Tag: sanctification

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Sanctification – Ezekiel 37:23-28

This passage may seem familiar – it’s a reiteration of themes first brought up earlier in the book, but with further developments.

He begins with the assertion that the people of Israel will no longer be defiled by idols – not only representations of pagan deities, but anything that our hearts are likely to put ahead of God, even good things. God promises to, in the fullness of time, remove these temptations from the people of Israel. Likewise, they will be rescued from the backsliding that was the hallmark of their relationship with God since Sinai.

Ezekiel is telling us that the sanctification of God goes beyond the elimination of sin but rather retools things all the way into our minds and hearts.

God makes a covenant promise to bring about this sanctification, as well as to unify the people of Israel and to drive the land to increase its abundance.

But we have hints here that this means more than material blessings – a promise of an everlasting covenant, God’s sanctuary among His people forever. On this side of Christ we see how this covenant is fulfilled in His life, death and resurrection, as well as His body, the Church. We are given all these promises and filled up with all manner of good things. Not all of that itself is fully realized, but one day it will be.

The discussion of the sanctuary among His people is a new addition the Ezekiel’s discussion here, a call back to Moses and the creation of the tabernacle, as well as to the temple of Solomon. These buildings were pictures of God’s presence with His people, but also discrete connection points for His presence and the center of His worship. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, each believer becomes that connection point and that center of worship. And that worship goes far beyond singing, but to all that we do that express the worth of God. His sanctuary is in the midst of us and in the midst of our day to day reality, and He is deserving of all that reality bending towards Him.

This sanctuary picture is the polar opposite of the idolatry from earlier in the passage. Those things we put ahead of God are the things we are called to lay down at the feet of Jesus. A heart of worship, yielding everything in our lives to Him – that is our response to these promises and to their fulfillment in Christ.

But even that response is the work of God, because as Ezekiel states here, He is “the Lord who sanctifies Israel.” Peter puts it this way – “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

– Sermon Notes, Jeff Sickles, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, December 26, 2021

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Sanctifying Encouragement – Ephesians 4:29-32

The theme of this last part of the chapter is simply “Words are powerful.” Much like in the book of James, which compares words to a fire that consumes, Paul here warns against “corrupting talk.”

Some versions say “unwholesome” “evil speech” or “hateful speech.” The term in Greek is “sapros” which means to be rotten like old foods or rotted like old wood. In the gospels, Jesus uses it to describe bad fruit versus good fruit.

We can look at this concept of words being like rotted timbers and tie it to Paul’s discussion of his words “building up”, and tie that back to the way Paul describes the church as being built up into a holy temple for the Lord.

We as a people need encouragement. We need it because life is hard. We need it because every discouraging word and thought hits with many times the weight of the positive. We need it because we are lonely, sometimes because we really are alone and isolated and sometimes because we are surrounded by people but without real connection. We need it because we are all fighting sin every day.

In Hebrews 3:13, we’re told to encourage one another daily. As we try to walk worthy of the calling, much of that is our responsibility – the discipline of taking off the old and putting on the new. But at the same time, we know it is Christ in us who started the good work of sanctification and will complete it. It’s easy to see sanctification as these two things, but here Paul talks about another key component of sanctification – one another, living in community, living in encouragement. Part of our sanctification comes from one another as we use our powerful words to build each other up.

And when we use those words to do the opposite, Paul tells us it grieves Holy Spirit. This is a call back to Isaiah 63, one of the rare instances of the term Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. “Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them.”

The Holy Spirit is not a force, but a person. He rejoices and he is grieved, specifically when one person he is in and is regenerating harms another with their words.

Instead, we must allow the Holy Spirit to “put away” the bitterness, wrath and slander that we tend toward, and to instead build within us kindness and compassion. But not only to those we love, those we are in community with, but those who have wronged us. Christians are those who have been forgiven, and have so learned to forgive others.

We are warned, in fact, that God will not forgive us unless we forgive others. So let us commit to building the kind of community that God has already made possible. A community based on trust, generosity, encouragement, and blessing to the glory of God.

This is the community Jesus died and rose again to create. If you want a piece of this community, all that is asked is that you repent and believe.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 22, 2020

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Not of Works, but For Them – Ephesians – 2:8-10

This is one of the most beautiful passages in the New Testament, but it is also calling us to something. It’s confrontational, it gets into your face.

There is a gift being offered to us, freely, but it’s a stark choice. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters,” says Jesus in Matthew.

We need to understand that God is not like us. Evil cannot stand in His presence. He is a righteous judge and we are a criminal standing before him. But he offers us life instead of death, freedom instead of bondage.

But that offer is, as Paul writes here, a gift, with nothing that we can do to earn or deserve it. We have no way to point to our own deeds or our own goodness. If we are going to boast, Paul writes elsewhere, we should boast about Christ.

We receive the gift by faith, and that faith is impossible outside of the revelation of God. One of our jobs is bringing that revelation – Paul writes in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

But when we respond in faith, we are re-created by the creator and united with Christ. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, we must be reborn to enter the kingdom of God.

And what that rebirth means is explained in verse 10. You can’t detach verses 8 & 9 with their beautiful message of grace and faith from verse 10. We can’t use the truth of grace as an excuse to do whatever we want. We are a new creation, “God’s workmanship,” specifically outfitted to do good works. Salvation is by faith alone, but faith itself is never alone.

In Matthew 7, Jesus tells us that we will be assessed by the fruit, the result, of Christ in us. Good works do not lead to Christianity, but Christianity leads to good works, says Martin Lloyd Jones.

We can’t mistake this for legalism, but we also can’t miss the truth that we are called to works. But the works prepared for us are not for ourselves, but for others and for Christ.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 6, 2020