking after Christ and abstaining from these things
that are so prevalent, not only in your culture, but are becoming
more and more acceptable behavior. For those who are sanctified,
this behavior is not right. It's not acceptable. It's not
what the sanctified believer wants to do. And so he says,
this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you
should abstain, abstain from fornication. Now, the marriage bed is undefiled,
the scripture says. And the Lord has ordained sexual
activities to be confined to the marriage union. And the Lord
is saying to His children, don't abstain from any sexual activity
outside of marriage. Abstain from it. You're sanctified. You're holy. You've been set
apart. Don't do that. Is it going to make you more
or less sanctified? No. That's not the point. That every one of you should
know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor,
not in lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles, which know
not God. They're not sanctified. They're
not holy. They're just doing what comes
natural to them. If you've been sanctified, it's
not natural. For you've got, it's contrary
to grace, isn't it? And then he goes on to say, and
that no man go beyond to defraud his brother in any manner because
that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have
forewarned you and testified. Be fair and honest in your business
dealings. Don't look for opportunities
to get over on somebody for your own profit. The Lord knows. This is not the way believers
ought to live. Why? Because you're sanctified.
Not in order to be sanctified. For God has not called us to
uncleanness, but unto holiness. He, therefore, that despises
despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy
Spirit. But as touching brotherly love,
you need not that I write unto you, for you yourselves are taught
of God to love one another. And indeed, you do it toward
all the brethren which are all in Macedonia. But we beseech
you, brethren, that you increase more and more. Grow in grace
and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll see more
and more of His glory. You'll become more and more painfully
aware of your own sin. You'll fall more in love with
Him and more out of love with yourself. And the fact of who
you are in Christ will be the restraining grace God will give
you to keep that old flesh. You study to be quiet, to do
your own business, to work with your own hands as he commanded
you, that you may walk honestly toward them that are without,
and that you may have lack of nothing. So be honest, be responsible,
work hard, abstain from fornication. Why? Because God sanctified you. All right, let's take a break.