2021.08.29
Notes
Transcript
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Do you remember the Snickers Super Bowl commercial from a few years ago that featured Betty White?
It shows a bunch of guys playing a game of football. The quarterback drops back and throws the ball to Betty White. She gets thrown to the ground and misses the pass. Back in the huddle, one guy says, “Mike, you’re playin’ like Betty White out there!” Mike’s girlfriend comes out of the stands and offers him a Snickers bar. He instantly returns to himself and goes back in the game.
“You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Grace is Grace…God doesn’t make distinctions between the workings of grace. We make those distinctions to help us understand.
The last two weeks, we’ve talked about:
Prevenient Grace – Wooing or courting grace
Justifying Grace – Grace that enables us to say Yes to a lifetime with the Father and “carries us over the threshold”
Sanctifying Grace –Grace that teaches us what it means to LIVE with God
[CLICK-blank]
Wesley used a house to describe Grace’s work in our lives:
[CLICK] Prevenient = Porch
[CLICK] Justifying = Door
[CLICK] Sanctifying = The whole house
Another analogy may help take the next steps:
Genesis 2 – We were created in the image of God (Imago Dei) Beautiful painting
Genesis 3 – Adam & Eve messed it up – while the paint still wet, [CLICK] Satan smudged us
Acts 2:22-38 – God calls us to restoration when he gives us the Holy Spirit
The Grace of His Holy Spirit through death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus is not just to woo you, or just to save you…
Restore the image of God!!
I used a photo of Hannah on purpose
Age 10 - Heart Surgery
Broken – SVAS
Dead – heart stopped/bypass
Perfect – Dr. Boone “There’s nothing to tell the insurance company, she’s perfect.”
Restoring the image of God comes through the grace of God
Can’t earn it
We don’t change in order to be loved…we change because WE ARE ALREADY LOVED!
6 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway.
He is the One doing the work of restoration!
Talking about grace’s work in our lives a few years ago … a young Isaiah said, “Oh, like the Snickers commercial. You’re not you without grace.”
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
One more analogy, and then I’ll quit with the analogies:
Receiving God’s grace is like Recovery of health after an illness:
Recognizing we’re sick – Prevenient
Going to the Doctor – Justifying
Taking the antibiotic – Sanctifying
If I stop short of taking all of the antibiotic, what happens?
Infection comes back … WORSE!
Sin is our infection … and we’ve all been infected from birth.
Sanctifying Grace is the antibiotic, and if you want real deliverance from sin, you must take the medicine until it’s gone!
The Greek word for salvation is sozo. Sozo has another meaning, though. Sozo also means healing. Our illness is sin, and we’ve been given the prescription for salvation and full healing!
Sanctifying Grace is the process of recovery from that illness.
While Justifying Grace takes away the FUTURE ramifications of our sin
Sanctification deals with the PRESENT state of sin!
We are declared…
Guilty in Prevenient---in need of God
Not Guilty in Justification ---IN God
Holy in Sanctification---Living and growing in God’s grace
Remember his goal isn’t to act like the painting isn’t smudged.
His goal is to restore the painting to reflect the image of God again!
14 For this reason I bend my knees before the Father,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.
ALL the fullness of God. [DON’T STOP SHORT OF THE FULLNESS!]
Scott telling Dad to shutup at the ballfield.
Dad stopped yelling because he discovered his shouting embarrassed Scott.
Sanctifying grace empowers you to stop sinning because you realize it embarrasses God … and worse!
God’s ultimate goal is found in Matthew 5:48
48 Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
17 times in the Old Testament we’re told to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy. The Greek word for holy is hagioi, and it is used extensively throughout the New Testament.
Jesus didn’t use that word here. He used the word teleios, which means perfect. We are to be perfect as our Father is perfect. Let me ask a few logical questions:
Is perfection possible? [non-rhetorical]
Is our god a compassionate god?
Would a compassionate god command something that isn’t possible?
Jesus just commanded perfection … so either he’s not compassionate … or perfection is possible.
Perfection vs. Christian Perfection
Christian Perfection is not mistakelessness!
In his teaching about the Law that precedes this command, Jesus explains that the Law is summed up with motive more than behavior:
adultery - if you’ve looked on another with lust - GUILTY
murder - if you’ve used harsh words with your brother - GUILTY
What defines sin is not behavior! What defines sin is motive! So perfection is not the absence of mistakes. Perfection is motivation to love God and love neighbor!
Okay, I lied a minute ago … this will really be my last analogy … promise. :)
[prized orchid analogy]
Tom Mills November, 2006 blogged:
“I heard a great message this morning. The basic content was that we are called to be perfect because our heavenly Father is perfect. Now there is a lot of explaining that would be necessary to get everything out of that phrase that we could, but the reality is that we do our best to explain it away. However, there is nothing in the command that gives us that latitude.” —Tom Mills (http://tommills.wordpress.com/ - November, 2006)
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
Grace in our Life: Sanctifying
In His Word, Jesus calls us to perfection in love. Through His Holy Spirit and the work of Sanctifying Grace in our lives, He makes Christian Perfection possible!
Grace calls us to be His … Grace carries us over the threshold … and Grace perfects us and restores us back to the Imago Dei [the image of God].
“You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
You’re not you without God’s grace!