Thank you, Rob. All right, back
at John 17, this is our great high priest, the Lord Jesus,
and He's praying and interceding for His people here. This is
our Lord's prayer. This is our Lord's prayer for
His people. This is His heart toward His
people. He said there, In one of the verses, I speak these
things that my joy may be fulfilled in them. He lets us hear His
intercession for us. This is one of the ways He fulfills
His joy in us. He prayed this in the hearing
of His apostles, and He does so as recorded it for us to hear,
because He's still interceding this way for His people. This
is for His church. He's praying here particularly
for His apostles, but this is so of all His people. Now this
is what he prays in verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. You know, we live in a day when
people are speaking of truth in a relative sense. That's your
truth. This is my truth. The only truth
is God's truth. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. As thou has
sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into
the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify
myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Our subject will be sanctified
through the truth. And I don't want to preach about
sanctification. I do not want to do that. I want
to preach sanctification. I want to preach Christ who is
our sanctification. The word sanctified is used throughout
the scripture. Saints, sanctify, sanctified,
sanctification. Sanctification is in Christ and
it's by Christ. It's, first of all, to be set
apart by God for God's use. Set apart by God for God's use. No more to be used for common
purposes. Where was this done in eternity? God the Father set us apart in
divine election. And where? In Christ. Sanctifications
in Christ. It's all by Christ. God the Father
set us apart in Christ in election. You read that, Jude 24. It's
to be regarded and declared holy. You
know, God tells us to sanctify Him in our hearts. We don't make
Him holy. We're regarding Him as holy,
confessing He's holy. And this is what God does for
us. This is by Christ's work for
us, what He did for us on the cross. We see God's holy. This is how we see God is holy,
by what Christ did, the reason He came, what He accomplished,
sanctification is by Christ, it's for Christ, it's in Christ.
And then it's to be made pure, it's to be made holy. And this
is by being born of the Spirit of God, it's by Christ being
formed in you. Christ who is our holiness, our
sanctification. It's all in Christ and by Christ
and through Christ. Sanctification is all of our
triune God alone, by His grace, as is every other aspect of salvation. So nobody that's sanctified by
God's own glory, that they sanctified themselves. not true sanctified,
not if they're truly sanctified. They're not going to take a glory
in being sanctified because God is the one who sanctified. To
be truly sanctified is to know God in Christ is our sanctification. That's what it is to be truly
sanctified. And to grow in grace and knowledge
of Christ is to know this more and more, is to know more and
more Christ is our sanctification. So more and more, all your confidence
is Christ. This is what growth in grace
really is. Now I want to show you three
things. First of all, how sanctification
begins in our experience of it. Then secondly, the truth by which
we are sanctified. And then thirdly, just a few
words about sanctification. First of all, The sanctification
began in a sinner's experience of it. How do we begin to experience
sanctification? Well, it's by God's grace that
we're sanctified by the Holy Spirit. It's by the Holy Spirit,
it's by God's grace when we're regenerated. Now we don't know
what's taking place at that time, but what has happened is a new
man has been created within us. In these bodies of sin and death,
a new man's been created, a new spirit, by Christ being formed
in us. Christ has entered in in spirit.
And we've been made a partaker of the divine nature in that
new man. Christ in you, the hope of glory,
one with Christ. Now, Paul said in 2 Thessalonians
2 verse 13, he said, We're bound to give thanks always to God
for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from
the beginning chosen you to salvation. That's how we were sanctified
in eternity. God chose us. But it was through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth. Sanctification of the
Spirit, that's the new birth, and belief of the truth. That's
where it begins. Where unto He called you by our
Gospel unto the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The apostles had been sanctified in this way. They had experienced
this sanctification. Christ said, I've given them
thy word. He came to them and he personally sanctified them
through the word, through the spirit. And when this begins,
we begin to learn right away. God right away begins to teach
us something of God's holiness. Something of how holy God is.
This has everything to do with sanctification. He begins to
teach us how holy God is. That's when God sanctifies us
in our heart. He makes us see Him holy. He
makes us regard Him as holy and declare Him as holy. We see God's
glory, we see His honor as being holy, being separate from sinful
man, being separated from ourselves. And everything we thought was
holiness, everything we thought that we were doing that made
us holy goes out the window. When you see God and see His
holiness, how infinitely great in holiness He is, that's when
you see your sin. He said in Numbers 20, 13, this
is the water of Meribah because the children of Israel strove
with the Lord and He was sanctified in them. He made them see Himself. He sanctified them in their heart
by sanctifying Himself in their heart and making them see Him
as holy, high, above all, separate, different from everybody, holy,
holy, holy God. That's what the angels cried.
Remember when Isaiah was made to see the glory of the Lord,
he heard the angels crying, the seraphim crying, holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God. They were covering their face,
they were covering their feet, he's so holy. And it made Isaiah
cry out and say, woe is me, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean
lips, I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. That's
what a glimpse of God's holiness did for him, made him see he
was unholy. and God sanctified us within,
that's when we see God's holiness. We learn something of it and
that's when He begins to teach us that we must be perfect to
have communion with Holy God. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. God Almighty is holy and righteous
and just and perfect. And if He's going to have anything
to do with us and have communion with us and accept us, we have
to be holy, just, righteous, perfect before God. Or He cannot
have anything to do with us. God requires perfection and righteous
obedience to His law. Perfection. Perfection. Righteous obedience. Anything
less, we'll be damned. Anything less. God requires a
perfect sacrifice for sin. Our sin has to be put away. Perfect
sacrifice. Atonement's got to be made perfectly. God requires a perfect holy heart
and perfect holy worship of Him. That's what He requires. That's
how holy He is. Perfect. And God accepts only
that which is perfect. He said in Deuteronomy 18.13,
Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. He said in Leviticus
22.21, Whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the Lord
to accomplish his vow, or a freewill offering in beefs or sheep, it
shall be perfect to be accepted. There shall be no blemish therein.
Now, when God begins this work and makes us to see something
of His holiness, and we begin to see how holy God is, and we
start to see our sin, that's when we begin to realize we can't
come to God as we are. We cannot come to God anything
that is of us. sin and possibility because we
see He's everything we're not and we're everything He's not.
He's perfectly holy and we're perfectly sinful. And that's when He begins to
show us His grace and His love and His mercy and start revealing
us something about His sanctifying grace in choosing us before this
world was ever made. You might not see this at first,
but he's going to start showing you this, and you're going to
start seeing this is the only reason you were separated. Only
reason he had mercy on you. Jude said, called us, he said,
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them
that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus
Christ and called. Sanctified by the Father. This
thing of making us holy began long before we ever experienced
it. If it wouldn't have began then,
we would have never experienced it. It had to begin before we
ever fell. God chose us in Christ. He distinguished
His people from all others in that He loved us, chose us in
Christ, separated us in Christ, so that before Him, by all His
spiritual blessings being given us in Christ, before Him, He
looked at Christ, our surety, our covenant, our Savior, our
Redeemer from eternity, so that before God, we were holy and
without blame before Him. in love, in the Beloved. The Apostle Paul addressed the
Corinthians. He said, under the church of
God which is at Corinth to them which are sanctified in Christ
Jesus. That's been before the world
was made. We learn this and when we start seeing this is why God
made us to be born again by His Spirit. He loved us long before
this world was made. He called us out. He separated
us. He created a new man within us. Why? Because He loved us
from eternity. And you start to see this had
nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with what
I am or what I've done. This is according to God's grace. Now, the second thing and the
most important thing you begin to see when He really begins
to sanctify us. This is the most important thing
we begin to see right here. We begin to be taught that Christ
is the truth, He is the word, He is our sanctification. Verse
17, He said, Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is true. John began this letter, this
gospel, by declaring Christ is the word. He's the Word that
was God. He's the Word that was with God
in the beginning. The Word that was God. He is God. He was manifest
in the flesh. He's the Word. He's the wisdom
of God from eternity. He made all things by Him. And
He was made flesh and dwelt among us. And Christ said plainly,
He said, I am the truth. I am the truth. He's God's Word. He's the truth. He's the truth. Now here Christ says that He
sanctified His apostles and He sent them into the world just
as the Father sanctified Him and sent Him into the world.
He said in verse 18, As thou hast sent me into the world,
even so have I also sent them into the world. How was Christ
sanctified and sent into the world? By the Father. He said
back in John 10.36, it said to the Pharisees, You say of him
whom the Father has sanctified, set apart, and sent into the
world, thou blasphemous, because I said I am the Son of God. In
eternal counsel before the worlds were made, God the Father sanctified
Christ. He set him apart to be the Christ,
His Son, to come forth, and at the set time He sent Him forth.
He is the sent one. He sent His Son into the world.
That doesn't mean He made Him holy. That means He set Him apart. He sanctified Him. He set Him
apart to be the Savior, to be the sanctifier of His people.
And as Christ, as the God-man, as the head of His people, as
the substitute of His elect, for our sakes, Christ sanctified
Himself that He might be the truth by whom we are sanctified. He said in verse 19, For their
sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified
through the truth. Now Christ was holy, He was pure,
He was without sin from the womb. So it doesn't mean that He made
Himself pure. That's not what He's saying.
He'd been holy from the womb. But it means He separated Himself
for God's holy use to accomplish God's will. And He did it so
that by his accomplished work, he might be the truth, he might
be the word, he might be the gospel by which God sanctifies
his people in our experience of sanctification. You get what
I'm saying? You get what he's saying? Christ
Jesus sanctified His whole person to be the offering to God. He
sanctified Himself to be the offering that would take away
the sins of His people, to be the offering that would remove
all our sins and put our sins away out of God's sight, out
of the sight of the law and justice of God by the sacrifice of Himself. That's what He means here. We
were sanctified in Him by God the Father in the divine election.
And by His one offering, by Him sanctifying Himself in going
to that cross, the spotless Lamb, burying our sin, fulfilling the
will of God, answering to God's justice on behalf of His people,
He perfected His people. He sanctified His people by that
offering. Perfected the elect, sanctified
us by His one offering. That's the will of God the Father.
It was our eternal and complete sanctification, making us pure,
making us holy, making us just like God is. That was the will
of God. And that's what Christ accomplished
by His perfect oblation. That's the will Christ accomplished. Go over to Hebrews 10 and look
at verse 10. Hebrews 10.10 says, He said He
came to do the will of God, and it says, Hebrews 10.10, by the
which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once. It says in verse 14, for by one
offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Those the Father sanctified in
divine election, gave to Christ, trusted to Christ, that's who
Christ perfected forever by His one offering, them that are sanctified. And by that offering He sanctified
us. And so when God comes to you and me and He sanctifies
us in regeneration, and the Spirit of God enters in, He creates
a new holy man within these sinful bodies of death when Christ is
formed in us. That's what He does. It's a new
man created by God in the righteousness and true holiness that Christ
is. It's Christ's righteousness,
and it's Christ in you that is the holiness. And that's when
this Holy Spirit purges our conscience to stop trying to look at anything
we've done as being our holiness, as being our sanctification.
That's when, for the first time, you see Christ as your sanctification. and you come to God in Christ
alone. He convinces us we've been made
holy and righteous by Christ alone. It's the holiness and
righteousness God has made us in Christ Jesus. That's when
we're brought to confess Christ to be our only holiness, our
only sanctification, our only righteousness. And that's when
God declares His child and makes you know it, that you're holy
and righteous in His Son. That's what Christ is saying
here. Father, sanctify them through
thy Word. Thy Word is truth. I've sent
them into the world. I've sanctified them. I've sent
them into the world just like you sanctified me and sent me
into the world. They're going to have to know who to preach.
They're going to have to know who sanctification is. They're
going to have to know who holiness is. They're going to have to
know who righteousness is. So Father, sanctify them through
thy Word, through thy truth. I have sanctified myself, Christ
said, for their sakes. that they might be sanctified
through the truth. He is the truth. What he accomplished
is the truth, is the word by which he sanctifies his people
in our heart. Now, let's look at the few practical
words here lastly. When is When it's the Word, when
it's the truth of Christ Himself by which we're born again, that's
when we're taught our need of the Gospel, our need of the Gospel,
the Word that's preached. That's when we're taught our
need of it. That's when we've experienced the power of the
Gospel to sanctify us, and it's by this Word He keeps sanctifying
us, and this is how we are made to only preach Christ and Him
crucified. This is how the Gospel's made
our one weapon right here. You keep experiencing this just
like you did in the beginning. It was the hearing of Christ's
faithfulness that sanctified you in the beginning. It's the
hearing of Christ's faithfulness that keeps sanctifying you, and
this is what makes you use this one weapon when you're speaking
to brethren or when you're speaking to sinners without. You speak
of Christ and Him crucified. Christ prayed that this sanctifying
knowledge be given His apostles because Christ was sending them
forth to preach Him. That's why He was sending them
forth. And it's sanctification by Christ the Word that we learn
to preach, only Christ and Him crucified. The Hebrew writer
preached Christ. All through the Hebrew letter,
he's preaching Christ. Because the Hebrews were trying
to go back to their vain conduct. and go back to all the different
offerings and all the silver and gold and all the different
things they thought redeemed them and all the ceremonies and
the law. They were trying to go back to
it. And a Hebrew writer preached Christ, Christ, Christ from beginning
to end. And He is telling them, ìCome
out from the vain teaching of those who say sanctification
and righteousness is by manís works. Come out from them.î Thatís
what He is declaring throughout the whole Hebrew letter. And
look how He says this, Hebrews 13. Look what He says here, Hebrews
13. What does He use to teach us
this? Hebrews 13.10. He said, ìWe have an altar.î
whereof they have no right to eat what serve the tabernacle."
He's saying those that are still trying to come to God through
the law, by their works, by their self-sanctifying works, they
can't come to this altar. You've got to be a sinner to
come to this altar. You've got to have nothing good in you,
nothing done by you, nothing that will please God to come
to this altar. And know that about yourself.
Know that the altar is the one that's going to sanctify you.
That's Christ. Look at this. For the bodies of those beasts
whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest
for sin are burned without the count. Wherefore Jesus saw so
that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered without
the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto
him without the count bearing his reproach. Let's go to him. Let's go to Him. Same message
as when He founds us a Gentile in our sin and loaded up with
our sin. Come out. Come to Christ. Go
to Him, bearing the reproach. Your old friends are going to
ridicule you. They're not going to have anything to do with you.
Go to Him. But here's the sad thing. When
you go to Christ, you're going to have religious folks who are
going to do the same thing to you because they say you're not
holy enough because of your works. You go to Christ. He's His holiness. He's your separation. Christ
and His accomplished work is the Word. He's the truth. He's
the incorruptible seed by which the Spirit birthed us in the
first place and by which He continues to grow us. He's the Word. He's
the milk. He's the truth. He's the meat.
He's everything. He's how we grow. And the result
of this work is we look outside of ourselves to Christ alone. That's the result. We look outside
of ourselves for holiness and for righteousness as well as
we do for everything else we need. That's true sanctification. To be conformed to Christ, separated
from this world, separated from our lusts, separated from all
that would separate us from Christ. And He continues to keep us partaking
of His holiness because He's God our Savior. He is our sanctifier
and He's our sanctification. Look over at 1 Peter 1. after
Peter exhorts us not to return to our vain lusts and our ignorance,
but to be holy for God is holy. That's what he tells us. Look
at the first thing Peter says when he talks about the vanity
we were in. Verse 18, For as much as you
know, you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received from your fathers. He
said up there, he said, he said up there, Verse 14, as obedient children,
not fasten yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.
Be holy. He that called you is holy, so
be you holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written,
Be you holy, for I am holy. And it begins right here. Don't
go back to the vain conduct you received by your fathers, thinking
you were redeemed by silver and gold, by ceremony, by something
you did. Same holds for holiness. Same
holds for holiness. but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily
was foreordained before the foundation of the world was manifest in
these last times for you." Well, how do we believe in God? Who
by Him do believe in God. It's by Him that you believe.
He sanctified you. That raised Him up from the dead
and gave Him glory so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Now watch this. Seeing you have purified your
souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure
heart fervently." How did we do that? Being born again. Not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth
forever." That Word, Christ said, sanctify them through thy Word,
through thy truth. He said, I've sanctified myself.
I'm going to the cross to do this work so that I'll be the
Word that's preached. I'll be the truth that's preached
by which they'll be born of the incorruptible seed and given
a new life and a new heart and holiness by me. Why does it have
to be of God? Why does it have to be of Christ
through His Word? Because all flesh is grass, all the glory
of man is a flower of grass. The grass withered, the flower
thereof falleth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
And this is the Word by which the Gospel is preached to you.
And it's by this same Word, it's by the same truth of Christ,
our holiness, our righteousness, that the Spirit continues to
grow us in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Look here at 1 Peter
2 verse 1. Wherefore, laying aside all malice,
and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and evil speakings.
What is that? That's everything the Pharisees were doing. Not
saying, stand over there, don't come near me, I'm holier than
you are. Lay all that aside, and as a baby, as a newborn babe,
You remember whenever our Lord called that child and He picked
that child up and He said, except you become as a little child,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. That's not what He
said. He said, except you become as this little child. You know where that little child
was? Held by Him. That's what He's
saying. Except you become held by Christ
like a little baby. resting in His arms and in His
grip and in His embrace. And He said, Now as newborn babies
desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby,
if so be you have tasted the Lord as gracious. It's Christ
preaching the Word. He's the prophet, priest and
king. It's Him preaching the Word through
the Spirit, making it effectual in our hearts that He sanctifies
us and that He grows us in this state of sanctification. Let
me show you that in Hebrews 2. That's what Hebrews 2 is declaring.
Not only is He the one that sanctified us at Calvary, He's the one,
He interceded, God the Father does this, God the Son, and God
the Holy Spirit. But Christ, we're told over and
over, He's doing this, it's the Father sending His Son to do
this. Verse 11. He said, both he that
sanctifieth, Hebrews 2.11, both he that sanctifieth and they
who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not
ashamed to call them brethren. He's made us one in him. He's made us holy in him and
we're in him. He's the head, we're the members.
What he is, we are. If the root's holy, the lump's
holy. What he is, you are. Now watch
this. Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in
the midst of the church. I will sing praise unto thee.
This was the will of our father. This was God's glory to sing
the name of God to his brethren and teach us his name and make
this word affectionate in our hearts. He sanctified us and
he's our sanctification and he's going to keep us knowing this
by this gospel. But, and then, let me ask you
this now. By our faults, by our sin, and by God's chastening us, even
when that's the case, and keeping us sanctified in Christ. That's
when we learn that those God sanctified never become unsanctified. Those that He's made holy never
become unholy, because our holiness is Christ. He'll make you know
that when you fall and you see how unholy you are and how wretched
a sinner you are, and yet He keeps you knowing Christ is your
acceptance, your holiness, your sanctification, and He keeps
you sanctified unto Him. That's when He makes you know
your sin don't make you unholy, don't make you unsanctified.
God's going to grow us more and more to sanctify God in our hearts. to see He's our holiness. We
don't make God holy, but we regard Him as holy. And this begins
in a new birth, but it grows as God grows us in grace and
knowledge of Christ. We're seeing Him as our holiness. God is our holiness. God regards
His people holy in Christ because He chose us and blessed us with
all blessings in Him. And God makes us cease looking
on the outward appearance when we fall or when a brother falls.
How does He do that? He, by continuing this work,
sanctifies Himself in our heart and makes us sanctify God ourselves
in our own hearts and trust Him to keep us. When you fall, that's
what He does. Is it not? When you sin. And the Lord comes to you and
with this gospel makes you see that He's still your holiness
and still your righteousness and He makes this word affectionate
in your heart. Does that not sanctify God in your heart? Do
you not see Him as your holiness and your righteousness and your
all? Do you not? And that's what makes us continue
to regard his people and our brethren as holy, because when
we've experienced this personally ourselves, and experienced him
keeping us, and that he is our holiness, and we didn't become
unholy when we fell, that's how come you know when your brother
falls, he ain't become unholy either. But if you're looking
on things people do and what you do and what you don't do,
when you do not do as you ought to do, you're going to lose every
hope you have. You're going to lose all confidence
you have because you're going to be trusting yourself and what
you've done. You're going to be looking at
your hand. And when your brother falls, you're going to be looking
at what he did and say, he can't be a child of God. Look at him.
That's not sanctification. God's going to keep showing you
you're his. and keep sanctifying His child
in His heart to know who He is. And what you did or didn't do
didn't make you holy or unholy. He's your holiness. He's your
holiness. God sanctified Cornelius. He
was a Gentile. And He's going to send Peter
down there to preach to him. So God let down a sheep filled
with all these beasts that were unclean under the law. And He
said, Peter, arise, kill, and eat. Peter said, Not so, Lord.
I've never eaten anything unclean or common. Or speaking to him again the
second time, he said, What God hath cleansed, that call not
thou common. Now if you've experienced this
in your heart, you're not going to be quick to call your brother
unholy and unsanctified when he falls. Because God sanctified
him. God sanctified him. The last,
this long suffering, what is long suffering? It's suffering
a long time. It has to come to the very last
resort for one God sanctified for you to separate yourself
from Him. The last resort. That's long-suffering. You don't
go there right off the bat. Why? If you've experienced it,
you don't. If you know what a vile wretch
you are, you don't. We're either holy or we're not
holy. When we're born again by our
triune God, we're holy now. We grow in that state of holiness.
But we're holy. We give thanks to the Father
which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints and light who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear
son. We're in his son's kingdom. We're out of darkness into light.
We're meet to enter into glory by what God's done. We don't
become more holy. The corn plant's a corn plant
in the seed, in the blade, in the ear, and when it's fully
grown, it's still a corn plant. But our new man, which is born
of incorruptible seed, created holy by God, does grow in the
grace and knowledge of Christ. Growth is an ongoing work. Sanctification
is a continual work. You're not getting more holy,
but you are growing. and being sanctified by God and
born again by the Spirit of God, every believer grows in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we're not growing
more holy. We're growing in that state of
holiness, in that in-sanctification, learning how to possess our vessel
in sanctification, but your possessing or not possessing is not your
sanctification. That's not what makes you sanctified.
God is. God is. from a baby to a young
saint to a mature saint. God is your salvation. He's your
sanctification. We're not growing more fit for
heaven. Your sin nature's not getting less sinful. God made us meet in Christ, in
election, in a new birth, and by what Christ accomplished for
us. Our fitness is Christ alone. The difference in God's true
growth And in those who think they're growing more holy, the
difference is the spirit. When you grow more holy, you're
broken and contrite. You see yourself, the sinner,
more and more. And you see Christ, you're all
more and more. That's the difference. It's not
a matter of words. It's not a matter of just words. It's the spirit that's different.
I do think I've put away some sins of my youth, but that's
not my holiness. That's not my growth in grace,
not by the sins that I've put away. Unregenerate men stop sinning
outwardly as they grow older, because their bodies just get
old more out. But that don't make them holy. But as the light of Christ shines,
we see our sin nature more and more. And we see sins in thought
and word and deed more and more. Even in our best deeds that others
may see no sin in. So we don't boast in our sanctification. But what a blessing. When you're
sanctified in and by Christ, you don't cease being holy and
sanctified when you sin. That'll be a blessing to you
when you fall. That might not be a blessing right now, but
when you fall, that'll be a blessing. to know you don't become unsanctified
by your fall. And by God's keeping sanctifying
grace, that makes you hate your sin more. It makes you hate your
self-righteousness more. It makes you see Christ as everything
more and more. Nothing we do and nothing we
don't do changes this. This makes you love godliness. This makes you love holiness.
This makes you know what true holiness is, looking to Him. Here's what it is. This is growth
in grace right here. It's growing more and more in
these three things right here. This is growth in the grace and
knowledge of Christ, to grow more in these three areas. Paul
said, we're the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit.
You learn more and more the worship of God is in the Spirit. Number
two, we rejoice in Christ Jesus. You grow more and more to rejoice
only in Christ. And number three, we have no
confidence in the flesh. You grow more and more to have
no confidence in you, nor in your brethren. And that confidence
in the flesh means you don't put confidence in them when they
do good, and when they fall, you don't put confidence that
don't matter. You trust the Lord, and you know
he's gonna keep your brethren. You pray for them, you try to
speak the truth to them, try to speak the gospel to them,
try to remind them Remind them how many times you've fallen
and remind them how many times God's recovered you. Keep them
looking to Christ. Keep helping them look to Christ.
Law's not going to do that to them. You can whip them and give
them a tongue lashing and be hard on them and whatever you
want to do. That ain't going to do it. Judgment
begets judgment. Flesh begets flesh. It's the
Spirit of God working in his believer. But wherever sanctification
he is, there's going to be consecration of the heart, that's going to
increase. There's going to be a conformity to Christ in the
heart and in the life, that's going to increase. Commitment
to Christ and His cause is going to increase. Love, devotion,
confidence in, submission to Christ is going to increase.
Love to brethren, forgiveness, long-suffering, patience, mercy,
that's going to increase. But in all of this, None of that
you're going to look at and put any confidence in. In all of
it, you're going to have a growing, utter lack of confidence in you
and anything you do. It's the nature of God shining
the light. He must increase, I must decrease. But it's this continual growth,
Romans 12, it's this continual growth His mercies constantly,
His mercies constantly. When you see you sin more, you
see His mercies more. And it's these mercies and His
continual forgiveness in spite of us when we fall and sin and
Him continue making us to see Christ as our holiness. These
are the mercies that motivate us. And so Paul says, I beseech
you therefore brethren by the mercies of God. That speaks clearly,
brethren, of our sin. Mercies of God. That you present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. Not to make yourself holy and
acceptable unto God, because you are holy and acceptable unto
God. Present them a living sacrifice,
which is your reasonable service. Be not conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's what I've
been trying to say. This whole work is renewing you
to think all new in what all this really is. that you may
prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For
I say through the grace given to me to every man that's among
you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to
think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man
the measure of faith. Amen. All right, Brother Greg.