In Luke we’re told that the Shepherds went to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. But back in 1999, someone not only went to see the baby Jesus… they took him home. They took him from the Daly Plaza in Chicago, IL and though authorities found Him and returned Him to the nativity, someone stole him again in 2004. In fact, this happens almost every year - all across country - somebody steals Jesus. It’s called the “Stolen Baby Jesus Syndrome”, and many communities have taken steps to protect their nativity babies with things like padlocks and chains - which apparently don’t always work. For example, in Arkansas - in 2008 - someone not only stole the baby Jesus, but also the concrete block and chain that secured him. Later, in Palm Beach, FL, authorities had given up using padlocks, and started implanted GPS units in their nativity child.
But why would they bother? Why would they care? Well, these figurines are fairly valuable – a baby Jesus can set you back anywhere from $500 to several thousand dollars. Anything that valuable is worth protecting.
When you have something that valuable, you want to protect it. You want to “fence it off” from the rest of the world so that people won’t damage, destroy or steal it.
And that’s the Biblical concept behind sanctification. Sanctification is also called holiness – sanctification and holiness are English translations of the same Greek word. Sanctification means – we’ve been “set apart.” We’ve been set apart from the world to protect us from damage.
In our text today, we read that “(We) were washed, (we) were sanctified, (we) were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” I Corinthians 6:11
You see, when we became Christians, we were sanctified by Jesus. We were set apart for God.
As I was working on the sermon this week, I messed up the word at one point and – instead of “sanctified” I said “Sanctuary”. Sanctified essentially means that we were given “sanctuary.” A sanctuary is not only a special place set apart in to worship God (like the we’re in right now). But a sanctuary can also mean a place set apart to provide safety or protection. Essentially Jesus has given us SANCTUARY. He’s SET US APART from, and fenced us off from, the world. We were so valuable to Jesus that He wanted to protect us from the damage of sin.
So, we’ve been given SANCTUARY because we are valuable to God. In fact, the most obvious statement of our VALUE is found in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world (so loved you and me) that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”
Ephesians 2:1-5 drives that home: Before you became a Christians “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved”
You see, God loves you (PAUSE) … but He hates sin. There’s a famous preacher who explained it this way: “God is holy, and holiness (or sanctification) is the moral condition necessary to the health of his universe because whatever is holy is healthy…. God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that would take the life of her child” A. W. Tozer
So, when Jesus SANCTIFIED us, He healed us of the disease of sin. And He gave us SANCTUARY from the damage that sin can do in our lives
But… why is that so important. Well, I Corinthians 6:9-11 tells us “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Without Jesus washing us… sanctifying us… and justifying us… we’re not going to heaven.
Someone once summed it up this way: “Life is short. Death is sure. Sin the cause. Christ the cure.”
But now… wait a minute! There are people who will say “I’m not a bad person! And I’m definitely not as bad as the people Paul wrote about in I Corinthians. In fact, I’m a pretty nice person. Just ask me!”
But, there’s a couple problems with that thinking. FIRST – God says you are. You are THAT BAD. Romans 3:23 says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Ephesians 2:3 says that before we became Christians “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
God declares: you and I had ALL sinned. You and I were ALL children of wrath… just like everyone else. No one is righteous before God.
SECOND – in the darker times of our lives we Don’t Really Believe that we’ve been all that nice. We can all think of times we’ve done/thought/said things we’re ashamed of . And, if you catch us at the right moment we might even admit that. AND, if (somehow) somebody were able to make a YouTube video of the worst moments of our lives I believe you and I would pay whatever we had to, to destroy that video. We wouldn’t want anybody to be able to see it!
Now, some folks like to kid themselves into thinking that IF they could just do enough good stuff to outweigh the bad, God would love them just like they are. I call it… “the Santa Claus theology.”
“He’s making a list, checkin it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty, who’s nice, Santa Clause is coming to town.”
BUT GOD ISN’T SANTA. And when He looks down at you and me there’s NOT one of us that would make the “NICE LIST.”
None of us have been good enough to be good enough. We don’t DESERVE Heaven. If we got what we deserved… we’d all go to hell! But God doesn’t want you to go to hell. He loved you so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever would believe in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.
One man said it this way: “I deserved to be damned to hell, but Jesus interfered.” - John Allen
Jesus came to wash away OUR sins; To sanctify our lives so you’d be SET APART from your sinfulness; To justify us so that it would be JUST AS IF I’D never sinned
Jesus made a list - He checked it twice; He already knew we ALL were naughty… not nice; But by His blood He made it so we could be… nice.
So sanctification is the process Jesus set in motion when we became a Christians. He SANCTIFIED us so that we could be healed of our sins.
Here’s another THOUGHT about sanctification. As I was studying for this sermon I noticed something about the Christmas story. Jesus didn’t go to the shepherds… the shepherds went to Him. And Jesus didn’t go to the wisemen… the wisemen came to Him.
Now, COULD Jesus have visited the shepherds in the field before He was born? Of course He could have. COULD He have gone to the wisemen in the East… before He was born? Well… of course He could have. But He didn’t do it that way.
In fact, the angels didn’t even guide the Shepherds to the manger. They just told them where He was and essentially said: go look Him up! And the Wisemen (well… they followed the star) but they also had to GO look for Jesus. And when they found him, they bowed down in worship.
As Christians… we are called to constantly seek Jesus in our lives as well. Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) Come! Follow Me! And when we do that… we bow down and worship Him.
But not everybody does that.
ILLUS: There’s a term called Laissez-faire. Laissez-faire is a policy or an attitude of letting things take their own course. It’s not an active life-style… it’s kind of laid back. And there’s a lot of people have a laissez-faire kind of relationship with God. They’re more than happy to let God do what He does, just as long as they don’t have to do anything about it themselves.
In John 15:19 Jesus said “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Jesus came into the world… to call us OUT of the world.
But there’s people who aren’t into that. They like the world… and they don’t really want to leave it behind, so they don’t intend to set themselves apart from the world. They’ll say “We’re adults! We can handle it.” So, they don’t try to control their language or their behavior, because they’re adults, they can handle it. And they don’t intend to control what kind of entertainment they have - whether it be TV, music, or literature - because they’re adults. (it’s the same mentality behind movies that say they have “adult content” or “this movie is ‘Mature’”. They try to make it sound like grown-ups can handle this.)
They’re ADULTS and they can handle it. That’s deceptive. Jesus came to sanctify us, to call us out of the world. He came to set us apart from that “ADULT” mindset.
Do you remember when I said Jesus had given us a SANCTUARY from our sins? This room we’re meeting is called a SANCTUARY. It’s been set aside for worship. But we mostly use it on Sunday for that kind of thing.
What if we decided to use for something else during the week? Suppose we know a farmer who needs to get his livestock out of cold. What if we decided to let him use this room to store his farm animals thru-out the week. Would that be a good idea? I mean, it’s not like we wouldn’t clean it up for Sunday. We’d cover the floors and walls to protect them from damage, and we’d sweep up… and we’d shovel out all the manure. Would that be a good idea?
Here’s the deal – no matter how well we would clean up the building… something would remain. What would remain? The Smell! You could never quite get all the stench of the cows/sheep/ goats, etc. out of the carpet. It would be like Tyson’s (a local pig processing plant) on steroids! The STINK would still be there no matter how hard you tried to disguise it!
Now, as Christians, we have been given a SANCTUARY from our sins. Jesus died on the cross to remove the results of our sins from us. And even though we may believe “WE’RE ADULTS” and can handle the smell of worldly things in our lives that smell will still remain. Do you think that, after Jesus died on the cross to give you SANCTUARY, do you think He would appreciate the smell you leave behind?
In Acts 26:17-18 Paul recalls something Jesus said to him. Jesus said “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may TURN from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
Paul’s mission was to convince people to TURN FROM darkness to light; To TURN FROM the power of Satan to God; so they’d have forgiveness of sins, and a place among those sanctified by their faith in Jesus. In other words, Paul was preaching about a Jesus who wanted us to SET OURSELVES APART from this world and follow Him.
Like the shepherds and the wisemen, we need to leave the world behind and come bow before Jesus.
CLOSE: Now… one last thought. If you’re not a Christian today, what do you intend to do with Jesus? From the Bible we’ve already seen that God loves you and that He wants you to live with Him for eternity. But your sins (and mine) would rob us of heaven. God didn’t want that – so He gave His only begotten son…
At Bethlehem, God wrapped His son in swaddling clothes, and offered Him to you so that you could go to heaven. What are you going to do about that? Will you leave the world behind… and come to Him?
Accepting His gift isn’t that hard. All you have to do is 1) Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God; 2) Acknowledge that you’ve sinned and determine to Repent (turn away) from the sin; 3) Confess Jesus will now be your Lord and master and have authority over your life; and 4) allow yourself to be buried in the waters Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and rise up a new creation in Christ.
INVITATION
