1323. What is Sanctification All About? Pt. 2

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where the focus would be on Christ, so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel Platform. 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 second in this series preached by Dr. Pettit.

He'll be continuing the sermon from yesterday, guiding us through what sanctification is all about, and we'll be giving an illustration about how we treat God. 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, 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. First of all, it's the way we treat God. The Bible speaks of some memorable examples of those who did not treat God as He should have been treated. For example, the two sons of Aaron, their names were Nadab and Abihu.

You ever heard of them? What happened to them? Well, they were both priests, and they both got drunk. And they offered a sacrifice to God one evening, but instead of using the fire that God had told them to use according to the law, they used a different kind of fire. The Bible says a strange fire.

We're not really sure exactly what it was. But it was not according to God's prescribed regulations. And as a result, as they offered this sacrifice with strange fire, what was the response of God? Fire came out from the presence of the Lord, from the Holy of Holies, and literally burned the brothers up. And God said in Leviticus 10 and verse 2, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh to me. In this case, they failed to treat God with humility, reverence, and obedience.

You could sum it up in one word. It's the Hebrew word kadosh, which means holy. God is to be treated that way. We have another illustration in the Bible. The Jewish people complained about having no water to Moses, and Moses went to God, and God said to Moses, I'll provide water from them from a rock, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to speak to the rock. Before he had smote the rock with his rod, and the water came out, this time God said, I want you to speak to the rock. And so he goes to the rock, and what does he do? Instead of speaking to it, he takes the rod and he hits it twice.

He's really mad. He hits rock. What does God do? God supplies the water. It comes gushing out from the rock, but Moses lost his temper and as a result, the Lord said to Moses, he would never enter into the promised land.

Why? Listen to the word of God in Numbers 20 and verse 12, because you believe me not to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel by your actions before those that are around you. By what you did, you did not show respect to my name. So when we talk about sanctifying God, about being sanctified, it is the way you and I respond in our treatment towards God. And of course we have a positive illustration in the New Testament when we're taught how to pray, our Father which art in heaven, what? Sanctified, or hallowed be thy name.

What does it mean? It means the concern of the believer is the reverence, respect, honor, and adoration of God's name. And he's talking about the way that we live, how we conduct our lives. So when I think of the implications of this idea, the way that we treat or the way we regard God, a number of verses come to my mind. First of all, Matthew 22, 37, it says we shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your, what?

Your mind. I love God with my mind. We read in Isaiah 66 and verse 2, but this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in his spirit and he trembles at my word. One of the ways that we show respect to God is that with our mind there is a humility towards God's word. We love God by engaging and focusing our minds on the word of God. We respect and tremble at the word. This book unfolds Jehovah's mind. This voice salutes and accents kind.

This fountain has its source on high. This friend shall all your needs supply. This letter shows our sins forgiven. This guide conducts us straight to heaven.

This charter has been sealed with blood. This volume is the word of God. Now what does that imply? That implies that when the Bible is read or the Bible is taught or the Bible is preached, then what do I do in my mind and my attitude? I recognize to love God with my mind. I'm engaged in his word.

It means that I'm humble and I tremble at the word of God. I definitely believe in multitasking. I don't know if I'm very good at it, but I think multitasking is a positive quality and I believe in doing that all the time, but not when it comes to the teaching and preaching and reading of God's word.

When I go to church, I don't pull out my cell phone and do stuff on it. I just don't do it. You know why?

Because, I mean, really? You say, well, I listen plus. Okay, let me cut it straight with you. You listen, but you don't hear.

I'm gonna tell you why. Because hearing God's word does not necessarily mean that you are really hearing God's word because involved in hearing the word of God is not your own self effort, your own mind, but it actually involves the Holy Spirit. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit sayeth to the church.

When you listen to preaching, as the word is being preached on the outside, the spirit is preaching on the inside and you might hear it, but you're not hearing it. And that's why I'm always concerned when I come to chapel and you're on your cell phone or whatever you do, and I don't know what you're doing, but I know this, or I ask this, are you really treating God for who He is? It's the way that we treat the Lord.

I believe many people are not going spiritually because they're distracted or they're disengaged wherever they are and they're just simply not listening to God through His word. So we sanctify the Lord God in our heart and we listen to His word. But let me also say this, this sanctification not only has to do with the way that we treat God, but sanctification also has to do with the way God treats us. And that's what we read tonight in 1 Corinthians chapter one and verse two when he says he writes to the saints in Corinth that are sanctified in Christ Jesus.

Think of that. Paul is writing these believers in this church and he calls them the ones that are set apart. And when he speaks about these that are sanctified, it means actually that they are perfectly holy in Christ because if you're in Christ, you're perfect. And that's how he treated them.

That's how he saw them. He looks on Christ's actions as their actions. He looks on Christ's perfection as their perfection. He looks on Christ's sinlessness as their sinlessness.

And as a result, in spite of their inconsistencies, their failures, their problems, and by the way, the church of Corinth had loads of problems. How did he treat them? He treated them as saints. As ones who had been set apart by the Father and redeemed by Christ. And the Spirit of God had placed them within the body of Jesus Christ and that's how he saw them. And because of that, Paul always treated Christians in a very special way.

How did he treat them? I love 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 14. It's a powerful verse. Paul says, for the love of Christ constrains me.

Literally, the love of Christ controls me. He's talking about everything that he did in his life and what does that mean when he says the love of Christ controls him? It means it exercised control over his thinking of how he actually treats and regards believers. And he explains himself in the next verse when he says, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him, who for their sake died and was raised.

Here's what Paul is saying. He says he sees Christians through God's eyes. He sees them no longer in themselves. He sees them in Christ.

Because they died with Christ and they were placed into him and they were raised with him and therefore his response is this, from now on therefore he says, we regard no one according to the flesh. I don't look at you as just a human being. I look at you as one who has been sanctified. Therefore, I treat you differently. I treat you with respect. I treat you with love. I'm kind to you.

I'm patient with you. I am respectful of you. I'm not going to be arrogant and talk about myself when I get around you because that's just rude. I'm not going to be critical or gossipy of you. I'm not going to spend my time thinking evil of you. I'm not going to be jealous of you or selfish. I'm not going to be negative.

Why? Because you are in Christ and you have been placed in him. You have been sanctified in him and what is the work of Christ in your life? It is your own sanctification.

He died so that you could be sanctified. And so when we look at the whole concept of sanctification, we're talking about the way we treat each other. And then finally, number three, and that is sanctification not only means to set someone apart or to treat someone as holy, but it means to actually purify or to make holy, to make it really and actually holy in your life.

Peter said, be ye holy even as I am holy, speaking of the Lord. And this work of the Spirit of God, we read tonight in 1 Peter 1 and verse 2, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit. Now this sanctification of the Spirit is the one who works in your life on a daily basis.

And I want to say two things. First of all, sanctification begins in regeneration when you and I are renewed and our natures are changed. It begins when you're born again. 2 Peter 1 and verse 5 says that you are made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. The Spirit of God infuses into every believer the new principle of the Spirit. Jeremiah says it this way, a new heart I will give them, a right spirit will I put within you. The Spirit of God turns the bias of our will away from ourselves to God to seek after that which is good and right. Sanctification begins with the work of the Spirit in us. And never forget that.

This is so important. Justification, that's God declaring us righteous, is God's work for us. Sanctification is God's work in us. Sanctification is the fruit of justification.

It is the evidence of the new life. They are not the same, but they can't be separated because justification is when you got saved and sanctification is when you're growing and maturing, but you can't pull them apart and say you can have one without the other because they are all a part of God's plan. Therefore, all true spiritual change is worked in us by the Spirit of God which leads me to this, that sanctification progresses throughout our life through God's work in us and through us. So here's the question, how does that work? How does sanctification work in your life?

Now, I think you already know it, but I think you need to hear it and hear it over and over and over. How does it work? Let me say first of all, it works through the agents of sanctification and secondly through the process of sanctification. Who are the agents? What is it that God is using to work in us and to change us?

There are three agents. Number one, the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5 16, walk in the Spirit, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Number two, the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all of our sin.

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then number three, the word of God, John 17 17, sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. So what is it that God uses in our life to sanctify us?

Well, let me put it this way. If these things are not a part of your life, you're not being sanctified. The agents of sanctification are the Holy Spirit, the blood of Jesus Christ and the word of God.

So what's the process by which these agents work? And it's a twofold process. And this twofold process, when you read the New Testament is described in many different ways, but in essence, it's the same thing. This twofold process, for example, includes putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Colossians and Ephesians chapter four, and having put off the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, having put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. In other words, the process is a process of putting some things off and putting some things on.

It's the idea of changing your clothes. Another illustration is crucifixion and resurrection, just like Jesus was crucified and resurrected. So we have to go through a crucifixion. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Galatians chapter five, 24. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. Galatians 5, 25.

So how do we live it? What's the process of sanctification? There's going to be a crucifying. Something's going to be dying and something's going to be resurrected. There's going to be something put off.

There's going to be something put on. Another phrase that's used in the Bible is dying and living. Likewise, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Another one is by loving and not loving. First John 2 verse 15. Love not the world, neither the things of the world, for if any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. As you grow in loving the Father, then you will grow in not loving the world. Sometimes we say stay away from the world and love the Father.

Actually, you really need to love the Father, and that'll help you not love the world. The Bible uses another phrase, work out what God's worked in. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God worketh in you both the willing to do of his good pleasure.

So God's worked salvation in, you've got to work it out. Another phrase that's often used in the Bible is the idea of the word mortification, and the idea of the word renewal, or I could use the word vivification. What does it mean to mortify? It means to put something to death. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, adultery, uncleanness. Here he's talking about putting to death the sinful desires that manifest themselves in sexual immorality.

He says you need to put it to death. John Owen said it this way, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. And what is the idea of renewal? Though the outward man perisheth, the inward man is renewed day by day, 2 Corinthians chapter 3 in verse 18. So when the Bible speaks about how it works, God works through the agents of the word, the Holy Spirit, and the blood of Jesus Christ. And the process is through this dying and living, crucifixion, resurrection. Put off, put on, work out, work in.

Love, do not love. All of that is the process. So let me put it all together. Let me give you an illustration.

And then I'm going to finish with this tonight. Let's take the illustration of you committing a sin that you really struggle with. Okay. I'm not going to ask you how many of you have a sin you really struggle with. I'm not going to do that. But let's say you have a sin.

Okay. And you really struggle with it. And when you do it, you're tempted to do it. And when you do it, you feel really bad about it. You feel guilty. How many can relate to what I'm just saying?

Okay. So you sin, you feel bad about it. So how do you respond? What's your response to your own sin? How many of you ever said to yourself, I hate doing this. And then your mind, you say, I'm not going to do it again. How many have ever done something that you know, you, you feel really bad about it. And you said, I'll not do that again.

How many have ever told yourself, I'll not do that again. Raise your hand. Okay. So let me ask the next question.

How many of you did it again? Okay. So what do you do? And the reason I use that as an illustration, because it's what we all struggle with and that's called workspace sanctification. Now when I say workspace sanctification, I'm not, I'm not saying there's no work in sanctification because the Bible says work out your own salvation, but it's the way you do it. Because actually what you're doing is what you're doing is you're doomed to failure because you can never overcome sin any more than you can save your own soul. You see, Jesus didn't die just to, Jesus didn't die just to pay for your, the penalty of your sin, the guilt of your sin. Jesus died to break the power of your sin. And when we go back to the agency of the word, the spirit in the, in the blood, that's where the power source is. And I need to respond according to the way the power of God works.

So let's go back. Let's say you sin. You obviously feel guilty about it. What are you to do? Well, you're, you're obviously convicted whether in your own conscience or the Holy Spirit is working in your life.

What do you need? You actually need to be cleansed because when you sinned, you separated yourself from God and the real issue is not that you're going to do it again. The real issue is you've been separated from God. You're not in fellowship with God. I'm not saying you lost your salvation. I'm saying you're out of fellowship with God. The real issue is this, it's you and God.

And what is God provided for that breaking of fellowship? God has provided the blood of his own son. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to cleanse us, to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What is the first thing I'm to do? I'm to get on my knees and to confess my sin to God. What does it mean to confess your sin to God? It means to say what God says. What does God say about what you just did? Then you say exactly what God says in the Bible. If you lie, don't say, God, I made a mistake.

God said, don't say you made a mistake. Say you lied. If you lied, say it. If you lusted, say it. Say what you did. Be honest.

That's the whole point. Honesty before God. And when I confess my sins, what is the result?

What's the agency? What's happening? The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. But not only does his blood cleanse me, but his blood also shows me what it took for God to pay for that sin because it took the blood of God's son dying.

And as we look to the blood, what does it begin to do? It begins to kill the appetite for that temptation. You see, the struggle is we have the temptation and we give in to it. You know why we give in to it?

Because we like it. But when we confess it and we see that it was God's son died and shed his blood on the cross to pay for our sins, God begins to work through the, we say the efficacy, the power of the blood to change my desire, not want to be in that sin. And the Bible teaches us that the Spirit answers to the blood because when you are cleansed, then what does the Spirit of God do? The Spirit, you are restored back into fellowship with God and now you're in a place to have the power of God at work in your life. And as we go back into the Word of God, God begins to renew us. So we go through confession and then we go through cleansing and then we go through restoration and then what happens is we begin to realize that the Bible, reading the Bible is not a discipline. Reading the Bible is an absolute necessity because I am dependent on God. If God doesn't help me, I can't overcome my sin. I don't read my Bible to show that I'm some kind of a disciplined person.

I read my Bible because I'm such a rotten sinner that I'm going to fall away from God if I don't get his Word in my life. When we read the Bible in dependence and we are empowered to obedience and as we walk in dependence and obedience, then God begins to give us victory over that very thing that I've struggled over, over and over and over in my life. And here's one of my great concerns that if you go through the four years of Bob Jones and you really don't deal with your sin problems, it's not like when you're going to graduate they're going to go away.

In fact, the matter is they're going to get worse. And so really the time for you to really come and really change is right now because God has provided what you need in his resources. And I'm not going to say that this is instant. Listen, this is not instantaneous sanctification. If it, if it, if there was an instantaneous sanctification, I'd be the first one in line.

But this is the way that God has made it. As he has provided the means of our sanctification, we can grow in the Lord. So I wanted to lay that foundation tonight for you to take home and think about as we listen to the rest of the week and let's pray for God to sanctify us. Would you bow your head with me as we pray tonight? Thank you for your kind patience.

You've listened well. I greatly appreciate it. As we pray tonight, I just, I just want to lift up prayers. How many of you would just say, Dr. Pettit, please pray for me tonight. I know the Lord is working in my heart. I know the Lord is working in my heart. I know, I know.

I just know I need to really be growing. I, I've got a lot of things God's dealing with me about. Please pray for me tonight.

Would you lift your hand up, slip it up all over the building. God bless you. God bless you. Father, we are all in desperate need of your blood, of your spirit and of your word. We want to honor Christ with our lives. We thank you Lord that you set us apart in eternity in a way that we will never comprehend, but we know you did that because you sent your son into the world and you set your spirit into our hearts. And Lord, I pray that we would be sanctified.

I pray that for myself oh Lord. And God, I know that you're doing a deep and thorough work in all of our hearts to be more like Jesus. Help us to treat one another as those that have been set apart. Help us to love one another as Christ loves us in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to the conclusion of a sermon by Dr. Steve Pettit, preached at the 2021 Bob Jones University Bible Conference, where the theme was sanctification. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we'll hear the next sermon preached from Bible Conference here on The Daily Platform.