Everyone else, as the kids are being dismissed, please take out a copy of the truth. God's word is truth. That's our verse this morning, John 17, 17, page 903. Last week was keeping through sanctifying. This week is sanctifying through the truth. I want to consider the what, the why, this morning. Sanctify them, Christ praise. What is that? Why does he pray that? How does it happen? But first, I need a hook, a hook. I love preaching. I also love talking about preaching in my preaching. It's sort of a breaking the fourth wall sort of thing. You know what that means, breaking the fourth wall? Have you heard that term? It's a theater term. I was first introduced to it by watching Who needs cartoons? You need the actions going on, they be doing their thing, they're watching, and then Bugs Bunny would turn to the screen and start to talk to you. That's breaking the fourth wall. I was being addressed by Bugs Bunny himself. Saved by the Bell, a ridiculously early, silly 90s teenage sitcom. Zack Morris would turn to the screen and he would talk to me. He's breaking the fourth wall. So in theater, you have three walls, you have the side, the back, the side, and then you have the fourth, The audience can see through it and see what's going on here. The actors up here aren't supposed to be able to see through it and act like there's anything out there. So here's this fourth wall. It's when the actors turn to address the audience that's breaking the fourth wall. It's an intentional violating of the accepted convention of the medium. Now, I'm preaching, I'm always looking at you, right, and I'm always addressing you and speaking to you, but the preaching medium, the convention is that I open up the Bible, I read it, and then I do the best that I can to explain it to you and apply it to your life. I'm just supposed to proclaim God's Word. But sometimes, I like to interrupt that and talk about preaching itself, right? Not just to preach, but to break convention, draw your attention to the preaching, and, hey, what am I doing, and why am I doing it, and what's going on here? I think I need to think more on why exactly I do that, but I think that I use it sort of like an illustration. It's an attempt to connect better. It's an attempt to grab your attention, which is what a hook Does. So many preaching books open up and tell me that I'm supposed to open with a hook. What is it? A hook is something that grabs your attention. It's something that reels you in. It's something that makes you want to listen at the beginning to what is to come. So here's your hook this morning. Holiness. That's your hook. That's it. Are you grabbed? Are you reeled in? Can you wait to see what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do for 50 minutes talking about holiness. Well, here's your book. Hebrews 12.14. Strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. That's a hook. Psalm 16.11. Remember, have you memorized it? You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. full joy, forever pleasure. Anthony just led us through Matthew 25 in Sunday School, and I was struck again, talking about the final judgment, the end of the text, and then Anthony excellently went through just how often, just in Matthew, Jesus talks about hell. Jesus has just done this three times in the course of this Olivet Discourse. This morning, he said, depart from me, You curse it into the eternal fire. These will go away into eternal punishment. Pastor Mike's text last week ended with cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. My text two weeks ago ended saying the master of the wicked servant will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Repetition. death, misery, forever punishment. That's why holiness should be a hook. That's why you should want to listen. We are dealing with something that is most important, that is maybe treated today almost as if it is least important. But without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Sanctification is about holiness. praise for our holiness. Let us hear and heed His words of eternal life. We're only looking at one verse this morning. It's too important, and my goal is simply for us to understand what sanctification is, why it's so important, not just for your eternal life, but for your present life now, and then how this important sanctification thing happens. So, five points. understood and most important. You are positionally sanctified. I introduced that last week. We need to explain what that means and try to apply it. So you are positionally sanctified. Second, I want you to catch the theme here. You are positionally sanctified by the word. Third, you are being progressively sanctified. No surprise here. Fourth, you are being progressively And finally, nothing brilliant here, you are in desperate need of the word. That's one of the main things that I want to communicate this morning. I know we think that we understand that and we think that we talk about that a lot, but our use of that word and our understanding and appreciation of that word do not match what we say that we believe about that word. We are in desperate need of the word through which the Lord makes us holy. So let's read that word. John 17, 17, but you need to pay extra close attention. This is what Christ prays for you. This is what God wants to say to you today. Jesus prays, sanctify in the truth. Your word is truth. Now let us pray for this time. Father, thank you for your word. Father, how little we have probably engaged with you through your Word this week. Father, we have the opportunity now to engage with you through your Word. Father, I have the privilege now of leading that engagement with you through that Word. Father, please help me. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe that apart from you, we can do nothing. Apart from you, I can do nothing. we will accomplish nothing of spiritual or eternal value here apart from you working through your word. So we ask that you would do that. Father, help us to understand holiness. Help us to see the goodness and the beauty and the glory of holiness. Father, I pray that you would help our hearts to desire that holiness just a little bit more. as a result of this time this morning. I pray that you would make us a little bit more holy as a result of this time, as you were through your living and active work. Father, show us Christ. Father, do for us in this time what we cannot do for ourselves. In Jesus' name, amen. Point number one, you are positionally sanctified. I introduced this last week. Jesus prays, sanctify them. In this last and longest Moments before his betrayal, his suffering, his death, the Son of God goes to the Father God, prays for himself, prays for his disciples, and prays for his church, for us, for you, and me. And it is clear what he prays here. He prays for your sanctification. Again, he can't just be praying for his disciples here. He's gonna tell us in verse 20 that he's not just praying for them, he's praying for all of us, and that must include verse 17. Remember, prayers reveal priorities. What do you pray for? Have you been stepping back at all and paying attention to and tracking what you pray for? Because what you pray for most reveals what you care for most. And Christ here prays not for our comfort, for our ease, not that we would feel good about ourselves, not our earthly success and advance, not that whatever that circumstance is in your life is driving you crazy, that you would change that circumstance. No, he prays for our sanctification. And so we opened last week with 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, 4, this is the will of God, your sanctification. The perfectly good God of perfect knowledge, who must then will wills and wants your sanctification. Is that what we will and want and pursue? You should want and will for yourself what God wants and wills for you. This is no optional, secondary thing. As we just saw at the beginning of the sermon, you're a cook. This is absolutely necessary and absolutely good. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. So what is it? What is sanctification? We began to define it last week. We've already said that sanctification is about holiness. Without it, we won't see the Lord. The Lord, Yahweh, who is Isaiah 6.3, holy, holy, holy. We saw last week that holiness is set-apartness. God is separate from. He is other. He is distinct. God is not like us. He is Creator, we are creature, and holiness refers to all that sets Him apart from everything else. Holiness is all that makes God, God. But, frequently throughout Scripture, it's used to refer specifically to God's moral purity and perfection, His ethical goodness. He is good, morally good. He is holy. And he tells us very clearly, 1 Peter 1.16, quoting Leviticus 11.44, you shall be holy, for I am holy. Why did God save you? What are you for? There are many answers, good answers to these questions, but we almost entirely ignore one of the most important answers. It's in Ephesians 1. We love Ephesians 1 because we love the doctrines of grace. We love God's absolute sovereignty. We love God's sovereign election. But what's the end? What's the purpose of these things? Ephesians 1, 3, and 4. Listen to this. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ. If you can just believe this one part, all your problems are solved. He's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. That's not even why we're here. even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, why, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. You are for holiness. God chooses and He saves His people that they would be holy. Are you holy? And how does that happen? Sanctification is how that happens. But we drew an important distinction last week that we need to recover and reemphasize. Scripture speaks of sanctification in two ways. It is how we structured our sermon. Positional sanctification and progressive sanctification. We think almost exclusively of the second. But we desperately need to recover the first. Listen to Chapter 13, paragraph 1 of our Statement of Faith. Baptist confession of faith on sanctification. Listen to this. It says, those who are united to Christ, there's union with Christ, those who are united to Christ and affectionately called and regenerated, there's a new birth, they have a new heart and a new spirit created in them through the power of Christ's death and resurrection. Catch what it says next. It says, they are also The dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed. The various evil desires that arise from it are more and more weakened. At the same time, those called and regenerated are more and more enlivened and enabled in all saving graces so that they practice true holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. As always, the Westminster Shorter Catechism is succinctly helpful here. What is sanctification? Question 35. Sanctification is the work of God's free grace by which our whole person is made new in the image of God and we are made more and more able to become dead to sin and alive to righteousness. But you notice how both of those assume these two understandings of sanctification. When the 1689 says we are further sanctified, it assumes that we have been first sanctified. When it talks about us being progressively sanctified, it's assuming our positional sanctification. And so biblically, we almost talk all about progressive sanctification biblically. All the sanctification words, the hagias, holy words, they are used far more often to refer to our positional sanctification than our progressive sanctification. Remember 1 Corinthians 1-2, Paul writes to the Church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. The grammar there, the sanctified, is the perfect tense to those who have already been sanctified. It's obnoxious, but the Greek perfect tense is often explained as a past completed action that has ongoing effects, ongoing continual effects on the present and the future. So they already have been sanctified in the past. I don't know if sanctification has much to say about their present. They are saints. based on something that has happened to them. They are something now, saints, holy ones. I briefly mentioned 1 Corinthians 6.11 last week. In verse 9 we should know that the unrighteous, the not holy, will not inherit the kingdom of God. It's the same as our Hebrews verse. Paul continues, Don't be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." Bad news. Good news. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. You were sanctified, Paul says, sanctified before the justified. We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. This is what is called the positional sanctification of the believer. This is a once for nothing in us or anything that we have done based entirely on Christ and what He has done for us. We are saints. We are sanctified. We are set apart entirely by the grace of God. And I'm emphasizing this again because I believe that we have largely lost this. We've talked a lot about identity lately and activity. Remember, it is out of identity that activity flows. It is from our understanding in deeds. We, all of us, have an assumed identity out of which we act, whether we are conscious of it or not. Who are you? We've been seeing that in Christ, you are His. You are God's. You are a child of God the Father, entirely by His grace. And it is that foundational identity from which is meant to flow everything else, every thought, every word, every deed. Well, now let's try and start to add this identity to that. You are a child of God, the Father, John 17, 11, the Holy Father, like father, like son, or daughter. You are sanctified. You are holy in Christ. And you are possibly in great need of remembering and realizing this truth. Why are so many saints so sad? Why are so many of us, to be honest, why are so many of us so sad? Why are we often so sad? And how would you answer that question? And how would you counsel them? Think on that in order to come back to it and tackle it at the end. But it starts, this whole thing starts with realizing the truth of who we truly are God's law says you must be holy, for I am holy. God's gospel says, here's how. I'm going to go about making that a reality for you, my precious chosen child. How does he do that? Well, point number two, you are positionally sanctified by the Word. I will be brief here. I'm gonna try to just build my case as we drive toward point five and our desperate dependence on the word for everything. I'm desperately concerned to convince you how little you use the word and how much you need it, how little I use the word and how much I need it. So Jesus prays again there, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. Now, we are about to see, in our next point, that Jesus is primarily praying for our progressive sanctification there. And the means of that will also be the Word. But the means of our positional sanctification is very much the Word as well. First off, you know by now that the first Word of the Book is that Jesus, the Christ, the Son, is the Word. He was in the beginning. He was with God, and He was God. And we are far too familiar and far too bored with the truth that the Son is revealed to us as the Word of God. This is at the very heart of what sets God apart from all others. Many times in the Old Testament it is the muteness of all the other so-called gods, the false gods of the nations, that proves their futility and unreality. Psalm 115, their idols are silver and gold. the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak." And remember, in contrast to that, the first thing that we learn about God, the first thing that we see God doing, is speaking. Let there be light, and there was. God speaks, and reality leaps into existence. Psalm 33, 6, By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, Hebrews 1, 3, Jesus the Son upholds the universe by the Word of His power. God's Word is and does everything. God's Word is and how He does everything. I made the case months ago that God's speaking is God's doing. God's Word is how God works. He speaks and it is. powerful word it is. What a living and active word it is. We must recover the wonder of words. We're so consumed by images now. We've been so conditioned by our phones and social media that we are increasingly becoming unimpressed with words. We're increasingly becoming even incapable of sustaining thought on words, and an appreciation of that. That cannot be the case for Christians. We cannot let that become the case for us. And so that's why we have to start here with the one true God, being the God who speaks and the God who creates us in His image and likeness to speak. Words are what set us apart from the rest of creation in reflection of our God of words. We cannot lose our ability and facility for words. But we cannot do a whole biblical theology of words here. The point is that it is God's word that creates and sustains physical life, so also it is God's word that creates and sustains spiritual life. We know John 3, you must be born again. Well, how does that happen? We know it's Christ, we know it's his work, it's everything that he accomplishes for us, but how does that get applied to us? How does that get credited to our account? How are we born again? 1 Peter 1.23. You have been born again through the living and abiding Word of God. 2 Timothy 3.15, the sacred writings, the words, are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Romans 10.17, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. See, the Word is how God works. And so, if you are in Christ, if you are a saint, if you have been set apart, by grace you have been saved, through faith, it is not your own doing, then it has happened through the Word. John 6, 63, it is the Spirit who gives life. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. So the Spirit of the God of life is the one who gives to us the life that we need, and the Spirit works through the Word of life. Spiritually alive, it happened through these words. You must know and appreciate that it is these very words, the Bible, that you are hopefully holding in your hands, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that called you out, that gave you life, that set you apart. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. It is through this Word that God fulfills that holiness a reality for us and in us. What a wonderful word this thing must be. Is our relationship and our response to God's Word in any way reflective of what it is and what it has done for you? What if you were dead, deserving of all the stuff we talked about in the beginning, an eternity of unimaginable suffering in hell, and you don't get any of that? And instead you get the eternal opposite of that. You get the life. You get the full joy. You get the forever pleasure. And that has been administered to you freely and graciously through God's living and active Word. How would you approach that Word? How would you use that Word if you really believe that we are saved through it? You have been positionally sanctified by the Word of God. Number three, let's keep moving. You are being progressively sanctified. Now, this is what we generally think of when we think of sanctification. The second part of the shorter catechism question says that it is the work in which we are made more and more able to become dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Sanctification is the holiness process. It is the ongoing, lifelong process of growing in godliness. What is God up to? You should always be asking yourself that question. I love asking myself that question. I love asking myself it when something really stupid and frustrating happens. Why did that happen? I believe that God is sovereign. He is sovereign over that thing. Why did that happen? I don't know. I don't know specifically what He is up to in each It's awful for me to step back and just think and remind myself that He is up to something. But we do know the big picture. Because of the kindness of God in the revelation of His Word, we do always know what He is ultimately up to, why He chose us, why He saved us. We start with this from Ephesians 1-4. He did all this that we should be holy and blameless before Him. None of these do matter. The garbage truck, always at night. Camped out in front of my house for over 30 minutes. And it has air brakes. And they just pump those air brakes every two minutes. They're like three in the morning. I don't know what time it was. All right, I'm interested in that. I'm going to sleep. They decided to park in front of my house and pump the brakes. Hot. Fell back to sleep. And I think Nora had a nosebleed or something. Like four in the morning. And then I had to get up again. And I go again. Why did that happen again? I don't know. But I do know that in some way, God is going to use these tiny little things to sanctify me, to draw out the sin and the evil that remains within me, the impatience and the frustration and the anger, to show me my sin, to lead me to revenge, and to lean upon Him and to look to Him. I don't know why the barber struck stop in front of my house, but I know that God is sovereign, and I know that He is in control, and I know that He is always working to bring about and create the holiness of His people. What does that look like? What would it really look like to be holy? Romans 8, 29. This is what God is doing. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. The predestined part is really important. We love that part. That's great. We should love that part. We can't miss the second part. by which God does that. He sets us apart, by grace, for Himself, for holiness, and then He begins the long and often painstaking process of making us like Himself, making us holy. This is what Jesus is praying for. Sanctify that. Make them holy. Make them like me. And here's why it's so important for us to understand what holiness really is, and how good it is, and how holiness is happiness. Because we probably still somewhat hear the word holy and think of something like holier-than-thou, or we think stuffy and uppity and boring. We still tend to think primarily of holiness in terms of negation. That is not this. It's not doing that. That's why we've got to start by first seeing Holy. Holy. That Christ is holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. And then to look to Christ as revealing God's Word, as revealing the Gospels, and see the beauty and the glory of who He is, and understand that that's what God is doing. That's who God is making us like. Him. He is so good. He does all things well. He is perfectly loving. in all his interactions with others. Isn't that amazing? The most difficult thing in life is people? People are difficult. Interacting well and lovingly with people is difficult. Can you imagine someone perfectly interacting with difficult people their entire life? I'm constantly struck by Titus 3, verse 2. challenge you with Titus 3 verse 2 first listen to Titus 2 verse 13 after the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ he gave himself for us to redeem us Paul continues, Titus 2.14, Jesus redeems us, again there's a purpose, to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. So there's the positional, he purifies us, there's the purpose, progressive sanctification, zealous for good works, that's holiness. But what will this holiness look like lived out? Listen to Titus 3.2, really listen to it, remind about it. Think about your week in light of this verse. Think about your week. Titus 32. Remind them to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. God help us. That's holiness. That's our high calling. That's what we are called to do, yes, but for now we're here. that Christ actually did that. And He actually lived that perfectly. Doesn't that sound wonderful? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be like that? Or to be in a relationship with people like that? Quarreling is the worst. We were made for relationship. That's why there is no pain like relationship pain. Wouldn't it be wonderful for there to be no quarreling? Isn't it so painful when you hear others speak evil words Okay. And so convicting when you realize how much you actually speak evil words of others when they are not around. Why do we panic sometimes when we send a text to the wrong person? Because we're jerks. And we know that we sometimes say evil things about people that we wouldn't actually want to say to them. Right? We feel, we panic, we're like, oh no, did I say something mean? What if there was none of that? What about gentleness? It's a great, like, of gentleness these days. Not gentleness is increasingly being elevated as a virtue in some segments of our culture, in our Christian culture. Much less, just what I'm going to address, showing perfect courtesy toward all people, is that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, perfect and holy And since it is from all those things, quarreling, speaking evil, all of that, it's from all of that that flows conflict, and from that is what flows anger and anxiety and frustration and disappointment and discouragement. Without those things, perfectly separate from those things, Jesus the Christ was a man of perfect peace, integrity, wholeness, calm, quiet, settled spirit, even with everything ranging around, even with everything at once. Doesn't that sound wonderful? I'm trying to paint a picture of what holiness actually is. How frustrating that this quiet and unsettled and conflicted spirit is. Holiness will be none of that. Holiness is Christ. And that's what God is doing for and in and through us. He is making us like Jesus is making us holy. Sanctification is the process by which He does that. Sanctification is God's will for you. And sanctification is good for you. Eternally good for you. Presently good for you. You should want nothing more than to be holy. For to be holy is to be like the perfect God. To be holy by grace is to be with the God again of life, full joy, and forever pleasure. This is what Jesus is praying for. And in Christ, you are being progressively sanctified. Now, how does that actually happen? Point number four. You know it. You are being progressively sanctified by the Word. sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth." That means that the means, how God sanctifies, how He is making us holy like Jesus, is scripture. It's the word of God. God's word is what works holiness in God's people. What can I say here? I wrote that, and then we were singing out from a foundation, and I realized in verse 1, What more can he say than to you he has said? There's nothing else that he can tell us. He has promised us himself. He has promised us eternity. He has promised us joy and bliss and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place. What more can he say? What more can I say? Is there any truth that we know more and do less than that it is through the knowledge of God's word? and application of it to our lives, that we grow in both holiness and happiness. What can I do? How can I encourage you to do something with this? Two basic observations that will hopefully help us a little bit. Number one, look at the verse. Don't miss that Jesus is praying to the Father. Notice that Jesus is addressing the Father, and he is asking the Father to do something. Father, you sanctify them. You're not gonna get anywhere in sanctification apart from this. This is first and foundation. Hear me out here, hear me here. Sanctification is God's work. Sanctification is God's work. And we know that that must be true because the whole of our salvation is God's work. This is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. And as sanctification is a key part of salvation, sanctification, too, must be God's work, a grace and gift of God. This is why it's so helpful and brilliant and biblical that the Shorter Catechism begins its definition saying that sanctification is a work of God's free grace. We often miss that part. Sanctification is a work of God's free grace. Good news. God always accomplishes His work. He always completes that which He begins. That's why you so need to know and rehearse Philippians 1-6 constantly. He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion. He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion. Derek and I were talking about that Friday. It's stuck in my brain. Grace, sovereign, initiating grace. We know that He begins the work. We know that the work is to conform us into the image of His Son, to make us holy, like Him and with Him. And so now we here know that He will accomplish this work. He positionally sanctified us by grace. He is progressively sanctifying us by grace. He will perfectly sanctify us by grace. In the Christian life, In the great conflict and war against the world, Satan, and self, you need to know that this is God's work and He will complete it. That truth has the potential to provide you great peace and contentment and joy if you can learn to use it. So it's God's work. Key first observation. Second observation. From the who to the how. Notice this. Sanctify them in the truth. I think it's significant that Jesus doesn't just say, sanctify them in the word. That's truth. And he's going to explain and clarify what the truth is by saying your word is truth. But he couldn't just say that. He doesn't just say that. He says, sanctify them in the truth. Why? I couldn't find a way to write about that. I think it's the context. I believe it's the context. I think it's because Jesus has just been talking about the word. And He has just been praying that the Father would keep us from the evil one, Satan, who Jesus has told us back in 844 is a liar and the father of lies. So God, the Holy Father, Satan, the father of lies. And just as we've seen that the first thing we see God doing is speaking, the first thing we see Satan doing is lying. which is speaking lies. As he comes in and begins to twist God's truth and cast doubt on the goodness of God's word, did God really say, you will not children of God, you will be like God? And this is what Satan has been doing ever since. This is entirely what some form of this is what Satan is always doing, what he's doing today, and this is what we need. Jesus prays that we will be sanctified in the truth, because that which is false, lies, are the foundation and root of evil, godlessness, and unholiness. And we have all of us swallowed the lies. Ephesians 2 says that we all followed the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. in His opening of our eyes to the truth of God, revealed in the word of God, that He sets us free from our slavery and misery. This is why Jesus teaches. Jesus came to save. Yes, of course. But His ministry was not a healing ministry. It was a teaching ministry. And the healing ministry confirmed the truth of the teaching ministry. Remember up in verse 13, it says, He speaks to them that they may have joy. There's words producing joy. Back in 1511, he speaks to them that his joy may be in them. That's because he is speaking the truth to them. He is revealing God to them, the God of goodness and glory, the God who made this world to work in a certain way, the God who made us to work in relationship with him, and it is truth, the truth revealed in God's words that exposes the lies for what they are, and begins to convince and compel us to see the goodness and the beauty of God's will and work through His word. We're going to talk more about this next week, but we need to see for now that we are sanctified progressively by and in and through the truth. And it is in His word that we find that truth. And all of that means Let's hustle up and apply point number five. You and I are in desperate need of the Word. Again, there's nothing brilliant here. But there are few things we more know and less do than live as if everything that we need is actually found in and through God's Word. As if we actually believe that holiness and happiness and joy and peace and contentment and satisfaction are found in and through God's Word. Now, I bet if we went around this room right now, each and every one of you up here would be standing right here in front of everyone, and we went through and say, all right, let's now take an account and let's share honestly about our time and experience of engaging with God through His Word this week. I think we'd all be a little embarrassed. I think we'd all be like, ah, no thank you. I'm gonna sit. I'm gonna sit right here. 168 hours a week. One out of 168, to be honest, is basically one mile, sorry. One out of 168 probably isn't going to cut it. The statistics always vary, but it seems that the going number is about eight hours a day that the average American engages with digital media of some sort, with the average American spending two and a half hours a day on social media. is going to have a hard time competing with 17 and a half hours of flashy and compelling and impressive social media as part of 56 hours of flashy and impressive digital media. Media that, by the way, is image-based and is warping and wiring your brain to be unable to give sustained attention to anything. You're reading a lot about the brain this week for some reason. brain scientists. Neurologists. They regularly say, neurons that fire together, wire together. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Every time you're engaging with something, and getting your brain to something, and having your brain do something, you're laying down We're training our brain to work and to operate in one specific way, and criminal and handicapped for being able to operate in the main way that God's Word asks us to operate by. We're going to talk about that next week. Your engagement with these things is making it harder and harder to engage with the truth, which is God's power to sanctify and save. It's just a really dangerous situation that we find ourselves in. And that's being reflected in how miserable and anxious everyone is. All the mental health metrics are skyrocketing, and it's affecting the churches as well. Why is that? I asked earlier, why are so many Christians so sad? Did you come up with an answer? Some of these hard circumstances, some of these terrible things that have happened to us, and all those are legitimate and true things that we need to do. But I think that this has to at least be a key part of it for some of us. I think our abandonment and disengagement from God's word has got to at least be a part of it. And part of the reason for that has got to be our obsession and engagement with digital and especially social media. Social media makes people sad. All the studies are increasingly demonstrating this. And yet we keep increasingly using it. Disclaimer up front, I know that I'm a miserable comforter. I'm working on it. I keep that in mind with my clubs. But I was re-reading some John Newton this week, and I was again struck by something that I had mentioned before. It was in reading Newton that I first began to realize that Christians in the past counseled and encouraged differently than do Christians in the present. Someone has died. husband and multiple kids, terrible track, all these things, you know, I just started to notice that Newton speaks to them completely differently than we speak to each other in such circumstances these days. And even in the course of that, Newton keeps coming back, he keeps talking about that monster self, that monster self, and our need to be weaned from that self, and he keeps talking about the Word, and providence, and how God does that, and our desperate need for our focus to be redirected away from the self. And I've been reading a lot of Lloyd-Jones lately, courtesy of Lydia. It's clear that even 70 years ago, they were counseling differently than we do today. But still in the 50s, Lloyd-Jones was beginning to express his concern that he says, he started to notice post-war, mid-50s era in England. Again, it's a weird time. But he started to notice that, he says, people are being far too interested in their own moods and states and circumstances. He says that people are increasingly far too introspective and self-concerned, and how almost all the counsel and encouragement that is given and received is focused on the self. Have you ever just stepped back and paid attention and noticed how much we all just talk all about ourselves, and how much of our conversation is about our circumstances? Here's been the really striking thing to me, how little of our conversation. how little of our counsel is about Christ, about this truth, and how it applies to our often difficult circumstances. What if that's the very problem? What if that's why many of us are having such a hard time? It's a culture-wide pandemic. Never has a culture been more safe, more comfortable, more affluent, more medicated, more counseled, and yet never has a culture been more miserable. And it's in the Church, too. The very way that we are approaching the normal struggle of the sinful human condition, life in a fallen world with a sinful heart, which is very difficult, but maybe the way that we're going about that is the very problem. We're so caught up in this ridiculous culture and consumed by it and influenced by it through the media, and we're so distracted and exhausted and confused because all of it is focused about us. It's all constantly directing our attention back to self. But it doesn't work. And the evidence is screaming that it doesn't work. Personal experience tells us that it doesn't work. And I know that, at least for me, all of my problems are rooted in my amazing ability to be self-focused and self-constrained. with eyes entirely on me and what I perceive to be my problems and my circumstances and my feelings about those things. And again, I'm not exaggerating. All of my problems are ultimately rooted there and are ultimately rooted in me, in sin and suffering. Which is why I so desperately need John 17, 17 and God's word and why I so desperately need to begin to seek my comfort and my help notice that the New Testament goes about its counsel and encouragement completely differently than we do today. This is why we spend so much time laying out the distinction between positional sanctification and progressive sanctification. This is why we're talking about the truth. This is why we're laying out doctrine and the teaching of God's Word, the truth. The whole argument of the epistles when it comes to the Christian life is basically, hey, realize who you are in Christ. live that out and live in light of that. See what God has done for you, entirely by grace in Christ. Look at what He has declared about you. Look at who He is making you into. Look back at the cross. Look presently at the Spirit in you. Look forward to eternity and now be who you are. Romans 6 is one of the best examples of this. We have been united to Christ. In a death like his, we will be united in a resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified, that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died to sin has been set free of sin." That's positional sanctification. All that is true about us. All that has happened for us. And in so Paul applies. And he counsels. And he resorts. Romans 6, 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You see what he's saying? Realize who you are. You are dead to sin. You are alive to God. Now, seek, by the grace of God, independence upon His Word through the Spirit in prayer. Now start living like it. We started as we did because I want you to see that it's your positional sanctification that is the basis of your progressive sanctification. John Murray says it like this, there's nothing more relevant to your progressive sanctification, your growth in godliness, than the reckoning of yourself dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ. There's nothing more important than realizing who you already are positionally. in Christ. I said a moment ago that sanctification is God's work, and it absolutely is. But we also need to be very clear that that doesn't then mean that we are called to do nothing. No, we're called to work out. He's the author. We are the actor. It's Philippians 2.12, work out your own salvation with fear and truly. For it is God who works in you, both the will And we do that through the Word, in complete dependence on the Word, with eyes fixed and minds filled with the truths of that Word, believing that our actual good is found in the Word. And do we really know and believe some of these facts? I'll just give you one, because you know it. But do we know it? Relations to your point. This is true of you. Paul says, been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. There's an opposite battle over right there is what we need. How far below our station are most of us living? Christ, the Son of God, loves us and gave himself up for us. Not only that, he's in us. And this is why sanctification is ultimately direct you back to yourself, which is the very problem. The solution to all of our problems is to be so focused on and absorbed by someone else, something outside, bigger and better than ourselves, someone so glorious and good and gracious that without even realizing it, we begin to forget all about ourselves. That's what I desperately believe. There is such freedom and peace and self-forgetfulness and Christ-focus. And it happens entirely by the Spirit, through the Word. As the truth of that Word again and again gets in us and takes a root and fills our minds and reminds us of who He is and who we are as a result. is ultimately to be so enraptured by the beauty and the glory of Christ that we will forget ourselves and will not have time to even think about ourselves at all. You know where he got that? He stole that from John. Even Louis Jones was stealing from other people. No one just got it from Paul. But remember the element, it's the sight of the glory of Christ that is the universal remedy and cure for all illnesses. But isn't it so awkward and weird sometimes to talk about the beauty in the world that does the very thing that is our hope and our help and our happiness? Why is that? Man, I gotta stop. I was having a hard time organizing my thoughts this week. But I think it's in part because this is so big and so important, and yet we all have such a hard time with it. I am tired of, and I want to be done with, a faith that doesn't seem to really do anything or help anyone, including myself. I've got to either be all in or all out. And I know that there's no hope out, so I've got to stop not giving myself to this truth that saves and sanctifies entirely and with all my energy. And I honestly believe that this is what you need as well. You need your time. Not filled with media and social media and that which is worthless. You need your mind not filled with those things. Get off the screen. Parents, please get your kids off the screen. I love Jeremiah 2 too. They went after worthlessness and became worthless. Maybe so much of our struggle, feelings of worthlessness and meaninglessness and sadness is because we are filling so much of our time with that which is worthless because we're filling ourselves with so much of ourselves and focusing ourselves so much on ourselves. The biblical and wonderful solution to all this is an all-consuming and all-satisfying Christ focus. So I encourage you, what can you do this week to pursue the means that God uses to sanctify you and make you holy? And I'm not telling you just to read the Bible, not to sing it. You need so much more than that. I'm telling you that you need a mind filled with the truth of God. You need a mind focused on being wired by it and not something else. I'm telling you to start your day and end your day with the truth. I told you recently that I can't put my feet on the ground. I wake up every morning grumpy, every single morning. I cannot get out of bed without reminding myself. Try reminding yourself something related to this week. I am positionally sanctified in Christ. I am a saint. God is today about my progressive sanctification. He is going to be working today to make me holy in everything that I am to do today. Every thought and word and deed is to be in light of these truths. I am His. I am for Him. He is good. And He is working for my good. And I am going to live like Him today. We are going to practice taking God's truth and talking to yourself with it and applying it to your heart and to your heart. Begin to take practical, intentional steps to face all that you face and interpret all that you experience through the lens of who you are and what you are for in Christ. Church, God loves you more than you love yourself. God cares for you better than you can care for yourself. And He is going to bring about a good that is infinitely better than you could bring about for yourself. Why not try and trust Him? Do it by faith through his word. You are desperately dependent on it. Let's seek to live like it together as God's people. You are positionally sanctified, you are being progressively sanctified, and you will be perfectly sanctified. Let's pray that God would help us to do more and more of that in us and help us to live in light of these realities. Bow, bow with me. Father, please help us. It is your word, not mine. that can work and create these realities. Father, we are in desperate need of your living and active truth, applied by your Holy Spirit, to work on our lives. Father, forgive me for how obsessed and concerned and focused on the self that I am. Forgive anyone else in here who struggles with that same self-problem. Father, please set us free from that monster of self. Father, please convince us that our happiness and our joy is truly found in looking away from ourselves and looking to you, and looking to Christ, and having our vision filled with a sight of his beauty, his glory, and goodness. Father, we often see and understand so little. Open our eyes, Father, show us Jesus Christ. Help us see his kindness to us in the cross. Help us to see his power in how he is protected and preserved and saved keeping us even today. Father, please help us to love Jesus more. We ask this in His name. Amen.