If you turn with me in your Bibles back to the book of Jude, it begins with a wonderful declaration. The letter of Jude is written to those, Jude is writing, as a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called mercy unto you, and peace and love be multiplied. It's not for nothing that Jude speaks about the God who is the sanctifying God, and the question that should be Foremost on all of our mind is, am I a sanctified one?

The most common declaration of the children of God in the New Testament describing them is the word saint. And 98 times in Scripture that word is used in the New Testament. They said saints, this is to the saints. These letters are written to the saints and That word at the root of it is the word from which we get our word sanctification. Ultimately it means to be holy. That's the root word of it. To be sanctified, to be a saint, is to be a holy, a holy one. someone who is set apart, someone who is dedicated to God, someone who is holy and separated. And the root of the word of sanctification is a Hebrew word called Hagios, and it means to be sacred, to be pure, to be perfect, to be immaculate, to be clean.

This is God's declaration of his people. It means one who is full of awe. God's children are in awe of what God has done for them and they, in that awe, have a reverence for God. Am I a sanctified one? Am I a sanctified one? And just to make it clear what it is to be a saint, almost every time the word saint is used in the New Testament, it's associated with a possessive pronoun. God says, they're mine, they're his. Their pronouns that speak in regard to the saints of possession, people that God owns. You're bought with a price. You belong to God. You're separated from this world unto God. It speaks of union.

One thing that is amazing in the New Testament, the most common description of The association of the saints of God with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and by the work of the Blessed Holy Spirit is that they are declared to be in Christ. in him, in him, in him. I think that term is used 170 something times in the New Testament, but there are around 100 of them that directly relate to the position of the child of God, the sanctified child of God is in Christ. And how can you be in Christ?

You have to be a sanctified one, you have to be. I love those words, don't they? Just listen to them with me again. To be sacred, to be pure, to be perfect, to be immaculate, to be clean, to be holy. So to be sanctified is to be a holy one. And before we go any further when it comes to sanctification, which in our understanding is how now we live the Christian life, how we live in this world as the set-apart, sanctified children of God. And the first thing I want to say is that if I am not deeply concerned about my personal holiness and about my sin, then I need to pray that the Lord would take me to the cross to show me what I am. And if I see some holiness in myself, as I am personally, I need the Lord to take me to the cross again. Because all of our sanctification is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all of our sanctification is about the cross.

And he sanctified a people and he set them apart and he put them in this world that they should be and live to the praise of the glory of his grace. They're personal matters, but I think they're incredibly important. I just love the fact that Jude is writing, and three times in this letter he speaks of these children. These sanctified ones are the beloved ones.

To be sanctified is to be loved by God. and to be loved by God in the way that God describes his love for them in Jude, where they are the recipients of mercy, they are the recipients of peace, and they are the recipients of love. And so the question is, there's two questions, isn't it? What is it to be a sanctified person? What is sanctification?

And if you have been associated with the religion of this world and if you have read the confessions of faith, The children of God are continually told that justification is purely and solely a work of God Almighty. And then, having saved you, he then puts you under a yoke of bondage to live out your sanctification by obedience to whatever it was.

These Jehovah's Witnesses yesterday were saying you had to be obedient to the commands that they saw in the scriptures about blood and all the other things that they believe in. And that for the children, those people then say that this is a progressive activity, that you, by your activities and by your obedience and by your diligence, you become more and more holy. It's called progressive sanctification. You progress. And finally, having progressed down that path, you are finally fit to enter heaven. I'm not here to give you my opinion about sanctification, nor am I here to talk about the various confessions and statements of faith that what the religious people hear.

I want to know what God says. I want to know what God says. And as we saw from Tom's reading out of Matthew chapter 11, John the Baptist asked a question. And I love the fact that the saints of God are allowed to ask questions and they are allowed to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith and they are required to test the Spirit.

So they are required to test, you're required to test what he said. by anyone who stands in any place to talk to lost sinners about the God whom they will meet. So I hope that sort of sets a bit of a stage for us, but I also want us to know and hear that everything about our faith that is important is in the present tense. Everything. Whom do you believe now? Whom do you believe now? Whom are you looking to now?

Is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified the wonderful declaration of substitution and satisfaction from God Almighty as he looked to that blood and he passed over his people? Is that good news? Or is the gospel just good advice about what you have to do? Is it a declaration of news from God? Is His blood all in my salvation? is his substitution, his substitutionary sacrifice, his offering to God, his holiness, his righteousness, his bloodshedding, is that all?

That's all. That's the easy yoke that he calls his people to take upon in Matthew chapter five. This religious world puts a burden upon the children of God to perform and to look to themselves and to look into themselves to see progress. One of the greatest reasons for lack of assurance is that we're looking for a work done in us rather than looking to a work done for us. Where is the Lord Jesus Christ right now? He's in heaven. What's he doing in heaven? He's sitting on a throne and he's reigning and ruling and he comes to the Zacchaeus of this world and he says, come down, come down, come down.

When we look into ourselves to see the signs of progressive improvement, all we have is discouragement. We're commanded to look to the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, the best that I can see in myself, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

There's a great sign given amongst the Ten Commandments. There's only one of the Ten Commandments that is declared by God to be a sign. A sign. It's the Sabbath rest. He says in Exodus 31 verse 13, verily my sabbath ye shall keep for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. Exodus 31 verse 13. Who keeps the Sabbath? There's only one person who ever kept the Sabbath.

There's only one person who's ever rested perfectly and completely and totally in God. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Where do we find rest for our souls? To go back to Matthew 11. We find rest for our souls in the one who rested on the Sabbath. The work's finished. The work is finished.

Therefore, to talk about sanctification and not to talk about the hymn, this possessive pronoun, to not define and declare the character of God as he is revealed in the scriptures, is to stumble right at the very beginning. If he says they're mine, these sanctified ones, these saints, they are mine. So any discussion of being a sanctified person must begin with the character of God, and all of the character of God is revealed in the greatest clarity in the Lord Jesus Christ hanging naked on a cross outside of Jerusalem. All of that extraordinary revelation of all of the attributes of God is condensed into that one person at that one time in those hours upon the cross. So any talk of sanctification which denies anything of the hymn or the one who says, these saints are mine, is a denial of sanctification right at the very beginning.

They haven't even begun at the right place. Our God is absolutely sovereign. absolutely sovereign. He was delivered, the Lord Jesus Christ was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. There were no accidents in what happened to the cross. He set his face like a fink to go to the cross to sanctify his people.

And you have taken, Peter says to the people in Acts chapter 223, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. How can they be sanctified? How can they, who had the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ on their hands and on their conscience, how can they be made clean? How can they be made pure and perfect and immaculate? There is only one way, isn't it? that the Lord Jesus Christ bore the evil of those sins in his own body on the tree and bore them away perfectly and completely. Those people that day their very heart. There is no sanctification without a heart work, wounding the people, that you own the fact that your greatest crime has been a crime against God Almighty. And you might say, well, I wasn't there at the time. But if I put you back in that crowd in Jerusalem, you'd be there.

Crucify him, crucify him, crucify him. We have to see, don't we? We have to see to be sanctified. We have to see the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified, and we have to see our direct involvement. And we have to see that this God is a righteous God, and he's a just God, and he's a wise God, and he's a powerful God.

And he's a God so powerful that he is perfectly able to apply all that he promises to the hearts of all of his people. If he's not absolutely sovereign, then we have no hope, brothers and sisters. We have no hope. There's no point talking about what we do if God is not absolutely sovereign in all of what he does, including our sanctification. He's just.

It was an act of God's justice crucifying his son. It was an act of his wisdom. It's an act of his power. and he alone is the creator, and he alone is the ruler of all. The Lord Jesus Christ prayed in John chapter 17, the Father has given him power over all flesh. Does that power apply to everything in a believer's life? or is there something left in the power of men?

If there's something in your salvation that's in your hands, I'm very, very sorry. You dare not bring it to God on the last day. You read those people in Matthew chapter seven. Jude is speaking about these people. And so the Lord Jesus Christ, and him crucified is at the very heart of what it is to be sanctified, to be as holy as God is holy. And the Lord Jesus, I want us to look at some verses, but I want us to see that the Lord Jesus Christ prays for our sanctification. And the question that we ought to be asking when we read John 17 is, is prayer answered? What can stop the prayer of God Almighty being answered?

Devils? Men? Don't men, we puff ourselves up, don't we, so much? He says in John 17, verse 17, read it with me, please. He says, sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. How much of his word is truth? all of his word is truth. Verse 18, as thou hast sent me into the world, so have I also sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself. He wasn't becoming more holy, he was just saying he was set apart by God particularly for this purpose. For their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. There is no talk of sanctification that has any biblical meaning whatsoever if it's not directly associated to the truth of God Almighty, the truth in his character, the truth in his word. In the beginning was the word. And he goes on to say, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all might be one.

What is the goal of sanctification? It begins with union with the Lord Jesus Christ before the world began. It culminates in this world, in this creation, with union with the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, and union with him in his resurrection, and union with him in his exaltation. That's what he goes on to say.

This is his prayer, that they all might be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. How do you get to be in God? How do you get to have that union with God? Let's forget about anything to do with creature holiness and creature goodness in any way at all. The only way you can be in that union with God Almighty is to be made by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to be as holy and pure and perfect and clean as God is. they might be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And so just in closing I want us to go through these verses that you have on a sheet there before you and I want us to see that in just looking at these verses today we will see that God's children, this work of sanctification, this work of us being set apart, this work of being made holy, is a work of God and God alone. It's the work of the triune God. As we read in Jude, It's sanctification by the Father.

Jude 1.1.

I just love that. I just love the notion that I was preserved in Jesus Christ. I was preserved in him. Before the foundation of the world, I was preserved in him when I fell in Adam in the garden. I was preserved in him when I came out of my mother's womb speaking lies. I was preserved in him when I blasphemed God with every fiber of my being and every thought of my mind through all of those years. And I need to be as much preserved in him right now as I was then.

That's what it is to be sanctified. But sanctification is a work of God, the Holy Spirit, in Romans 15, 16. That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. And sanctification, obviously, is by the Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews 10 verse 10, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Okay, let's just go through this. list here. There are all the words sanctify, sanctify, sanctify and sanctification that are used in the New Testament. I do not have time today to look at all of them, and I trust that in your studies you might go back and see them in their context. I want us to look at some of the Greek, and I trust you know that God speaks perfectly good English, and he gives ears to hear and eyes to see, but the Greek tenses in these verbs, particularly when it comes to sanctified, are just so incredibly significant.

Ephesians 5, 6, that he might sanctify, that's an aorist active, it's a completed work, and it's an active work. He's talking about the church being purified in Ephesians chapter 5, being presented holy and spotless and unblameable. And he cleansed it with the washing of water by the word.

I love what 1 Thessalonians 5.23 says, And the God, the very God of peace, sanctify you wholly. And I pray, God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 13, 12, wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, he suffered without the gates. We are called upon as the children of God in 1 Peter to sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

We are to set him apart. We are to set him apart from all of this creation. He's above all of this creation. We are to set him apart from all our religious notions of what we have to do. We want to take upon ourselves, as he commands, take my yoke upon you. It's an easy yoke. It's an easy, and it's a light yoke. Now I want to look at the next passage. We don't have much time, so I just want to, let's skip down to Hebrews 2 verse 11 on the first page.

And Hebrews 2 is just an extraordinary, Hebrews, all of Hebrews is an extraordinary declaration of the sanctifying work of God Almighty. and it's just extraordinary how clear it is and how repeated it is. For both he that sanctified and they who are sanctified, and that perfect passive tense is incredibly important.

What's perfect? Nothing here. What God does is perfect, but to be perfect is, it speaks of a completed work once done never to be repeated. Understand? And when he speaks of the passive, perfect passive, someone is active and you're not. It is just to be the recipient of a gift. That's what grace is, isn't it? Grace is God giving us. the Lord Jesus Christ, not because of anything that we do, not because of anything that we maintain.

To go back to Hebrews 2.11, for both he that sanctified and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. We're brothers, we're members of the same family. And then he goes on to say, one of my favourite, and I think one of the most important verses in all the scriptures in Hebrews 9, verse 14, he goes on to say, How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve, to worship the living God. So let's go over onto page two and look at these words sanctified.

And I don't need to repeat again and again the Greek tense. I just wanted, I put that in there so that we would, hear what they heard and we would understand what they heard when Paul put his pen down or Luke put his pen down, God had spoken. God had spoken. And God had spoken really clearly.

Let's begin in Acts 20, 32. And now, brethren, I commend you to God and the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified. Perfect passive tense. And Paul gives his commission in Acts 26 verse 18, Who does the work? Whose faithfulness are we relying on? Our faith, our faith is in the faithful one.

Listen to how he describes this Corinthian church. It's extraordinary, isn't it, that he speaks, this church in Corinth had a serious dysfunctional family, didn't it? Everything about the Corinthian church was dysfunctional. If you ran the rod of modern religion over the Corinthian church, you'd have them all excommunicated in a heartbeat, wouldn't you? Fighting amongst themselves, bragging about their gifts.

Listen to what he says. Under the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified. Amongst that rebellious mob there is a church. They are sanctified, perfect passive, in Christ Jesus and called to be saints There's a link between the two of them. With all, this is Corinthian letter was written to us, with all that in every place, call on the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours.

He speaks of what we were in 1 Corinthians 6.11, but as such were some of you, but you are washed, you are sanctified, You are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Your sanctification is as complete as your washing, and it's as complete as your justification. 2 Timothy, let's move down, 2 Timothy chapter two, verse 21.

If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel under honour, sanctified, sanctified and meet, qualified, that means, perfectly fit for the master's use and prepared for every good work. What precedes all the good works? Being sanctified precedes all the good works. All the good works are the good works that God has prepared for his people to walk in. They're the good works of the sanctified ones.

We looked at Hebrews 2.11. Hebrews 10 is just an extraordinary declaration of the sanctifying work of God Almighty. By the witch will, we are sanctified, perfect passive, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Just one time, just one event, all of the children of God are completely washed clean of all of their sins.

And if they have no sin, what does that make them in God's sight? Pretty simple, isn't it? You're just holy, exactly what the saints are, aren't they? They're pure, they're immaculate, they're perfect. And sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, not our offering, the offering of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ once for all. Hebrews 10, 14, four by one offering, he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.

Isn't that remarkable? Religion would never tell you that. Or if they did tell you that, they'd take it away from you in a heartbeat and say, well, now you have to do something. And we've looked at Jude before. Sanctification is ultimately a union with the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1, Cole had it printed on our Bibles all those years ago and it wasn't any mistake whatsoever, it was really good.

He says, but of him, 1 Corinthians 1.30, but of him are ye in Christ Jesus. There we are again. Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. All of them. All of them. They're all in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm looking at very wise people. This world is full of wise people, and look at the mess they're making of this world of ours, these so-called wise people. I'm looking at incredibly wise people. Beloved, they're very wise, aren't they? And they are righteous. What is it to be righteous? Righteous means obedience to the law of God.

They're made. This is a creative activity, a declaration of a creative activity of God Almighty. They've kept the law of God perfectly. Not in themselves, ever, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. And sanctification and redemption. And how do we get in Him? God put us in them. God put us in Him. that according, and this is the end result of what happens in the hearts of the children who are sanctified. That, verse 31, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. That word glory means to boast, to have confidence in.

How do you know when you've met someone who's not sanctified? They're talking about their activities of sanctification apart from their being sanctified in the Lord Jesus Christ. God's children are not going to boast. God forbid, says Paul in Galatians 6, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. God forbid that I should have any confidence. God forbid I should have any boasting save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision.

There's only one thing that matters, and that's a new creation. And when God creates, what did he say in the first creation? It's very good. It's very good. God looks at his creation. God looks at the new creation in the hearts of his people and he sees them so closely bound to the Lord Jesus Christ. They pray Paul's prayer, that I might be found in him. It's the only place when God comes looking for Angus Fisher.

I hope he never finds me at all except in the Lord Jesus Christ and so deeply buried in the Lord Jesus Christ that he can't see me at all and I'll be happy. And I can take that yoke upon myself and I can find that yoke easy and his burden light because he's finished the work.

That's what he said, didn't he? That was his last words. It is finished. That should be enough, isn't it? That should cause the child of God to go away rejoicing. God has promised. God has done it. God has sealed it with the blood of his son. May the Lord be our teacher and our guide into all the truth as we look into these glorious, glorious declarations of our God. Let's have a break and pray the Lord blesses his words to our hearts.