couple of the ideas in verse
2 this morning. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge
of God, And according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus
Christ and for sprinkling with His blood, may grace and peace
be multiplied to you. Now I spent a lot of time last
week just pounding the reality of what an apostle is, of what
an apostle does. and that they are not the large
and in charge bosses of the church, but rather the largest servants
to the church. They've been given authority
to speak the word of Christ, the teaching of Christ by the
Spirit of God, and in doing so, the Spirit of God in us permits
us to be subject to that in our humility, in our lives, and so
forth. And one of the reasons that I
emphasize that is because we live in a day and age where leadership
is often seen as oppressive and bossy. But leadership is humble
and quiet. Leadership is a servant first. We also looked at Peter throughout
the New Testament narratives. We saw how Peter, though he was
full of zeal, was misguided. misunderstood almost everything,
acted on impulse rather than wise and prudent thought. And of all the disciples, he
would have been one that the public would have seen to be
the closest to Christ, et cetera, although we know that the relationship
that Jesus had with John was much different. Peter would have
sort of, and did, stand out as the spokesperson for the disciples. He was the spokesman. He spoke
for them. He spoke up for them. He talked
over them. And he always denied anything
that would seem like he would fail. But yet he also doubted
himself. He doubted the words of the Lord. He said, it is not so. You do
not have to die. He even asked the Lord, is it
me? Am I going to betray you? Then I would never, ever, ever
abandon you. And then lo and behold, what
happens? He denies Christ three times, but he was restored. He
was restored. And he was restored because he
belonged to Christ. And then Christ told him to feed
my sheep, not once, not twice, but three times, once for every
time that Peter denied Christ, Christ restored him. So the context
then, as we learned last week, is that there were a lot of Jewish
people, ethnically, who had come to believe in the gospel of grace,
sovereign and free, come to believe in the person of Jesus Christ
by the Spirit of God. And it cost them, it cost them
their livelihood, it cost them their freedom, it cost them their
voice, it cost them their family, it cost them their property.
And so they were just spread out, they were just cast out
into the world to go and live like nomads again. And Peter
is writing to them this letter to encourage them in the faith.
And what we see oftentimes, especially with Paul's writing, Peter is
no different, is that the introduction to these letters, these introductory
statements, are ways of really establishing almost like an outline
or a reflecting point or an anchor or tether to the rest of everything
that's going to be said. And so you'll see us going back
to chapter one, verse two, throughout the reading and the teaching
of this letter. And when we get to verse three, there's so much
there, there's just this doxology, and we closed with that last
week. And Peter's primary point is to give hope. To give hope, and then because
of that hope, to give solid and practical instructions to these
Christians who for Every logical and rational thing that they
know should run for their lives and escape this Christianity.
You ever felt that way? Yeah, we have. And so what I'm
gonna do today is a little bit different. I've preached this
letter many times before. I'm sure that if you look on
the church website, I've probably preached it in my tenure here
over 12 years, but it's going to be a little different. Matter
of fact, I don't think I have, but it's going to be a little
different. It's going to be a little slower. It's going to be a little
more focused because Peter is writing Jewish people who are
Christians. Remember, they're not practicing
Judaism any longer. There's no marrying of Jewish
theological traditions into Christian teaching. One points to the other
and the application is sovereign grace, not works and laws and
precepts and washings and ceremonies and certain types of voices and
certain types of language and certain types of clothes and
certain types of movies and certain types of chicken. And so Peter establishes by the
Spirit of God this hope and then this action, this attitude. There's
always some, there's a lot of deep, almost self-preaching in
this text. You'll see it as we get started
over the next few weeks. But what I'm going to do is to
give the application that I ran out of time for last week about
the sovereignty of God and the foreknowledge of God the Father,
what it means for you in a practical sense. And then we're going to
step into how that sovereignty, how the foreknowledge of God
applies to your sanctification and reestablish what the Old
Testament and the New Testament would teach us about sanctification. And then we're going to make
application there because I don't want you to be lost when Peter
begins to make application. So, for example, in verse 13,
look there real quick as sort of like a foreshadowing of months
to come. Therefore, preparing your minds for action," see,
this is what he's assuming, you will be preparing your minds
for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace
that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So see, this hope that is tied and tethered to the blood of
Christ, that is tied and tethered to the promises of God, that
is tied and tethered to the power of God and His sovereignty, His
electing love, is the only place where we can
find hope. Then he says in verse 14, as
obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of
your former ignorance, which was what? The precepts of religion
in Judaism. The promise of the coming Messiah
misunderstood and misinterpreted. But as he who called you is holy,
set apart, sanctified, consecrated, you also be holy, set apart,
sanctified, consecrated in all your conduct. Since it is written,
you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on him as father
who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct
yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing
that you were transformed from the futile ways of inherited
from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver
and gold, et cetera." I say that to just recapitulate what I've
been saying for a while, and that is that yes, there are deep
theologies that make great differences in our lives. Those differences
are fleshed out in the way we live. Not in the strict adherence to
obedient standards that the culture would give us. but in the application
of the depths of what God's love is for us. And I'm gonna re-establish
a couple of those points this week because I know it was a
lot last week to get through all of that. And so part one
of today's sermon, there's three parts, 12 sub-parts, doing this
for Mike, and about 30 different commentaries. So get your outline
ready. I have no idea how it's gonna
sound in the end. But according to the foreknowledge of the Father,
Four knowledge, God's not just omniscience, but God's purposes,
God's will, God's desire, God purpose all things. It's not
that God knows something will happen, God has purposed it to
be. It's an active relational knowledge,
implying moreover, a relationship with those that he knows intimately.
I say it this way, that God loved me before I was. not because
of me, but in spite of me, because of him. Someone asked for clarification
last week after the sermon online, could you please help me deal
with the idea of election? And listen, I have an educated
brain in the context of that theology, and I could have answered
that in 15 different ways. But I said it this way, and I
say this often, not as often as I should, but sometimes just
to bother my wife, I say, you know why I love you? And she
knows what I'm going to say, yes, because I choose to. No matter what, I choose to.
Today, I choose to love you. I don't make that look good.
There's a lot of work in that. Sometimes I say it through gritted
teeth. God chooses to love you. God
elected to love you in Christ. And He did so, it's not how He
feels toward you, it's what He has done for you. And that's
what love always is. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ
with all of our heart, mind, soul, strength, and shoes, then
we will do that love. That love is actively energized
and obvious through our love for each other. Actively. Not
a feeling. Love is never a feeling. That's
called enmeshment. If you want to talk about that
psychologically, I'd love to. But biblically, love is always
what we do. 1,000% of the time. Never how
we feel. And then that emotion comes with
the love of action. An emotion comes with the reminder
of the grace of God. but it is not a foundation upon
which we stand. Because we could be tired, hungry,
or just selfish and change the way we feel about someone. According
to the foreknowledge of God. This is the relationship he has
with his people. The scriptural basis for this, the theological
basis for this, and I'm gonna unpack some of this in a minute
a little bit deeper, but Jeremiah, I said it last week, Jeremiah
chapter one, verse five, before I formed you in the womb, before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you. God has intimate knowledge. of his people. And who's he talking
to? He's talking to Jeremiah. Before I formed you, Jeremiah,
in the womb of the mother that I created, I knew you. See, that, don't know about you,
but that goes a long ways for me. That carries me to a great
place. The psalmist says it this way,
your eye saw my unformed substance. And I mean, I'm a dreamer, and
I like to think about unseen things, and I try to see them. A thousand years ago, I'd probably
be an opium addict or something, you know, weird, trying to find
a psychedelic way into it. And I've had people say, hey,
Tippins, if you drink this, you'll see God. I'm like, no, thank
you. I'd rather not. I've also heard people seeing
the devil, you know. I don't want those experiences.
I can see God just fine through the pages of the scriptures.
But there's something in me that I like that stuff. I like to
ponder the unseen. I love it. I love to measure
in my mind the immeasurable. Some people are like, ah, just
give me the list. No, I don't want the list. I
wanna talk about is there even paper to put it on? What's paper? What does it mean to put anything
on? Is anything even on? Yes. It's so weird. The New Testament undergirds
these same things about the intimate knowledge of God with his people,
the intimate knowledge of Christ for his people. Romans 8 explores
the idea that God foreknew, and he foreknew, he also predestined,
and those he predestined, et cetera. This is not an insight
into the future. This is an active choice that
is love. This is what the scripture teaches
us. Ephesians 1, Pastor Trey has talked about this several
times already in the last six months or so, we see that believers
are chosen in Christ before the creation of the cosmos. God said, let there be light
in order for his people and his electing love to manifest before
his people. When we talk about the glory
of God, that literally means being able to see God for who
he really is. There has to be someone and something to see
it. But here's the practical implications
that I did not get to last week. And there are six of them, maybe. What is this electing love? What
is this sovereignty? What does this foreknowledge
of God do for us? A lot of things. You have to
break it down. You have to put an end to a list. Somebody like
me. When I start stuff like this,
it's usually 50 to 60 things, and I break it down to like 30
things, and I say, well, I can combine about 15 of these things,
and that's still too much, cut it in half. So that's really
how I do it, and I have to pick and choose. All right, this one,
this one, this one, do I want grits or bacon? I mean, so this
is not exhaustive, this is not illuminating, this is not God
the Holy Spirit giving you everything that you need to know. And some
of these things may not even resonate with you, but I'll tell
you this, some of them will. The implications for us as believers
understanding God's foreknowledge is that it deepens our faith
in God's sovereignty. It deepens our faith in God's
sovereign plan. And we know that for those who
love God, all things work together for what? For good. For those
who are called according to his purpose. How many times have
you been told that verse? Or you've heard that verse from
a pulpit or something. And you've not rolled your eyes,
but you've had that sentiment. You're thinking, am I really?
I hear you, but it really doesn't do much for me. I mean, let's
be honest about it, right? Sometimes we get at the place
where the truths of scripture are not necessarily impactful
at sometimes in our life. It's okay. You don't have to
believe in gravity to stand on the ground. You don't have to
understand it to fall off a cliff. And if I throw a ball at your
face, you better duck or catch it. It deepens our faith in God's
siren plan. The more we live, the longer we are reminded, the
more intimate we are with the scriptures, the more applicable
they are to our lives as we love others, not because we're supposed
to, but because God has loved us in such a way that we are,
we're just like, we have to, we're compelled to express that
type of active, selfless love to others. And I want to talk more about
that in the weeks to come, giving some guidelines on what love
really looks like in service, because it can be abused, and
it can be abusive. But this understanding ensures
believers that their lives, we are not as God's children, a
series of random events. We are not, you know, just marbles
on the floor of a cosmic pattern. We're not. We're under the sovereign
control of a Father, a God who loves us and created us and knows
us. So that no matter what comes
our way, no matter how bad it is, we don't have to like it,
we don't have to even have the capacity to thank him for all
of the terror, or the horror, or the pain, or the suffering,
or whatever it might be. But we have been given the capacity
to rest in what we can't see, which is the outcome of his promises.
Because they haven't come yet. And so when we focus on these
things, our belief is reinforced, that every trial, every uncertainty,
every thing has a divine purpose, and that encourages us to love
God more and to grow deeper in our faith. The second thing is
that understanding God's foreknowledge helps enhance our trust in God's
wisdom and timing. Now, I know that seems redundant.
That's the same thing. No, it's not, because it's one
thing to say, I trust God in all circumstances, but it's another
thing if you pray like me, I used to think I was a very patient
person, but I'm not. Now, I'm not walking around actively
impatient most of the time, but inside of me I am impatient. I want things settled, I want
things ordered, I want the socks paired and in the drawer, or
I just want to throw them all in the trash. I don't want this
limbo state of waiting for conclusion. I want to know that you like
me and everything's good and that I've made everything right.
We'll talk about it later. No, we'll talk about it now.
Well, I've got to use the bathroom. Too bad. You just got to hold
it. You see? Impatient. But the more
I'm reminded of God's foreknowledge, of His sovereignty, of His election,
of His power, I can rest in His timing. I know that it doesn't
matter if it takes me five years to grow to place A, where I wanna
be, and this thing, or that thing, or the other. Nothing is instant,
but we have been established in a Christian culture, in our
world, that makes us want it yesterday. Well, be honest about
that with yourself, with others, and with the Lord. Don't pretend
like I'm just all pious, stoic here. No, we're not. Let's just
be honest. Now, some of you are, and you're a model for us. We
thank you for doing that. Don't stop. It's not me. Don't look at me as the example
of patience. I promise you. I've postured it for a very long
time, and I'm just gonna be honest about it. I want all of you to
be joyful now, before you leave this room. I want your problems
fixed, and we're locking the doors until you get it. I mean,
you know, you're not even gonna eat. Chicken? No, keep the chicken
outside. So God's foreknowledge helps
us trust in his wisdom and his timing. The third thing is it
gives us a sense of security and belonging. I don't know about
you, but being rejected in any way is bad. I mean, anything. You bump into somebody at the
grocery store. Oh, pardon me. Watch where you're going, you
stupid idiot. Oh God, who is this guy? I don't know, but he
hates my guts. I gotta go home and cry. I mean, is that needy? No, that's sensitive. And there's
nothing wrong with being sensitive. If I wasn't sensitive, I'd be
a terrible pastor. But if I'm overly sensitive,
if I'm hyper-empathetic, I'll have a nervous breakdown again,
and again, and again, and again, and again. So there's growing,
there's things. So how do we grow? Well, one
of the primary ways that I have grown in this is to find my confidence
in the sovereignty of God, not the sovereignty of God's purpose
or the calling of James. but in the sovereignty of God's
purpose. So I can rest that knowing even when, and you've seen some
of us elders make great mistakes standing right here in this pulpit
through the years. We've allowed things to take
place in this church, a not present elder, youngest elder, newest
elder excluded. He's like, no, wasn't none of
me. I wasn't even here. He wasn't here. Um, but you know, we've made
great mistakes and we've had to stand before you and say,
forgive us. We made great mistakes. We've made mistakes, we've had
no wisdom in that. But at the end of the day, instead
of beating ourselves up, we go, but the Lord had a purpose in
it. And He did, oh my gosh, look what it did to set us free from
so many shackles. Had that not happened, we'd still
be in the infancy stage of bondage. Somebody says, hey, next week,
somebody's gonna burn the building down. Ah, no, we're not gonna
open up, you know? So God doesn't give us that forethought. Hey,
it's coming, something's coming. No, don't give me that, because
I'll tie myself to a chair. Not gonna happen. But we get
a sense of security and belonging. My sheep hear my voice, Jesus
says, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal
life, that they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out
of my hand. I had someone say to me, in reference
to Romans chapter 8, middle of the week, and we were talking,
and we said our goodbyes, and they said something, and that
scripture came up, and they said, yeah, but we can take ourselves
out of the love of God. Oh, now we gotta have a longer
conversation that couldn't happen right there at the door. No,
we can't. We can spit in the face of God,
stomp our feet, kick dirt in his eyes, and it will not move
him. We belong to him, not as a possession in the way that
we look at possessions, but in a possession that cost him his
life in righteousness and justice and in love. He's purchased us
with his blood and nothing can take that back. See, while faith
is a place of rest, Faith does produce action, but
it produces action from a place of absolute rest. Being known
by God before the creation of the world gives me a profound
sense of security and belonging, that no matter what rejection
I face in this life, He has not rejected me. Should He? Yes, in all real ways and practical
wisdom, but because He chose to love me before me, He can't
reject me. because God doesn't change. Now
that helps me in every relationship I have. The fourth thing, understanding
God's foreknowledge is that it gives us a purpose for life. It allows us to be aligned with
the will of God. I can't tell you how many times I've had this
question, whether it be in person or on writing or online or theology
on call or whatever. How do I know God's will for
my life? Well, it's very simple. Just
read the New Testament. and listen to it. The will of God for us is to
be set apart for him, done in Christ, then set apart our attitudes,
actions, minds, and affections in that way. Well, doing it,
not very well, but okay. How do we flesh that out in a
primal place, in a foundational place? We love one another as
Christ loved us. We submit to one another as Christ
submitted to the Father. And now my tablet just lost my
place here. There we go. What's next? Well, the scripture
tells us there in Ephesians 2 verse 10, we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them. So we align our lives after the
will of the Father according to the scripture because we know
that his purposes are good and true, that his love for us is
sovereign. And what does that do? The fifth
thing, it fosters an absolute attitude of humility. It is where
my ego checks out. And I say that in the pejorative
sense, that ego is not bad, it just means self. But where I get in the way of
me and everything else around me and destroy things, understanding God's sovereignty
gets me out of the way. It's like I tell the story of
a very difficult time after the loss of a loved one, where I
was very self-absorbed. That happens sometimes when you're
suffering, right? And I remember opening the Bible and telling
the Lord, what have I not read? No, I hadn't read Hebrews in
a long, long time. And I'd thrown all sorts of stuff around and
just had this little fit of pity. And I'm sitting in the floor
of my study, and I open it up, and the scripture
is illuminated by the Spirit. Many times, in many ways, God
has spoken to us through our forefathers, but in these days,
He speaks to us through His Son. And the paraphrase there tells
us about who Christ is. He's above all things. And he
finished the work of redemption, he sat down at the right hand
of majesty on high, having completed the work that he was sent to
do, and the angels worship him, and the creation gives glory
to his name, and here I am focused on me and my needs and my feelings. And it's okay to do that, because
until times like that, you'll never grow to be more settled
in the sovereignty of God. So don't shy away from the pain. Don't think, well, I've gotta
be humble. I'm gonna do it. That's arrogance.
That's narcissistic. Not clinically, but in action
and attitude. No, I'm not gonna do anything.
The only time we see that in the Bible, number one, as an
example, is the Pharisee, I thank you, God, that I'm not like,
you know, you've done all this. And Lucifer, I will, I will,
I will. James warns us, don't say I'm
gonna go do this and that, make a profit and have, no, if the
Lord wills I will do this. So when we get a good grasp and
a constant reminder of God's foreknowledge, of God's sovereignty,
of God's love in this way, it really grows humility in us.
For consider your calling, beloved. We heard this this morning. Not
many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many
of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble
birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame
the wise. God chose what is weak in the
world to shame the strong. And the final thing that I think
we need to really grasp here as we move into the rest of this
teaching is that understanding God's foreknowledge and sovereignty
gives us assurance of salvation and our eternal hope. And that's
what Peter is talking about here. He doesn't really get in to all
the typical nuts and bolts until chapter two. And he says, so
put away the dishes, the clothes, the socks. put away malice, put
away all deceit, put away hypocrisy, put away envy, put away slander,
like teensy-teensy newborn babies long for pure spiritual milk.
I can't wait to preach that. That's two weeks, by the way,
what I just said. That's five hours in my brain,
but that's gonna have to be like 120 minutes. Long for pure spiritual
milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed
you have tasted that the Lord is good." So see, our hope is
in the tasting of the sovereignty of God. Our hope is in the pleasure
of that aroma. It always reminds me of John
11 and 12. It always reminds me of when
Jesus hears that Nicodemus has died. I mean, Lazarus has died. Sorry about that. Nicodemus,
he does die, but not in the text. It reminds me of that time when
we see him in the house. And that very expensive annual,
I mean, the cost of an annual salary oil is poured all over
him. And the scripture says the aroma filled the house. And I just, I don't know, I was
a poet. I can sit on that for weeks.
It wouldn't be very beneficial for you, but it's very beneficial
for me. Our eternal hope, blessed be
God and Father, verse 3 and 5 of chapter 1. of our Lord Jesus
Christ according to the great mercy. He has caused us to be
born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled,
and unfading, kept in heaven for you. And he talks about you. So I believe that we need to
have these things, these understandings, because it is hard sometimes
because we're not in the practice of making application. And I
have not done a very good job through the years of really parsing
out a deeper application in a clear way. I might say it or toss it
out there, spray it out or whatever, but I want you to hear it a little
bit more directly. And it's a lot harder, it's a
lot more work to make sure that what we're
saying is contextual and that you can find it. And that you
can come to those same conclusions, because if you can't, you can't
test me in it, right? I've said this a lot, don't ever
take my word for it. But don't refute me by going
and Google searching in alternate view. Read it for yourself, and
then we'll talk about it. Part two, in the sanctification
of the spirit. According to the foreknowledge
of God, the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, to the obedience
of Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling of His blood. And I approached
all of this last week, but in this week and next week and the
week after, we're going to unpack each of these one and two at
a time. In the sanctification of the
Spirit. The biblical understanding of sanctification. This is going
to be a very, very long section here. I want to go to the Old
Testament, I want to go to the New Testament, I want to establish
it. You heard me say last week that we have historically in
the theological circles of history, in the annals of doctrinal pursuits
and clarity. We have men and women and children,
young people, old people, rich people, poor people, who have
come to understand the application of sanctification and what it
is and how the Bible teaches it. And in the time that they
came to this understanding, it was necessary because there were
debates and conversations. All right, right now in our country,
right now in our culture, right now in this church, We're not
having great debates over what's really being said by the Bible.
Primarily because we don't live in a day and age where we don't
live in a society where the scripture is even used, even by Christians. I mean, it's just not, I was
talking about biblical worldview last, we have no idea the biblical
worldview of Geneva 500 years ago. And for almost being a prisoner,
John Calvin was required twice a day, seven days a week, to
teach publicly the Bible. That's why he wrote so much,
because he's like me. He's got to work through all
these things. I'm dumb, but he wasn't. But
what they were going through in the 17th century is nothing
at all to what we're going through. Nothing. So what they worked
out and what they parsed out is extremely interesting and
could be extremely beneficial for us as we want to see what
other people have thought. But if we use those generations
to establish our understanding of what God's Word is saying
today, we are not learning. You see what I mean? We're just
repurposing. Now, it takes a lot of filtration. It takes a lot of intention.
So, for the sake of clarity, I think every generation and
every church ought to work through things. It's okay to borrow and
to consider. But I think we need to start
with the Word of God and we need to end with the Word of God together,
collectively. And right now, there's not really
a debate on sanctification. We've just open mouth, open mind,
accepted it for what it is. And if you go to seminary and
you're working on a doctorate in something or a master of divinity
or a master of theology or whatever it might be, or you go to a Bible
college or you go to a Sunday school class, someone else has
already written down what someone else has already read that someone
else had already written down. And they say, this is what it
means. And you're like, OK, sounds good
to me. And we just take it doesn't mean
that we're lost or unregenerate. It just means we're not thinking
through. We just accept it. Can't tell you how many times
I've heard other people throughout my life teach my sermons because
they are very personal. My stories are real life things
that I have seen, heard, and participated in. And when I hear
someone else tell the story of their uncle who had the same
name as my uncle in the pond in the same way that I had, and
the fish thing that happened exactly like it was, and then
I tell it some years later, or they tell it, I tell it at a
conference and somebody comes up to me and says, hey, you stole
that story from my pastor. I did, and come to find out I've
ministered with this guy years before. He said, yeah, I'll tell
that story. I said, you need to tell it as
a story, not your story. Well, the point I'm making is
that that seems to be what preaching and teaching is all about. Let
me just have something to say. It's been said. That's not the
point. We are walking to grow in our
understanding together, to grow intimately, to grow as a people.
And so if we need to understand what it means to be set apart
for Christ, to be consecrated, to be holy, to be sanctified,
let's go to the Word of God in its context and ask ourselves
what it really means. Don't just accept the idea that
sanctification is two-fold, positional and progressive, because that's
not true. Now that's a really interesting way of doing it,
and I think By and large, it's accurate, but what we then decided
is we'd just take it this way. And some people will say, well,
I am becoming more like Jesus every day. No, you're not. Not in a real sense. Maybe in
some senses. Maybe your attitude is changing,
but it's never going to be like Christ's. I might be like Christ
this morning and like Peter's this afternoon. Or might be like
mine, oh, heaven help you, you're never gonna get into heaven now. Or maybe like the devil. My oldest
daughter, when she was six, told me I was the devil. With gritted
teeth. And I said, well, you're the
daughter of the devil. That was my response and all of my pastoral
and fatherly wisdom. Gotcha, gotcha. But what does it mean, sanctification?
I mean, we get the Old Testament references, Leviticus chapter
20, verses seven and eight. I am the Lord who sets you apart,
who sanctifies you. Sanctification is God's act and
is not a human effort in its real sense. New Testament clarifies
that by saying God chose you, 2 Thessalonians 2, I read these
last week, as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctification
by the Spirit. John 17, 17, sanctify them in your truth, set them
apart in your truth. Your word is truth. Jesus prayed
for his disciples, showing sanctification as a divine act rooted in the
truth of God. So now let's think about this.
What does that mean for us? What does it mean to be sanctified
by the Spirit? Well, first we understand that
this is something the Spirit has done, right? The Bible doesn't say, and the
Spirit offers the ability for sanctification. The Bible doesn't
say the spirit hopes that you'll be sanctified. The scripture
says that he who began a good work in me is faithful to complete
it. What is that good work? Redemption.
What happens at the end of this life is glorification. What is
that? A new creation. My ontological
essence, who I am, my mind, my conscience will be cleansed and
the body that I have, the body that you have as believers will
be sinless. completely sinless, just like Jesus. We'd be glorified,
we share in that. And we ebb and flow, we mature
and fail, we grow and digress. In our lives, the older we get,
it seems like it gets a little easier, we just get tired of
trying. That's what it is. We're like, I give up, I don't
care anymore, I don't have an opinion anymore. What do you
think, I don't care? Yes, that sounds good. We just
don't want to fight with ourselves or with others. And so it's not
like we're becoming more righteous. The sanctification needs to be
first understood that it is being set apart for God's purpose.
We need to realize that it is the centerpiece of our identity
in Christ. Who am I? You are sanctified
in Christ Jesus. You are set apart in Christ.
You are righteous in Christ. You are holy before your Father
in Christ. And God's not being tricked.
He knows us, but he has declared us completely righteous, completely
set apart for himself. And nothing, listen, nothing
can change that. No matter how we live, no matter
what we think, no matter how far off the rails we go, no matter,
thank God for the parable of the prodigal son. Thank God for
the life of Peter, for the ministry of Peter during the days of Jesus.
Thank God for David and all the record of his nonsense. Thank
God for Moses, who couldn't speak well, who had to get Aaron. God
gives him a stick to go down there and tell a king to step
off. Thank God for these models of
failures. Thank God for Paul. who found his little murderer
and acted on it. We are set apart for God's purpose.
Paul tells Corinthians to the church, to those sanctified in
Christ, called to be saints together with all those who in every place
call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord
and ours. Our identity is that we are set
apart. Our identity is that in us being
set apart, we reflect the holiness, the righteousness of Christ.
Paul writes to the Hebrews in chapter 10, verse 10, and by
that we will have been sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. And because of that, we have
a different relationship with the world. a much different relation
to the world. We hear the text a lot, right? Be in the world but not of it.
And what we've done in Christian circles historically is we've
created the list of what it means to not be of the world. And we've
written books about it and we've preached sermons about it and
we've made people feel shame about it. And then when we aren't
doing these things or we're accomplishing the antithesis that is not of
the world, we feel pretty good about it. And then we act like
we're humble and we go, oh, this is so thankful. It's not for
the Lord, it wouldn't be me. I'm like, it's not you anyway.
Unbelieving people, lost people, people devoid of the spirit of
grace are able to walk in a manner worthy to be matched with Christian
living all over the world. And I don't want to give examples
because, quite honestly, I think it's rude to give examples. I
didn't understand that until somebody recently said, hey,
you know, we've been friends for a while and we've been talking
about things and you sort of like shot me in the head when you
made fun of my faith. I wasn't making fun of it. But
I use it as an example. You see, you've got to be careful. There's nothing funny about unbelief. You have a different relationship
with the world. I've given them your word, Jesus says in John
17. And the world has hated them because they are not of the world,
just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them
out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. But even in the context of our
Christian world, what happens? We have a lot of misconceptions,
and we need to have some clarifications about sanctification. Let me
quickly remind us of some of the things we talked about there,
and then I'm gonna expand the Old and New Testament, and then
we'll be done for the day. Clarifying the nature of sanctification,
some of the misconceptions are that sanctification is a gradual,
ongoing process of becoming more righteous. The Scripture would
teach us, and I'm going to repeat myself today a couple more times,
but the Scripture would teach us, just like Peter's going to
teach us, that we ought to set ourselves apart in our minds
and our hands. I mean, I am holy before the
Father completely, fully, ever, forever, right now because of
Christ. His righteousness has been credited to me on the account
of justice. But if I get through preaching
today and you get in my way and I just slap you to the floor,
get out of my way, man, I'm trying to get through. I mean, that's
not necessarily Christ-like, nor is it loving. It's not even
good humanism. It's terrible. I mean, humanism says, hey, let's
respect each other. So you could say to me, you know,
you need to set apart your attitude like you are already set apart
in Christ. You need to work on that, brother.
Because you keep slapping us, we're going to have a problem.
We'll take you out the back and slap back. You see? But we can't conflate
this idea that we're becoming more righteous just because we
do our duty, just because we're doing what is good and prudent. Because unbelievers feed their
children, remember? They don't give them a snake
or a rock when they ask for bread. And if we love the Lord, then
we should love each other. And all of the law is to show
us our guilt before the Father. And then there's only one way
of not being guilty. And that's if someone fulfills
the law perfectly in true righteousness and takes the place of the sinner
in their guilt, Jesus Christ. That's why it's called the good
report, the gospel, the God speak. God has said. So sanctification, is really a position. Though
we could argue that there's a sanctifying reality in growing and maturing,
because the words don't need to be interchanged, we need to
communicate it clearer. So we like to say mature or grow. It's always the joke when we
potty train our children, they won't graduate high school without
doing it. Or tying their shoes. They won't
go off on their first job without knowing how to talk. But that's
not always true. It's just a joke. But we do mature. We grow. We
learn things. We learn to be more intelligent.
We learn to be more emotionally in touch. We learn all sorts
of things. We learn what is good and prudent,
wise and profitable when it comes to life and how we speak and
how we think and how we respond. But in Christian life, especially
in America, this is anecdotal, but I mean, I've been around.
I'd love to hear alternate stories. We seem to do better at just
getting the don't dos and feeling confident enough,
well, we're growing up now. My children don't move, they
don't breathe. They only eat when I force it down there. They
don't like it, they can just starve. I mean, you know, and
you're thinking that that's a joke, but I mean, there's some sentiment
there. Especially you moms who have raised children at home
alone and fed them and they want to turn their nose up at it.
You really want to show them what they could be eating, right? It's not a process. It's not a process. By a single
offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being
sanctified. And that's those who are also being set apart.
Who? Those who will come to faith,
those who are set apart now. We are still being set apart
by the Father, by the Spirit, awaiting that day of redemption,
that day of glory, that day of life. You might think, well, what's
the big deal? Well, the big deal is if we don't understand the
completeness of sanctification, then we're misunderstanding the
completeness of sovereignty. Or we're trying to parse out
the, you know, dare I say, I'll just say the
philosophical, the Western philosophy of man's responsibility. And man means human being, not
male. We don't need to parse that out.
We need to see what the Bible says. The implications of misunderstanding
that is that we can sometimes do believe that we've achieved
a state of holiness through personal effort in some aspect of our
life, but partial perfection in one area or complete perfection
in one thing is still complete failure in everything else. The
word says if you miss one little teensy thing of the law, you
have been found guilty of all of it. If you get upset inside
your spirit and go, ugh, then you're a murderer and you're
a blasphemer and you're an idolater because you've broken righteousness. You see? So we can never look
at ourselves in such a way of going, hey, be like me, mature. No, be like me, submissive and
humble to the promises of God and setting me apart in Jesus
Christ. Those things will transform our mind as we grow. And even
when we're doing things rightly, thank goodness for that, we should
be, and not doing all this other stuff, we can still internally
be extremely confused about where we really stand. That's why so
many missionaries have so many pictures on their stinking Facebook
pages. Look at me and us and us doing
all these things. What about, no, Mickey Mouse
was a missionary. You know, I mean, why do we do that? I mean, share
your life, do what you want to do, but be careful. A friend
of mine that used to do some Middle Eastern stuff, some church
planting there, extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Extremely
underground. And I'll never forget, one of
the missionary support groups that were paying his way wanted to pull his funding because
he wouldn't let them write an article in their national magazine.
You know what he told them? Keep your stinking money. If
you put my face in that magazine, hundreds of people are going
to die, you stupid idiot. Oh, you're just not even a man
of God, oh. And I'm like, Lee, so he left
that organization, thank God. You know? Because for the people
who ran it, we gotta be seen doing these things. What does
the Bible say? Don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing.
Do what is in private, pray in private. Not on the street corner,
not on Facebook, but it's the world we live in. Some of the godliest people,
you don't even know about them. And that's tough because, good
gracious, if you like validation and you want to be accepted,
there's no better way of doing it than just show people that
you're doing what they like. It's called politics. Paul has something to say about
that to the Galatians in chapter three. He says, are you foolish?
Why are you being so? Having begun by the Spirit, I
said this last week, are you gonna now be perfected by the
flesh? We're not perfected by the flesh. We're perfected by
the flesh of Jesus Christ that was crucified for us. And that's
it. So maturing and growing, let's
quit conflating it with being holy or sanctified. Let's expand
this. What's the Old Testament, the
New Testament have to say? I can go through this fairly quickly. There's
a bunch of things. Let's see, the Old Testament,
I picked six. I'll list them out very quick.
Sanctification of the Sabbath, the setting apart of the holy
day in Genesis chapter two. So God blessed the seventh day,
that's what the word Sabbath means, seven, seventh day and
made it holy. And as he set it apart for himself,
because on it, God rested from all his work that he'd done in
creation. Now we know, and if you don't have heard teaching
on this, you can go look at that little mini series of Genesis
one through three that I did. year before last? I don't know. Sometime. Maybe it was 2020.
And you'll see that the whole creation account is nothing but
a tiny little commercial about redemption. It's not to tell
us the biology and the science and everything else. That's not
the point of it. It's not there. It's to tell us what? It's to
tell us that God out of nothing can create everything and out
of darkness can create light and separate it and prepare a
place for people to live organically and biologically So if he can
do that, he can prepare a place for you to live spiritually with
him in a temple. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. That's the
point. That's the point of it. So we
see sanctification of the Sabbath. That introduces the concept of
being separate, being holy, being set apart for special purposes.
The whole nothing was set apart for God to have everything created. Sanctification of the priest.
We see the priesthood in Exodus. The scripture says verse 29,
verse 44, chapter 29 of Exodus. Actually, there's probably 40
verses there, but the essence is this. This is what you shall
do to them, consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.
These are the Levites. And I will consecrate the tent
of meeting and the altar. I will set them before Aaron
also and his sons. I will consecrate to serve me
as priests. This is my role, this is your
role, I'm setting you apart, this is what you are to do. So all these elaborate rituals
for consecrating Aaron and his sons highlight the importance
of what it means to be set apart in Christ completely and forever.
It was always worthless, it pointed to that which was worth, that
had value, worthy. Sanctification of the firstborn,
Exodus 13. Consecrate to me all the firstborn, whomever is the
first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both man
and a beast is mine. Give it to me. Remember Jesus'
consecration in the temple? Remember John's consecration
in the temple? You tell the world, this child
is not mine, it belongs to the Lord. I give this child over
to you in service. Why is that? Because it is a
picture of God giving His Son to set apart His people for His
purposes. And what is that purpose? To
see Him for who He is in His majesty and His love and His
power. Sanctification of the temple,
I won't get into all those things. The Lord hears the prayers of
His people. God's desire. The temple is a picture of God's
desire. And I say that with emphasis. God's desire to be present with
His people physically. Like in the garden. It's a temple. The Garden of Eden. We rebel,
and then that temple is closed off. The veil is closed off.
The Holy of Holies, where God meets man, is gone. And the only
way to not die is something else to die to cover up the guilt,
the nakedness, the shame. And Jesus is the one who tears
down that veil, that wall of hostility, being set apart. Jesus was set apart through obedience.
We see in the Old Testament many times, I want you to be set apart
by doing these things, but it's not, as we've seen already now
in these other four or five things, it's never righteousness, it's
never true purity. It's a picture of what is true
purity. So our actions and our obedience, as we'll see next
week, are pictures of purity because we understand the love
of God in causing us to be sanctified forever in Christ. And then the scripture calls
us. I should take the next 25 to
30 minutes and just read Isaiah chapter 6. I'll do it next week. It won't
take 25 minutes, but I'd love to expound on it. We see that
prophetic call to being sanctified, to being set apart. We see in
the context and the precepts of all of this worship and stuff,
and we see that in the Bible there, Isaiah says, Lord send
me." And what God does in the imagery of Isaiah speaking to
him is he consecrates Isaiah in the same manner that the pagans
consecrated their idols. Touching his lips with the coal,
setting him up in the sacrifice and all these things. That he
would speak, he would be purified, he would speak my words. I'd
love to go through those pictures. But Isaiah was set apart for
prophetic ministry. And this illustrates the necessity
of being cleansed and set apart for the service of the Lord,
especially in the roles of spiritual oversight and service of the
word. And that's, I don't like that. Because the world, over the last
two and a half decades, the world of Christianity has taught me
to be something that the Bible has not asked me to be. and probably
you too, and called it sanctification. New Testament, same stuff. We
see sanctification, I've already said Hebrews 10. 10, being sanctified
through Christ, once and for all through His death. As we
see here, and as we've been talking for the last 15, 20 minutes,
that sanctification is a definitive act by the Holy Spirit of God.
As such were some of you, Paul says to the Corinthians, but
you were washed as such were some of you, lost, blinded, living
in darkness. You were washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
by the Spirit of our God. And then there is a sense in
which we are to set apart our lives, our mouths, our attitudes. We're gonna say, okay, I'm gonna
set apart this job, I'm gonna set apart, like if you go buy
10 pounds of chicken, you're not gonna like cook all that
chicken for the same meal, maybe, unless you're just really hungry.
You might say, I'm going to do chicken in this and chicken in that.
You're going to set these things apart for different recipes.
Beloved, our lives are just like that. Sometimes we set different
aspects of our lives apart for different things, but everything
we are to set apart for the sake of God's glory. When it comes to community, Peter
will say here that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for his own possession. Why? So that we may
proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness
into his marvelous light. We see Paul saying the same thing
to the Colossians, so this is not just because they're Jewish. So this collective understanding
of sanctification as a church is vital to our growing, to our
applying God's sovereignty, as I talked about in the introduction
of the sermon, and to having the transformative work of God
the Holy Spirit through the Word together. I hate to use old cliches,
but you know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Likewise, a community is only
as strong as its weakest person, except in the gospel. Because
the weakest person in the chain of righteousness is Jesus Christ,
who is also the cornerstone that can't be shaken. Now that's thinking
about nothing and everything at the same time. So what do we do in the last
few seconds of our time together? How do we apply this? I want
to remind you of a couple of things. First thing is I want
you to understand the interplay of foreknowledge and sanctification,
the intersectionality. I've already taught it, but I
want you to see it. It's that God's sovereignty and
His foreknowledge, His electing love, is absolutely 100% tethered
to our righteousness and to His decree to say that we are set
apart, that we are holy before Him. In other words, God's sovereign
election, God's love, establishes our identity before Him. And
nothing that we are practically changes that. Nothing that we
are personally changes that. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Listen, beloved, these aren't to be obstacles. They're to be areas of freedom
for us as believers. Paul even says it in Galatians
chapter 1. I mean, look at his whole life he lost in darkness. In Galatians he said, God set
me apart before I was born for this. Makes me feel real small when
I gnaw at the regret that I have inside of me, things I didn't
do and didn't accomplish, things that I could have done and could
have accomplished. I need to be reminded of that.
David, same way. Peter, I've already mentioned
him the same way. Just reminding us, we have these examples in
the Bible that show us that God had purposed these things and
that nothing can change what God has established. The idea of living in this contemporary
world These things will help us make better decisions. These
things and this understanding of God's work and purposes and
power and our holiness before him will help us in our ethics
and our morals. It will help us in our relationships
with the world around. It'll help us in our politics.
It'll help us in our jobs. It will certainly guide us as
parents and as lovers and as neighbors. Won't it? It should. The word vocation means divine
call. Did you know that? So whether
you're a mailman or a lawyer or nothing, because you just don't
know what you want to do yet, it's okay. Do it as under the
Lord. It is a vocation as under the
Lord. God has a purpose for us. God has a purpose for us before
we were born. And this will influence our choices.
This will influence our attitude. Beloved, all of this comes with
one guarantee. Well, a lot of guarantees, the
sovereignty of God and His purposes, but all of this comes with one
other guarantee. You want to know what it is?
Absolute pain and suffering. There you go. This is the close
of the sermon. It's going to stink sometimes. You've heard it seven or eight
times already, but it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to
be honest about where we are. You will not be condemned in
this spiritual family because you're human and you're hurting.
I don't care why you're hurting. I don't care if you dug a hole,
set yourself on fire, threw yourself in it, and then covered yourself
with gasoline. What's going on? You're not gonna be condemned.
Mickey Mouse will be there. That's the voice. I don't know
why I did a Mickey Mouse voice. You're not going to be condemned.
You're going to be loved through it. You're not going to be, I told
you, shame, shame, shame. No, there's no room for that. Now, we might
do that sometimes, and then we can receive, please don't do
that. And then we'll stop. What does that do for us? It
equips us for the work of the ministry, which is the whole reason we're
sitting here. First, to ourselves, to our homes, and to one another,
then the neighbors around us. Remember we talked about it a
couple of weeks ago. and it equips us then to empower
us in our witness. It empowers us in our witness.
This theological understanding equips us when we face skepticism,
when we face terror, when we face adversity, when we face
rejection, and it provides a foundation of our faith in such a way that
we're able to stand firm and rest deeply rooted in the plan
of God for our lives. So when I know that I'm holy,
And I know that I'm not. I trust in what God has said
about me. And that affects how I live in the world. That affects
what I want. But beloved, we can't do it alone.
We can't do it individually and expect it to be empowering. We
have to do it together. That's why we come together,
that's why we sing together, that's why we pray together,
that's why we have the Word of God together, that's why we take
the Lord's table together, to be reminded of these things that
we may live in such a way that we rest in the promises of God's
love for us. Because not only has He promised
it, He has proven it. And He has purposed it that we
would live as a people. Right now. Right now. in a manner worthy of the calling
that we've been given. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the gospel of grace. I thank you, Lord, for Peter's
letter and that it's such an amazing truth, one after the
other, to give us hope, to help us to walk and to live with joy. Lord, help us to live in an authentic
way, to find our identity in Jesus. to find our identity in
your love, and Lord, in doing so, to help us see how we could
love each other. Father, I pray for each one of
us. I pray for those who haven't been with us for a while, who
have been sick and hospitalized, and that we might not even have
known we've been praying. Father, I pray for those who
are just troubled in their spirit, who are downtrodden, those who
feel intimidated about being around others, Lord, those who are struggling
to find out who they really are, those, Lord, who are not honest
about what they're going through, there's no guilt in any of it,
Father. We are where we are. We need to be reminded of whose
we are. So Lord, in Your power and by
Your Spirit this very moment as we pray these things and as
we pray for them, Lord, work powerfully in our inner being,
in our mind, in our soul, in our spirit to give us that peace,
to give us that rest. And we thank You that we can
pray these things to You and that You hear us despite what we thought
or said before we got here. despite what we're thinking we're
going to just do in an ugly way or sinful or with an attitude
when we leave here. Lord, you hear our prayers. So help us to pray for each other,
because oftentimes, Lord, we're not able to pray for ourselves. We pray all these things in Christ,
by His name, by the authority, by His power, by His rule, and
by His love. Amen. Let's take the table, beloved.