I have been given the assignment tonight to
talk about the role of Scripture in spiritual growth, and this is not only an important
subject, but I am sure it's first because it sets the foundation for everything else,
since all the other means of grace flow to us out of the Scripture. That's how we know
what they are. And there are so many ways to approach this, but I want to begin with
a statement made by our Lord Jesus Christ. One of the most remarkable statements that
He ever made, and there are so many revelations from His lips and so many about His own holy
perfections, so many places where you hear Him speak of His own glory. But He made one
statement in that great high priestly prayer in John 17, in speaking to His Father that
is really a stunning statement. It's three Greek words, "ego hagiazo emauton." Emphatic
in the use of those pronouns. In the English He said this, "I sanctify Myself," John 17:19.
That is a stunning statement from a human perspective, made not to man, but to God.
Made to His holy, omniscient Father, without a hint of hesitation. Now, we all know that to be sanctified is
to be separated from sin. Scripture says of Him that He was holy, He was innocent, and
He was undefiled and separate from sinners, Hebrews 7:26. But the wonder of the statement
is that He sanctified Himself. It is an indicative tense, which carries continuity. That is to
say, He is always sanctifying Himself. He is always separating Himself from sin. He
constantly separates Himself from sin and sustains His own holiness, though tempted
relentlessly at all points as we are. Self-sanctification. Turn in your Bible for a minute to John 17
and look at that particular text and some around it as a starting point for our thoughts
tonight. In John 17 and verse 17 He says, "Sanctify them (that is those who belong to
Him in the world, believers) sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth." And then
down to verse 19, "For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified
in truth." Twice in verse 17, the word "aletheia," the word for 'truth' is used and then at the
end of verse 19. We are sanctified in the truth, and He Himself sanctifies Himself that
we may be also sanctified in truth, indicating by the 'also' that He also sanctified Himself
in the truth. And right there, you have the key to sanctification. It is to know and obey
the truth, the revealed will and Word of God. Obviously this is characteristic of our Lord,
and He repeats it a number of times. Travel a little bit through the Gospel of John with
me, going back to chapter 4, and we'll do a little bit of a Bible study here for a moment.
Back in John chapter 4, here come some familiar words of our Lord. Verse 34, "Jesus said to
them, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.'" It is My daily sustenance to do
the will of Him who sent me. In chapter 5 and verse 19, "Jesus therefore
answered and was saying to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself,
unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these
things the Son also does in like manner.'" And down in verse 30, "I can do nothing on
My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek
My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." This is perfect sanctification, to ever
and always do the will of God. In chapter 6 and verse 38, "For I have come
down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." In chapter 7
verse 18, "He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory
of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him." It is the one
who seeks the glory of God, the one who obeys the truth of God, the one who pursues the
will of God who is sanctified. And it goes on in the 8th chapter, verse 28,
"When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on
My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. I always do," verse
29, a key statement, "I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." His self-sanctification
was perfect obedience to the will of God. And again, one other passage that you can
look at more perhaps carefully later, John 14:31, "That the world may know that I love
the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." When He was tempted, with what did He reply
to the temptation? Scripture, taken out of Deuteronomy, as we remember. He answered every
temptation with an affirmation of the truth, the revelation of God in Deuteronomy. "I sanctify
Myself," He said to His Father, with no fear of rebuttal on the part of the omniscient
God, who Himself declared, "This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." What is sanctification? Perfect sanctification
is flawless obedience from the heart to the will of God, known and understood perfectly.
That's perfect sanctification. And our Lord's own personal testimony to His sanctification
was part of a prayer that embraced all of us in which He said, "Father, sanctify them
by Thy truth; Thy word is truth." That which set apart the Lord Jesus Christ is exactly
what sets apart the believer. All other gracious means of sanctification are necessarily revealed
to us in Scripture, so that's where we have to start. That's, as I said, the foundation.
Scripture then is the source of all sanctifying truth. As Paul said to Timothy in his second letter,
"It is able to make you wise unto salvation, and to make the man of God perfect, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works." The apostle John, who wrote these texts under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, understood well the role the truth plays in sanctification. And we
learn that from his epistles. Let's turn to the second and third epistles of John, postcard
epistles, about three hundred words each. Could have been written on one sheet of papyrus,
and I want you to notice John here is writing the first letter to a lady, I believe an actual
lady, with a family, in a church, and the second letter to a man whom He names as Gaius.
But I want you to notice what his emphasis is. 2 John 1, "The elder," referring to Himself,
the only time we find the word elder in the New Testament in the singular: "The elder to the chosen lady and her children,
whom I love in truth; and not only I, but also all who know the truth, for the sake
of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy and peace will
be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have
received commandment to do from the Father." Five times in that salutation, the word aletheia
(truth) appears. Five times! He knew that sanctification was by the truth, and he wanted
people walking in the truth, and he rejoiced when they did, because that's the path of
progressive spiritual growth. Just as a footnote, go back to 1 John 2 and
refresh yourself at verse 5, "Whoever keeps His word (the Word of God), in him the love
of God has truly been perfected." That is, God's redeeming, saving love is perfected
in the person who fully obeys His Truth. "By this, we know we are in Him." And then verse
6, "The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked,"
that is as Christ walked. You say you belong to God, you say you are a child of God, then
you ought to be marked out as a person who walks in the truth because that's how Christ
walked. He kept the Father's Word perfectly. If you say you abide in Him, that will not
be the perfection of your life, but it will be the direction of your life. How did He walk? Keeping and obeying the Word
of God. That's the pattern we follow. Back to 2 John for a moment, and so John says here,
"I'm so glad to find some of your children walking in truth." On the other side of that,
verse 6, "This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you
should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not
acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Watch yourselves, that you might not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may
receive a full reward." Listen, your spiritual growth yields an ever-increasing
weight of glory, which can be forfeited if you are distracted from the truth into deception,
into lies. It doesn't just have an effect upon you here and now. It doesn't just harm
your spiritual development here, therefore your usefulness and joy. It has a lasting
effect on that eternal weight of glory so that you would actually forfeit something
that you had gained. In fact, you are warned that if anybody comes
along and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, don't let him in your house and don't
give him a greeting, or you will become a partaker in his evil deeds. There are warnings
from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible to stay away from false teaching,
because anything that corrupts your pure understanding of the truth halts your sanctification and
your spiritual growth. 3 John adds to our understanding of John's
preoccupation with this necessary foundation of spiritual growth. "To the beloved Gaius,"
he writes, "whom I love in truth." Verse 3, "I was very glad when brethren came and bore
witness to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth." And then this wonderful
statement, which I give to my own congregation so frequently, "I have no greater joy than
this, to hear of my children walking in the truth." That is the supreme joy of the pastor.
That is the supreme joy, because it is only as they walk in the truth that they become
spiritually mature. Down in verse 8 he says, "Support other ministers,
because they are fellow workers with the truth." Down in verse 12, he mentions, Demetrius,
who received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. In other words,
he was consistent with revealed truth. These two little postcard epistles call us to a
simple understanding that the foundation of all spiritual progress is related to divine
truth, and that's as it should be. Go to Jude, one more postcard epistle here.
Jude is an incredible book hidden in the shadow of Revelation but never to be overlooked.
In verse 3 Jude says, "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about
our common salvation." Stop there for a moment. That to me is a fascinating statement. Have
you ever tried to write a letter you couldn't write? I know as a preacher, there are many
times I started a sermon that I never could finish because my heart was so directed in
another way. No matter how I tried to do what I first started to do, I couldn't do it. And
that is where Jude was. I don't know how many pieces of papyrus he crumpled up and threw
in his trash basket. "I wanted to write you about our common salvation, but I felt the
necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was
once for all delivered to the saints." You know what he is saying there? He said if we
do not battle to protect the truth, we aren't going to have a common salvation. We aren't
going to have a common gospel. I would love to just write a letter and celebrate
our common salvation, but I'm not sure it's common. So, what do you do to protect it?
Verse 17, "Remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles." Verse 20, "Build yourselves
up on your most holy faith."
And so, these three little epistles all agree the priority is the truth. It is the truth
that saves. It is the truth that sanctifies. It is the truth that make you wise unto salvation
and the truth that makes you perfect, thoroughly equipped for all good works. Sanctification
is the work of the truth. The truth is critical. The obvious implications of this are pretty
startling. The more you remove the truth from somebody's life, the more you inhibit their
spiritual development, and nothing can do the work that the truth does. There is no
sanctifying power in human intuition. There is no sanctifying power in insight. There
is no sanctifying power in experience. It is all in the Scripture. Only the truth of
God revealed in Scripture sanctifies. Sound teaching accurately interpreted, understood,
and applied. An as you embrace the truth, you progress spiritually. Now to see that, go back to 1 John chapter
2. Let me just give you John's paradigm for spiritual growth here. And this is good. This
will be a kind of a little test for you. You'll be able to identify yourself in here somewhere,
a very definitive text, very definitive. I don't think there's another text like it in
all of the New Testament. It's 1 John 2:12: "I am writing to you, little children, because
your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because
you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you
have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning.
I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides
in you, and you have overcome the evil one." This is just marvelous! There's an opening
statement in verse 12, "I am writing to you, little children," teknia. That can refer to
a child of any age. I would be a teknia of my own parents. It's without regard to your
age. It's not identifying a child chronologically. So, he's saying, "I'm writing to all of you,
children, all of you whose sins are forgiven, all the redeemed, all the justified, all the
regenerate. And I'm writing you generally." But then in verses 13 and 14, he splits us
all into three groups. You see it there? Fathers, young men, and children. There are stages
of spiritual growth here. Now, we know there are at least two stages of spiritual growth.
In the words of Jesus in John 21 when He said to Peter, "Feed My sheep and feed My lambs."
But here you have three categories of spiritual development. Let's look, first of all, at little children.
We kind of start at the bottom, verse 13, "I have written to you, children, because
you know the Father." Here the word "children" is different, paideia. It refers to children
under pedagogical training, children under training in the elemental teaching. Ignorance
is being eliminated at the most basic level. This is being a spiritual child, not in the
sense of being the offspring of God as it were, but being childish. And what is characteristic
of a spiritual child? He says, "You know the Father." Parental recognition. A sort of spiritual
dada or Abba, Imma. You know your Father. This is a sort of a salvation confession.
You cry, as Paul says, "Abba Father." The immature child in the analogy that John is
using here, the immature child is attached to mother and father. Parental recognition
dominates their lives. The attachment is the strong bond. They are dependent, and they
are more regulated by trust than by understanding. It has its problems, however, because in Ephesians
4:13 and 14 it says, "Be no more children, because you'll be tossed to and fro and carried
about by every wind of doctrine." That's why the Lord gave to the church the leadership
He gave for the perfecting of the saints, so they come to the full stature of Christ.
Being a spiritual child is to be immature. It is to be unable to fully have your senses
exercised to discern, as Hebrews 5 puts it. It is to be unable to grasp the depth, the
meat of truth, and it is a very, in some ways, exposed place to be. There's not a great will
to discern. There's a broad sense of tolerance very often. I don't need to say much more about that to
have you understand that much, if not most, of the evangelical church in America as we
know it is in this category. They celebrate their attachment. They sing all the worship
choruses, celebrating their dependence on God, and that's fine. But they have really
no will to discern or to separate and no criteria. And it has nothing to do with how long you've
been a Christian. It has to do with how much exposure you've had to the truth. In fact,
it seems to me that churches are being designed for these people as if that's the pinnacle
of achievement. You find a church that maybe has a history of doctrine and teaching of
the Word of God, and the new pastor comes in and says, "Let's go backwards. Let's reinvent
the church, and let's just all be babies again." Self-absorbed, preoccupied with feelings,
needs, problems, keep everything shallow, directed at selfish, childish preoccupations,
and stunt everybody's growth. Well, there's a second category here, and
that is young men. They are mentioned in verses 13 and verse 14, "I write unto you, young
men, because you have overcome the evil one." That's a pretty powerful statement. Verse
14 adds the cause of that, "I have written to you, young men, because you are strong,"
why, "and the word of God abides in you, and you've overcome the evil one." So, what is
the difference between a spiritual babe and a spiritual young man? It is strength. And
wherein is that strength born? It is born of the knowledge of the Word of God. The word
here for 'young men' is the word for 'youth' -- 'strong,' 'mature.' And they are characterized
in verse 14 as having the Word of God abide in them. They are strong in the Word. I watch this all the time in my own pastoral
work. I watch this all the time. I watch it particularly with young men because I am always
surrounded by lots and lots of young men, and I watch them go from a loving relationship
to God and overwhelming sense of being attached and God is their loving Father, to begin to
know and understand doctrine. And they go from being children to being strong, young
men. You can always sort of mark them out because they want to go to battle with error.
They want to attack the cults. They want to go in a room and no longer want to talk about
the basics of Christian experience. They want me to answer all the questions about all the
aspects of theology they don't understand and they're getting wired with all that, and
they're developing spiritual muscle from all of that. And there is an amazing benefit.
"You have overcome the evil one." Twice, he says it. "You have," past tense, "overcome
the evil one," with continuing results. That sounds like an overstatement. What does he mean by that? It's amazing. Overcome,
nikao, from which the word Nike comes. 'Victor,' 'to conquer,' 'prevail,' 'win.' Let me tell
you something folks, when you get to being a spiritual young man, and you are strong
in sound doctrine, you have triumphed over Satan. You say, "What are you talking about?"
Do you understand what the apostle Paul said about Satan and his agents? They are disguised
as what? Angels of light. Satan is a liar and a deceiver and so are his agents. And
when you know strong doctrine, that's not a problem anymore. You understand that? Satan
spends most of his time operating in false religious systems, in damning, lying schemes.
That's a pretty potent benefit of knowing the truth. You prevail over the stratagems
of the enemy as he endeavors to deceive. I'll tell you, none of us is perfect. Certainly
I'm not, but I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would buy in to false doctrine. I
can't imagine it. I will fall into temptation, but I cannot imagine a scenario in which I
would buy into false doctrine. When I see false doctrine, I get aggressive. I don't
get fearful. I don't become a doubter. And we storm the gates, in the language of 2 Corinthians,
you might want to look at that passage, 2 Corinthians 10. It talks about spiritual warfare.
It's a really rich passage. I've spoken about it before. But it says, "Though we walk in
the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh." What he means there is not that he
is fleshly in the sinful sense. He says, "I'm human. I'm a human being, but I don't engage
in this spiritual war with human weapons." That's another text that needs to be understood. "The weapons of our warfare are not human.
They are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses." And he talks about these fortresses
in the next verse as speculations -- logismos in the Greek. He says what we do is we attack
fortresses, massive edifices. And the word in the Greek is the same word for 'fortress,'
same word for 'prison,' same word for 'tomb.' "We are assaulting these things." And what
are they? The fortresses in verse 4 are the speculations, the logismos, the ideologies,
the systems of thought in verse 5, which are lofty things raised up against the knowledge
of God. That is any ungodly idea, any ungodly system, any ungodly philosophy, psychology,
religion, etc. We smash those things and we take the captives, set them free, and bring
them captive to the obedience of Christ. Do you want to know what spiritual warfare is?
Spiritual warfare is a battle for the mind. It's a battle for how people think, and what
is the one weapon that destroys error? Truth! It's so obvious that Paul doesn't even mention
it. It is that great and glorious revelation of God, which smashes all other ideologies. Back to 1 John, there is a third level of
spiritual growth, and this one is the longing, I think, of certainly all our hearts who have
walked with the Lord for a long time. He says beginning in verse 13, "I am writing to you,
fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning." Verse 14, "I have written
to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning." What is this?
You've gone beyond an accurate theology. You've gone beyond knowing the doctrines of Scripture
to become enthralled with God. And that's where Scripture will take you. You live in
wonder, you live in love, you live in praise. Your Christian life is no longer defined by
your theology; it's defined by your adoration. It's defined by your passion for God. It's
defined by your delight in Him. All your Biblical knowledge has introduced Him to you, and now
you have engaged in a communion with Him. It has deepened and deepened and deepened,
and you've watched the realities that you know to be true about Him unfold in the marvelous
providences of life. You wake up one day, and the thing that you're most excited about
isn't your theology any more; the thing that you're most excited about is your Lord. Paul was anxious to keep growing, as R.C.
said earlier, in that regard, as fine a Christian as he was. The thing that comes out of his
heart in Philippians 3 is, "That I may know Him." It's never enough. I've seen it through
my life. I've seen His hand of providence on my life. I've seen Him work in the lives
of the people of my family. I've seen Him graciously save my children. I've seen Him
rescue me from death. When I was about twenty-four hours from being dead with blood clots, I
was telling a friend last night, and was lying in a critical ward wondering what was going
on, because I was very healthy and had a little knee surgery from old football injuries, and
now I am in there. Blood clots had gone out of the leg and up and splattered over both
lungs. I'm lying in there wondering what the purposes of God in this are and I am thinking
about going to heaven, and it's looking pretty good. In fact, when I recovered I had just
a mild disappointment. It's true! It's really true! But I was lying in that hospital, this just
comes to mind from what I was saying last night. The doctor came in, and he saved my
life. Friends sent me to him. He knew what was wrong, got me in there, and saved my life.
A godless guy, but over the days that he would come to visit me, he found that I was a preacher.
He started talking to me, and when I could talk a little better, we had a conversation.
He said, "Now, you cannot preach for three months because you cannot stand up, or you
will have more blood clot problems. So, unless you preach ten minutes," and I said, "No,
I don't preach ten minutes." No, I can't do that. I can't clear my throat in ten minutes,
that's the problem. But he said, "I'm kind of curious to hear you preach." So he said,
"I want to come to your church. First time you preach, I'll tell you when you can, I'm
going to come and hear you." He said, "I haven't been to church since I was sixteen," he was
probably fifty-seven years old. I had planned to start a new series, and I had to postpone
it to that first Sunday. The first Sunday, I called him few days before.
I said, "I'm preaching this week." He said, "I'm going to come." He was on the third row
sitting there. He hadn't been to church since he was sixteen years old. And I announced
that I was beginning a series on Luke, and my first sermon was "Luke, the beloved physician."
The Lord just knew. You know, that's almost five years ago. He's never missed a Sunday.
Within a month, he gave his life to Christ. And he has now become a dear friend. Now look,
I mean, I suggested to the Lord that there might have been a plan B to evangelize the
guy. It's a little hairy approach for it. But I mean that's one illustration of the
providences of God that unfold. The endearing providences of God that unfold in your life
and you see it, and all of a sudden it isn't about your theology; it's about your communion. You know, I just grieve for the evangelical
church in our country, people who are left in infancy, cheated out of the richness of
doctrine, living life by principle. Cheated even more out of the depth of an intimate
sense of God's personal love and involvement in your life, as all that is true about Him
unfolds before you. Well, that was the introduction. You think
I'm kidding? I just want to say three more things and a few things around the three things. All right, how do we then bring ourselves
to a place to submit to this, right? I mean, that's the question. You say, "Okay, I don't
want to be a spiritual child. I don't want to be left in infancy tossed to and fro and
carried about by every wind of doctrine. I don't want to be ignorant about great truth.
I don't want to be ignorant about it because I want to be able to fully glorify God for
everything He's done. I want to appreciate Him in all His fullness, and then I want to
go beyond just appreciating the things that are true about Him, and I want to know Him
in the fullness that I can. How do I then respond to the Word? What do I do?" I'll just
give you three little words, make it simple. Cognition, just maybe you'll remember them
if I make them sound the same. Cognition. It starts with understanding what
the Bible says and what it means. The meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. If you
don't know what it means, you didn't have the Scripture. So, you start with finding
out what the Bible says. Many years ago as a kid, I started reading the books of the
Bible repetitiously. I'd read the same book everyday for months, because I knew I needed
to know what it said, and when I preached, typically I explained the Bible with the Bible.
And the reason I explained the Bible with the Bible is because that's the way I read
the Bible, and I remember starting in 1 John and I said, "I'm going to read this thing
every day for 30 days," and at the end of 30 days, I said, "This is so good I'm going
to read it every day for 90 days," and many days I read it over and over and over and
over, and I knew what was in 1 John. I knew everything that was in 1 John. If you said,
you know, "Where does it say that if we confess our sins?" 1 John 1 verse 9, left hand page,
right hand column half way down. Visualize, you know I can see it. Then I went to the Gospel of John, and I read
seven chapters everyday for months, and then the second seven everyday for months, and
then the final seven every day for months, and I began to see how 1 John connected to
the Gospel of John, and then I went to Philippians, and then I went back to another Gospel and
within a couple of years, two or three years, it all came together and analogia Scriptura
overwhelmed me that the Bible is its own interpreter. Sanctification begins with renewing your mind.
Does that sound familiar? You've got to know it. There's no premium on ignorance in sanctification.
You're not going to get there by holding your hands up, swaying back and forth, and singing
a 7/11 chorus, you know, seven words eleven times. You don't get there that way. It's
not going to happen. It's about understanding truth so that you can obey it and praise God
for it as His Son did. The discipline of putting the truth constantly in your mind is critical.
You have a bookstore over there. Get yourself over there and get everything you can get
and read that great material that explains the Word of God to you. Those are gifted,
called, illuminated teachers of the Word of God. There isn't any other way to get there
without that. Lack of knowledge retards spiritual growth. It retards sanctification, and there
isn't any way you can make it up. There is no way to retard the flesh, to restrain the
flesh except in a true paradigm of sanctification. Legalism won't get you there. Mysticism won't
get you there. Chasing demons won't get you there. Pragmatism won't get you there. Sacramentalism
won't get you there. The thing that gets you into the ongoing sanctifying process is taking
in the truth. Don't confuse childlike faith with childish
thinking. And I know this, some of you are here at this Ligonier Conference because you
have come to realize that the Scripture is far deeper and wider and higher than you ever
imagined. You have perhaps recently discovered some profound insights and understandings,
and you are now discovering that you have been sitting under shallow teaching for years
and years and years. That's why you're here, and some of you have a very high frustration
level in your local church. You're pleading with somebody to feed you the Word of God.
We're living in a time when the largest and most influential churches, the fastest growing
churches are shallow. They're like Christian comics at worst. At best, it's People Magazine. It's hard to think about it this way, but
this is a counter-Christian culture event. You understand that? This is a counter-Christian
culture event. A lot of people out there are frightened to death of this event. Some of
your pastors are scared that you're here. You're going to go back and say, "Pastor,
I want to talk to you about the extent of the atonement." It may be more than they can
take. And you're struggling in your church because superficiality prevails, a self-indulged,
theologically indifferent church trying to feel good about itself without ever growing
in the knowledge of the truth. Somebody said to me one time, "You just read
all those dead guys, don't you?" I don't read all the dead guys, but I read a lot of dead
guys. The compelling reason I read the dead guys is because the living guys are so messed
up. Let me tell you something. The greatest theologians of our day cherish the greatest
theologians of our past. J. P. Moreland wrote, "The mind is the soul's primary vehicle for
making contact with God, and it plays the foundational role in the process of maturation
and spiritual formation, the mind." Bishop Moule wrote, "Lord and Savior, true and kind,
be the master of my mind. Bless and guide and strengthen still all the powers of thought
and will. While I ply the scholars' task, Jesus Christ be near I ask." Listen to this,
"Help my memory, clear my brain, knowledge still to seek and gain." Cognition. Cognition.
Martha, Martha. Mary, you chose the better part, right? Luke 10, sitting at the feet
of Jesus listening. Second word, cognition to conviction. This
is what you want to do, as you learn the Bible you want to begin to develop conviction. These
are the things that you believe. Your life is a product of what you believe. What you
really believe is true is how you live or endeavor to live. As the truth takes over
your mind, do you know what's going to happen? Because you know it's the truth of God, it's
going to produce principles that you do not desire to violate. Isn't that what sanctification
is about? It's about being compelled to obedience. 2 Corinthians 4 is a text that I'll spend
just a moment to attach. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul is talking here about all his, what
he talked about a lot of times in 2 Corinthians, but here also, he's talking about how tough
life was. Verse 8, "Afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing,
persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed." I don't know of too many Christians in America
like that. You know of any Christians in America that are afflicted, crushed, persecuted, and
struck down? We've pretty well managed to avoid that, but Paul was always going through
that. In fact, he was even carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus. He said, "I
just live everyday knowing I could die. I identify with my Savior." In verse 11 he says,
"We're being constantly delivered over to death." Every day he woke up, he realized
one of the plots that were being hatched could come to fruition. He could be dead. "Death
is always at work in us." You stop at this point and you say, "What
are you doing Paul? Everywhere you go, you offend everybody. Everywhere you go, you go
into town and you don't ask what the hotel is like. You ask what the jail was like, because
that's where you are going to stay. As soon as you open your mouth, somebody throws you
in there or Jews get mad at you and throw you out of the synagogue. The Gentiles think
you're going to cause a disruption. What are you doing?" I love it, verse 13, "I believed, therefore
I spoke." Fair enough. It just so happened that what he believed was God's truth. "I
believed it, so I spoke it." That's conviction. That's conviction. He took that from the Old
Testament. He says, "We believe, so we speak. What do you want me to do? Do I have an alternative?
This is my conviction." John Bunyan was in jail for I think 12 years.
It wasn't the stone and the steel that held him there. People kept saying to him. "John,
you can get out of there. Just do what they tell you. Stop preaching." This is what he
said, "If I did that, I would make of my conscience a continual butchery and slaughter shop."
He said he would "rather suffer if frail life might continue so long till the moss grows
on my eyebrows than violate my conviction." Conviction! What you're doing in the Bible
is learning the Word of God to develop a set of convictions that will rule your life and
hold your conscience captive and activate it when you get near to violating them. That
was Paul. 2 Corinthians 1:12, they were hammering on
Paul, calling him all kinds of things. Here is his answer. He says, "Our proud boast is
this, the testimony of our conscience that in holiness, in godly sincerity, not in fleshly
wisdom; in holiness and godly sincerity, not fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God we
conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you. I was true to the wisdom of God,
and my conscience doesn't accuse me. Say what you will." Acts 23:1, he said, "I've lived
my life with a perfectly good conscience." Acts 24:16, "I do my best to maintain a blameless
conscience." Biblical truth establishes cognition in the mind and develops conviction in the
conscience. Third, affection. Affection. And my time is
gone, so I will make a comment or two on this. Take your Bible sometime tonight before you
go to bed and read through Psalm 119 and find every place the psalmist says he loves the
law of God, he delights in the law of God. It's over and over and over and over again.
And read Psalm 19, where he says "the law of God is more desirable than gold. Yea, than
much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb," and then read Psalm 1 where
it says, "Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in it he meditates
day and night," and I will tell you folks, you can see this progression going on in your
life. As you expose yourself to the Word, you begin to understand what it says. It begins
to form your conviction, and then it becomes your affection. What did Job say? What controlled Job? If
you're going to fly a party, he had every reason, don't you think? You're going to start
hollering at God, questioning God. He had every reason, but he said this, Job 23:12,
"I have treasured Your Word more than my necessary food." Paul found his delight in the law of
God. "Oh, how I love your law." Affection. How strong should be that affection? Peter
put it this way, "As babes," 1 Peter 2:2, "As babes, desire the pure milk of the Word,
in order that you may" what? "Grow thereby." That's where we end. Spiritual growth comes
when you have the affection for the Word. What does it mean "as babes desire the pure
milk of the Word?" He's not talking about being a spiritual babe there, and he's not
contrasting milk and meat like 1 Corinthians 3. He's simply saying this, "In the same way
that a baby longs for milk, you should long for the Word." Epipotheo, 'to crave.' Psalm 42:1 uses it in the Septuagint, "As
the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul for you, O God." You don't read the
Bible as education. You don't read the Bible as curiosity. You don't read it as intellectual
stimulation. You don't read it to win an argument. You read the Bible like a desperate, crying
brephe, a little tiny infant, hungry to suck all the nourishment out of it that it desperately
needs. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this Word, this milk.
Give us the same longing, the single, sole, solitary longing that a baby has for milk
and nothing else for the Word. Knowing that the baby doesn't care about the clothes, the
mother does. The baby does not care about the room, the decoration, but just the milk.
Give us that solitary affection and sanctify us by Your truth, thus conforming us to the
image of Christ who sanctified Himself. And Father, at the end of all this, one thing
must be affirmed. We could try with all our might. We could try with desperation to do
this on our own and we can't, and so we're reminded of what our Savior said three times
in the upper room, that He would send us the Spirit of truth. O God, we know that the sanctifying
of anyone is a divine work through the Word by the Spirit of truth, and so we plead, O
God, that Your Spirit would mould us and shape us into the image of Christ.
