Sermon Audio
February 28, 2016 Third Sunday in Lent
The Inheritance
Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 20-25, Psalm 25, Ephesians 5:1-14, St. Luke 11:14-28
C. S. Lewis said that when he was a boy he sometimes had a toothache. When he did, he knew what he should do. If he told his mother, she would give him an aspirin and he would feel better. But he never did, at least not until the pain reached a point that he couldn’t take it any longer.
The reason he didn’t was that he knew what else his mother would do. The next morning, she would haul him to the dentist’s office. The dentist would take care of the problem, but he wouldn’t stop there. He would poke around checking out his entire mouth and might very well go to work on other teeth that weren’t even hurting yet. And that meant more pain.
Lewis said God operates in much the same way. You go to him with one area of your life that you know needs improvement and the next thing you know God is poking all these other sore spots to let you know they need work, too.
And so we come to our epistle lesson for today, which begins, “Therefore, be imitators of God . . .” I’d say that’s fairly direct: Be imitators of God. But is it clear?
It is if we recognize that to be an imitator of God is to be an imitator of Jesus, God’s own Son. Imitating Him is a process called sanctification, and it is vital that believers in Jesus Christ understand it.
In the first sense of the word, called “definitive sanctification,” God acts alone. Scripture tells us that whoever God justifies, He sanctifies. When we whom God selected come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, we are justified. That means God declares us righteous, as though we had never sinned.
Everyone who is justified is simultaneously sanctified. In this “definitive sanctification,” that means each of us is set apart. That’s the basic meaning of sanctification. God sets us apart for His own purpose.
The Bible uses the illustration of clay pots. Most are made for a common purpose, like holding oil. But a few are set apart for holy use, such as holding the blood of sacrificial animals that is sprinkled on the altar of God.
The first purpose is common, or profane; the second is sacred, or holy. When a Christian is justified, or declared righteous, he is also sanctified, or set apart for God’s holy purpose.
That Christian is set apart as an individual but also as part of a group. In Old Testament times, that group was the nation of Israel, called out by God for His special possession to make His glory known in all the earth.
Since the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord and the coming of the Holy Spirit, that group is the church, all who come to saving faith in Christ. The first is called a nation of priests, the second a priesthood of believers.
Notice the word “priest.” A priest is someone who represents man to God. Whenever we offer up prayers to God for our unsaved relatives and friends, our country or other countries – any group that includes unbelievers – we are representing those people to God and fulfilling our priestly function. We are set apart to do just that.
The second sense of sanctification is called “progressive sanctification.” God does the heavy lifting here, too, but he demands our involvement in this ongoing labor.
When we are commanded to “be imitators of God,” this is the sanctification in view. And this is what we must understand because it is here that we must participate with God.
I fear the church has lost much of its understanding of progressive sanctification. Many Christians don’t seem to grasp that ongoing change is required in them. How can we show the world God’s glory if we act like unbelievers – and every statistical measure indicates that we do act just like unbelievers?
After coming to saving faith in Christ, we should be different people from those we were before. In the early church, people understood as much. The great theologian and church father Augustine involved himself in other philosophies. When he admitted their inadequacy and saw the truth of the Bible, he knew that if he was going to commit his life to Christ real change would be required of him, especially involving his womanizing.
He prayed, “God, make me good, but not yet.” That may not be the ideal attitude but it was honest: He wasn’t going to claim to be a Christian if he wasn’t prepared to act like one. And soon he was prepared.
Sin doesn’t turn us loose. Scripture is clear on this point as well. John Newton, the hard-living Scottish sea captain and slave trader who accepted Christ and then wrote “Amazing Grace,” said, “I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was.”
We’re supposed to change. Well, now, Preacher, you ask, just how holy do you want me to be? Here’s the answer to that question from 1 Peter 1:16: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
It means, “Be as holy as God is.” Oh, but that’s impossible. And of course it is impossible for us to be as holy as God, just as it’s impossible for us to be omniscient or omnipotent or omnipresent. But we can be sanctified.
And we must be sanctified. God never relaxes His standard of holiness for His sin-stained creatures because to condone even the smallest scrap of sin would be to deny His nature.
We are commanded to perfect holiness but we are trapped in this sinful flesh. It seems we’ve been ordered to do the impossible. Would God command an eagle to become a chicken? The Scottish preacher John MacNeill told of the farmer who trapped a young eagle and put restraints on it.
He put it out in the yard and it was soon pecking around in the dirt with the chickens. A shepherd came down from the mountains, where the eagles lived, and saw this eagle scratching around like a chicken. He asked the farmer to release it and he agreed.
After the restraints were removed, however, the eagle continued to act like a chicken. Finally, the shepherd set the eagle on a high stone wall. He remembered who he was and flew away in a spiral, heading for the heights where eagles soar.
When God saved us, he took our restraints off. Those restraints were our sin. The fall had robbed us of our free will and allowed man to choose sin only. When God redeemed us on the cross, He restored our freedom. Sin no longer has mastery over us. That’s the meaning of holiness.
We are no longer constrained to peck in the dirt like chickens. We can live as we were created to be, soaring with eagles. It doesn’t mean we never make a mistake, it means we live in the beauty of God’s holiness, no longer slaves to sin. God did that for us, so He would get the glory. Therefore, be imitators of God.
We must be sanctified. And the final goal of our sanctification is the glory of God.
When we wonder what makes it worth all the trouble to strive for holiness, we need only think back to God’s purpose in creation. If we do that, we’ll stay focused on our Christian walk far better than most of us do now.
God created the world, and in particular man, to gain glory for Himself. And by our sanctification, he tells us here in Ephesians, he gains great glory. Here’s Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are created for good works, which reveal our holiness and God’s glory.
That holiness is no mysterious feeling, not some mystical speculation or ecstatic fervor. It is thinking God’s thoughts and doing God’s will. God lays it all out for us in his Holy Word. I’m reminded of a song: trust and obey, for there’s no other way.
One especially imposing obstacle in our pathway to sanctification is covetousness. One who covets cannot be an imitator of God. Paul is emphatic on that point.
The original sin arose from covetousness. Adam and Eve lusted after something that was not theirs by right but belonged to God. That something was knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to imitate God, but not as dear children who look up to and emulate their parents. Instead, they became the “sons of disobedience” of v. 6. They wanted to claim for themselves what belonged to God alone.
Dear children – or, in some translations, beloved children -- submit willingly to the will of their parents. This is not the submission of the concentration camp but of the nursery: I want to be like you because you are worthy of praise and emulation.
John Piper wrote that God’s “aim is not to constrain man’s submission by an act of raw authority; His aim is to ravish our affections with irresistible displays of glory.” This submission is filled with gladness. Piper added, “No gladness in the subject, no glory to the King.”
Adam and Eve didn’t want knowledge of good and evil for its own sake. Their real goal was to steal the glory that belonged to God, or at least to grab a share. This is how Satan tempted them in Genesis 3:5: “For God knows that when you eat of it (the fruit of the forbidden tree) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God had made them rulers of His creation but they were not content.
They coveted what God had so they could receive glory from the rest of the creation on a par with His. Their idea of imitating God was becoming counterfeit gods.
That was their plan for stealing his glory. Rather than submitting with gladness as beloved children they coveted the possession of the Father as disobedient sons. Imitating God means participating with him in our sanctification, not hijacking his glory.
Now, look at the idolatry involved. Adam and Eve lost interest in who God was and worshipped instead what He had. They had access to the tree of life but that fruit wasn’t enough for them. They wanted to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
They did, and they traded life for death. Instead of relating to God as the One who gave them life, they focused on something He had that they found appealing. Harold Hoehner wrote, “When one covets a particular thing, that becomes the center of his or her life and is worshipped in place of the creator.” Adam and Eve were worshipping not God but the thing they coveted, his glory.
When He made the ultimate sacrifice on the cross, our Lord not only saved us, He also offered the ultimate lesson in sanctification. Remember, the Son is the perfect image of the Father. To be like God is to be like Christ, to be like Christ is to be like God. To imitate Christ is to live the selfless life, to live for others and not for ourselves.
Look at the contrast Paul has set up. Covetousness is the way to destruction. This is the way of fallen man, the sons of disobedience. Selflessness is the way of our Lord and Savior and of those who would follow him.
Do you want what other men have or what God says is worth having? Are you not satisfied with what God has given you? If we walk in love we will seek the best for those God puts in our lives and not for ourselves. We will love our neighbors as ourselves.
When we become faithful imitators of Christ, as beloved children, we can become grown-up examples for others to imitate, as Paul did. We mustn’t wait until we’re perfect to become models and mentors to others. On the other hand, we mustn’t fake it, either. Someone will check up.
A missionary in India was teaching the Bible to a group of Hindu ladies. Halfway through the lesson, one of the women got up and walked out. A short time later, she came back and listened more intently than ever. At the close of the hour the teacher inquired, "Why did you leave the meeting? Weren’t you interested?"
"Oh yes," the Hindu lady replied. "I was so impressed with what you had to say about Christ that I went out to ask your driver whether you really lived the way you talked. When he said you did, I hurried back so I wouldn’t miss out on anything."
When we imitate God as beloved children, we become worthy of imitation. Amen.
The Inheritance
Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 20-25, Psalm 25, Ephesians 5:1-14, St. Luke 11:14-28
C. S. Lewis said that when he was a boy he sometimes had a toothache. When he did, he knew what he should do. If he told his mother, she would give him an aspirin and he would feel better. But he never did, at least not until the pain reached a point that he couldn’t take it any longer.
The reason he didn’t was that he knew what else his mother would do. The next morning, she would haul him to the dentist’s office. The dentist would take care of the problem, but he wouldn’t stop there. He would poke around checking out his entire mouth and might very well go to work on other teeth that weren’t even hurting yet. And that meant more pain.
Lewis said God operates in much the same way. You go to him with one area of your life that you know needs improvement and the next thing you know God is poking all these other sore spots to let you know they need work, too.
And so we come to our epistle lesson for today, which begins, “Therefore, be imitators of God . . .” I’d say that’s fairly direct: Be imitators of God. But is it clear?
It is if we recognize that to be an imitator of God is to be an imitator of Jesus, God’s own Son. Imitating Him is a process called sanctification, and it is vital that believers in Jesus Christ understand it.
In the first sense of the word, called “definitive sanctification,” God acts alone. Scripture tells us that whoever God justifies, He sanctifies. When we whom God selected come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, we are justified. That means God declares us righteous, as though we had never sinned.
Everyone who is justified is simultaneously sanctified. In this “definitive sanctification,” that means each of us is set apart. That’s the basic meaning of sanctification. God sets us apart for His own purpose.
The Bible uses the illustration of clay pots. Most are made for a common purpose, like holding oil. But a few are set apart for holy use, such as holding the blood of sacrificial animals that is sprinkled on the altar of God.
The first purpose is common, or profane; the second is sacred, or holy. When a Christian is justified, or declared righteous, he is also sanctified, or set apart for God’s holy purpose.
That Christian is set apart as an individual but also as part of a group. In Old Testament times, that group was the nation of Israel, called out by God for His special possession to make His glory known in all the earth.
Since the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord and the coming of the Holy Spirit, that group is the church, all who come to saving faith in Christ. The first is called a nation of priests, the second a priesthood of believers.
Notice the word “priest.” A priest is someone who represents man to God. Whenever we offer up prayers to God for our unsaved relatives and friends, our country or other countries – any group that includes unbelievers – we are representing those people to God and fulfilling our priestly function. We are set apart to do just that.
The second sense of sanctification is called “progressive sanctification.” God does the heavy lifting here, too, but he demands our involvement in this ongoing labor.
When we are commanded to “be imitators of God,” this is the sanctification in view. And this is what we must understand because it is here that we must participate with God.
I fear the church has lost much of its understanding of progressive sanctification. Many Christians don’t seem to grasp that ongoing change is required in them. How can we show the world God’s glory if we act like unbelievers – and every statistical measure indicates that we do act just like unbelievers?
After coming to saving faith in Christ, we should be different people from those we were before. In the early church, people understood as much. The great theologian and church father Augustine involved himself in other philosophies. When he admitted their inadequacy and saw the truth of the Bible, he knew that if he was going to commit his life to Christ real change would be required of him, especially involving his womanizing.
He prayed, “God, make me good, but not yet.” That may not be the ideal attitude but it was honest: He wasn’t going to claim to be a Christian if he wasn’t prepared to act like one. And soon he was prepared.
Sin doesn’t turn us loose. Scripture is clear on this point as well. John Newton, the hard-living Scottish sea captain and slave trader who accepted Christ and then wrote “Amazing Grace,” said, “I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was.”
We’re supposed to change. Well, now, Preacher, you ask, just how holy do you want me to be? Here’s the answer to that question from 1 Peter 1:16: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
It means, “Be as holy as God is.” Oh, but that’s impossible. And of course it is impossible for us to be as holy as God, just as it’s impossible for us to be omniscient or omnipotent or omnipresent. But we can be sanctified.
And we must be sanctified. God never relaxes His standard of holiness for His sin-stained creatures because to condone even the smallest scrap of sin would be to deny His nature.
We are commanded to perfect holiness but we are trapped in this sinful flesh. It seems we’ve been ordered to do the impossible. Would God command an eagle to become a chicken? The Scottish preacher John MacNeill told of the farmer who trapped a young eagle and put restraints on it.
He put it out in the yard and it was soon pecking around in the dirt with the chickens. A shepherd came down from the mountains, where the eagles lived, and saw this eagle scratching around like a chicken. He asked the farmer to release it and he agreed.
After the restraints were removed, however, the eagle continued to act like a chicken. Finally, the shepherd set the eagle on a high stone wall. He remembered who he was and flew away in a spiral, heading for the heights where eagles soar.
When God saved us, he took our restraints off. Those restraints were our sin. The fall had robbed us of our free will and allowed man to choose sin only. When God redeemed us on the cross, He restored our freedom. Sin no longer has mastery over us. That’s the meaning of holiness.
We are no longer constrained to peck in the dirt like chickens. We can live as we were created to be, soaring with eagles. It doesn’t mean we never make a mistake, it means we live in the beauty of God’s holiness, no longer slaves to sin. God did that for us, so He would get the glory. Therefore, be imitators of God.
We must be sanctified. And the final goal of our sanctification is the glory of God.
When we wonder what makes it worth all the trouble to strive for holiness, we need only think back to God’s purpose in creation. If we do that, we’ll stay focused on our Christian walk far better than most of us do now.
God created the world, and in particular man, to gain glory for Himself. And by our sanctification, he tells us here in Ephesians, he gains great glory. Here’s Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are created for good works, which reveal our holiness and God’s glory.
That holiness is no mysterious feeling, not some mystical speculation or ecstatic fervor. It is thinking God’s thoughts and doing God’s will. God lays it all out for us in his Holy Word. I’m reminded of a song: trust and obey, for there’s no other way.
One especially imposing obstacle in our pathway to sanctification is covetousness. One who covets cannot be an imitator of God. Paul is emphatic on that point.
The original sin arose from covetousness. Adam and Eve lusted after something that was not theirs by right but belonged to God. That something was knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to imitate God, but not as dear children who look up to and emulate their parents. Instead, they became the “sons of disobedience” of v. 6. They wanted to claim for themselves what belonged to God alone.
Dear children – or, in some translations, beloved children -- submit willingly to the will of their parents. This is not the submission of the concentration camp but of the nursery: I want to be like you because you are worthy of praise and emulation.
John Piper wrote that God’s “aim is not to constrain man’s submission by an act of raw authority; His aim is to ravish our affections with irresistible displays of glory.” This submission is filled with gladness. Piper added, “No gladness in the subject, no glory to the King.”
Adam and Eve didn’t want knowledge of good and evil for its own sake. Their real goal was to steal the glory that belonged to God, or at least to grab a share. This is how Satan tempted them in Genesis 3:5: “For God knows that when you eat of it (the fruit of the forbidden tree) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God had made them rulers of His creation but they were not content.
They coveted what God had so they could receive glory from the rest of the creation on a par with His. Their idea of imitating God was becoming counterfeit gods.
That was their plan for stealing his glory. Rather than submitting with gladness as beloved children they coveted the possession of the Father as disobedient sons. Imitating God means participating with him in our sanctification, not hijacking his glory.
Now, look at the idolatry involved. Adam and Eve lost interest in who God was and worshipped instead what He had. They had access to the tree of life but that fruit wasn’t enough for them. They wanted to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
They did, and they traded life for death. Instead of relating to God as the One who gave them life, they focused on something He had that they found appealing. Harold Hoehner wrote, “When one covets a particular thing, that becomes the center of his or her life and is worshipped in place of the creator.” Adam and Eve were worshipping not God but the thing they coveted, his glory.
When He made the ultimate sacrifice on the cross, our Lord not only saved us, He also offered the ultimate lesson in sanctification. Remember, the Son is the perfect image of the Father. To be like God is to be like Christ, to be like Christ is to be like God. To imitate Christ is to live the selfless life, to live for others and not for ourselves.
Look at the contrast Paul has set up. Covetousness is the way to destruction. This is the way of fallen man, the sons of disobedience. Selflessness is the way of our Lord and Savior and of those who would follow him.
Do you want what other men have or what God says is worth having? Are you not satisfied with what God has given you? If we walk in love we will seek the best for those God puts in our lives and not for ourselves. We will love our neighbors as ourselves.
When we become faithful imitators of Christ, as beloved children, we can become grown-up examples for others to imitate, as Paul did. We mustn’t wait until we’re perfect to become models and mentors to others. On the other hand, we mustn’t fake it, either. Someone will check up.
A missionary in India was teaching the Bible to a group of Hindu ladies. Halfway through the lesson, one of the women got up and walked out. A short time later, she came back and listened more intently than ever. At the close of the hour the teacher inquired, "Why did you leave the meeting? Weren’t you interested?"
"Oh yes," the Hindu lady replied. "I was so impressed with what you had to say about Christ that I went out to ask your driver whether you really lived the way you talked. When he said you did, I hurried back so I wouldn’t miss out on anything."
When we imitate God as beloved children, we become worthy of imitation. Amen.