More than Forgiveness

Harmony

Father In Heaven,

You are the maker of heaven and earth and the one who cares so deeply for humanity,

Thank you that you care so much for us that you send your son to take on sin and make us new,

Father today we pray for those among us who care for others,

Whether it be by circumstance, employment or calling they are imitating your great love for humanity by caring for those who cannot care for themselves,

Lord when we were week you cared for us,

Lord when we couldn’t save ourselves you saved us,

Lord when we were unwise, you are our wisdom.

Lord, today we ask for a great renewal for those who care for others,

Lord that you would give them an energy that they didn’t know was possible

Lord, would they experience your happiness and joy and radiate that to those who are being cared for,

Lord, we ask that you would renew their resolve, when care giving gets difficult, would you be near to them and renew them

Lord, would you reveal your love to these caregivers so that they can love others in the same way.

On the long nights when the clock seems to tick in reverse,

We are reminded that you are closer than the air that we breathe

That you are right here among us.

We ask all these things,

In the name of the great physician,

Jesus Christ.

Worship

Jeff Shehan

Early November

Intro

When I first became a Christian, I knew and sensed that God desired a different kind of life from me but my life didn't look much different from before I was a Christian

Here I had made this shift in my mind, that I knew there was a God, I knew Jesus was the son of God, and I had surrendered my life over to Jesus

But there were still these behavior habits…Behavior that didn't honor God that was deeply engrained in me. And the reason why was that I had practiced it…When you practice anything it becomes second nature.

But the difference once I had become a Christian was was that when I made these mistakes (AKA) sinned…I felt convicted and went oh…I need to change that

sometimes I didn’t really feel convicted but God used others to convict me

I remember that when I became a christian I was 14, I was in high school and like most other high school boys I had a pretty foul mouth

I would cuss…Not because I wanted to but everyone was doing it and I wanted to be cool

And one day I was standing near a girl that I had the hots for and I cussed…Don’t remember what I said or why…I was probably just trying to look cool and this girl says to me

“Ugh…Thats so unattractive” And what I realized in the moment is that not only was it unattractive to the girl that I really liked, but it was unattractive to God as well

So I stopped

And there were a thousand other moments like that and from time to time these moments still happen

And it is the Holy Spirit working with me to renew my mind to change my desires and make me into a new person

Holiness series is based on really one big idea in the Bible:

We believe in New Creation

What we believe is that the past doesn’t have to define you

That wherever you have been in life, whatever you have done, all of that is wiped away by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross

That he has paid for your sin and has justified you before the father

What we believe is that when you take the step of faith to say Yes to Jesus and give your life over to him that he does a crucifying work in your life…And he puts your old self to death and births something new in you...

see, when Jesus died on the cross, the entire enterprise of the old creation died with him...

and on the third day when Jesus rose again, that is the first day of new creation.

So through trusting Jesus with your life , and surrendering it to Him, you can be made into a new creation.

The Apostle Paul will talk about this all over the place:

Ephesians 4:22–24 NIV

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

The Old man that Paul is talking about is basically Living by default…Just living like everyone else

And living in that way of life is not an act of faith ....So Paul says don’t give in to the default way of life

it is an act of faith to not give into lust and deceitful desires

The New Man: When you make the choice to follow Jesus then the Holy spirit renews your mind

The holy spirit dwells in you and helps you birth new desires in your life

So you were created to be like God in righteousness and holiness

You were made for this

The audacity of the christian message is that we believe that God not only forgives us of our sins but actually remakes us into his image

that process is called sanctification

Sanctification is the process in which God makes you into a new creation who resembles Him. (1 Thes 4:3-8)

1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 NIV

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

See what Paul is telling the church is that Sanctification is God’s will…Don’t you love it in the Bible when it says: This is God’s will! Its actually rare! so when you see it…pay attention!

Sanctification takes self control (1 Thes 4:4)

Self control only comes out of a discipline

Which means it is a choice to control your body to abstain when you should abstain and to act when you should act

We all know people without self control, they are called children

Sanctification is a commitment to live in a holy and honorable way (1 Thes 4:7)

How does Paul define this?

Not living in a passionate lust type of way

We don’t take advantage of people

A commitment to purity

Sanctification takes a reliance on the Holy Spirit (1 Thes 4:8)

If you are trying to go at the Holy life alone, then you will fail

The holy life comes from reliance on the Holy Spirit

living in a way of life that pursue the Holiness of God in your own life is done in conjunction with the Holy Spirit

Sanctification is a perfecting process

To say I am going to pursue sanctification is to say that you are going to train for eternity with God

So you begin living in a way that relies on the Holy Spirit now, one day when you take your last breath, it will actually be the most natural thing in the world....

So in living lives of holiness we find verses like this

Romans 12:1–2 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

All of these verses show us that in following Jesus we are called to live a holy and set apart life.

A life that doesn't live by default

that doesn't give into our base desires

and a life that honors God...

A sacrificial life

So this is what sanctification is

But what is the process of sanctification?

See what we believe is that sanctification is a process

The reason why sanctification is a process is because it might take some of us years to lay everything in our life down at the feet of Jesus

And some others, it doesn’t take long at all

Sanctification really is the process of becoming more and more like Jesus. And what

Sanctification reveals our own stubbornness

If I had a dollar for every time someone said…I have been struggling with this thing for a really long time but then when I finally surrendered it to Jesus, I had wished I did it a long time ago

There are some of you here today who could walk closer with God if you would just lay down whatever it is in your life that is causing you to stumble…But the problem is that these things that cause us to stumble are our security blankets

There is something about the refining fire of God that makes us afraid to walk though it. It is easy and natural to want to hang on to our sin…But the more we give it up the more we realize just how stubborn of a people we are

So what I want to do is to look at a scripture where we see all in one place where this process of sanctification happen

Isaiah 6:1–8 (NIV)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

So first and foremost there is this picture of Isaiah in the throne room of God. And Isaiah is looking at God and being confronted with the sheer holiness of God and the entire setting

So these angelic creatures are shouting Holy, Holy Holy

Initial Sanctification (Isaiah 6:5)

Isaiah when confronted with the holiness of God his own sin just becomes obvious

I remember when I was a kid we has these California missions projects in the 5th grade and we had to visit a mission, write a report and then build a diagram.

So we were on a family vacation and we went to the Santa Inez mission and I had made a sugar cube model of this mission.

I was so stinking proud of this model I had made…I thought it looked amazing

I must have used 100 sticks of hot glue and 1,000 sugar cubes

But then when I took it to class all of these kids had bought these replica missions from the gift shop of the missions they had visited

Their missions looked perfect all of the sudden my work of art just looked like a pile of trash....

See when faced with sheer perfection all of our imperfections come out

and its a jarring moment in our lives to go…oh wow…I suck! I’m broken…I am ruined!

And when you face this, its actually a good thing…Because you experience God and you’re like…I could just never stack up!

And we live in a society that wants to get you to believe that your imperfections are actually fine and you don’t actually need to change at all. But the reality is that we are all sinful and in the face of a perfect God we cant even stand up!

Isaiah understood this...

When faced with the holiness of God he had one answer: I have unclean lips, all of my people are unclean and now I have seen God…I am ruined!

See Isaiah is a good Jew, he knows that he can’t be unclean in the presence of God

There is a real fear here: He doesn’t want to contaminate God’s throne room

See what you have to understand is that the Jews had all of these strict codes about sin

This is just an example and I could give a bunch more

Leviticus 15:1–7 NIV

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When any man has an unusual bodily discharge, such a discharge is unclean. Whether it continues flowing from his body or is blocked, it will make him unclean. This is how his discharge will bring about uncleanness: “ ‘Any bed the man with a discharge lies on will be unclean, and anything he sits on will be unclean. Anyone who touches his bed must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. Whoever sits on anything that the man with a discharge sat on must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. “ ‘Whoever touches the man who has a discharge must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening.

The idea is that whomever is unclean contaminates anyone that they are around

So Isaiah has got to be nervous because he is in the temple of God and its not like he had strange bodily discharge but he is unclean because of his sin

And he know that anything unclean up until this point has caused people to die in the presence of God

But what happens next…is that instead of Isaiah transferring his uncleanliness to God, Isaiah is touched by this fire, this coal and the Holiness of God was transfered to Isaiah…This is actually a monumental change in the Bible..

Because up until this point…Unclean people made Holy people unclean

This is actually a shift that we will see when Jesus comes on the scene…He goes around touching lepers and dead people and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, they become clean!

So initial sanctification is that first grace that we get from God when our eyes are opened to the fact that we need a change in our lives.

The next is called

Progressive Sanctification (Isaiah 6:7)

Progressive sanctification is that time in your life where your sin is atoned for, your forgiven and your still working out your salvation

Isaiah at this moment had been redeemed by God, He had been changed at the moment that he was touched by the fire of God.

And this is where many of us find ourselves

Progressive sanctification is the place where we are forgiven but we are still figuring out what it means to follow Jesus

The Apostle Paul was talking about whet it means to work out your salvation and this is what he said

Romans 7:21–24 NIV

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

I mean…Can’t we relate to this?

Its like we have been forgiven and redeemed…But those old desires haven’t quite died yet?

They still plague us

But we believe in one last step to our own sanctification and we call that

Entire Sanctification (Isaiah 6:8)

This is the moment of total surrender

Don’t take this the wrong way…I know to read, Entire Sanctification is to think like…well I have a PHD in following Jesus..>I’m all done I’m perfect now...

No! not at all

Entire sanctification is coming to the point where you just have a total reliance on the spirit of God

Its coming to the point where you have given everything over…

And sometimes we thought that we have given everything over until another hangup shows up in our life and we have to give that over too.

and I really believe that Jesus calls his people to this and that we can resist it if we want

There is a story of Jesus and a rich man

Mark 10:17–22 NIV

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

This man was a religious man…He had kept all of the commandments

But what I love about this story is that jesus knew the man’s last hangup and he was absolutely setting this guy up...

Jesus listed all of the commandments that are toward loving others except for he left one out

Jesus leaves out, You shall not covet

And this guy couldn't do what Jesus was asking. And its not that Jesus wanted all of this guys money, it is that he knew that money was his hangup…Sure this man honored God and kept all of the religious practices but money was his true God

And Jesus was calling him to this last full surrender

And he couldn’t do it

He was already a religious guy…He cared about God but he Just couldn’t let it go!

This wouldn't have made this rich young guy sinless

But for him, letting go of his wealth would have made him live in a deeper dependance on God

Entire Sanctification is saying, okay, I have been set free from sin, now lets live like that is actually true!

Romans 6:22 NIV

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

When God sets you free from sin, he reshapes your desires, and its when your desires are reshaped that you can live in such a way where you have no desire to go back to your old life…It doesn't mean you wont mess up and sin…But Entirely sanctified people own it…ask for forgiveness and they move on and grow...

One of the things that we have to understand is that its not like in the Bible it lays out: initial, progressive, and entire sanctification…But this has been a helpful tool that theologians have used for years to describe the change that God makes in people and the human response.

God wants to grow Holy people

people who can see him and enter his life and I believe that this is the process...

Challenge

Phoebe Palmer was one of the greatest holiness preachers of the 19th Century. She was such a powerful preacher that churches that didn’t believe in women in ministry set that aside and allowed her in their pulpit

She was such a powerful preacher because wherever she preached she wouldn’t show up until a second alter was built for holiness. See nearly everyone who attended church in the 1800’s were already christians…What she did was she called people to choose holiness

She called people to move beyond the stage in their life where they kept flirting with sin

She called people to ask for the Holy Spirit to dwell in their lives

And that is what I want to do today…is to give you this opportunity…even if you have been a christian for years…to do a full surrender

Maybe today you need to come to the alter and say, God I need this sanctification, I need to get to the point where I say, Here am I send me