What Sanctification Means

A couple weeks ago, I gave a sermon where I introduced the sermon with a man who had tried very hard to please God and took an action that seemed to everybody.

Everybody involved was a great pleasing of God.

And it was where Azza, the Bible, touched the Ark of God.

We'll read the story. Of course, the Israelites had lost the Ark, which was the most holy object that they had.

It was declared holy by God. It wasn't even something they were supposed to look at.

And yet the Philistines had taken Him because God wasn't with them anymore.

And through a series of miracles, it ends back in Israel.

And David, as the king, is so excited. All the people are excited. All the priests are excited.

And they get this cart, and they put the Ark on the cart, and they're taking it to Jerusalem, and they're singing, and they're praising God.

And they're worshiping. And the ox has stumbled.

And the cart starts to fall over, and Azza reaches up to keep it from falling, this most holy object.

And God kills him on the spot. Just kills him.

It's so dramatic that everybody knows God killed him. And David is angry and afraid.

He's very afraid of God, and he's very angry.

We went through the story in great detail to show that David and Azza, on all of Israel, had a serious problem.

In human reasoning, Azza is a good guy, and God killed him, what, arbitrarily?

Why would God do this? And yet, by the end of the story, David understood.

In fact, he told the priest, he told all of Israel what they were supposed to do.

And it's because they misunderstood something very, very important.

And it was the beginning of a whole series of sermons we're going to do on holiness.

That's just a very religious-sounding word.

And yet, it's interesting, in Isaiah, there is an angel that stands before the Almighty God, before his throne, and shouts out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is filled with his glory.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.

In Hebrew, when something is mentioned three times, it means it's really important.

Now, to really understand this, we have to understand what the word holy means in Hebrew, because we're going to go into, now, a major doctrine of the Bible, and one that we don't talk about much, and yet it is a major doctrine.

Holy, in Hebrew, simply means to be separate.

You separate something.

It can mean unique.

This thing, this person, this object, this time, whatever it is, is unique, and it is separate.

We went through the sermon and showed, separate, separate, separate is the Lord of Hosts.

Unique, unique, unique is the Lord of Hosts.

To truly understand holiness and how it applies to us, we have to understand that God says, I am like nothing else.

And we went through a little bit of what it means, that God is like nothing else.

We'll cover a little bit of that this time.

Next time, we'll cover even more of it.

How God is not like anything else.

He transcends everything. He's separate from His creation. He interacts with His creation. He's above it. He's beyond it.

He's not limited. You and I are limited by everything, aren't we?

Space isn't a limitation to God. Time is not a limitation to God.

Power is not a limitation to God. He transcends all this.

And when He says, I am unique, unique, unique, that is at the core of how we are to understand our creation, our purpose, and our relationship with God.

That He isn't us. He is something else.

He's above us. Eventually, we'll get to our purpose and His purpose for us.

But we start with an understanding of holiness, of how unique God is.

Now, what's fascinating is that God is holy. Even one of His names is holy.

I am holy. He says, my name is holy.

He says, I am unique. I'm separate from everything. I'm above everything. I'm beyond everything.

And then He says, I enter into this world of common things, of corrupt things. Because you and I live in a corrupt world. We're corrupted. We're not in the state that God originally designed human beings to be in.

We've become sinners. We've been influenced by Satan.

He enters into this world of corrupt and mundane and common.

And He says, you are separated. And you are mine.

And therefore, you are separated from everything else. And you are holy.

You know, the wood and the gold that the Ark of the Covenant was made out of, that's just common, mundane, golden wood.

It means, you know, God can make all the woody, goldy ones. That wasn't the point.

That gold, that wood, and that configuration, and there was a lot of instructions on how to build that Ark.

Because He said, this represents my throne.

And we went through a little bit how important that Ark was because of its representation, what God said it was.

And He says, He takes that, and He says, now this is mundane and it's common and it's corrupted, but not anymore. Because I take it, God says, and He now imbues it, He imparts to it holiness, aspects of holiness.

When God declares something holy, it actually takes on aspects of who He is.

So when Moses approached the burning bush, the voice said, take off your sandals.

That ground you're walking on is special. It's holy. The ground you're walking on is like no other ground on the face of the earth because the special presence of God is right here, right now, in front of you.

So take your shoes off.

There's a lot of things God says is holy.

The most important thing for us is to think about the God says that people can be holy.

All human beings are just common, mundane, corrupted human beings.

And throughout God's plan, He reaches out and He takes a person here and there, and He says, you are mine.

He sent it to the entire nation of Israel, and they were His.

And yet they never measured up to the holiness He expected of them.

And there were reasons why.

And then He started the church.

And the holiness of people in the church must surpass the holiness of ancient Israel.

And we'll go through that, too. Why?

But to understand that if you are here because God called you, what God said was, you are mundane, you are common, and you are corrupt, just like everybody else.

And I, the creator of the universe, take you and say, I separate, holy, I separate you from something to separate you to something.

I separate you from something to separate you to something.

Now to understand this, there's a premise we all have to accept to begin with.

And that is humanity is separated from God.

So humanity is common, it is mundane, it is corrupt, it is separated from God. God is holy. He's unique. He's perfect.

We talked about creation last time. He's brilliant. He's a genius. He's righteous. There's no evil thoughts. There's no evil any... Here's this being, and here's his creation, and his creation is common, mundane, and corrupted.

It is separated from him. And he reaches into his creation and takes created beings.

We will never totally understand holiness until we understand we are created beings.

He takes created beings that he made, and he says, I choose you to be separate.

I choose you to be separate.

So now to further this, that's sort of a summation of what we covered a couple of weeks ago.

To further understand this now, we have to really delve into the doctrine of sanctification. What does that mean? It's very simple in Greek and Hebrew. To sanctify something is to make it holy, to make it separate.

Sanctification is a process in which you take something that is holy, or take something that is mundane and corrupted, and make it holy.

You make it holy. And the example I'll use next time, because we'll use this example over and over again, is God takes someone covered in sewage and says, I choose you to be clean.

Now, if we don't understand, I choose you, I sanctify you. I choose you to be clean means you can't stay covered in sewage.

Now, in other words, you must now take on a different way, different attributes.

So, I take this person and I sanctify you. I now make you holy, which means I must clean you up and make you different. I must make you clean.

And you and I are in a process called sanctification. You have been called by God to be sanctified.

And if we don't grasp this, we'll never reach entirely what God wants to do in our lives.

When we talk about sanctification, we're going to have to go through all kinds of things.

Like the Holy Spirit. How are we sanctified? The work of Jesus Christ in sanctification.

What does it mean in our conduct? What does it mean in our relationship with God?

What does it mean in marriage, which is holy and is sanctified?

What does it mean to participate in a holy Sabbath day, where we just made the Sabbath day another mundane common day?

Because God says it's holy, it's separate. It's not like any other day for His use.

So we're talking about sanctification and how we must understand sanctification, this process of being made holy.

I mean, we read both in the Old Testament and New Testament where God says, Be you holy as I am holy. It's a command. Be you separated as I am separated.

And we only understand that through Jesus Christ. God the Father is beyond comprehension.

It's only because Jesus Christ became a human being that we can say, Oh, I can see how some of this works. Be you holy as I am holy.

So, remember sanctification is now God developing in us qualities of holiness.

That's why it takes God's Spirit working with us and in us to complete this process.

You know, I can't become holy. How do we declare ourselves separate? We can't.

But we're being separated from the mundane and the common and the corrupt separated to God.

So our first point. We can respond to God's calling for holiness only when we are humbled by His holiness.

Only when we accept His greatness beyond our comprehension and trust in that greatness, in that perfectness, in that beauty, in that goodness, in that power.

Only when we can trust in that can we understand holiness because we see His separateness.

If nothing else, I want you to go home and say, God's so much bigger than I thought. Good. First step. First step. God, beyond my mind, yes. First step.

And we now have to respond to Him. Look at Isaiah 57.

We must be humble before God.

Isaiah 57, 15.

For this says the high and lofty one.

This is how God talks about Himself. Oh, I'm higher than all of you. I'm way up here.

And it doesn't matter where you are in the universe. He's above you.

He's able to transcend this.

We can talk about that more next time because David talks about it.

Next time we'll cover a lot of Psalms where David talks about these very things in an incredibly reasoned way and an incredibly passionate way.

Here Isaiah says, for thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity whose name is holy.

He says, I live in an eternity. Explain that.

When your child comes up to you and says, okay, I figured out that God lives forever, you know, from one point on, how did He live forever before?

I mean, where did He begin? Everything has to be done. If forever demands a beginning, does it? And you have no answer for that.

I know God made time. We talked about that. I don't know what it's like to live without time. I'm trapped in time. I'm trapped in the sun and the moon and the earth and everything just revolving. I'm trapped in it.

God's not. God's not.

You know, God remembers living and being with Abraham as if it's right now.

See, we don't have to worry about God forgetting us. You know, if someone dies, has God forgot them? No. It's as if He's living with them right now. He says, I inhabit eternity. I will dwell in the high and holy place with Him. Okay, this is how God wants to live with us, dwell with us. But here's the type of person He will live with. I will dwell in the high and holy place with Him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

He declares, my name is holy and I will live with you when you understand that.

My name is unique. My name is special. My name is beyond. I'm separate from all this.

But I interact with it.

And He says, when you really get that, we can relate. Well, the problem is we can never truly relate to God. And yes, that's uncomfortable. It's supposed to be. It's supposed to be uncomfortable a little bit to come into the presence of God. And only then does He take you and you have this experience of a father picking up a child.

Because He's so much bigger. He's so much bigger.

It's interesting. Isaiah writes this. God inspires him to write this because God's talking to him.

But when Isaiah was called by God, He had a real interesting reaction to that. Understanding the greatness and the holiness of God. Let's go to Isaiah 6.

So this is long before He wrote Isaiah 57. Isaiah 6.

And verse 1, God now gives him a vision and talks to him. God calls him to him. The Holy God says, Isaiah, come here.

And I say, oh yeah, let me come. I'll go talk to God. This will be great.

Verse 1, in the year that King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple. And above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings, which two he covered his face, two he covered his feet. And two he flew. And he cried to another and said, we already quoted this, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out. And the house was filled with smoke. And I'm trying to explain what he's watching here. And it's realm where God is.

And I said, Hey God, how you doing?

And I said, Woe is me, for I am undone.

Oh no, I'm going to die.

I'm before the great God. Now, Isaiah had gone before the great God in prayer many times in his life. Isaiah had gone before God many times in his life. But for the first time, he gets his little, little window-glips of who he's been talking to. It's like, oh my.

This is who I've been talking to. Woe, for I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips.

For my eyes, I've seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

So God comes along and basically says, You're forgiven. You're forgiven. It's interesting how he does it here, but I want to skip down to verse 8.

So now, God says, You're forgiven. So he's now standing before the Lord of Hosts, absolutely terrified, but realizing the Holy God has bestowed on him holiness.

The Holy God has forgiven him. He has separated him from his sins. He's now allowed him to come before him. He's in the audience of the King because the King said, Come.

Every time you pray, the King says, Come. Well, actually, it's very interesting. Jesus Christ says, Come, and then present you to the Father.

And he says, You go pray to the Father, but we go through him to get there.

Here, finally, God says, Okay. I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send, and who shall go for us? Okay, who am I going to send out to do my will, to do my purpose? Now, here's a man who said, I'm going to die, and once God says, No, I've separated you. I've forgiven you. You are separated. You're not mundane and common anymore. You're not unclean. I've separated you. He says that I said, Here I am, like God didn't know he was there. Send me! I'm here. You can send me.

Look at the difference.

From, I'm a dead man to use me.

And that happened because he began to understand he was humble before the holiness of God.

A second point is that we can only be made holy in the terms of sanctification of the Christian. You know, God sanctifies places and things for His purpose. But for a Christian, our sanctification is becoming holy as He is holy.

There's only one way that can be done. Second Thessalonians 2. Second Thessalonians 2. Is he still with me here? He's a big concept. Second Thessalonians 2. Because I don't know what you're supposed to do. No, I'm not with you! We'll start here in verse 13 because it's the beginning of a sentence or beginning of a thought. He says, But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, Paul says, a personal comment, brethren, be loved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation.

God chose you. There's only one way to get where we're going here. Sanctification isn't a choice we make. Response is a choice we make. We'll talk about response in a minute. Response is a choice we make. Sanctification is the choice we make. Because you and I are not separate from God's creation. We can't make anything separate. We can't make anything holy. Only the one that is separate can separate something. Understand? So only God can say, I choose you.

We do not choose Him. Only God can choose us. He is an incredible privilege to be chosen by God. And it's not because we deserve it. It's not because, oh yes, He chose me because I wasn't as common and corrupt as everybody else. Right? I mean, you really want to say that? God chose me because I wasn't as common and corrupt as everybody else. That's not true! So God says, I choose you. That's His wisdom. And He chooses us.

He said, so you were...God from the beginning chose you for salvation through what? Through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. We can only be sanctified by God's Spirit. God says, I will sanctify you. Now you must go through sanctification. I will choose you to come out of the sewer. I will choose you to come out of the sewer.

But we live in the sewer. I remember years ago, there was a little girl...this was probably 25 years ago...she was kidnapped. And I remember the manhunt that went on for her. And they couldn't find her. And I think it was three days later, they finally found her. Someone had taken her to...it was either a national park or a state park, the kidnappers, and put her down inside an outhouse, down in the hole, down inside the sewage. She'd been abused and she was starving. And they put her down in there. And the other reason they found her was someone was going by and heard a child crying and looked down into the outhouse, and there's this child covered in sewage down in the outhouse.

And said, what are you doing down there? And her answer was, this is where I live. She wouldn't do any different. Some adult took her, some adult put her there. It's where she lived. That's us! The thing took us, put us in the outhouse, and God says, what are you doing down there? Well, that's where I live. This is my house. Don't you like it? But you get used to the smell, it's not so bad. That's a graphic example, but that's exactly what holiness is. God says, come on up out of there.

Let me separate you from this. This is what it is. We have to get down to the reality of what God is doing and what God is offering you. The separate God, the unique God, that's above and beyond everything. So let me get you out of this, and you come separate from me. You come to me. He says, for the salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and the truth.

God's Spirit, and then our response to that truth. That's part of the sanctification. It's a process of being made holy. To which He called you by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The process of sanctification leads us to the glory of Jesus Christ and obtaining His glory. In other words, eternal life. Sanctification, God, this process leads us to eternal life.

That's why I say this is such an important, important doctrine that we don't talk about enough. The third point. Sanctification is a work of God, but you and I have to participate in it. It is God's work, but you and I have to participate in it. God does not possess us through the Holy Spirit. You have to really understand sanctification. You have to go through the work of the Spirit. A couple years ago in Pentecost, they gave a sermon on the work of the Spirit. How does God's Spirit work in us? Because it doesn't possess us. God is saying, I'm going to take over your mind, make you do what I want, and I'm just going to make you holy.

God says, I've come to you, I've called you, I've called you out of the cesspool you're in, and I want to clean you up. Do you wish to be cleaned? Do you wish to go where I want to take you? Hebrews 12. It's very interesting when you go through the Old Testament. The priests performed holy duties. And those duties were very important. Holy duties. Aaron's two sons, the first Thai priest in the tabernacle, his two sons did not perform their duties right.

They didn't think holiness was important, and God killed both of them. This is important to God. The separate one, the unique one. So he tells the priests in numerous cases, okay, here's some holy things I want you to do in the tabernacle. Now go sanctify yourself. Go make yourself holy. And what that would mean is they would have to take a bath, they would have to put on certain clothes, they would have to pray, they would have to get prepared. They had to participate in the holiness. It's the same way with us.

God says, I have holy things I wish to do in you. Sanctify yourself. Prepare yourself for holiness. Hebrews 12, verse 14. Verse 14, pursue peace with all people and holiness. Now stop a minute, because it's like, pursue peace seems to be the subject, but there's two subjects here. Pursue peace and pursue holiness. Pursue it. Go after it. Live it. Grab hold of it. God says to all of you, all of us here, I have called you to be holy, therefore, go sanctify yourselves.

Prepare for holiness. Go prepare for holiness. Prepare for holiness. Pursue it. Now look at the rest of the sentence. Without which no one will see the Lord. Without holiness, you will not see Christ when He returns. Sanctification is a requirement of salvation, it's part of salvation, just like justification is. He said, looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

Lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears. The writer of Hebrews writes to the church and says, pursue holiness, you cannot see God. You cannot appear before the throne of this awesome God without becoming holy, without being sanctified and going through sanctification.

Look at Romans 12. Romans 12 is interesting because I think we missed the enormous oxymoron here for these people, of what he's saying. Jews lived in a world, at this time, I mean in the first century when Paul writes, Jews lived in a world where sacrificing animals to God was still being done in the temple of Jerusalem. So they understood what a sacrifice was. You took that sheep or that goat and you dragged it in, and those priests took it in and they slit its throat and it drained out and then they put it on a fire.

Some to be eaten and some to be just burned up, depending on what kind of sacrifice it was. They understood what a sacrifice was. In the Roman world they knew what a sacrifice was too. In Rome itself there were sacrifices constantly in the pagan temples. They would cut animals open and take their entrails out and study them because the gods would tell them when to send secret messages to the intestines of animals. They did it all the time. Of course it's bizarre, it's not true, but in other words everybody knew what a sacrifice was.

It's when you took an animal and you killed it. Paul says here in verse 1 of Romans 12, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice Notice the next word, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. He says, you know, this is just reasonable. When the holy God says, I pick you, our response is, I now become a living, dying person. That's what the oxymoron is. Sacrifice is dead, and he says, you become a living, dead thing. You live. Part of you is being sacrificed. You're sacrificing yourself. Your life is now a sacrifice because it is holy.

Just like that animal became holy when they killed it. It was for God. You have become holy for God. Your life is holy for God. And our reasonable service to understand the awesomeness of God calling us is to say, me being sacrificed is just, that's just reasonable. Man, that's a cheap price for this. It's not the way we think, is it? That's a hard thing. He goes on and he says, and do not be conformed to this world, right?

To be holy means to be separated from this world. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

You're separated from the world and separated to God. And therefore we are to be a holy sacrifice. Oh boy, this is big, isn't it? But this is our calling. This is the doctrine of sanctification. We didn't even start at the doctrine of justification, which is actually a precessor to sanctification. It could be justified before you can even start sanctification. Well, it all sort of works together, but they are two different concepts. So how do we respond to this? How do we respond? There's a lot of ways we do. We're going to start with two. Next time, we'll do a couple more. How are we supposed to respond? You know, woe is me, I am undone. Okay, once you get past that, how do we respond? The first thing you have to do is we begin to obey God. Sanctification involves obedience. If I believe God is really holy, holy, holy, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all things, and he says, hey, come here, you're mine. You're mine, come here. Now, everybody's his, and he's got a plan for everybody, but understand, to be made holy is a special thing. The question is, when do you become holy? If we are called now, we are called to be holy now. Not in the future, now.

Now remember, you say, oh, I'm not holy. Well, you're in the process of sanctification. You're in the process of being made holy. So you are sanctified, come here, you're holy to me, and now we've got to clean you up, and the rest of life is getting cleaned up. God's saying you're sanctified is one thing. No, sanctification being made holy, taking on the attributes of holiness, takes a lifetime of being cleaned up.

And it's interesting, and we may do a sermon. I don't know. I picked six sermons to do. I now have 12 ideas. I don't want this to go on until next July, so we'll probably cut this short. But we can do a whole sermon on the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, the man who was supposed to have done away with the law of God, saying, God's law is holy, and I wouldn't even know sin if it wasn't for the law of God. In Romans, part of understanding holiness is to go to the law, and then we try to obey it. The problem is the Jews thought you obtained holiness through the law, and you can't, because you know why? If you truly understand the holiness of the law, you know you're condemned by it. I can love the law and still realize, oh, did I break that one? Great. Let's see. I've broken all of them. The problem with the law is beautiful, wonderful, and holy, and good, and it brings you before the holy God and says, if I don't let you come here, you don't get to come here because you are corrupt.

Understand, the law brings us to the realization, oh boy, I'm corrupt before God, so if He doesn't show me mercy, I can't go there. I can't go there. And anyone that can tell me how to get to God on your own, please come tell me how to do it. I really would like to know. It's not possible. God does it. And we come before this holy God, and the law still stands, and the law convicts us. And then we say, I want to try to do it, and God says, well, you're going to need a lot of help, but we'll get you through this. We'll start cleaning you up, and you will start taking on holy attributes of the law of God. Okay, I'm not going to steal anymore. Good. You're starting to learn a little bit about holiness. I'm going to not use your name in vain anymore. Good. Oh, I just did. Bad. Good thing sanctification is a process. Okay? Good thing it's not a one-time event, because, oh, I used God's name in vain. Oh, you're out of here. That's not how it works. Obedience to the law of God, all the teachings of God, is part of sanctification. You can't say, I decide to stay covered in the sewage. Well, you can, but you won't be holy. You won't be accepted as holy. Obedience is so important. 1 Thessalonians 4. 1 Thessalonians 4. Boy, when we get into holiness, it starts to change even our motivations. Why we do what we do with God?

We obey God out of fear, or do we obey God because of this? Verse 1 of 1 Thessalonians 4. Finally, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more. So Paul wants the people of Thessalonica, just keep growing. Keep growing in your relationship with God. Keep growing in your understanding of Jesus Christ. Keep growing in your holiness. And you should abound more and more and more. And you should be able to see from us how you ought to walk and to please God. Now, of course, walking, we know, is used in both the Old New Testament as a way of life. That your way of life be pleasing to God, that's what holy people wish to do. We want to please God in how we live our lives. For you know what commandments are made by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God. This is the will of God. Your sanctification.

This is the will of God that you be, not just declared holy, but you be made holy. You be made separate. You be made unique. You be made special. So, you know, everybody wants to be special, right?

Everybody wants to be special. But guys, no, no, no, you really know what special is. I'm glad that you have that talent, and that makes you special. That's wonderful. I'll show you somebody who has more talent. That's how God looks at things. You're really smart. That's wonderful. That makes you special. Let me show you somebody who has more. They're smarter than me. You can roll really fast. Oh, at school everybody treats you special because you can run really fast. Let me show you somebody who can run faster than you. And that guy says, no, no, forget those things. I mean, those are good things. We should work on those things. And physical life is wonderful, by the way. I'm not down on physical life. It's great. But it's just short.

But what he says is God's will is that you be made holy because that has an eternal process to it.

But in holiness, in specialness, in uniqueness, in separation, but in holiness. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man. Boy, this statement's real important. He who rejects sanctification in actions. Okay. Oh, God's justified me. I don't need to be sanctified. I mean, he's made me holy, so I don't need to do works. Your problem is you believe in salvation by works. I believe salvation produces works. If the works are not being produced in you, you're not being saved. That's what sanctification is. If the works aren't being produced in us by God, then we're not being saved. It's not being saved. It's not simple. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man but God, who has given us His Holy Spirit. He says, if God's given you the Holy Spirit, and you say, oh, I can live life however I want to, God understands, and then you continue to live an unclean life, he says you've rejected God. That's a scary statement, isn't it? That's a scary statement. We start to realize the importance of sanctification. We are to obey. It is our response. Now, none of us are perfect in obeying. Sanctification isn't just an event. To be sanctified is, oh, you're holy. To be made holy, oh. You know, I've come to the conclusion that God's greatest miracles is not opening the Red Sea. That's child's play. Oh, let me see. I've manipulated a few molecules. Raising someone from the dead? That's no problem. Converting somebody, now that's a miracle. Making a corrupt, common, mundane human being holy? That is a miracle. And that's what he wants to do in your life, his greatest miracle.

His greatest miracle is what he wants to do in your life. And we keep waiting for the miracles to happen. Well, God, if you just, you know, help me hit the lottery, I'll give you 20%. I'll feed the poor. I'll take care of poverty. Just let me hit the lottery. It's a miracle. Being made holy? Well, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. 2 Timothy 2. We'll get to our second point here. 2 Timothy 2, because they're tied together. Obedience towards God. Verse 19. Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands having this seal, okay? So we know we're on solid ground when this seal is marked on you. You know, you see a seal of freshness, right, on your man-made jar. Okay, this seal, now we know, okay, this is the date that is good, too. Kings used to have seals. They put on letters, you know, to say, this is from the king. Okay, this is the seal from God. Now, what is the seal from God? He says, the Lord knows those who are His. So here's the thing. We don't understand this process. We go through life a lot of times disengaged from being made holy by God in his sanctification. But on our forehead, we don't even see it as a big stamp that says, this one's mine. Boom! Every once in a while you see somebody else, you think, oh, that person's being used by God. Yeah, there's a big seal, boom, on your forehead. This one's mine.

Now, all people are gods. I'm not... This isn't about elitism, okay? It's about who God chooses when He chooses them. That's what this is about. And either He has chosen us to be His children. He has called us to be holy, or basically we're playing church. Right? Either He's called us to be holy, or we're just playing church. He has called us to be holy, as He is holy. He says, so we have this seal. He says, it let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Now, a little bit ago, Paul said, or we read where Paul said, that we are to take care of our vessels. Okay? That's very interesting. A vessel. You know, usually, I think of a pot or a jar, right? Now, a pot or a jar, unless it's decorative, has its purpose, is for something else to be poured into it. Right? So, you know, I have a coffee mug every morning. I go, and most mornings I take the drink, and I make myself a cup of coffee. It's a vessel for my coffee, and I appreciate that vessel. I look forward to seeing that vessel in the morning, and I'm really upset if it's not washed. No, I'm not. I have lots of coffee cup vessels in my house. Besides, I'm a big boy. I can wash my own coffee cup. The point is, a vessel, and the way you use it here, is to have something else poured into it. That's its purpose. We already talked about a show where he says, your vessel, possess it. Own yourself as someone who is holy. He expands on this here. He says, but in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, our obedience doesn't earn us salvation. Our obedience is our participation in sanctification. If we don't participate, we end up not sanctified. God said, you are sanctified. Now become sanctified.

If we don't become sanctified, eventually we're not sanctified anymore. It's very interesting. All the vessels that they had in the ancient tabernacle don't exist anymore. They've returned to dust, as far as we know, or they're hidden someplace underground.

Now we don't know what happened to the altar that they had and so forth. It doesn't matter. Except for the Ark of the Covenant, they would have no purpose today anyways. They would have no purpose. Their holiness does not know what God is doing now.

We are to become holy forever. So He says we're to take this vessel, cleanse it Himself from the ladder. He will be a vessel for honor. Sanctified. We do these things to be cleansed. Why? So that we can do the holy work of God.

Remember the priest? Go sanctify yourself, come back to the tabernacle, and do your jobs. And it's the same thing here. We have to remove ourselves from sin with God's help. Yeah, because only He can make us holy. He helps us remove ourselves from sin so that why? We become vessels of honor, sanctified, and why? Useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. Useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. Once again, I hate it when people say, well, you think you've earned salvation through works. I do not. But I have to be, you and I have to be, prepared for the Master, for His works. If we're not, we're not sanctified, we're not justified, and we're not receiving salvation. And if you want to say that's salvation by works, go ahead. That's not my works. It's not your works. It's submitting to the works of God, which are produced in us. We have to respond. If we don't respond, what do we end up? What do we end up as? Well, we read as Esau. We're already told we end up as Esau. Now our second point, and it's a very short point. Wow, that's a long time with the one point. But they're tied together. We've read here about obedience. We've even seen the word honor show up. When we obey God, we must honor God. To honor God means we have to show Him deep respect. We must respect who God is. We'll talk about that a lot more next time. We must respect the reality of God instead of trying to make God into our own image, which is just another idol. We have to try to grasp who He really is, who Jesus Christ really is. In the New Testament, the word that's translated honor, or respect, I'm sorry, honor, basically means to value something. When you honor something, you value it. It means something to you. It is great value to you. If I offered you a solid gold coin, this one ounce, and a one ounce coin made out of copper, which one do you want? Which one do you value? The copper one has no value at all. That gold coin has great value. Everybody says, oh, give me the gold coin. What do we value? That's an interesting question in relationship to God. How much do I value God and honor Him in my life? Honor and value are connected. How much do I value and honor God's teachings in my life? I value God because He helps me when I'm in trouble, but I don't think much about what He commands me to do, because holiness isn't that important to me. What do I value and honor more than God? Now that's a tough one. Because you try to answer that one, and it gets really uncomfortable. Because every time I try to answer that one, I find something in my life that I'm honoring more than God. Because it's taking the place of what I should be doing. It's not even a sin, but it's taking the place. If you're miserable and unhappy and mean to other people, and spend two days in depression every time the Titans lose, then you're in there. That's dishonoring God. It's a game. God doesn't expect us to live life depressed over that. There's a lot of real things to fight depression over than that.

Romans 2. Romans 2. So we obey God, and we have to value Him. When you and I are declared holy by God, and we take this holiness, and we say, Yes, Lord. I mean, the fact that you are here, means you have said, Yes, Lord. I wish to be holy. I know I was undone. Now send me. You've said, send me. I'm here. I wish you to forgive me, apply Christ's sacrifice to me.

I wish you to give me your spirit. I wish to obey you. I wish to take on attributes of holiness. Remember when God says you're holy, now He begins to give you some attributes of holiness. So you're here because you told God, Yes. If you didn't, you need to go tell Him, Yes. And then you begin to receive these attributes. At that point, you become, and I become, and this worries me. This little thing worries me.

We become representatives of God. We become representatives of His holiness. When you went to the temple in Israel, that temple was a representation of the holiness of God. The nation of Israel was a representation of the holiness of God. One of the reasons He destroyed them, because He said, I made you holy and you have, you have dishonored me. You have dishonored me to all the other nations. So I'm not going to be with you anymore. I'll be with you later because I'll fulfill my promises.

The great thing about God, He fulfills these promises. But there will be a time when you will not be my representatives, and they haven't been. The church became His representatives, and God's Spirit was given to each person and made available to each person. That means we represent God. Verse 21 of Romans chapter 2. He's talking to the church. You therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? When you say, do you not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who are the whore of idols, do you not rob temples? You who make boasts in the law, do you not dishonor God through breaking the law?

Then this next thing really bothers me. I understand that because we all still sin, we all still struggle, we all fall down. We're not completely holy yet. We're still in the process of sanctification. But notice the next statement. For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. How much dishonor do we show to God by the conduct we show other people? I think about that every time I get angry at somebody when I'm driving, or I try to think about it. Don't beep the horn this time.

It's one thing to beep the horn because there's going to be an accident. It's another thing to beep the horn because you're mad at him. You know, and you just stare at him as you drive. Wait, wait, wait. What if that person shows up at church next week?

I do think of those things. Knowing God, he would put me in that situation just to teach me a lesson. So I don't want to have to learn that lesson the hard way. Are people blaspheming God because we represent him because we're holy? Now, once again, none of us are perfect. We all fall down. We all do. But that's not the issue here. What Paul's saying is, what about when you just don't care? You're just a hypocrite. We tell everybody else not to keep Christmas, but we, on the other hand, we do things that bring dishonor to God. Yeah, I don't keep Christmas, but I do go out with my friends on Saturday night.

Yeah, we drink a little bit too much, but you know, come on, we're just having fun. Now, the person who saw you at the bar comes to church because God called them, and they want to come out of their alcoholism, and there you are sitting there at church, the guy they saw drunk Saturday night at the bar. Why come back? If you're seeking holiness, why come back? So we have to realize, the grace of God is a privilege to be called by God for holiness, and it is a responsibility that is absolutely frightening.

Because he says, you're separated from the corrupt, the mundane, and you're separated for me in a world that you now represent me too. We now represent him. If that scares you a little bit, it scares me to death. It frightens me. It keeps me awake at night sometimes. And it should. It should. How do we respond to God's greatness, his awesomeness, his brilliance, his power? How do we respond to a creator who keeps coming back into creation and interacting with us?

A creator who could, by the way, make us do whatever he wants. We could be puppets on a string. Right? A guy can make us dance. That's not who he is. That's not who he is.

How do we respond to that? We start with two attitudes. Obedience and honor. That's just a starting point. Oh, that isn't the end of it. That's just where we start. Okay, I'm going to try to obey you, and I'm going to try to honor you. And then we move on to the really hard stuff. I think that's where we start. Ask God to reveal His holiness to you. Ask God to reveal Himself to you as much as any of us can understand or handle. If God really revealed Himself to us, we don't go crazy. Ask God to reveal Himself to you in a way that you can understand. Ask Him to reveal Jesus Christ to you in a way that you can understand. Not what we make up, but who they really are. And then ask Him if He shows who He is to you. Ask Him, make me a vessel. Create me into a vessel that you can live in.