7/10/2018 — Sanctification (Part 1 of 2)

[Music] sanctification and justification our biblical doctrines that all of us as believers should understand and today on truth for life Alastor beg clearly explains what these two terms mean how they differ and how both doctrines help us become more like Jesus alistair begins teaching in verse thessalonians chapter 5 [Music] there are passages of Scripture which in anticipating them you expect to unfold with rich and meaningful import there are others that as you imagine going through them you expect that you will move with fair rapidity and pass over them lightly I must confess that when I began to look at the concluding verses of 1st Thessalonians 5 beginning from verse 12 I keenly anticipated that it would be a fairly brief journey I had never imagined that God would unearth for us such an important and vital wealth of information as it relates to what it means to live together as a church family in submission to leadership in the discovery of worship in the expressions of fellowship and indeed since about the 12th verse we have noted that Paul has provided for his readers approximately 17 vital aspects of practical Christian living which if applied says Paul will allow the believers to encourage one another and build each other up he has been reminding us of our relationships and at the same time of our responsibilities inherent in the making of this list in the reading of the list is the question how in the world are we ever to do this how am I going to manage it and Paul not only provides for us as we've seen the directives but he also turns us to the dynamic now as he wraps this up he expresses himself in succinctly necessary word of encouragement and in verse 23 as he prays for those to whom he has written so clearly he prays that God Himself the God of peace will sanctify them through and through and we spend today on verses 23 and 24 noticing four things first of all the person to whom Paul refers them and it's right there at the head of the verse to whom is he referring he is referring to God says to God himself why does he do this because he recognizes that neither the Thessalonians nor any other local church will be able to work out these principles in their experience save for the enabling of the gracious work of God and so he refers them to the person of God but when we use the word person of God we don't use it in order somehow or another to make God as ourselves because he is clearly other than ourselves so in what way then could we refer to God as a person well we do it indeed the Scriptures do it in order to distinguish between the whole notion of God as some kind of impersonal power or vague energy and the biblical revelation of God as a personal God as distinct in his character and in his nature very important as I'll show you in just a moment that we understand what g.od spells for many people the whole notion of God with a small G is whatever they might conceive him to be but when we come to the Bible it speaks in very clear terms it doesn't simply say that God is a person but it says also that God is plural that he is one in three and three and one Father Son and Holy Spirit that he is a Trinity but says somebody I read the Bible and I haven't found the word Trinity in the Bible why would you use that word both theologians have used the word all through the centuries because it expresses clear biblical teaching when we take the Bible and we read it we discover that as God makes himself known to us we find him as Father Son and Holy Spirit and we find that God the triune God is at work in every aspect of his revelation in the creation of the world and in the redemption of people verse three of Ephesians chapter 1 Paul says praise be to the God and father notice father of our Lord Jesus Christ why well in verse 4 he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight all that I want you to notice is this then when it comes to the issue of salvation God the Father has planned it when you come to what Jesus the son has done you find in verse 7 in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace in other words what the father has planned the son has procured that by his death upon the cross Jesus has actualized that which was planned in eternity and the place of the Holy Spirit you will find in verse 13 and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation having believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised Holy Spirit so God the Father planned it God the Son procured it and God the spirit applied it so why is it that I know that I'm a believer today because the Spirit of God is at work within my heart reminding me of the provision that Jesus has made upon the cross and introducing me to the awesome truth that God planned and purposed this from all of eternity I know this with you in passing because it is directly counter to the contemporary view of God while there is a tremendous interest in extraterrestrial activities while you find with increasing interest people concern about out-of-body experiences and the possibility of unidentified flying objects and the and the chance that there is something after death in the midst of all of that there is mass confusion concerning who or what God is some time ago in Life Magazine they did a survey or an article entitled who is God and what it has to say reveals more about the human imagination than it does about any kind of biblical revelation but in one case a young high school freshman called Rakesh ah I take probably to be an Indian or a Pakistani probably of Hindu descent his answer was I have a lot of gods I have like a baseball pitching rotation I do one one day second one the next day just like that I have four gods and two goddesses but I left two of them out because I didn't think that they were doing their job now here's a person who in asked being asked about spiritual things responds yes I'm interested in spiritual things in being asked about God cities I'm very interested in God indeed let me tell you about how interested I am in God now if we possess a similar form of confusion in addressing the god question then we will be no help to people on this spiritual continuum it is for that reason that we need to labor hard to make sure that when Paul says I am commending you to the God of peace that we understand just exactly what we're talking of Jeremiah in his day speaks to the nations of his day and to the people of God in the midst of the nations and these folks had created idols will you say well we don't have idols in the same way while they may not be fashioned in the same way but we do certainly have idols and so the Lord in Jeremiah 10 speaks to the house of Israel and this is what the Lord says do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky though the nations are terrified by them for the customs of the peoples are worthless they cut a tree out of the forest and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel they adorn it with silver and gold they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it will not totter like a scarecrow in a melon patch their idols cannot speak they must be carried because they cannot walk don't fear them they can do no harm nor can they do any good no one is like you or Lord you're great and your name is mighty in power now the Prophet is distinguishing between the God preoccupation of six centuries BC and the reality of God as he has made himself known and there is intense practicality in this love once because you see that God who is revealed to us in the Bible is the God of Psalm 139 Oh Lord you have searched me and you know me you know when I sit down and when I stand up it was you put me together intricately and my mother's womb you fashioned me before ever I could conceive of anything surely sister sanest I am fearfully and wonderfully made that's the God of biblical revelation now men and women today who have an interest in God who cm is simply a cosmic principle or some kind of forceful energy have no accompanying sense of identification with this personal creator God consequently they live their lives empty they live their lives lonely and they live their lives fearful because they have got no knowledge of who they are or why they exist but when we come to the God of the Bible to the god to whom Paul refers here may God Himself the God of peace then you see it makes a difference to us because then I can say you know I'm not just a load of chemicals lost in a solution I'm not just a kind of grown-up bunch of genetic organizations but according to what I'm finding in this book I am a child of God by creation I'm not junk I am not essentially irrelevant I have my own set of fingerprints and I have my own DNA why because God the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ determined it would be so so you see this theology is not some sort of arms activity for a Sunday morning oh well so it's God himself as opposed to God with a small G it makes every difference in the world to be able to go to a person and say you know you were fashioned after a master plan you may believe yourself to exist in a world of chance without point of identification but I want you to know that God the Father fashioned you and he has in his son made possible your Redemption it is to this God then that Paul refers his readers he is a person and he is plural and he is powerful he is eternal and uncreated and infinite he is not limited by time or by space he derives life and everything from himself everything in life everything that is created runs down but the Creator does not run down God does not run down he is a person he is plural he is powerful and he is peace he is the God of peace what a wonderful phrase the God of peace he who is Hall nough sin and of himself he is the ultimate expression of peace and he is the ultimate only bringer of peace a peace which is enjoyed between God and man on account of what Jesus has done having made peace through the blood of the Cross Colossians 1:20 a peace which guards and keeps the hearts and minds of believers even though there is much to unsettle and threaten somebody far removed from this church fellowship called me out of the blue this week a distant person to me a successful individual and he called me Alistair could you give me 15 minutes of your time I want to talk to you about peace I have no peace and for three hours we sat together and talked about the glory to God in the highest and on earth peace that comes from the God of peace he's not a God of confusion he's not a God of disorder he is a God of peace and there can be no peace until the grace of God has dealt with sin that's why Paul started first Thessalonians in that way you may remember right in the first verse he says grace and peace to you first the Grace and then the peace for it is the grace of God which introduces us to forgiveness of sins and then in that there is peace that's the person secondly will you notice with me the process the person to whom he refers them is God himself the God of peace and the process to which he commends them is this process of sanctification what does he want God himself to do for them and and by defect for us he wants God to sanctify us through and through indeed he says he wants our whole spirit soul and body to be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ boy that's quite a thought isn't it let's try and unpack this if we can this whole issue of sanctify you through and through there's probably not a few of us this morning if we were given a large sheet of paper and uh and a cup of coffee and a longtime would be hard-pressed to do very much in extrapolating anything from sanctify you through and through you know we could maybe write it in a different a number of ways or whatever but if somebody said I want a thousand words on what this means we may be just finding ourselves a little on edge so let me try and unpack it for you indeed you may be more on edge by the time I try and do this it may be even more complicated than when we're starting now you might be better with a blank sheet of paper than what you end up with I don't know but let me try my best for you because this is crucial this is really crucial sanctification as I kind of sound to it doesn't it like yeah maybe I'll think about that next week as if we okay could we go into something else please a little more practical I don't like the sound of this one no sorry here we are verse 23 is where we are sanctifies the native word therefore sanctifies what we're dealing with you see is that kind of like justification you feeling good because you pulled that word up you knew there was another word that ended in a tion justification you said I know that one you do good because that's very important it is vital that we understand justification or will never understand sanctification and will never understand the way of the two of them go together so sit back relax and I'm going to teach you about justification sanctification and the way in which they interact with one another justification first of all Romans chapter 5 and verse 1 is the verse that comes most readily to Minds therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God this is a reminder justification as we've noted before is basically a legal term okay it is a declaratory term lawyers understand it especially those who exercise their prerogatives in a court of law when a judge declares a man or a woman not guilty he is simply giving them a legal standing true he is not doing anything to their character he is ultimately not saying anything about their character and he is certainly not changing their character what he's saying is this person stood before as accused and I am declaring him or her now not guilty now the reason that this is significant is because when we read the Bible we discover that by our very nature as created we stand before God accused now admittedly that's bad news the bad news is that by virtue of the fact that we haven't loved them as we ought that we have loved ourselves more than we should that we have turned our back on his ways and even often when we have done good things we've done them to attract attention to ourselves or to make ourselves somehow feel better we stand condemned before God indeed one of the summary statements on it is in Romans 3:23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God so what I discover about myself in reading the Bible is that although I want initially to feel good about myself although I want to be told that all is well with me I face first of all the bad news that all isn't well that I am actually condemned before God on the basis of my unbelief my passive and difference and my act of rebellion and I'm not unique in that respect I share it with everybody well the question then falls for the logical mind how then can a sinner be justified by a holy and righteous God how do you get out of the position of condemned to justify it also somebody that's fairly easy you start going to church you start doing good things you start pulling up your socks fastening your shoes and doing the best you can what a little religious emphasis to it and all of those things may prove to be extremely helpful but they don't answer the question how am I to obtain the legal standing of not guilty in the sight of such a judge well the answer is in verse 24 and 25 of Romans chapter 3 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and how do they get out of the predicament well they are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus God presented him that is Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood what Paul is seeing here and indeed throughout the whole framework of these chapters in Romans is simply this when Jesus shed his blood upon the cross he died the death which was our due he died in our place and he died on our behalf and so on the ground of what Jesus has done on the cross God can pronounce on the sinner who believes in Jesus the not guilty verdict because Jesus died on the cross notice carefully God has not pronounced on everyone the not guilty verdict because Jesus died upon the cross God can pronounce the not guilty verdict on the sinner who believes in Jesus who seeks to say goodbye to believing in my own abilities in believing in my own good deeds in believing in my church attendance in believing in my background in believing in my contributions to the United Way into the person who says you know all of the best things I do are really just like filthy rags when I think of being declared not guilty and then suddenly I understand that this baby in Bethlehem was the Christ of Calvary and that on that cross he bore the sins of those who would come to place their faith and trust in him and so I come to do just that and as a result and God takes my condemned status and changes it to not guilty you're listening to truth for life and the Bible teaching of Alistair beg we're in a series called belief and behavior and today's message is titled sanctification if you've missed any of the sermons in this series you can find the entire collection online at truth for while you're there you have the option to purchase this entire three volume series on CD or USB at our cost with no markup you can search for the series titled belief and behavior at truth for life we're passionate about providing clear relevant Bible teaching without cost being an issue so that as many people as possible can hear the life-changing message of the gospel when you partner with this ministry and give a financial gift we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of a book by Sinclair Ferguson called the Christian life in this book dr. Ferguson provides rich insight into core Christian doctrines that both new and mature believers will find helpful using the analogy of a three-legged stool dr. Ferguson explains that Christian doctrine together with experience and practice are all required for staying upright he expounds on key doctrinal themes in a clear and practical way while covering the spectrum of complex topics things like repentance justification and the election of God's people be sure to ask for your copy of the Christian life when you call eight eight eight five eight eight seven eight eight four or you can donate online by visiting truth for life.org if you'd prefer to mail your gift along with your request for the book write to us at truth for life p o-- box 39 8000 cleveland ohio our zip code is four four one three nine as you travel this summer while you're away from your local radio station you can easily hear truth for life just about anywhere in the country simply go online to truth for life dot org slash station finder and find a station broadcasting allister's teaching while you're on the road enter the zip code of your location and the stations in that area will automatically display this convenient feature ensures that you don't miss Ingle program through our current study in first thessalonians we're learning that a sinner doesn't have to become righteous before he's declared righteous I'm Bob Lapine hoping you'll join us again tomorrow as Alistair explains the powerful doctrines of justification and sanctification the Bible teaching of Alistair beg is furnished by truth for life where the learning is for living [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 2,252

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Truth For Life, Character of God, Imputation of Righteousness, Justification, Sanctification

Id: bI-FsixBbCI

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2018