Sanctified - August 25th, 2013

By Pastor Greg

‎Last December there was a pretty insignificant cross-country race held in Spain. Several word renowned runners were participating, using it as a training event. But at this race something significant happened that caused the news media to stand up and take notice. Abel Mutai, Olympic Bronze Medalist from Kenya, mistakenly thought he was finished with the race, but actually had about 10 more meters to go. That’s when the second place runner, Ivan Fernandez Anaya, impressed the world by giving up victory to do the right thing. He caught up to Abel Mutai, and pointed him to the finish line allowing him to finish first. Ivan didn’t think it was a big deal, but the world stood up and took notice. I believe this is because amid a world of corruption, deceit, and greed, our world is thirsty for something good. I believe the people of this world are longing from the depth of their souls to find a reason to hope; any good deed that shines in this weary world.

I believe the Christian has an opportunity to be the light that shines in a dark world. But the problem is, as we have learned by Paul, is that even within the Christian the selfish, corrupt, greedy, sinful self still remains. Paul, in his letter to the Roman Christians, taught us about Truth and Grace – the standard by which God calls us to live, and the grace He grants us as we strive to reach that standard. However, considering the fact that our sin nature still remains, and that our sin nature is working against us, how can we possibly “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10)? How is it possible for us to separate ourselves from the world? How can we become set apart and holy? How can we become sanctified? Paul has reminded us that because of our sin nature we do not possess the ability to live according to God’s Laws. “For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it” (Romans 7:18). So what is a Christian to do? Do we admit defeat and never try to live according to God’s Holy standard? Do we merely rest upon grace? Well, the good news is that God equips us for this very task. He grants us what we need to overcome the weakness of the flesh. He grants us His Spirit which becomes a source of strength and power to actually live in a way that pleases God (Read Romans 8:1-17).

Paul says a believer is not condemned. And that’s because our sin nature is covered by the sinlessness of Christ. But this section of Romans is not addressing our salvation, it is speaking about our ability to please God; to be the kind of person that lives as a Christian should. To stop living as a person still held hostage by sin, God equips each believer with the ability to become sanctified; set apart from sin, and instead reflecting the Holiness of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit living within us that enables us to live in a way that honors God, reflects God, and pleases God. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Mark 12:30). So if you want to step away from sin and please God, submit and surrender to the guiding of the Spirit

This gifting of the Spirit is something very significant. Pouring out His Spirit into each Christian was no afterthought by God. It is one of the more significant events in your salvation. Think about this: within each true believer dwells the Holy Spirit. But also within each believer there is still the fallen human nature. So we find within each believer not only the Holiness of the Spirit but also the sinfulness of the flesh. Warren Wiersbe points out that, "Daily He {Spirit} endures our carnality and selfishness; daily He is grieved by our sin; yet He loves us and remains in us as the seal of God and the “down payment” (compare 2 Corinthians 1:22) of the blessings waiting for us in eternity". The Spirit marks us as God’s very own. By pouring out His Spirit into our lives God confirms us as His very own. But the Spirit also conforms us into the kind of person who lives in a way that honors God. A person surrendered to the Spirit will be guided away from the sins of the flesh. They will be transformed into a person who can please God. This is what it means to be sanctified; to be transformed daily into the image of Christ. And the more we allow the Spirit to do His work within us, the more we reflect the holiness of Christ.

As a Christian we must work daily to submit to the urgings of the Spirit within us and suppress the urgings of the flesh. It takes diligence, work, and determination. This is why Spiritual disciplines are so important to the Christian. They help us focus on the Spirit rather than the flesh. To walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, we need to immerse ourselves into the things of God’s Kingdom. We do this through prayer, Bible study, and participation in acts of service or in acts of worship. Some are strengthened through fasting, while others are strengthened by journaling. The point is that these spiritual exercises strengthen our ability to be controlled by the Spirit of God rather than by the flesh.

‎So, what does a life led by the Spirit look like? It is one that shows fruit; evidence that can be seen and heard. Paul says a life led by the Spirit calls God "Abba Father", an affectionate term similar to calling our own fathers "daddy". We move from selfishness to selflessness. We move from hate to love, anger to peace, sadness to joy, irritability to patience, meanness to kindness (compare Galatians 5:22-23). These characteristics are evident within the Christian who listens to the Spirit as He works to help the believer become more sanctified; more like Christ.

William Shakespeare wrote "That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world”[1], or, as Willy Wonka puts it, “So shines a good dead in a weary world”. This world is longing for righteousness. The people of this world are constantly fed a diet of corruption, selfishness, greed, hate, anger, and indifference. They are starved for even the tiniest glimmer of light. This is why the stories of people like Ivan Fernandez Anaya cause such a stir. Here are people acting contrary to human nature; people acting with love, caring, patience, and understanding. And the world seems a little less corrupt; a little less wicked when the light of a little candle throws its beams for all to see. This is what happens when you and I allow the Spirit within us to transform us. We become a little more like Christ and a little less like the world. That’s what it means to be sanctified. And when this happens I believe the world will stand up and take notice.

Question: Then what does it mean when we see a professing Christian acting as a person of the world instead of acting according to the Spirit? What does it mean when we see no “Fruit of the Spirit” in their lives?

Answer: It could be one of 3 things. They have either grown indifferent to the urgings of the Spirit within them, do not know that what they are doing is contrary to the teachings of God, or do not have the Spirit within them in the first place. In other words, it’s either a matter of the heart, mind, or soul. They need to be encouraged to change, taught to change, or evangelized. They either need to be convicted, convinced, or converted.

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^[1] The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene I

Comforted - August 18th, 2013 Sermon

‎Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune after his sickly father died, he decided to get married so he could share his fortune. One evening, at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She took his breath away. "I may look like just an ordinary guy," he said to her, "but in just a few years my father will die and I will inherit $200 million." Impressed, the woman asked for his business card, and three days later she became his stepmother.

Things don’t always turn out the way we imagined. Take our Christianity, for example. After we confessed our sin and allowed Jesus to come into our heart, we started doing the things that Christians do. We started attending church. We started reading our Bible. We stopped doing things that are shameful and worldly. At last, we thought, life will be different. We could finally become a new person. And for a while this seemed to work. For a while it seems we mastered our old sins. But then reality set in. We found that the very sins which we attempted to overcome still lurked deep within us – tempting and luring us back to those old shameful behaviors. And we discovered sins we didn’t even know we had. This isn’t what we imagined Christianity to be like. Indeed, it is not just the sinner of the world who needs grace, but the Christian needs it as well, perhaps even a little more.

Consider the words of Paul the Apostle – the man who traveled preaching and teaching and planting churches all for the glory of Jesus Christ. You wouldn’t expect him to struggle with sin, yet listen to his words in Romans 7.

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” groans Paul. Why would he feel trapped by sin even though in chapter 6 he had spoken about being set free? It’s because Paul not only needed to teach his readers about grace, but he needed to remind himself as well.

When a person learns of God's holy standard of living, they begin to realize just how far short they fall. Once they learn that certain behaviors are considered to be sinful, they are aghast to find those very behaviors within them. And they are shocked at how easily and frequently they sin. What a horrible revelation this must be - to realize on the one hand that you have been set free from sin, yet to still see the same old sin within yourself. This is what Paul is speaking about in this section. Knowledge of the Law did not make him sin, it illuminated his sin. And he was shocked just how often he caught himself living outside of God's parameters.

We have come to Christ and confessed our sin. We have admitted freely that we need Him to be our Savior. In His grace, God accepts our confession of faith and grants us eternal life. Yet sin still remains. We are not cleansed of sin. Sin has not been removed from us. We find its ugly stench still lingering, still poisoning the very depth of our soul. But we had hoped for something else. We had hoped that sin would be cast aside and we would become new creatures. Yet at the end of the day we realize that nothing has changed. We still struggle with the same old sins that plagued us before Christ came into our lives. We look at our lives and are ashamed at the kind of person we are. Oh what a wretched person we still are!

Does this mean we are not set free? Does this mean we are still held captive by sin? Because sin still remains, does this mean we are not truly saved? Absolutely not, says Paul. What it means is that we have now become a person with two natures - a sin nature and a spiritual nature. Prior to our relationship with Jesus we had only one nature - a nature governed by sin. But now we have the ability to see our sin and confront our sin. The day our sin nature is removed awaits us in the future. However, in the meantime our sin nature is covered by the sinlessness of Christ. He wraps us in His robe, covering our sin. We are loved by the Father and declared righteous by the Father not because we've become religious and straightened up our lives, but because of Jesus Christ our Lord. Sadly I have come across very few Christians who truly understand this.

As a Christian matures they should be allowing the Spirit to guide them instead of the flesh. But truthfully a battle is being waged within you each and every day. The old sin nature is luring us back into sin while the Spirit nature is calling us to holiness. And every moment of every day this war takes place within each believer, which is why we should respect the older saints among us. For 60 or 70 years they have been living out their Christian life. They have been at war for a long, long time, yet have not been overcome by the adversary. There is much we could learn from an older believer.

Being Christian does not mean we have done something to remove our sin, but that we have allowed Jesus to cover our sin. Beneath the festival robe He has placed upon me I am still the same wretched man I used to be. The only difference is that I know today what I did not know yesterday. Yesterday I was not aware of my sin. Today I am. And yet even though I have confessed my sinfulness and God has granted me eternal life, I will still sometimes sin. I will still struggle to allow the Spirit to overrule the flesh. Sometimes the flesh overrules the Spirit. However, because I am dressed in the righteousness of Christ, God chooses grace. Even though I have offended Him, God grants grace – not because I have earned it, but because I have placed my faith in Christ; my Advocate who pleads on my behalf (see 1 John 2:1). Actually, we don’t fall from grace when we sin, but rather grace, like rain, falls down on us.

Grace is the other boundary, the other guard rail, which God has established in His world; the other being Truth. It is between Truth and Grace that a Christian lives. Truth says that we must stop living as if we were still bound by sin. Truth is the standard by which God calls us to live. Grace is what He grants us as we strive to reach that goal. Grace is what we are granted when we sometimes live as a person still held captive by sin.

Becoming a Christian is becoming a person with two natures, one born of the Spirit and one born of the flesh. And the two wage war within each believer. The mind is set on God, but the flesh is set on sin. The mind desires to serve the Law of God, but the body desires to serve the law of sin. Paul’s point is that our only hope can be found in Jesus - not because He eliminates the desires of the body, but because He grants us grace when the flesh overcomes the Spirit within us. To truly understand God’s grace is to truly understand that when God looks at a believer He sees not their righteousness but instead the righteousness of the Son (compare Isaiah 61:10). Because of their faith, God credits the righteousness of Christ to their account. And when you begin to realize this you will begin to finally understand grace.

Conformed - August 4th, 2013 Sermon

The automaker Rolls Royce takes great pride in the reliability of their handcrafted automobiles. Once an owner of a Rolls was traveling across the United States on an extended trip. While traveling, the car had some mechanical problem. He called the Rolls Royce factory and asked that they send out a mechanic straightaway to fix the problem. The company responded in royal fashion. They put a mechanic on a private jet with all of the necessary tools and flew him over to make the repairs. The owner was so wealthy that he wasn't at all concerned about the cost, and he would not spare any expense to assure that his beloved Rolls Royce was properly repaired. However, after several months he realized he had not received a bill. He directed his secretary to contact the Rolls Royce factory to inquire about the bill. He received a prompt reply from the Rolls Royce Company. It said simply, "We have no recollection or record of any Rolls Royce having ever had a breakdown or being in need of repair anywhere in the United States."

That reminds me of how God treats us when He forgives us of sin. Like Rolls Royce, God says, "I have no recollection or record of any sin being committed." We have been set free from the bondage of sin, so start living like a person set free. And you can almost imagine the Apostle Paul saying something similar. “Don’t just know you are free, live as if you are free”. These words echo back what Paul wrote in Romans chapter 6. You are no longer slaves to sin (Romans 6:6). And these words are just as important to us today. We are no longer slaves, so live like a person set free from sin.

Paul takes his readers on a beautiful journey from sin to salvation in the book of Romans, beginning by announcing Good News. Faith in Christ results in peace with God (Romans 5:1-11), eternal life (Romans 5:12-21), and freedom from slavery (Romans 6:1-14). This is what we receive from God because of our faith in Christ. But does God’s Good News end here? Is this all there is to being a Christian – a simple understanding of our sin, God’s promise, and our confession of faith? Some people might think this is true, but Paul says absolutely not. All of this has just been the beginning. We have been granted salvation because of our faith, but the next part of the process is how we live out that salvation. In other words, how should we live now that we know we are free? Paul gives us the answer in Romans chapter 6 (Read Romans 6:15-23).

Some people who have been set free from the bondage of sin feel that grace triumphs sin, and because of grace there is no need to change their behavior. We can hear their arguments in verse 15. ‎Since we receive grace from God, why is it necessary for us to change our behavior? Doesn't God love me even though I am a sinner? If I am saved by faith, why should there be a noticeable change in my life? In a way their arguments are true. We do not earn salvation by removing sin from our lives. Neither do we lose our salvation when we sin after we are saved. “Jesus loves me just as I am” we often hear. It is this attitude of liberty that Paul addresses in this part of chapter 6. Some have wrongly interpreted what Paul was saying in this section. We have not been set free to sin, but set free from sin.

Look closely at the end of verse 19. This is the main point Paul is trying to make. We certainly don’t earn our salvation by removing sinful behavior from our lives. But as Christians we should become more holy over time. In other words, our actions, the deeds of our hands and the words of our mouth become an offering of worship to God. Our language, the way we dress, the way we manage our money, the way we treat others, the way we treat ourselves, the way we worship God, the way we manage our time, all these things become a testimony to who our Master is.

‎It is through faith that we are saved, but it is through the choices of our heart that we become holy. We choose to become more like Christ by what we embrace and what we remove from our lives. We make a choice to separate ourselves from the world. Sure, the Holy Spirit gives us the ability, and God has given us the opportunity, but in the end you and I must take the responsibility. Turning away from sin once we are saved becomes an act of the will. To refuse to conform ourselves into the image of Christ is to remain in the image of sin (compare 2 Corinthians 3:18). And if we make a choice to remain in the image of sin, who then is our master? This is Paul’s argument against those who live on the extreme of liberty; claiming that they need not change because God loves them just as they are. Truthfully, if a person really loved God, they would desire to honor Him with their lives; to surrender to Him and be willing to be conformed by Him.

In my 20's, the Lord accepted this prodigal son with open arms. But bit by bit there were certain behaviors in my life that were far too much like the world. And through the Spirit's gentle nudging, I circumcised them from my life. Removing them did not earn me salvation, but cutting them off from my life became a symbol of my commitment to God. It's the same with circumcision in the Old Testament. No one was saved by doing this, but doing this became a symbol of obedience.

God does not command us to become dead to sin. He tells us that we are dead to sin and alive unto God, and then commands us to act on it. We once were slaves, but Christ has set us free. And as people set free from sin and death, we elect to become servants, giving our lives over to the One who has set us free to conform us into the image of Christ. Truthfully we become an effective witness in this world when we take the Father’s glory and reflect it out into the world by being conformed into the image of the Son. So should a Christian strive to stop sinning? Should a Christian stop acting like a person of the world? Absolutely! Not to earn salvation, but to show our identification. By our behavior the world will know who our Master is.