1154. What is Sanctification All About? Pt. 1

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we'll hear a sermon preached at the Bob Jones University Bible Conference. This is a time when classes are dismissed and students concentrate on hearing the word preached from several visiting pastors and evangelists throughout the week. Today's sermon is from the 2021 Bible Conference where the theme was Sanctify Them. As we'll learn through this short study, sanctification means to be set apart under God.

It's an attitude of treating or regarding something as holy. Today's sermon is the first in this series preached by Dr. Pettit. He'll be guiding us through the first part of What is Sanctification All About? I want to read tonight the scripture from John chapter 17. I'm not going to preach from that, but I'd like to read the text of scripture tonight that we chose for this week. In John chapter 17, it's the words of Jesus as he speaks to his own disciples, as we understand his heart, his passion, his desire.

What does he want for them? And in John chapter 17, in verse 15, we are going to read, and we'll read all the way down to verse 19. The scripture says, Jesus says, I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but thou shouldst keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. As thou has sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. This was the prayer of Jesus. And as he prayed for his disciples then, we are quite assured that he prays for us tonight.

Of all who are most earnest about our sanctification, surely it must be Jesus himself. And his desire is that you and I would mature and grow and be sanctified in Christ. And so as we pray, as we ask the Lord's blessing, would you tonight decide in your heart, Lord, please sanctify me. Please, Lord, help me.

Please help me to grow. Because if he's praying for that and you're praying for that, then assuredly that's a prayer that he will answer. Would you please stand with me as we pray tonight? And I want you to pray along with me and for those that are around you, that God will answer this prayer that Jesus prayed then and as we are most assured of, he is praying now. Lord, first of all, we come to you tonight realizing that we have fallen short, that we have not measured up, that our hearts are not where they ought to be.

Lord, we have struggled with sin, we have battled with temptation, we have fallen. And Lord, I pray that you will forgive us and, Lord, that you will cleanse us and that you will sanctify us by your Spirit and by the work of your Word in our life. Lord, we pray for a reviving of the Spirit of God. And we pray that you'll answer the prayers that have been prayed by many students in this student body for you to work in our hearts. I pray, Lord, for that student who has drifted and their hearts have become hard and, Lord, that they are worldly and they really have not really embraced your calling on their life, that tonight and throughout this course of the week that by your power and by your Spirit you will melt the heart of clay and that you will work in our hearts. Lord, I pray for Christians who want to live for you and they're struggling with a particular sin or an emotional deep struggle in their life. Lord, please give grace and blessing and sanctify them through thy Word and thy truth. And then, Lord, for many who are mature believers, I pray that even as Paul prayed that he would press on, that we will press on to your likeness. Lord, do your work tonight in our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. As Christians, we believe that there is one God and that God has revealed Himself in three persons. We describe our God as the Trinity. And since there are three in one, then there is always a perfect unity within the Trinity. For example, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are perfectly unified in their qualities so that, for example, the love of Christ is the exact same love of the Father and the exact same love of the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, not only are they unified in their qualities, but they are united in their actions. That each part of the Trinity has a very vital part in the life of bringing a person to salvation or bringing those of us who are saved to sanctification. It is the work of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And tonight I'd like to do sort of a big picture message. And really my goal is for us to understand, first of all, what is sanctification all about?

What does it mean? But specifically to see it in the light of the work of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in our lives. So let me give you three verses of scripture that I'd like to read to you tonight. I'll refer back to these scripture verses over the course of the evening. The first one is found in the book of Jude and the opening verse, verse 1. The scripture reads, Jude the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father. Then the second verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 2, where the scripture says, unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus. So you note, they are sanctified by God the Father, they are sanctified by God the Son. And then thirdly, in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2, where Peter writes these words, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit.

So what do we read? We read in these verses that our spiritual growth, our spiritual maturity is the work of all three persons of the Trinity. And I think it should be obvious that if the Trinity is united in this work of sanctification, then sanctification must be incredibly important.

Important in our lives, important in its value in our life. So much so that the book of Hebrews says that without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. If we're not being sanctified, then we'll not see the Lord. And let me say it this way, if you're not interested in being sanctified, then are you really interested in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?

Because that's what they are interested in. And if you're not interested in the Trinity, then what does that say about your relationship to God, who has revealed Himself in three persons? So let's then look tonight, let's try to grasp what sanctification means and specifically how it relates to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So my desire tonight is to be very simple. I just want to lay the groundwork for all the other speakers that will come and speak from various texts and various angles and look at sanctification.

I just want to lay the foundation primarily because it's important that we be all on the same page. That we really are aligned in our thinking as we seek to understand what sanctification is all about. So three basic ideas or three basic truths tonight I want to share with you about sanctification.

First of all, when we talk about the word sanctification, what do we mean? We mean specifically something which is common, something that is legitimately used for ordinary stuff, but it is taken and it is set apart for God's purposes. Something ordinary, something common, something every day, but it's taken and it's dedicated, it's devoted to, it's set apart to God for His purposes.

For example, it could be something as common or ordinary as a bowl or a fork. Or a shirt. Or a tent. Or a musical instrument. Or a day in the week. Or a specific family.

Or even a specific city. In other words, these are things that are very common, very ordinary in daily life, and yet these things are taken and they are specifically set apart for God. That's the idea of the meaning of the word sanctification.

I'm not talking about necessarily purification for sin, getting sin out of your life. I'm just simply saying it's something that's taken that is ordinary and it's given over to God. So throughout the Old Testament, what do we see? We see God the Father setting things apart for Himself. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 3, what did God do? He set apart one day in the week as a holy day. Listen to Genesis 2-3, and God blessed the seventh day and He sanctified it. Because that in it He had rested from all of His work which God created and made.

You know the story of creation. Six days and on the seventh He rested. Six days were common days. The seventh day was a special day. And it was a day in which mankind is not to work, that is to set it apart so His focus can be on resting and on serving His Creator. In the book of Exodus chapter 3, God said that when the Israelites leave Egypt they were to consecrate or they were to set apart the firstborn son and the firstborn cattle to be the lords. Exodus 13 2, He says, sanctify unto me all the firstborn. So the firstborn child, the firstborn son.

In my family I'm the firstborn son. So if I was Jewish I would be set apart and devoted to God from the other children. For example, the Jewish people worshiped God in a tent.

Have you ever slept in a tent? Well, God had a tent in which He was to be worshipped. It was called the tabernacle and it was used to be only for the worship of God. Later on it became a building, more permanent, called a temple. And everything that was used in the temple worship was to be strictly used in that temple. Those would be things like the altar, the instruments, the vessels.

Those would have been forks, those would have been knives, those would have been bowls. Out of all the tribes of Israel there were 12 tribes. One tribe was set aside and devoted for sacred purposes. What was the name of that tribe? They were the tribe of what?

The tribe of Levi, the Levites. And the Levites did various things. Some of them were musicians. Some of them were guards.

Some of them moved the furniture. Some of them, the priest, offered sacrifices. But everything they did was devoted and set apart under God from everything else that was going on. And you could go through the whole Old Testament and find this out.

You could go on and on. For example, in Joshua chapter 20 and verse 7. There were six cities in the land of Israel that was set apart. They were called cities of refuge.

Have you ever heard of those? What were the cities of refuge for? They were for people to run to if they accidentally kill somebody. Let's say you're in a car accident and somebody gets killed. Well, the family from that individual that got killed, they will seek revenge on you and they're going to come after you to kill you. So what did you do? You ran to a city of refuge and there you were saved from what they called the slayer.

The one's going to take your life. And Joshua tells us that those cities were set apart by God for that specific purpose. So the Old Testament word for sanctify means to set apart by God for holy uses. Now, this helps us understand why the Bible speaks of Jesus being sanctified.

How do we know that? In Luke chapter 2, when Jesus was just born, what does it say about his parents? It says, and I read, And when the days of her, Mary's purification, according to the law of Moses, was accomplished that they brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present Jesus to the Lord.

And then they quote the Old Testament as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that opens the wound shall be called holy to the Lord. When Jesus was a little baby, he was devoted, set apart by his parents for holy purposes. Now, the next time we discover the life of Jesus, how old is he?

He's 12 years old. What is he doing? He's in the city of Jerusalem.

He's having his Bar Mitzvah. And his parents leave after the feast, and as they're traveling, they realize Jesus is not there. And so they come back into the city of Jerusalem, and they seek for him for three days. And after three days, they find him. And what is he doing?

He is conversing with the scholars of the law. And of course, the worried parents ask him, Why are you doing this? What is going on?

What is taking place? Why are you this way? And he looked at his parents, and he said, Why were you searching for me?

Don't you know that I must be about my father's business? What do we see about Jesus? He understood his life was to be devoted to God. And tonight, we read in John 17 and verse 19 that Jesus said he sanctified, he devoted himself that his disciples would also follow him and to be devoted to the truth. So in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, the whole idea of sanctification is being set apart under God. Now, let's go back to the book of Jude and the first verse. And what does it say in Jude chapter one or in Jude verse one? It says that we are sanctified by God the Father.

What does that mean? You and I are sanctified by God the Father. It means this, that the Father set you apart. You were sanctified by God. You didn't sanctify yourself.

God sanctified you. It means that God set you apart for his own eternal purpose and his own will. Now, if God sets you apart and God is eternal, then when did he set you apart?

It wasn't yesterday. It was in eternity. You say, Preacher, I don't understand that. Whenever you find something in the Bible that you don't understand, then get on your knees and worship him. The Bible teaches us that you and I were set apart, sanctified by God in eternity for his purpose and his will. Then what it means is then God redeemed those people when he sent his son, Jesus, into the world that he might set apart a people for himself. So what did Jesus Christ come to do? He came to redeem those that God had set apart. And then what did God do? He sends the Holy Spirit into our hearts that we, through salvation, might live out that set-apartness. He set us apart. Jesus died for our sins.

He shed his blood. And then the Spirit of God works in our hearts. We believe. We receive Christ. And we are set apart at the moment of our salvation in a devotion to God from the rest of the world. That's what he said in John 17. I don't pray for the world. I pray for them that I have taken out of the world. So by the work of the Father.

We've said it this way for years. The Father planned our salvation. The Son purchased our salvation. And the Holy Spirit prepares our heart to receive that salvation. This is all of the work of the Father's eternal plan of completely setting us apart unto him. Now let me ask you a question tonight. Have you ever been gripped by God's work of sanctification in you?

Has this ever gripped you? I believe that one of the greatest motivations for your own sanctification is when you come to the full assurance of your own salvation. Let me explain it this way. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I grew up in a nominal Christian home.

I'll say it that way. But I didn't grow up in a home where I heard the gospel until I was 17 years old. When I came to understand the gospel at 17 years old, I wanted to go to heaven, but I didn't want to get saved. I didn't want my life to change. So for the next two years, God began to work in my heart.

Short story is that my freshman year in college, I went to school in Charleston, South Carolina at the Citadel. My roommate on the soccer team witnessed to me and shared the gospel with me. And I heard a message preached over the radio on Easter Sunday, 1975. And during that message, I responded and accepted Jesus. And I really believe I got saved that day.

But let me be honest. I would say from the time I accepted the Lord until sometime in probably October of that year, it was in the springtime, so this would have been five or six months later, I knew that I had accepted Jesus. I knew that. I knew that I had made a definite decision. I did want to be saved, but I wasn't fully assured that God had accepted me.

I just didn't know it. And I'll never forget, probably on a Tuesday night, I went to a Bible study on campus and a fellow stood up and from the book, from the epistle of 1 John, he taught on the evidences that you're really a child of God. And I sat there and I listened to each evidence.

And I had never heard this in my life. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I knew not so much that I had accepted him, but that he had actually saved me because he had literally done in my heart what the Bible said. And when I walked out of that Bible study that night, I can't tell you, first of all, the joy that I had, the desire to live for the Lord that I had. And for the first time, I really grasped that I am the Lord's, that he has set me apart unto himself, and that I must live my life for him.

So let me dig a little deeper. I often wonder, could it be that many of you who really are not living for the Lord really have never settled in your heart that he has set you apart, that you are his? Because when you realize you are his, that this was what his work has done, then what does that motivate me to want to do in my life? No wonder Romans 12.1 makes sense.

I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God that you present yourself unto God a living sacrifice, that dedication unto God is not some miserable decision, but it is the joyful reality that I am his. So what is the idea of sanctification? It is being set apart unto God by God. The second thing I'd like to say tonight about sanctification is that sanctification has the idea of an attitude.

And that is sanctification means to treat or to regard something as holy. So let me give you an illustration tonight that may help you understand this. So I brought one of my mandolins. Somebody asked me how many mandolins you have, and I said only six.

So I brought one of them tonight. And this is probably back when I bought it, by far it was by far the most expensive mandolin I ever owned, and it was a Highline mandolin. And I bought this, let's see, I think I bought it like 19, what was it, it was about 1990. I don't think I bought it when you were with me, Will.

I don't know, did I buy it when you were with me? I don't think, you probably don't even remember, but anyway, we were, I had been doing some study up on, you know, really nice high level mandolins. And so one of them I had discovered, it was made by the Gibson company and they make very Highline mandolins. And this one I really like, I like the way it was looked, the way it looked and it was named after a famous bluegrass mandolin picker named Sam Bush. So it's called a Bush mandolin. So, but when I saw the price tag, it was like way out of my league.

I just couldn't even get there. So we're preaching and I'm in, we're in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a great place to buy a mandolin. So I went to a music shop downtown Nashville called Gruen's and they sell vintage expensive instruments. And usually when you walk in one of these stores, you walk in and listen to the people that walk off the street and pick up the guitar and start playing it because these guys are like really good. So you've got the guitar section over here and you've got the fiddle section over here and you know, then there's the mandolin section and they had like a wall full of mandolins. And when I turned the corner, I looked up and there it was. It was love at first sight. This beauty was sitting up on the wall.

It's got some very unique features about it. And it was sitting there and I thought, I can't believe like they actually got one because they're like really hard to find. So the guy, one of the guys in the shop, I said, you mind if I play that? He said, are you interested in buying it? I said, maybe.

So I took it and I went back in a room that typically you go back in these rooms and you sit there and... Man, as soon as I strummed this thing, it was like gorgeous. And so the guy comes back in and he says, are you interested? I said, well, what's your best price? And I knew how much it cost retail. I said, what's your best price?

And so he came back. He said, well, I went up and I talked to Mr. Gruen and he said, here's his best price. He gave me the price. I said, okay. And I thought, you know, if you want to buy it, you just go for it. So I said, I'm just going to go for it. And I got a credit card.

I can go for anything. So I took my credit card and I paid for it right there. And then they asked me a question. They said, would you like to take it with you or would you like to have it shipped? Well, why would I have it shipped? It doesn't make any sense, except that I was so excited that if I took it home in that night, I had to preach when I would start praying for the service, I would have like this mandolin in my head.

Like I'm praying to the mandolin or something. So I said, ship it to the next church. And so they did. And they shipped it.

And the next church, it got there. And of course I told everybody on the team and told my kids and everybody. And so when I got it, man, everybody just huddled around me, you know, when I opened it up and I pulled out this beautiful thing. And then I looked at my children and I said, children, I just want you to know that that mandolin is more expensive than you.

So you be very, very careful or I will send you to heaven as quickly as possible. So I played this, I played this for quite some time. And then one summer I was up at Northland camp and we were having a practice one day.

You remember this Will? We were having a practice and I had this mandolin. And thank you. And one of the guys working at camp looked at me and he said, hey, do you mind if I play you mandolin?

I said, sure. So he took it and it has a little strap around it and he was holding it. And I don't know how it happened, but this little peg here popped off and literally this mandolin went... And it hit the concrete floor. And this little curl right here popped off. And I mean, and I've got it still here. I've got like a deep gash in it. And when it hit the floor, everybody turned and looked at me.

And you know, like, is he going to kill the guy or what's going to happen? And so I didn't. And I was actually very spirit filled. I'm very proud of that.

And I didn't do anything to him and I took it to the shop and they fixed it and it's fine. And if you're interested in buying it, please see me afterwards tonight. I'm more than happy to sell it to you. Now, it's the way you treat it. Anything that's special. Some of you guys have gotten engaged in the last two or three months.

Let me ask you a question. How special did you treat that diamond you bought that girl? I mean, some of you were so freaked out. You know, like every day you went, okay, is it still there?

You know, did it walk away? Because your whole life is in that thing. What does it mean to be sanctified? It is the way we treat something. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today's sermon titled, What Sanctification is All About. Be sure to listen tomorrow as we'll hear the conclusion of this sermon from Dr. Steve Pettit, preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel Platform.