Sanctification: To Be Holy

Last week, we spoke about the idea of obedience, of being obedient to God. And we saw in the story of King Saul, a life that was disobedient, that lived in rebellion to what God wanted of him. And we saw that obedience wasn't an objective tick the box sort of thing, but that obedience is utterly relational. That being obedient came down to a desire to give joy to God's heart rather than breaking that heart. We saw that obedience was a reaction to the grace that had already been given us in forgiveness of Jesus.

But perhaps some of us went home last week feeling sad and realising that maybe we're not quite there yet. Maybe things aren't quite nice and smoothed over, that we still have some rough edges, that there may still be areas in our life that we struggle with. Well, this morning, we're going to be looking at another facet of obedience, another aspect to obedience. It's the dynamic aspect we call sanctification. Now that is a big theological word, but it means to be holy.

To be holy. And that as Christians who have given our lives over to God, we believe that we are being made holy. We are being made obedient. Let's have a look at this topic this morning in the New Testament in First Peter chapter one verses 13 to 25. First Peter chapter one verse 13.

The apostle Peter writes to the churches in Asia Minor. Therefore, friends, prepare your hearts, your minds for action. Be self controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.

For it is written, be holy because I am holy. Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty ways of life, handed to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him, you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him, and so your faith and hope are now in God.

Now that you have been purified, now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God. For all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you.

So far, our reading. What does it mean to be holy? What does it mean to be holy? Are you holy when you feel bad or guilty when you have an impure thought or when you make someone upset or when you stay at home on a Sunday to watch the rugby? Is it the idea of being a self righteous Mister Goody Two Shoes to walk around school or work or home with pride about how clean your life is?

Is that what holiness is? Is holiness dependent on how guilty we feel when we sin? You know, the extent of the brokenness we have. What is holiness? What is the Bible referring to here in this passage when it talks about being holy?

Do you know what? The Bible defines holiness as actually being cleaned up and put aside for a purpose. Holiness is to be put aside. It means to be set apart. Not so much as a benchmark, not so much an aura of perfection.

Holiness means to be cleaned up for a certain purpose. There was a man who once went into an op shop. You know what an op shop is? Saint Vinnie's or or whatever. He was looking for something special to invest his ten dollars into.

And after wandering around for a while, he thought he saw just the thing. It was a porcelain bowl. Now from first look, it was fairly unimpressive. Someone had obviously used it to hold flowers at some stage. It was still dirty and grimy.

There was actually still some withered leaves in it. It also appeared to have a crack running through one of the sides of it. The owner of the shop, obviously didn't think too much of it, the shop, the op shop owner, because it was just tucked away in the corner there. Some books and stuff were on it, you know, rags and stuff, and no one had seemed to actually have picked it up in years. But the man saw this and carefully went and fished it out.

And disguising his absolute delight, he went with his ten dollars and paid for it. He actually got some change back for it. When he arrived home, he went about cleaning it, taking great care. He spotted that it was in fact a fine piece of Chinese porcelain. And he knew that he could repair the crack, and he went about soaking this bowl trying to get the soil and the grime out of the cracks.

And as he did this, the patterns of the bowl started coming out. Over time, he was able to bring this bowl up back to good as new. Then when it was done, he took it and he placed it in the middle of his home in a beautiful display case right in the foyer of his house. It was just what he wanted. This morning, the Bible tells us that we are like this bowl.

Despite the desperate situations we face, our faith in Jesus Christ has huge implications for how we live, for the purpose we have. As we have another look at our passage, the key verse, the key verse is right in the middle. It leads up to it in verse 18, and the keyword in this passage is the word redeem. Redeem in verse 18. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

What the word redeem means is actually to buy something back. To buy something back. Another word that the Bible sometimes refers to, and we actually read it in our reading this morning for the elders, is that Jesus Christ ransomed our lives. Ransom and redeem are very similar because it means that you get something back. You don't buy with a ransom.

You don't buy with redeeming because buying means that you never owned it previously. To redeem or to ransom means it belongs to you and you're just getting it back. The Bible this morning says that as Christians, we have been redeemed. We have been bought back like the dirty plate in the junk shop. Verse 13 to 15 gives us commands on how we ought to live.

This is how it's structured. 13 to 15, Peter says, live holy lives. Live holy lives. This is how our lives as Christians should look. Set your hope fully on the grace given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Be obedient children. Do not conform to the evil desires of this world. Be holy. But then he gives us the motive. He gives us the why to be holy.

He says, prepare your minds for action. Be self controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace given to you. In other words, change. Change.

Because God has given us new life, because God has come into our lives, because we were radically broken and flawed. Change. Be holy. Be different. Be nonconformist to every other non Christian value out there.

But he goes on to say how this life of obedience is possible in the first place. And he says in verse 18, we have been redeemed from an empty way of life. We have been redeemed from an empty way of life. All of us, at some point, gave ourselves over to all kinds of purposes other than the purpose we were made for. Empty ways of life, Peter calls it, futile, dead, self destructive.

God, in fact, had to physically come into the junk shop of human history to buy us back. And he says in verse 19, the price, the cost was the precious blood of Jesus, the Messiah. He says it wasn't gold. It wasn't silver. It wasn't no US dollar currency, no Japanese yen.

It was infinitely more precious. It was God's own Son that was the price. My life for His. For some of us, the empty way of life, the empty way of life was very dramatic. It was filled with self destructive choices of things that hurt us and hurt others.

But for others, those empty ways of life may have been caught up in hypocrisy, in doing church, in grudgingly doing good, having clean lives because we felt we had to. The Bible says that ultimately both of those approaches were wrong. Both of them were empty. Why? Because they were not how God created us to exist.

Instead of showing off our purpose, instead of showing off our beautiful patterns, the artwork that the Creator has put in us, you used it to hold dirty and dying saggy flowers. So we have been redeemed for a purpose that is far above what we were using it for in the first place. Unfortunately, this is the truth. Sin and Satan caused us to be dirty and neglected. He was our master at, he was our owner at one point, Satan.

And he used us for all the bad reasons, all the worst reasons. But the great news is that God is busy with the process of cleaning us up. In fact, the cracks of sin in our lives, the cracks that have could have meant that we lost our worth, the end of our purpose is in fact those cracks is being repaired as we speak. In the process of this big word sanctification, which means to be made holy, we understand a concept of now and not yet. The Bible speaks of sanctification having happened now.

Right now, as you have received Jesus Christ, you are holy. But it also speaks of it as a process. Now you have received it, but you haven't fully developed it. Now and not yet. The huge gaping crack in our life, the broken relationship with God, that huge severe gaping hole in the porcelain has been filled with God and instantly mended the moment we gave our life into the hands of God, repented, and believed in Jesus.

Instantly mended. But He is also in the process of bringing out those imperfections, of bringing out those beautiful patterns on the porcelain, of getting the grind, the deeply ingrained grind out of the porcelain. Because of this, Peter says to us that we should live lives that are radically different from the lives of those around us. In other words, because you are plates that have been repaired, that have been fixed up, and yet are still in the process of being fixed up, because of this fact, behave like beautiful clean plates with pretty patterns. Now, okay, gentlemen, I'm sorry that I have to talk to you as pretty plates.

You may not like that analogy. Think, rusted engine blocks or something like that. Manly. Yeah. Don't go back to those empty purposes you were being used for previously.

That is what he's saying. Don't go back to that. The way this works, Peter says, is through correct thinking. We read in verse 13, therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self controlled by setting your hope fully on God's grace.

Prepare your minds for action. Now this word is fascinating. It's only used here in the New Testament, I believe, in the Greek, the original language. To prepare that word, that verb is to literally gird up the loins of your mind. And that sounds weird, so that's just said prepared in our English translation.

But if you understand the context that Paul was writing in, everyone wore these beautiful linen or cotton robes that were long, but they were restrictive. You couldn't move freely with them. If you had to run, you actually had to gird it up, bring up these robes, and tie them around your legs so that you could be able to you were able to move freely. Run. It's getting yourself prepared that Peter is referring to here.

Gird up the loins of your mind. Prepare your mind. Get ready to be obedient for action, he says. Think it through. Peter describes this previous situation that we are to stay away from as being in a state of ignorance.

Have a look at that in verse 14. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you once had when you lived in ignorance. Once you didn't understand, once you didn't know, once you thought what you were doing was fine, you were meant to hold dead saggy flowers. But now you understand. As the gospel has been explained to you, you are growing to realise just what it really means for you.

Do you realise that you've been cleaned up for a much finer purpose? So okay, KJ. Thanks for that. What's the what's the purpose? What have I been called to?

Well, hopefully, we're going to really get into that in the next few weeks as we start a series on spiritual giftings. We believe that God has called us for a purpose, that we have been born again to be used in His kingdom. Those are parts of the finer purposes that God has called us to. But right now, broadly speaking, perhaps we can go home this weekend and really think about some of these purposes. But broadly speaking, we're talking about new life, changed life, obedience to God's commands.

Now suppose after this, this man cleaned up, we'll call him John. After John cleaned up this beautiful porcelain bowl, imagine the original owner, the bad owner comes to the op shop owner and says, I want that bowl back. Can I buy it back? And the owner says, well, sorry. John has bought it, but you can go and speak to him.

John, the owner of this bowl, would be perfectly within his right to say that sorry, this bowl is no longer available to you. I've bought it. Not only because he's bought it, however, but he's also cleaned it inside and out, and he has given it a whole new use to be displayed right in the centre of his home. It would in fact be an insult as well as an injustice if this old owner was to take it now and use it to hold his flowers again. It would be an injustice.

It would be an insult to the work of John. Why return this beautiful precious plate to its old purpose? But that friends is why we are encouraged here to continue to do good things. That is why we are encouraged to live clean, healthy lives, to not eat too much, to not drink too much, to not hurt ourselves, to not hurt other people. That is why we are called to love our enemies as our friends.

That is why we're called to walk the extra mile, to give to the poor our extra blanket. This is what God intended for us. This is some of the teachings, the basic teachings that Jesus gave us to do as Christians. But in our pride, we chose once to walk a different path. We chose to do the opposite even.

Instead of loving, we hate it. Instead of healthy living, we drank too much. Instead of caring for the downtrodden and the not so easy to love, we ignore them or we downright shun them and use excuses like I'm too busy. But we have now been cleaned up and we are in the process of getting ever and ever more clean. That is the promise.

We are getting cleaner by the day. We are being restored to live out exactly the sort of life God has for us, His holy purposes. So Peter says, prepare your minds for action. Get ready. You know?

Get ready for action. Don't conform to the old desires. Why choose to go back to that empty way of life when you can have a life that fulfils the purpose that you've been created for? And in fact, you don't have to go too far even at a secular level to see study after study proving that doing good, living a Christian life is actually good for us. It's amazing.

And we know it ourselves. It feels good to help others, doesn't it? Why go back to not helping people? It doesn't make sense. It feels good to love.

So why do we go on hating? It feels good to love Jesus. Why do we try to live our lives without Him? It's counterintuitive. Okay.

Thanks, KJ. But what about the sin that we may still commit every now and then? What about those times we make a bonehead move where we trip up and fall again flat on our face? Well, the truth is that God is not finished with us yet. The work of sanctification, that theological term for holiness, bringing holiness in us.

This work of sanctification is an ongoing process, and it will go on until we are made perfect. That is a promise. We are going to be perfect. It's going to keep going until we get there. And we know again from the Bible, it's probably not going to happen until we see Jesus again, until He comes back for us, until we are given resurrected new bodies, new minds.

But the greatest thing to be aware of, the greatest thing to be aware of is not the benchmark of perfection, although that is important. Greatest thing to be aware of is the knowledge that you are in the process of being made perfect. And that gives us a lot of hope, doesn't it? That gives us a lot of hope because we remember that this is God's job in us. And He started this not because we were inherently clean and beautiful and pretty, but because He loved us in the first place.

And He saw us in the junk shop, and He went to us, and He got us. The thing to remember is that we have been loved by a relentless love. And if you've been living a life of legalism or self righteousness where that clashes with the freedom of this morning's message, there is good news for you. And if you've been living a life that said no to Christianity, but where you might have lived according to your own purposes, where you try to figure out things in your own strength, there is good news for you this morning too. If you find yourself struggling with sin, if you find yourself struggling against the power of it, there is good news for you because you can be made brand new, perfect, for the purpose that God has for you.

Our passage this morning finishes in verses 23 to 25, but verse 23 in particular, it says that we can be born again, not through perishable seed, but imperishable. Not through a fly by night philosophy. Not through a self help guide. Not through some pop culture that tells you, Maybelline, you are worth it. This morning, we are given the promise that we have been given an imperishable seed, something that doesn't come and go.

We've received a living and enduring word of God, which means a living and lasting promise. A lasting promise. And that is that you are relentlessly loved by God, who has seen you struggling in a purpose that never suited you. Struggling through a way of living that was never the way it was intended to be. And if you are that person this morning, if you are seeking, I ask you to accept Jesus Christ and the truth of His action for you again this morning, to accept that He wants to save you from your failures, the truth that He wants to clean you up from the inside out.

The truth that He wants to save us from ourselves. He wants to save us from our old abusive owners that used us for the wrong purposes. This morning, I want you to make the decision not to go back to the empty way of living, but to be filled with a full life of Jesus Christ. A life that is full of joy, full of peace, free from guilt. If you have, if you want that this morning, I want to encourage you.

We've got a team that's going to be praying in the back of the church. You don't have to be specific. You can just say, I need some prayer. I want some prayer. Make that decision this morning.

And if that's not you, make that decision this week. Go home and think about it. Seriously think about it. Accept it and make it real to you. Not simply, again, another cognitive decision.

Make it real to you. Accept that promise to you this morning. Let's pray together. We have been born again, Lord, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and the lasting promise of God. And that, Lord, that promise is that because of Jesus, because of the remarkable love that He showed us when He came to us, when He took up His calling, a life of sacrifice, self sacrifice, a love of remarkable extent.

Father, that we have heard about that, that we have experienced that, and even right now, the Holy Spirit is making that true in our lives. Father, I pray that this morning, we will forsake the old and accept the new. And, Lord, that this morning we are also comforted that in even the moments that we wrestle and we have struggled with sin, the truth is, Lord, that we are in the process of every day being made holy, being made righteous, that we are being made clean. And Lord, that is an amazing truth. Hallelujah, God, for that.

Well, for every person here who has sensed Your calling and Your desire for them to change in an area in life that they know needs to change. Father, I pray that You give them the strength, the ability to do that. And, Father, if there are hearts here this morning that are just overflowing and bursting with praise, I pray, Lord, that You'll give them the outlet to do this in with full abandon, with a life that just testifies to Your goodness, that cannot keep it in, whose bones ache if they try to suppress the message of Your grace. Give them the ability to share this with any ear that is willing to hear. We thank You, Lord, for this message again.

We pray that it does not change us. We pray that we don't leave here unchanged. We give our lives in Your service once again. In Jesus' name. Amen.