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We are tonight continuing on from the theme begun this morning. We had a really wonderful service this morning and we had an excellent communion time. But we didn't really have the opportunity to go very far down the road of tracking the meaning of the word sanctification. And in our salvation that God gives us is first of all how we get in the door right at the beginning. And sometimes that's called our justification. When God treats you, he puts you in the status of being justified even though you're a sinner. But because Christ has died for you and Christ has provided his righteousness to be ours. Some people picture it as being dressed in the righteousness of Christ. So although you know you're someone who like the rest of us humanity is a sinner, nonetheless on the basis of coming to Jesus, the one who died for you on the cross, and paid for your sins, you get justified and that's the beginning. But that's not the end of the salvation process. The salvation process finishes when you get to glory. And so from the moment you first come to Christ, then you are a Christian, you have eternal life, but it's being outworked. And there's a process of things that happens, the next of which we need to understand, is called sanctification. Justified, God's treating you as if you're justified. Even though it needed Christ to produce that for you. And now sanctification is when God helps you to become more just, and more Christian, and less sinful. And that process of sanctification is what's being talked about here. And in our verse in Thessalonians, it says this is the will of God. Now anybody here tonight, don't put your hand up, anybody here tonight searching for the will of God, if you're looking to know, what is God's purpose for you, whether it be in the overall slant of your life, or whether it be in the details of where you work, or where you live, or some special decision as to where you're going to study, or just what you're going to do as a work, or who you're going to marry, all those questions. If you're looking for the will of God, sometimes we make the mistake of so fascinating ourselves with the answers to those questions, that we fail to notice that the Bible's emphasis is more on how we're getting with knowing Jesus, and how we're getting on with becoming sanctified. And here in this verse, look at verse 3, up on the screen in Thessalonians, for this is the will of God, the old versions read, even your sanctification, or some versions said, even your holiness. Because the word hagiasmos in the Greek, it has this idea of your actually becoming more holy, becoming more set apart for God, which is the idea of sanctified. Sometimes different versions of the Bible and different spots in the scriptures where the word is used, because it's the nature of words in another language, and when you translate them to English, that there is what is called a semantic range. And the semantic range is the variety of subtle differences of meaning that that word is used for. And the semantic range for this word hagiasmos not only includes sanctification, but sometimes the translations will put the word holiness, and other times they'll put the word consecration. And so you see that the word has got a range of meanings. Now we're not free to pick the one that best suits our theories. Actually what we have to do is to go by the context, and what fits into the meaning of the general passage. And here this is talking about what God wants people's behaviour to change to be like when they become a Christian. He says, This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. Each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour. So there you've got sanctification, and there you've got the word holiness. And not in the passion of holiness, but in the lust like the Gentiles, the people who didn't know God, who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us to impurity, but, and actually the little word in can mean in or to, makes more sense. He's not called us for impurity, but for holiness, or to holiness. And the idea of sanctification is that the purpose of God in bringing you to be a Christian starts with you getting forgiven, but then progresses on for you to become more holy, and God gradually giving you the capacity to live that out. Now in the morning as we were talking about this we referred to a verse in Romans, so if we go to the verse in Romans please, and in that verse in chapter 6 and verse 9 it says, We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. And then the verse goes on to say, see what the next little bit is, if I've got the right reference. Okay, oh, the one that I'm wanting you to turn to is, let me get it up here, Romans 6 and so verse 19, not verse 9, verse 19 and verses 22 and 23. So it's talking about this process of getting to be sanctified and leads to, in the long run, righteousness. But thanks be to God who you were, you were once a slave to sin, because your beating from the heart to the standard, actually we probably need to not be on verse 17 straight there, we need to be in verse 19, which is there. If you look down, I'm speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations, actually, alright. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity, now this is describing your average living as a non-Christian, as once you presented yourselves as slaves to sin, you were free in regard to righteousness, you might remember, I don't know whether you remember when you were not a Christian, and there was a sense of freedom you had from all the requisites of the Bible, or a freedom from the expectations of Christian communities, or it might have been parents. And you might remember that there was a sense in which you longed for freedom to throw off the restraints. That's a non-Christian position to be in. But when you come to Christ, that coming to Christ is because you've been convicted of the need of righteousness, which you don't have, and you've come to Jesus, and he gives it to you, and suddenly there's been a change in your heart where you know you're more properly acting out the person that you've become when you're seeking to obey his wishes and to follow his ways. And so, instead of finding it difficult shouldering all the expectations, from the Christian communities, and from parents, and from your own ideas as to how you really would be a better person if you behave, instead of shouldering that cloak of oh dear, I'm a failure again, you now have the reverse happening. Because what's occurred is that in your heart you have been made righteous, a gift from God, it wasn't your living it out that made you righteous, but you were given the righteousness of Christ, and when you don't live up to that, you criticise yourself, and you're aware that you haven't really lived the person that you've now turned in to be. And sometimes there's a period of time when you're aware of your character that you've developed by how you've acted, and it's the old way, but you're also aware of something new that's there that wants you to act the new way. And this is describing this story, this scenario to be in, in which before you were slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, God's laws that's talking about. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. You might have heard the illustration about the people who got invitations to go to wedding parties, which we're going to have the party part of the wedding, the reception part of the wedding, on some of the ships or boats that go down our river. And so there's a certain spot where these barges, boats are, that you can go and get on. And if it's been arranged, then you find the right barge. But there was two young men who were invited to weddings. And they were quite different young men. One was a Christian and one was a non-Christian. They didn't know each other. But when they went down to get to go on the reception, they got the boats mixed up. And one of the boats had a young couple that were married who were Christians. But the non-Christian guy, he got on that boat. And he had a terrible time. Because they were singing choruses and they were sharing about their lives. And he just felt so estranged because he got on the wrong boat. But the Christian guy, the reverse happened to him. He got on the boat, which was a group of people who were really going to all get drunk and all have a whoopsie time where they didn't care about how they behaved. Try not to let the parents know or try not to get into trouble with the police. And he found what was going on didn't gel with him. Now what's actually happened is that the persons, both of those, represent people who have or have not had the actual conversion experience. Conversion is not just a psychological thing that some people down in Canberra complain that we Christians are pushing onto others. Conversion is something God does when a person comes to Christ. And that process of a person coming to Christ is a spiritual happening. Because of my background in evangelism this is something I've seen happen an awful lot. Where people once were rebels against God but then something happened where they came into contact with Christians who took them along to a set of meetings. In my early days I was in Tasmania doing crusades all around the place. Put on by the Baptist Union. And you'd go to a church and you'd hear the stories of people who'd say, well, I wasn't intending to get mixed up with this Christian crowd. But someone put on me to come along and when I came along God spoke to me and something changed and I'm glad I'm here. And they tell you the story. That's talking about a Christian conversion. Some people it's a dramatic event that they remember all the steps into. Other people it's not something quite so well defined. I've met people who said, well, back when I was in this age this is how I thought. But that's gradually been changing and I've become aware that I don't want to be like that anymore. And they begin to tell you of how something has changed them and they don't know what. I like meeting those sorts of people because I could say to them, well, I know why. And when I begin to tell them about what I'm now telling you they say, yes. And they find out that they have actually come to Christ. They heard about it and didn't realise that was happening. Most people don't really track or know exactly what's going on when they come to Christ and get properly converted. It's a process the Spirit does. Jesus, remember he said to Nicodemus, it's like the wind blows where it wants to and you hear the sound it makes but you don't know where the wind is coming or where it's going to. So is everybody who's born again. That being born again is being changed from someone who's away from God an enemy of God, doesn't know God and then they get born again to become a Christian. And to their surprise they start liking going to good Christian things. Now not all Christian things are likeable. I've been to lots of boring ones. But nonetheless there is something in Christian gatherings which in your heart you're just glad you're there. I always made a rule in our churches that we've been in is to not make it a bit of a law that you have to go twice on Sunday. And some of you are here tonight the second time. I didn't know how many of you would be second timers so I'm still doing the same topic from the morning. But do you know that in one church I was at there were some of the more stricter members of the church who used to try and tell everybody you've got to go twice on Sunday. That annoyed me. And do you know why it annoyed me? Not that I didn't want them to come twice on Sunday but they made it a legalism. And it sort of kills the joy of it actually if you do it just only because you have to. And we had a young couple who became Christians and particularly the girl involved. The boy had been around church longer but the girl she became a Christian and she was so surprised how much she loved it. And she was a singer by nature. She was something that liked to sing. And she watched in the evening services of how we had a group of young people who sang and she came and said I want to be one of those singers I want to be one of those singers. And anyway as she came out the door one Sunday morning the elders of the church came and stood by me. This is an old fashioned way the church used to be in Baptist churches where the pastor would be at the door shaking hands as people left. And the elders would come and when I preached this really got on my nerve a little bit when I first went there because I'd get up there to speak and they'd be sitting behind me and they'd all wear the best of suits. And I could see people looking up at these well-dressed people and they were wearing different clothes and I used to wear my jeans just to try and identify with the newcomers. And then the service would end and I'd go down to the door and these men would march along behind me as I walked down the aisle and they'd stand around looking important to shake the hands of the people leaving. And the girl came out and she was really happy because she'd just become a Christian in the recent weeks and she discovered that joy that joy of knowing Christ and she's telling how much she enjoyed coming to church in the morning and then she said as she just continued sharing she said, Oh, tonight I'm going to see and she named the film that she and her fiancé were going to go and see. And one of the elders' wives said, Ooh, ah, you're not coming to church? And this blanket of guilt came over the poor girl because she just confessed she's going off to a film. And thankfully, they were coming to see me during the week just for some teaching and I was able to say, Look, you don't have to come twice. Come, the Bible does say, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together because some are doing that. But you don't have to come twice. Only come if you want to. Because God, the Bible says, God loves a cheerful giver and it's not only putting your money in the plate he's talking about. A cheerful giver is someone who does things for him because that's what you want to do. That's the life of a Christian that he's wanting us to have, to do things because he's put that new person in you that wants to. So I said, Don't come in the evenings unless you really want to. But because she wanted to be a singer and she liked watching the other, most of the singers we had were younger women like her. And she started coming in the evenings and she was there because she wanted to be. That's the Christian life. And when something changes you inside that you want to, that's the process of sanctification. It's a God action and it's done by the Holy Spirit which is what this is talking about. But it does require our participation in the decision-making processes. We have to make a bit of a decision that we're not going to go on being trapped by the wrong things. We're not going to continue and sometimes those sins can be very attractive. We have to say, I know that's wrong and I'm going to stop. And you might have a bit of a struggle for quite some time because there are areas that you've got in the habit with. And this is what it's talking about. For you were slaves to sin, this is previously, but you were free in regard to righteousness, this is before you became a Christian. Verse 21, But what fruit did you get in all that time from the things you did? Being from the things to which you now are ashamed. For the end of those things is death. But now that you've been set free from sin and you've become the slaves of God, I'll explain that in a minute, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, to a subtle change in character where you find yourselves liking more and more the right things. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I made a big point this morning that you get eternal life the moment you come to Christ, but you don't experience it all fully unwrapped. And you don't actually get that full experience until you get to glory, until you get to heaven. And the sanctification is a part of the process in between whereby you change from the struggle of being a new Christian and finding you've got all these wrong habits to being someone who likes to do the right thing and it becomes set in you as a part of your character. We have people in our church here and did have some that have passed away, but who had a determination always to come twice on Sunday, but they didn't come because they had to. They came because they set it up as a habit of righteousness. You don't have to, but you let the Lord lead you as to what's appropriate. We had visitors come to our house just before I drove off and so Michelle isn't able to be here, but she's not feeling bad about not coming. But if she had the opportunity, she'd love to come. And there's something about being a Christian when you keep on making the decision to foster the new life you've got, that it grows to be a part of who you are. And that is what sanctification is. And it finishes up with your salvation, very obvious when you get to glory, when you get to heaven. We'd better keep moving because I had something to say about all these verses and never got to do it this morning, so I thought, well, I will this afternoon. That was Romans. Now what we'll do is we'll go to, let me see, I think we'll go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Now I'm not sure did I do that one before? Let's have a look anyway. 2 Thessalonians in chapter 2 verses 13 to 15. All right. Okay. Here's the apostle and he's talking here to the Thessalonians and he says, we ought to give thanks to God for you. I think I did do this this morning. Brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved. He's talking about some Gentiles, the first ones to get in to be saved were Jewish people, making, becoming converts and then some early Gentiles. Through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth. What I said this morning was the two aspects that drive your sanctification is in the first instance the fact of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Now let's get this straight about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The three members of the Trinity, when we talk about them in terms of what things they might do differently, you call that the economic trinity. It's just a theological term to talk about the economy of what the Father might do that the Son doesn't or what the Spirit might do that neither the other two do. Now, the economic trinity though, when you understand an emphasis that might be with the different members of the Trinity, has to be held along with what is called, still called the Trinity, but it's called the immanent trinity. Now the two wordings are the economic trinity and the immanent trinity. Sorry about the theological terms, old habits I have coming out, but it's good to know those two terms because the immanent trinity is that there's nothing that the Father does that the other two are kept out of. There's nothing that the Son does that the other two are kept out of and there's nothing that the Spirit does that the other two are kept out of. I think you've got the point. And the reason is that the Father is immanent in the Son and the Spirit is immanent in the Son and the Son is immanent in the Son. And the Spirit is immanent in the Spirit. And when you come to Father God, when people come to me and say, Jim, I want to become a Christian, I usually lead them in a prayer that goes, O Father God, I know that I have sinned. Please forgive me for all of my sin. But the prayer is addressing Father God and in the Bible prayer is nearly always from earth to heaven. And to address Father God is not a bad way to do. But I could have said, O Lord Jesus Christ, because he hears, he hears from heaven too and he gets involved with our prayers as well. But because of the fact that the Father is the chief one who in the Son is his Son, he was the Son before he became a human son, might I say. But because of the relationship in the Trinity, the prayer to pray to the Father is a pretty good thing to do. And Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him, how do I pray? And he gave what we now call the Lord's Prayer, our Father who is in heaven. One of the things you learn by the way from that is address your prayer to the Father and secondly recognize it's from earth to heaven, our Father who is in heaven. Now that's because the Father has a special role and that's referring to the, of the two ways to talk to the Trinity, that's talking about the economic Trinity. But the immanent Trinity is when you realise that they're all involved with each other. So whatever you get the Father to do for you, the Son is doing too. And when it came to the creation of the world, it was both the Father's will, he did it by the Son speaking it into existence and the Bible says the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters which were yet to become developed into, in the days of creation that finally finished with our finished creation so that God had a rest. Alright, so I've introduced you to this concept of the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. So, when we talk about coming to Christ, how is it that you come to Christ? It's because the Spirit comes on you and convicts you and draws you. The Bible actually says no one comes to the Father except the Spirit draws him. Jesus said, no one comes to the Father except through me. So you see that connection between the Trinity members that you don't do business with one without getting business with the whole three. This has some applications to different doctrines and you can pick a doctrine that's going to skew with somebody who's got it all wrong. If they say, well you had business with Jesus and became a Christian but now you need to do business with the Holy Spirit because you don't know anything about him and get him to come into your life now. That's actually a heresy because you can't get business with the Father and with Jesus without it being the Holy Spirit drawing you and without there being him involved in the process. If you opened up your person to God, you got properly related to the Father, you got saved by the Son and the Holy Spirit was given to you as a gift, as a part of your coming to Christ. He's the one who actually, listen to this, some people talk about I let Jesus into my heart, but in actual fact the truth of the matter is if you come to God, the Father, through Jesus the Son, the way that Jesus comes into your heart is actually through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into your life and creates the possibility of your taking the moral impact of Jesus in your person. It's actually the Holy Spirit who brings the indwelling of Christ into your life. So there's no possibility if you've received Christ and you thought of those words to mean that you let Jesus into your heart that you now need to let the Holy Spirit into your heart because the members of the Trinity don't do business with one where you then have to go and have another deal with the others. Do you get the point? This is extremely important to understand the whole question of charismatic things. Now there are some people who are anti-charismatic. That is the most stupid thing to be, being anti-charismatic. If by those words you mean you don't want anything to do with the spiritual stuff because you can't become a Christian without the Holy Spirit convicting you of your need without Jesus having saved you by what he did on the cross and the Father having allowed you to get right with him and the whole business of the Trinity and the fact that they are immanent one on the other meant that there was no availability of you to get business just with Jesus and have nothing to do with the Spirit. I know some of you have heard my illustrations before but this is a very good one. At the University of Queensland when I was a student and I've got two degrees from the UQ and I went there a number of part-time years to get them but in that time there were others from different denominations who go to the campus and really work on people to become a part of their little group. And what was difficult about that was because they'd come and they often worked on the people who'd just come to Christ and I found that some of the people that I was leading to Christ or wanting to lead to Christ they would pounce on them metaphorically and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and they'd come and say now you not only need to have Jesus as your Saviour you need to receive the Holy Spirit. Well one day I met with one of these workers and there were some who actually did it as a full-time thing for a few years and they'd work on the people and they were committed they were keen I admired their enthusiasm and I was talking to this fellow and I said now look I was walking up there's a big ring road that goes around the University and this ring road goes past the student blocks and goes past the psychology spot where I used to work where I used to go and study and the cafeteria and then there's a book shop and it goes around past the science thing rooms and I said well someone's coming up from the car park and I meet him down here just before he gets to the union block and tell him about Jesus and how he died for them this is my illustration in discussion with this charismatic guy and I said and I tell him how he can come to Christ and become a Christian he wants to he lets me lead him in a prayer to come to Jesus and he thanks me and shakes my hand and keeps walking but what he doesn't know is that you're getting ready to pounce on people too and you're around maybe near the book shop I can't remember exactly how I ran the illustration but around near the book shop and you come out and say have you received the Holy Spirit and he says no no no I don't know anything about that and you tell him well you need the Holy Spirit you better ask the Holy Spirit to come into you and the person now so he tries to receive the Holy Spirit with a prayer for you and you tell him well you need the Holy Spirit you better ask the Holy Spirit and he looks up and probably doesn't know what to think of all this and keeps on walking and he gets around to the mathematics building which is further around and what you've got to do is run across the green of the courtyard and get to where the mathematics building is because you've only left the job partially done two thirds and you better get around near the mathematics building and then when he comes by there you jump out and say oh now you need to get the whole trinity and you've got Jesus and you've got the Holy Spirit but how you can get right with the Father I'll tell you how and at that moment he got my illustration it's stupid to divide up the trinity God doesn't make himself available that you can section off the members Father Son and Holy Spirit you come to God if tonight you've never actually come to Christ and you get some friend of yours or me to lead you in a prayer and we lead you in a prayer and the person who can deal with you is also the Son he's the one that died for you and the person that you will get as a free gift on coming to the Son as Peter announced in the first Christian sermon of the day of Pentecost if you repent and you believe in Jesus Christ you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and you get all three there's no such business of separating out the trinity and if you read your Bible if you want to go home and check up on what I said tonight read the first few chapters of the book of Ephesians and they'll tell you about how you need to have the Holy Spirit to strengthen your heart to be able to take the indwelling of Christ you don't become a Christian because you let Christ in and then have to go and sketch the Holy Spirit but as you come to God and do business because of Christ's death the forgiveness you get and the change in your heart is actually affected by the Holy Spirit and if he did not strengthen your heart you would not be able to take the moral impact of the precious Lord Jesus Christ who's now King of Kings and Lord of Lords coming into you and explode you apart you need the Holy Spirit to strengthen your hearts read the book of Ephesians how it talks about this he strengthens you that you can take the indwelling of Christ now we're talking here about the relation between the Trinity but just also as it is with the Father Son and Holy Spirit that you've got to get down straight but also you need to understand that when you come and receive Christ as Saviour when you come and trust God to forgive you when you come to receive the Holy Spirit in your life when you come to receive the Holy Spirit in that moment listen to me that's the beginning but it's not the end and what this morning my sermon was about was about the process of sanctification which follows and this verse is about that and he's talking to people who've come to Christ and he says in verse 14 look at it there to this he called you through the Gospel the Gospel message calls people to come to God through Christ he calls them to go on and be worked on that eventually you'll end up in heaven to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and so there's a process in between and it's called sanctification you actually could understand all the different denominations and what they tell people to do the whole idea in the more Catholic sort of approach to things where they have special orders where people take oaths to be in the order clothes and the actual idea when they start being in those orders is they have to have a consecration but you know that in the Greek if you look up all the places in the Bible where it talks about being consecrated it's the same word hagiasmos for our sanctification sometimes translated as holiness sometimes consecration sometimes sanctification but it's the process which we also participate in and it's a faith matter of like we looked at from the Romans verses that just as before you had you wallowed in sin and that was natural now by faith you say I am going to be holy and you make a decision to work at and sometimes it's hard for a while if you've got old habits but it's our participation in sanctification which these passages are calling us to join now I went through and got all these different verses I'll be wearing out my welcome if I go too long don't say anything and agree but let's go to another verse and 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2 now this verse is talking about Peter's writing to the exiles in the dispersion it's the part of the land where many Jewish people have gone and they're a long way away from Jerusalem and they heard the gospel as someone took the gospel there and they become Christians and they've never seen Jesus they weren't around when he walked around they didn't hear of him straight away when when people started becoming Christians but eventually the gospel got to them and here they are and according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ in one stage Peter says him you've never seen yet you believe in these ones who are living in the distance I guess if he had a chance somehow or other to have come to Australia and he met us I guess that would be a group of Aborigines but if he could somehow come to our time he'd have to say the same thing because we didn't see Jesus walking around at Palestine and we are people that nonetheless have come to know him and we are people that are sprinkling with his blood some of the aspects that make you a Christian is the death of Jesus and how he shed his blood for our sins that's how you got in the door whether you lived at a distance place or whether you were in Palestine it's all the same may grace and peace be multiplied to you now that's in verse 2 we're going to look and see I don't know whether I told you or not but down in verses is it 22 let me see what I said 22 and 20 to 25 1 Peter 1 22 to 25 there we are having purified your souls that's another word by the way that or the verbal form of it is used to having purified your souls your sanctification is where your soul is getting purified by your obedience to the truth and part of the process that happens is that as you read the scriptures God speaks to you and sometimes it can give you a fright it's a bit like that singer who was a really good singer with a guitar and I'll get his name in a moment and he lived with his girlfriend and they both became Christians but as they read the scriptures and went on and he was someone who used to come around he came to Sydney and it was his singing which was the first follow-up lesson my wife Michelle when she'd become a Christian got what's going on to this fellow's concert Keith Green is his name and he died in a plane crash and his wife has written a book about it Melody is his wife and anyway this fellow found out after he and she had become Christians that in fact they were living without recognising the truth of marriage so they decided to go back to being engaged even though you know it was just his way of being right how he'd done it all wrong before having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again not of perishable seed but of imperishable the seed of the word of God through the living and abiding word of God and so sometimes as you're being sanctified is brought to light as you read the scriptures that you've actually been doing a lot of things that are not exactly what God would want and so you put those things right you don't get all thingy about it and look down at yourself you just put right what the scripture tells you and that's a part of your sanctification but it's being called being purified your souls being purified now what's interesting is that it talks about the imperishable seed and if you look down at a lower verse down the bottom of my page have you got this to and this word is the word the good news that was preached to you and so the good news and the summary of the central message of the bible which is the gospel the summary of that in scripture is the good news and if you want to have the power of God to help you get sanctified one you need the spirit you need to follow his promptings to seek to do the things he leads you to to make decisions to seek to be sanctified to become more holy but also recognize that it's all a part of the general message as to how salvation is yours and that general message about salvation which will have you finish in heaven where your sanctification will be made complete and you'll be then put on demonstration as a model of what Jesus' salvation can do for the rest of the world to see we're going to be his trophies one day and that good news that runs through the scriptures along with the work of the spirit are the two aspects or powerful things that help your sanctification and to get to know what that gospel is and to really rehearse it and as I mentioned this morning in my own conversion I gave this little gospel of John which my brother and I read together Christian and I we read it through in three days as kids and couldn't put it down I was amazed because I being brought up in a Christian family I got made to study the Bible I went to Sunday school and I won prizes for being in the Sunday school and because I had to do it but when I came to Christ and they gave us the gospel of John I wasn't doing anything because someone told me I had to I loved it I have not stopped loving the scriptures ever since this word is the good news that was preached to you in the gospel the more you internalize it it something does something to your mind it Christianizes your subconscious and if you join together the work of the Holy Spirit call on the Holy Spirit to work in you you don't need a special experience of the Holy Spirit but you can call on him take me deeper and if you read any of the people who have been used of God and missions and things like that and you get their biographies and as they write about there nearly always is a time when they realize that the Bible was an important book and God somehow brought someone to show them if you begin to internalize this word it gets a grip of you and the people that I've had influenced me like my father tell me the stories of him I hardly recognize the person he described because he had become ten times sweeter in his old age but you know he used to memorize he used to memorize it in Greek like the whole book of Thessalonians in Greek he knew off by heart and he memorized the scriptures and if you memorize the scriptures and you call on the Holy Spirit he will do a work in you of sanctification of this purification and he will make you someone and that's actually the time most people discover gifts turning up it's not charismatic because someone prayed on you and you fell over backwards or something like that it's because as you get let the Holy Spirit begin to move in you what he'll do is bring to the surface the particularity of God's purpose for you which is the same thing as he gives you a gift for and he leads you to your ministry and these are things that are fruits of your sanctification and the people who run missions know all this very well they know that if you get a lot of recruits to come out to the mission field and they haven't had time to get sanctified they just have a big problem out in the mission field and they squabble with each other and they eventually have to come home having been frustrated by what they couldn't get to happen but if you let them have time to be sanctified and when they come to the mission field it's a process that's been ongoing and is working then they find all the resources to make the mission work work and it is the good news preached to you the message the entire message not just come to Jesus and become a Christian not the simple little sketch of gospel but the gospel as explained by the whole of the Bible if you let that get a grip on you along with the work of the Holy Spirit your sanctification your which always has other words that is used your holiness will all be advanced and you'll find that Christian life works for you thank you for listening and especially if you came this morning because I've given you two doses now of the same medicine jar and on sanctification let's pray Heavenly Father I thank you for the the fact of your word and I give you praise Heavenly Father for how your word is so powerful the Bible says that the word is powerful converting soul and Lord I'd always thought of that converting bit to be just getting people to make the decisions and it's only been more in recent years I've realised that that's only a part of it that the scriptures are powerful and doing the other parts of salvation which includes the sanctification includes the bringing to full surrender it includes that sense of finding one's place in the will of God that you might know that true and perfect will of God Romans 12 says Lord I covet that that should happen to the young adults particularly of our church and that there will be a cohort of persons from our church who because of the sanctification that's happened to them through the word of God and the work of the Spirit that they will be a force in the world we pray this in Jesus name and for his sake Amen.