Well, probably I should say first of all
that there is nobody in the room who
more regrets that I am standing here rather
than sitting where you are sitting than I
do, and you will understand, some of you
who know of my long-standing friendship with
Walt Chantry, that I was much anticipating his
preaching from several passages to us over the
period of this conference.
I did give him a final opportunity just
as I came in to see whether he
really wanted to give these addresses now or
not, but sadly he has declined to do
that.
We have been friends for 30 years now,
almost exactly just over 30 years.
I drove him when I was a young
man and he was already a man of
international fame and distinction, and he kindly since
then has taken me under his wing, and
I rather suspect that part of his motivation
just a few minutes ago in declining just
to come up and give these addresses is
that he's sitting back there thinking, I wonder
what the boy will make of these themes
over these next two days.
Well, I want to try and honor the
burden that Walt Chantry has had in the
way in which he's divided the theme for
us, and also to honor the passages that
he would have preached to us from, although
I suspect I will neither rise to what
he would have done nor duplicate what he
would have done.
So we're going to read this evening in
the letter of Paul to Titus, the letter
of Paul to Titus chapter 2, and we'll
begin to read there in verse 1, and
then we'll move on to the obviously significant
verses in verse 10 through 15, Titus chapter
2, addressed of course to someone who is
being exhorted in the work of the gospel
as we ourselves are.
As for you, teach what accords with sound
doctrine, teach what accords with sound doctrine, and
there follows a series of specific exhortations about
that teaching in connection with older men, verse
2, older women, verse 3, and then Paul
comes later on to a word that will
especially be addressed to those who are in
particular need.
He speaks to those who are slaves, verse
9, to be submissive to their masters, to
be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but
showing all good faith, so that in everything
they may adorn the doctrine of God our
Savior.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing
salvation for all people, training us to renounce
ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self
-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present
age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing
of the glory of our great God and
Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us
to redeem us from all lawlessness and to
purify for himself a people for his own
possession who are zealous for good works.
Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all
authority, let no one disregard you.
The burden of these three messages on holiness,
which Mark Johnson and I are sharing together,
is a burden that stretches, as you would
see from the program, from the eternal purposes
of God right into the way in which
the Christian believer is a person who walks
in the power not of the flesh, but
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The division itself, I hope you find intriguing,
and we owe that division to Walt Chantry.
Holiness as the purpose of the Father and
the purchase of the Son this evening.
Holiness abiding in Christ tomorrow.
Holiness walking in the Spirit.
Perhaps I should begin with the homework.
The homework is to reflect before we come
to the addresses that are to follow, to
reflect on the question of whether if you
had three addresses on holiness, would you have
divided the addresses in this fashion?
Would your instinct have been to include these
three themes, the purpose of the Father and
the purchase of the Son, abiding in Christ,
walking in the Spirit?
I leave the question dangling in the air
for a reason that, God willing, I will
return to tomorrow.
But two important things about this theme of
holiness strike us, I think, immediately.
The first, as Ian Hamilton reminded us right
at the beginning of the conference in the
famous words of Robert Murray McChane, my people's
greatest need is...
Well, would you have finished the sentence the
same way?
My people's greatest need is the improvement of
my preaching.
My people's greatest need is the improvement of
my pastoral skills.
My people's greatest need is for the church
to get larger.
Or my people's greatest need is my personal
holiness.
We all come, I'm sure, conscious of the
fact that this is one of the areas
of our greatest weakness.
And yet, in many ways, we are conscious
that if we're in the gospel ministry at
all, as ministers or as elders or as
students for the gospel ministry, an excellent level
of holiness is one of the supreme qualifications
for gospel ministry.
And indeed, we're all conscious as we look
at the qualifications for a call to the
eldership in the New Testament, that there really
is only one of them that deals with
excellence in spiritual gifting that we should be,
in some sense and in various contexts, apt
to teach.
But the dominant emphasis is on this, that
there is an excellence of holiness and sanctification
in our lives that marks us out as
an authentic Christian believer.
That enables our people, as I sometimes say,
to point to our ministers and elders when
a stranger asks a question, what does it
really mean to have been saved by his
precious blood?
And to be able to say, follow that
man around for two or three days.
And then you will come and be able
to tell me what it means to be
saved by his precious blood.
And as we were reminded this afternoon, we
inwardly tend to move back a little at
the very thought that we should be exemplars
of holy Christian living.
And yet, says the Apostle Paul to Timothy
in this instance, all men should see your
progress.
All men should see your progress.
That's a text that has haunted me over
the years, personally, and in my relationships with
other ministers, most of my best friends are
gospel ministers, and I'm sure they ask about
me as I ask about them.
Are all men seeing your progress in this
kind of godliness?
Is that what stands out about your ministry
over the years?
That your people are able to say, one
thing I can tell you about my minister
is that he has manifestly progressed in godliness
since the day he came to minister among
us.
And so there could be few things more
important for us to consider in a conference
of ministers and elders like this than the
theme of holiness, especially our own holiness.
The other thing, by way of encouragement to
us, that we should note, as it were,
in passing as we move into the heart
of our thinking about holiness is this.
It's the marvelous way in which the great
gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in
indicatives of grace that are able to sustain
the weight of those imperatives.
The apostles do not make the mistake that's
often made in Christian ministry, where the indicatives
are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel
preaching.
So often in our preaching, our indicatives are
not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, gracious
enough, to sustain the power of the imperatives.
And so our teaching on holiness sometimes becomes
a whip or a rod to beat our
people's backs because we've looked at the New
Testament and that's all we ourselves have seen.
We've seen our own failure and we've seen
the imperatives to holiness and we've really lost
sight of the great indicatives of the gospel
that sustain those imperatives.
And as we reflect on a passage like
this, the grace of God appearing in Jesus
Christ, our Lord, and the fulfillment of the
commands of the law of God, as clearly
Paul here has in view, one of the
things that we constantly need to remember is
the way in which these imperatives for holiness
are grounded so frequently in the New Testament,
in the glory of God the Trinity.
And the apostles do this in different ways.
Let us remember how Simon Peter does this
in the opening of 1 Peter, that we've
been chosen by God the Father through the
sanctification of the Spirit for the sprinkling of
the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Or how in his great statement to the
Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians, we give thanks to
God for you because God has chosen you
as the first fruits to be saved through
sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the
truth so that you may obtain the glory
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that woven as it were into the
very warp and woof of the New Testament's
exposition of what it means for us to
be holy is this great groundwork that the
self-existent thrice holy triune God has in
himself, by himself, and for himself committed himself
in all three persons of his being to
bringing about the holiness or sanctification of his
own people.
That this is the Father's purpose, that this
is the Son's purchase, that this is the
Spirit's ministry.
Indeed, in an extraordinary way, the Apostle Paul
virtually says that is how he understands his
own gospel ministry.
Remember how he puts it in Romans chapter
15, when he says that he is a
minister of Christ Jesus because of the grace
given to him by God, that he might
present the Gentiles as an offering that is
acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
So they are tucked away in that part
of Romans that even Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones
never got to.
Paul gives to us this exquisite statement about
what it means to be a gospel minister.
It means to be caught up and swept
along in the purposes of God the Trinity,
in the outworking of God's election, in the
outworking of the Son's sacrificing, in the outworking
of the Spirit's operations of grace, and all
of this has in view.
This is God's will for you, says the
Apostle, even your sanctification.
And it is to this that we are
directed when we speak in particular about the
way in which our holiness has been planned
in the eternal purposes of the Father.
Now that isn't explicit in Paul's statement in
Titus, but it's certainly evident in the way
in which he speaks about the grace of
God appearing, the grace of God has appeared
to produce holiness in us.
It's obviously in a way a reference to
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself the
grace of God.
But behind that and in that, it's a
reference to the way in which our holiness
is not an accident of our present experience,
but the fruit of the divine purpose and
the fruit of the divine planning.
He has chosen us, says Paul to the
Thessalonians, that we might be holy.
Indeed, he says, you remember, to the Colossians,
that is the sure evidence of divine election.
Put on then, he says, Colossians 2.12,
as those whom God the Father has chosen.
And he gives this marvelous description of what
a living Calvinist looks like.
Somebody who believes that he has been chosen
by God and he's marked by compassion and
kindness and humility and meekness and patience.
Would God that it were true that Calvinists
look like this.
But if you don't look like this, you're
not a Calvinist.
Because the elect of God put on compassion,
kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
They bear with one another.
Now, what's that rooted in?
It's rooted, says the apostle, in the eternal
counsels of the ever blessed God.
And of course, the most marvelous expression, at
least it seems to me the most marvelous
expression of this.
His most glorious words in Romans 8 at
28 and 29.
Those whom he predestined, he also called and
so on.
We know all things work together for good
for those who are called according to his
purpose, his divine and eternal purpose.
What is it he has predestined us to
be conformed to the likeness of his son?
Now that's what holiness is.
And it is of supreme importance that we
as gospel ministers and elders understand that is
what holiness is.
No more and no less than being like
the Lord Jesus Christ.
No more and no less than being like
the Lord Jesus Christ.
It may be possible to of all kinds
of abilities in the Christian ministry.
It may be possible to have all kinds
of acute theological understanding in the Christian ministry.
It may be possible to be intellectually and
affectionately thrilled by the power and glory of
the gospel.
But if I'm not like the Lord Jesus
Christ, then I am not holy.
And Paul is saying this is what God
the Father has set his heart on.
This is his eternal purpose.
So that negatively we can say that rather
than being a problem or an obstacle to
holiness, God's divine election grounds our holiness.
The interesting thing I think is that the
only people who find election a problem to
holiness is the people who don't believe in
election.
John Owen puts this I think very well.
Volume three, I think it's page five, nine,
eight.
And if I remember it's near the top
of the page, but certainly Owen says this
somewhere.
He says, you know, I've met many Christian
believers who have struggled with the question.
Am I really among the elect?
But I've never met a Christian who is
conscious that he or she is among the
elect who has struggled with the question, has
God destined me to be holy?
Because he's chosen me.
And he's chosen me to be his.
And he's chosen me to be like himself.
And because I am a poor and miserable
and wretched sinner in and of myself.
And because in and of myself, even when
touched by God's sovereign grace, I retain these
powerful elements of indwelling sin that make me
slothful and lethargic.
Were it not for God's eternal purpose and
the way in which he's put his hand
upon my life, I would fall short of
that holiness to which he has called me.
So rather than a problem, God's plan is
a necessity.
And rather than a hindrance, God's plan is
a powerful inducement.
He has destined me to be like his
son.
If I can put it this way, God
has seen his image, his portrait of himself
fractured and fragmented in the fall.
He has seen that image become distorted and
rebellion has set in.
And he is not content any more than
you would be content if you were the
owner of a great and marvelously valuable portrait
of somebody you loved.
You would not be content when the police
officer came to the door and said, we
have good news for you, sir.
We have apprehended the thief.
God dealing with Satan is simply a means
to an end.
You would say to the police officer, but
have you got my portrait back?
That's what the father wants.
He wants his portrait.
And so his glorious purposes in eternity.
I was reading in the inflight magazine on
the way here today, United Airlines.
If you happen to travel United Airlines, there's
an article in there that has a section
on some golf course that the Australian golfer
Greg Norman has created.
And, and the way they are marketing it
is that when you get onto this golf
course, it's almost as though you feel it
was, it was just there waiting to be
a golf course.
And Greg Norman in the blog says, Michelangelo
would look into a great piece of marble
and say, I saw the angel inside and
I'm going to get rid of everything that
isn't angel.
And he said, can you believe it?
Well, if you love golf, you can believe
it.
It was the same with this piece of
land.
I saw there was a golf course inside.
And so I just got rid of everything
that wasn't golf course.
Well, that's trivial and humorous, but that's actually
what God is about in his eternal purpose.
He's getting rid of everything that isn't like
his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, because in
us, he wants his portrait back and he
will bend all history to that destiny.
Isn't it interesting that from Romans 8, 29,
where God says, this is his purpose to
transform us into the likeness of his son,
that he would be the first born, the
preeminent one of many brothers.
Then he goes on in that relentless march
of his sovereign purposes that tell us at
the end of the day that nobody and
nothing can ever stand the way in what
God purposes to do.
And how telling it is, isn't it at
the end of Romans 8, that the interrogatives
are all personal rather than impersonal.
As though Paul were, as it were, challenging
the thief of God's image, the evil one,
the serpent, and saying, who can stand in
the way of my blessing of my people?
Who can bring any charge against them?
Who can bring them down?
Who can destroy them?
If God is for us, and this is
what he is for in his being for
us, then we know that the good to
which he is bending all history and providence
and every circumstance in our lives, the good
at which he is aiming in the midst
of all the pain, in the midst of
all the chiseling, he is at the end
of the day doing only one thing.
He's getting rid of everything in the entire
universe that will not display the honor and
glory of his son.
And he has set his heart on getting
rid of everything in us, deconstructing us, even
as he reconstructs us so that more and
more we become, even in our own personalities,
our own lives, our own characters, our own
situations, he is crafting us to be more
and more and more like the Lord Jesus.
Now listen, in all eternity, in all eternity,
apart from one another, there was only one
thing that the Father and the Holy Spirit
were mutually devoted to, and that was the
Son.
And they are determined, they are determined that
you, yes, in your character and personality, will
be conformed to the likeness of that Son
incarnate in our flesh.
And so, rather than seem a threat to
us, the fact that our holiness has been
planned in the eternal purposes of the Father
is a cause of glory and rejoicing, a
cause of praise and wonder.
It's a cause of humility and worship that
his plan should be that he would take
poor me and change me, that I would
become more and more like his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But this holiness that is planned in the
eternal purpose of the Father is a holiness
that has been bought for us at the
high cost of the work of the Son.
Now, the role of the Son in sanctification,
the role of the Lord Jesus in sanctification,
extends beyond the fact that he has purchased
it.
But I think it is important for us
to recognize and to emphasize that holiness is
actually purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's not something that happens to us as
a kind of additional extra to his work.
It's not as though we can divide the
purposed work of his reconciling and justifying death
from our sanctification and regard it as incidental
to Christ's work.
It is the New Testament teaches us of
the very essence of Christ's work.
Remember how Hebrews 2 puts it in those
marvelous words, since the children share in flesh
and blood, he himself partook of the same
things that through death he might destroy him
who had the power of death in order
that he who sanctifies and those who are
sanctified might be one.
Now, let me spend just a little time
on this theme that my sanctification, my holiness,
ultimately my Christ-likeness is as much part
of the purchase of the Lord Jesus Christ
as any other aspect of my salvation.
I think perhaps we are sometimes so rightly
focused on the fact that by the shedding
of his blood, the Lord Jesus Christ has
purchased my pardon, that we lose sight of
the fact that he has also purchased my
sanctification and my holiness.
And of course, what we need to understand
in that connection is this, that there are
no blessings of the gospel that come to
us round the back of the crucified Christ.
There are no blessings in the gospel that
come to us in any other way than
coming to us through the conduit of his
death and resurrection.
There is nothing in my Christian life that
I could possibly have unless the Lord Jesus
Christ had purchased it, had gained it for
me by means of his obedient life and
his atoning death.
And the reason for that is really fairly
obvious.
It is, here are the things that are
of first importance, that Christ died according to
the scriptures for our sins.
And since in the scriptures sin is expounded
as a multifaceted reality, a multivalent reality, you
remember perhaps at seminary working your way through
the list of Hebrew nouns for sin.
The Old Testament is rich in its vocabulary
for sin, and the words are not just
synonyms.
The words are there to help us understand
the multidimensional, multivalent, sinister character, warped, twisted,
rebellious, fallen, missing the mark, nature of sin.
And you see, if that, and isn't this
the agonizing thing about our ongoing sanctification?
It is almost as though the spirit begins
to loosen up the flesh, and we begin
to see that what we thought of, first
of all, sin was just a kind of
mass of stuff there.
And then we begin to see how subtly
it's woven into the very warp and woof
of our being, and it's multivalent in its
powers.
Now it seems to be urging us to
rebel against God, and now it's twisting us
around so that we become less than straightforward
Christian believers.
Now it's causing deceitfulness, now it's causing pride.
Now you see, if we are to be
saved by His precious blood, there needs to
be a corresponding multivalency in the atoning work
of Jesus Christ.
There must be no remainder of some remnant
of unatoned for aspect of sin, if I'm
ever fully to be sanctified, if I'm ever
to be able to be in the presence
of God and secure there.
And so it's as we understand that this
is what Christ is doing on the cross.
How superficial our understanding of this often is.
Shame on me if I expound to my
people the details of their sinfulness, but I
don't correspondingly expound to my people the multivalent,
multiform character of the glorious work of our
great Savior to show them that there really
is an atonement for all their sin and
a price paid that will not only bring
them forgiveness, but will deal with everything that
stands in the way of their final holiness
and their ultimate glorification.
Now we can't deal with this exhaustively this
evening, but let me mention five or six
things that I think lie on the very
surface of the apostolic teaching in this respect
as to how it is that the redemptive
work of Jesus Christ purchases for us a
release from sin in all its dimensions and
consequences.
Now the most obvious of these is this,
that the Lord Jesus has died in order
to propitiate the wrath of God.
Romans 3.24. He is the redemption who
answers in Romans 3.21 to 24, who
answers to the wrath of God that has
been described and grounded in Romans 1.18
through Romans 3.20. But doesn't that just
deal with justification?
Well, it certainly does deal with justification.
We are freed from the wrath of God
and it's a blessed condition, but you see
it also deals with the whole issue of
our holiness.
Because so long as I am under the
wrath of God, or even so long as
I fear I may still be under the
wrath of God, I will be enervated of
all dynamic to grow in holiness.
I'm not sure it's really psychologically possible for
a human being who believes himself to be
under the wrath of God, or even as
a Christian believer to fear that he or
she is still under the wrath of God,
to find within his or her soul an
aspiration to be like this God under whose
wrath he or she feels that he or
she still stands.
But oh, you see, when in the gospel
we are assured that we are free from
the wrath of God, that it's been poured
out upon our Lord Jesus Christ and exhausted
in Him, and we know that we are
justified before God, then we understand that we
can stand before Him with the same confidence.
I mean identically the same confidence as the
Lord Jesus Christ, whoever wants to please His
heavenly Father, because the righteousness with which we
stand before Him is actually the righteousness of
Jesus Christ.
Now that's easier to sing about with Zinzendorf
than it is to think about when you're
going through difficulties in your Christian life.
Bold, you approach the throne, clothed in the
righteousness of Christ.
But that's a truth of the gospel, that
the propitiation of the wrath of God so
delivers me into the assurance of the righteousness
that is mine in Jesus Christ, that I
need no longer despair and I need no
longer be crushed by Satan when he drives
me to despair.
So the propitiation of the wrath of God
is significant for the holiness of the Christian
believer.
But Christ died not only as a propitiation
of wrath, Christ died as an expiation of
our defilement.
Remember how Paul puts this in Ephesians chapter
1, when he speaks about the glorious work
of Jesus Christ in whom we have redemption
through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins,
and that's the theme that's taken up in
Hebrews, isn't it?
The way in which our consciences are cleansed
from dead works through the expiatory work of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's a great thing to know, that your
sins have been washed away and your heart
has been washed clean.
Now isn't it interesting, you see there is
a kind of, there's an anatomy in the
New Testament I think we often miss.
Our sins are washed away, but yes, our
consciences are also cleansed.
There is an objective washing away of my
sin in the atoning blood and expiation of
the Lord Jesus Christ, but there's an answering
reality to that in my conscience, says the
New Testament, so that my conscience is cleansed
from dead works and I'm set free from
that awful, gnawing condemnation that paralyzes holiness.
And so both propitiation and expiation are divine
answers to all that hinders the holiness of
the Christian believer.
But there's a third aspect to the death
of Christ, and I want to express it
this way, even if certainly for some it
would seem a little controversial.
It is this, that our holiness is effected
at the purchase price of the blood of
Jesus Christ, because in shedding that blood, our
Lord Jesus Christ died to sin.
Now nothing controversial about that I hope, because
I'm just quoting Paul in Romans 6.10,
he died to sin.
But it seems to me that's a different
thing from Paul saying he died for sin.
Not least because the context in which he's
saying it is the context of him appealing
to these Roman Christians and to their understanding
what it means to be a baptized Christian.
Don't you know that all of you who
are baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death?
How can we who died to sin go
on living in it?
And it's in that context of stating in
Romans 6.2 that the believer has died
to sin, that that's who the believer is.
The believer is somebody who has died to
sin.
That is, I take it, died to the
reign of sin that he's been speaking about
in Romans 5.12-21.
That we're no longer under the dominion of
sin that we once were under.
We've died to that dominion and we are
set free from it, and the reign of
sin is no claim on us any longer.
That's why we yield ourselves not to sin
as though it were our king and employer
and master and general, but we yield ourselves
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now it's in that context that Paul grounds
our having died to sin in the fact
that the Lord Jesus Christ died to sin.
And I take it, since he can't conceivably
mean in Romans 6 earlier on that we
died for sin, that there was anything propitiatory
or expiatory about it, that he means the
same thing when he says we died to
sin.
And the reality that makes it possible for
us to have died to sin is that
in his death the Lord Jesus Christ died
to sin.
Now what does that mean?
It means at the very least that since
sin reigns in death, in his death, the
Lord Jesus as to his humanity came under
the reign of sin in the very process
of destroying the reign of sin.
Which means that in his blessed death upon
the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ not only
purchased that pardon and forgiveness and justification and
reconciliation that sets us free in reality from
condemnation and sets us free experientially from condemnation
of the conscience, but the Lord Jesus Christ
also purchased in his death that freedom from
the dominion of sin that now makes it
possible for the believer once freed from sin
to live endlessly to the glory of God.
In that he died, he died to sin
once for all.
In that he lives in his resurrection power,
he lives to God.
And so in some miniaturized, not yet fully
realized, but decisive way, Jesus Christ purchased death
to sin for all who belong to him.
Many of you know the words of John
Owen in that respect.
There are only two pastoral problems.
One is persuading those who are under the
reign of sin that they are under the
reign of sin.
That's the problem of evangelism.
And the other is persuading those who are
no longer under the dominion of sin that
they are no longer under the dominion of
sin.
And almost every single pastoral problem that you
and I encounter will have an element of
that in it, won't it?
But at the price of his precious blood
in a way that surely beyond the greatest
of theologians to plumb to the depths, part
of the significance of the death of our
Lord Jesus Christ is that in that death,
the sinless one died to sin.
That in the process of destroying the reign
of sin over those who would belong to
him and be united to him, he actually
had, as it were, to enter into the
enemy occupied territory of sin and death to
break it open.
And for two long days, the victory was
in from a human point of view, complete
down until he rose again, conqueror on the
third day.
Now that leads to a fourth aspect.
Christ died to propitiate the wrath of God,
to expiate the defilement of sin, to deliver
us from the dominion of sin, and fourthly,
to free us from the bondage of Satan.
He entered into, you remember, as some of
our great Easter hymns seem to have captured
this, perhaps because some of them were written
by the early fathers.
Whatever else you make of the way in
which they handled the theme of the victory
of Jesus Christ, they got this right, that
Jesus Christ entered enemy occupied territory and broke
the power of the one who has the
power to hold us in lifelong bondage to
the fear of death.
Isn't that what Hebrews chapter two so marvelously
says?
In order that he might destroy the one
who has the power of death through death
and deliver those who through fear of death
were subject to lifelong slavery.
Now, I think I find that a most
illuminating statement.
Pastorally, I mean, personally, that apart from the
redemptive work of Jesus Christ, men and women,
however much they disguise it or divert it,
are actually lifelong slaves to the fear of
death.
You see it in every variety of non
-Christian funeral, don't you?
You see it in the funerals that feel
as though you're in a room where there
are no windows and the atmosphere is bleak
and you see it in the non-Christian
funerals where there is this stretched, this stretched,
every nerve effort to be jolly and happy
and to celebrate.
And you see they're actually just two forms
of the same thing, that there's nobody in
the room who has conquered the fear of
death.
And you go to the funeral of a
true Christian believer where there may be the
deepest loss and the deepest mourning, but the
room still has windows and doors and there's
a future and there's sense of hope.
And in the midst of all the loss,
we grieve for ourselves as we rejoice for
the one who has been taken from this
world into the glory of the presence of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
The fear of death is the mother of
all fears and all other fears seek to
disguise it, don't they?
I suppose many of the Puritans understood this
well.
We get it nowadays, often surrounded in all
kinds of psychobabble about the fears people have
and you need to deal with these fears
and these insecurities and we're awash with them
and there's nobody who holds the alchemy except
the person who understands that Jesus Christ died,
entered the domain of Satan in death in
order to deliver those who through fear of
death were subject to lifelong bondage.
That's why I think the resurrection was such
a glorious thing to the early church.
I don't know if we've managed to capture
this because increasingly the evangelical church and its
evangelical preaching has been best in talking about
man and worst in talking about God and
about Christ and about the real ministry of
the Holy Spirit.
And you know, amassing arguments to prove the
resurrection is not the same thing as being
overcome by the sheer power of the reality
of the resurrection, that it delivers you from
the fear of death because you know that
Christ has crashed through the wall of death
and is bringing with him all who belong
to him.
And you see, if that does anything to
our sanctification, let me put it this way,
I've always, all my life long when I've
expounded Romans 6, my focus has been on
what does it mean to have died to
sin.
And the reason for that is because I
find it far more difficult to speak about
what it means to have been raised into
newness of life.
Now that may not be your experience, but
I suspect if it's not your experience, you're
probably in the minority here.
But the glorious good news of the gospel,
the power of the resurrection, the sheer power
of the resurrection, I guess we could put
it this way.
Has it really made all that much difference
to my life?
That Christ is risen.
Would anybody think looking at my life, somebody
must have been raised from the dead here.
Fifthly, just in case you're losing the plot,
that's been a long day and many of
you have traveled far.
We're speaking about Christ purchasing our sanctification.
He does this by his multivalent death.
He propitiates the wrath of God.
He expiates the defilement of sin.
He delivers us from the dominion of sin.
He frees us from the bondage of Satan.
Fifthly, he purchases for us the gift of
the Holy Spirit.
He purchases for us the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
You understand that?
That it is as a direct result of
what Christ has done on the cross that
the Holy Spirit comes.
Isn't this what Jesus weaves into his teaching
and John's gospel?
It's to your advantage that I'm going away,
going to the cross, because unless I go
away, go to the cross, the Holy Spirit
will not come to you.
But if I go, I'll be able to
send him to you.
And certainly I am of the view that
one of the reasons why John is so
struck by the pierced side of Jesus, flowing
forth both blood and water, is because of
the way in which he has listened to
and understood the teaching of Jesus about the
Holy Spirit as rivers of living water.
Let him who is thirsty come to me
and drink as the scripture said, at least
as I understand what Jesus is saying, as
the scriptures have said, out of him, out
of him, that is Jesus, out of him
will flow rivers of living water.
He is the new temple.
He is the one from whom the river
flows.
He is the true Jerusalem.
He is the one to whom the thirsty
may go and have their thirst slaked by
the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is
why it's within the very context and fabric
of John's gospel that the Lord Jesus breathes
the Holy Spirit upon his disciples.
But even if that were not true, isn't
this one of Peter's extraordinary insights in his
great sermon on the day of Pentecost?
I read that sermon in Acts chapter two,
and I wonder what teaching he must have
been given in the previous six weeks between
the resurrection and the ascension of our Lord,
those weeks when Jesus taught them and taught
them so much about how to understand the
Old Testament scriptures and what it was he
was doing.
And do you remember how he explains the
meaning of Pentecost?
He says in his words in Acts chapter
two that the meaning of this, verse 33,
is that having been exalted at the right
hand of the Father, he has received from
the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit,
and he has poured out this that you
yourselves are seeing and hearing.
Now, what's this about?
It's about Jesus fulfilling his promise to the
disciples in the upper room discourse.
I will ask the Father, and he will
send.
And so behind the closed doors of heaven's
glory, the Lord Jesus has ascended on high
in the clouds and disappeared from our view.
And we don't know what's been happening behind
the curtain.
And then, says Peter, as the Holy Spirit
has been poured out, he says this is
an explanation of what's happened behind the curtain.
He's fulfilled his promise.
He's gone to his Father, and he said,
Father, you promised that if I atone for
their sins, you would give me the nations
for my inheritance.
And in order that that might be effected,
the Holy Spirit who has borne me through
my ministry will need to be poured out
upon them to bear them through their ministry.
Father, I've done everything.
Father, I've paid the price for their salvation,
including the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Father, keep your promise that you would send
the Holy Spirit and bring multitudes to know
my salvation.
I love to think that our own relationships
with our sons might be modeled upon the
relationship between the heavenly Father and his son.
And, you know, your son can use all
kinds of arguments and be shown the door.
But when he says, but Father, you promised,
then your son will have.
And here is a far from reluctant father
who has loved his son with joy, hearing
his son say, Father, I've done everything now.
The time has come.
Fulfill your promise.
And so the same Holy Spirit who was
poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ and
enabled him throughout the whole course of his
ministry is now poured out upon the people
of Lord Jesus Christ in order to provide
the energy and divine power more and more
to change them into the likeness of the
Lord Jesus himself.
When he comes as Jesus in John 16,
14, he will take from what is mine
and he will show it to you.
I wonder if the apostle Paul knew that
statement when he said that we are being
changed from one degree of glory to another,
even as we gaze upon the Lord and
are being conformed to his likeness.
He has purchased everything that we need.
Now, one final thing, that means that we
are purchased, doesn't it?
It means that we are purchased.
And this, the New Testament stresses in different
places, you've been bought with a price, glorify
God in your body.
You've been bought, says Peter, not with silver
and gold, but with the precious blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to have been purchased?
Well, you think about it like this.
You go into the store and you see
something, probably in the sale, knowing most of
us, and it's just what you need, just
what you need.
And you call over one of the people
you can never find when you actually want
to buy something.
And you say, I'd like to buy that.
And they're just about to take your credit
card and say, just come over here when
they notice there's a little sign on it
that says, that says reserved for Walt Chantry.
And they say, you can't have that, sir.
Mr. Chantry has already paid for it.
It's his and nobody else's.
Brothers, that's who we are.
We're his and nobody else's.
And when we understand that, we begin to
take more than baby steps.
Towards that progress in holiness that will be
apparent to all who know us.
I say, this is a question that haunts
me.
Really?
Does anybody out there, whoever watches me, does
anybody who knows me as a minister, has
it ever crossed the mind of anybody who
has ever heard me preach?
There's something here that reminds me of Jesus.
Dear brothers, that's the most important thing in
your ministry.
That's what Murray M'Cheyne was talking about.
It's not great gifts that he uses, but
great likeness to Jesus.
Because that's the only thing that's going to
last in you for all eternity.
And that's what he's reserved you and me
for.
Isn't that wonderful?
Well, let's go and live in its wonder.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that we are
saved by the precious blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that every part of our salvation
is the fruit of his death and resurrection
and ascension and his heavenly intercession and his
coming again.
We want to be men who have a
reserved sign on them.
When we are tempted by Satan, when we
struggle with our own sin, when there are
others who seek to bring us down and
to lead us into sin, we want to
be reserved men who know that we've been
purchased with a great price.
Help us, we pray.
Humbly, we pray, but earnestly, we pray for
ourselves and for one another to make such
progress in holiness that it may make a
difference to our ministries.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.