The Gift Of The Sanctifying Savior Series

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?