But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judges according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." As far as the reading of Sacred Scripture, let us pray together. Glorious and beautiful and holy God before whom the angels cry out holy holy holy Lord God Almighty we bow before thee in these moments, Lord, and we pray. Please help us as we pursue, as we cultivate a life of holiness through the means of thy provision to be more holy, more set apart to the cause and kingdom of thy church and thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, bless us in this hour. Feed us with spiritual food convenient for us and lead us in thy ways and give us a better understanding of what it means to be holy, of our call to it, of our cultivation of it, of the encouragements to pursue it, and of the joys to be found in it. We ask all this in Jesus' name, with the pardoning of all our sins and his atoning blood. Amen. Well, the godly farmer who plows his field and sows seed and fertilizes and cultivates is acutely aware that he needs God to come and bless every aspect of his farming.

Otherwise, he'll have no crop. He cannot cause the seed to germinate, the rain to fall, or the sun to shine. But he pursues his task with diligence. Anyhow, he doesn't sit in the living room chair and say, well, God has to do it all, so I won't go out and sow my field. He looks to God for blessing.

He looks to God knowing that if he does not fertilize and cultivate the sown seed, he will have no crop at all. Well, the Puritans used to say the Christian is like that. His soul must be a cultivated garden in order to produce fruits of holy living unto God. In fact, William Ames defines theology in this very sense. He says theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God, living wholly to God.

And God exhorts his own children, doesn't he, in the portion I just read to you, two or three times, to be holy. So I want to expound this verse for you in this hour, this verse from 16 chapter 1, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And I want you to understand from the beginning that the only way to have a holy church is to have holy believers in the church. No other gimmicks, no other devices can make your church holy. So my focus is not on the holiness of the corporate church in this hour, but the holiness of you as an individual believer.

Because only as you are holy, will you participate in a church that is holy. I want to do four things with you. First, we want to look at the call to cultivate holiness. We'll see what it is and the call to do it. Second, what we must cultivate.

What exactly are we about to do, studying about to do? And thirdly, how must we do it? What are some practical tips and ways to cultivate holiness? And fourthly, what encouragements does the Word of God afford us to cultivating holiness? So those four things, call to do it, what we must cultivate, how we must do it, encouragements for it, and then we'll conclude by looking at a few of the joys of cultivating holiness.

Now, 1 Peter chapter 1 is one of the most precious in all the Bible. It stresses what God does for a believer. You find it already in verse 2, That's why I read that for you. That we are elect, if we're believers, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. You see right away this Trinitarian foundation of believers' Christian life.

And Peter then goes on to say that we are kept in verses 4 and 5, we are kept by the power of God, preserved for the hope for inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, were kept until the day is coming when we shall enter into this inheritance." And it's so amazing, he says, that even the angels, verses 6 through 9, are looking into this. Like, how could it be that sinners, fallen sons and daughters of Adam, could be recipients of such a glorious salvation? And so Peter makes known to his readers that it's not they who chose God, but God who chose them. And therefore, they must relish this glorious inheritance, this glorious sovereign grace. And that's what he speaks about in verses 10 through 12.

But then in verse 13, you see, he transitions. And he says, wherefore, if this is true, if you're left by this God, if you're saved by this God, if you're kept by this God, wherefore You yourselves need to stir up your own minds and not let this hope slip. But you must by the greatness of this hope seek to make your lives conformable to this hope. And therefore, he who has called you, he who has elected you, he who saves you, he who preserves you as he is holy, so be ye holy." Well, you get the drift of it, don't you? God is looking for returns.

He's looking for gratitude. He's looking for a response. We need to be children of obedience, offering Him our willing service. We need to be holy. Now Peter says we need both what I would call negative holiness and positive holiness.

We need negative holiness in the sense that we need to be separate from sin. We need to abandon sin. Need to hate sin. Need to cast sin away. That's what he says.

Look at verse 14. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy so be holy in all manner of conversation but to separate from sin is not enough if you separate from sin and you leave a vacuum behind and you don't fill it up with positive holiness, guess what's going to happen? You're going to slip back. It's like a person goes on a diet and he or she tells you, you know, I lost 70 pounds in the last year. And you say, wow, amazing.

But in the back of your mind, you're thinking, I hope you don't gain 70 back next year. Because if you don't have something to fill that in, break the old bad habits, and live in a different way, you're going to slip back. And that's what happens with people who seem to be like perpetual backsliders. They keep slipping back. So here's the positive rule of life.

As he which has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of living." Now, how do you do that? And what is it? And what must we strive for? So we need to grasp, don't we, first off, what holiness is if we're going to understand what we must cultivate and pursue. Holiness is a noun that relates to the adjective holy and the verb sanctified.

So when we speak of sanctification, all that we mean is being made holy. In fact, it's interesting, the Dutch word for sanctification is heiligmakking, holy making. That's their word for sanctification. Holy making. And to be made holy, again, contains these two things.

The negative sense of to be separate from sin and positively to be consecrated or dedicated to God and conformed to Jesus. But the only way we're going to understand that is if we grasp, first of all, that holiness is primarily definable in terms of its relationship to God. The focus in the Bible on holiness is not on us, though it's important in the Bible, but it's on God. God is the Holy One. Isaiah says 26 times, referring to God, the Holy One, more than any other attribute, again and again and again.

The Bible focuses on holiness in God. Holiness is his permanent crown. Holiness is his glory. Holiness is the beauty of God. I like the way Jonathan Edwards put it.

He said, holiness is more than an attribute of God. It's the sum of all of his attributes, the outshining of all that God is. And one other Puritan says, it's the luster that lays upon all his other attributes. Have you ever been at a large lake? Early in the morning as the sun comes up and the waves are coming in and you can look out and see hundreds of waves into the distance, little rivulets of water coming at you, and then if the light just picks up the top of every one of them, there's this beautiful light, this beautiful luster laying as it were across all the body of water.

That's what this Puritan author meant when he said, the outshining of all that he is, the luster that covers all his other attributes. Every attribute of God is cloaked in holiness. God is holiness with a capital H. He is holiness par excellence. So to be holy as he is holy means we have to understand what holiness is in God.

Now, forefathers and theologians have divided the attributes of God, as you probably know, into two categories. And the most common division is, even though there's no division in God, it's just for our logic, is communicable and incommunicable. Incommunicable means attributes that you cannot communicate. Incommunicable. So eternity.

We haven't lived in eternity past. So the eternity of God is incommunicable. But then there are communicable attributes of God. All of those attributes we can never have to the degree that God has them, but we can have touches of them. We can have bits of them.

We can have something of the essence of God of them, and yet not be like God in their quality and their quantity. And so we call those communicable. Well, holiness isn't able to be communicated, a communicable attribute of God. So we need to know what it is in God to know what needs to be communicated to us. So we know what it means for us to be holy.

So what does it mean in God? Well, it means three things. It means, first of all, and Paul Walsher talked about this this morning, separateness. Separateness. If I had a chalkboard here, I'd write the word creator, and then I draw a sharp line underneath it creation.

There's a line of separation between creator and creation. You see nearly every religion in the world doesn't have a line there. That's why in all kinds of pantheistic forms of religion, all kinds of pagan forms of religion, God is a cow, God's a tree, God's a star, God is something that mixes with creation. Exception is Islam. But there what you have is you have a very sharp line of distinction, like in Christianity, but the creator never came down into the creation.

And so the sharp line of distinction means that God cannot communicate with man. God is radically, capriciously sovereign. He can save you today, damn you tomorrow, shave you the next day, and damn you the next day. And so you just do the five pillars of Islam and you hope for the best. That's no comfort either.

But the beauty of Christianity is that God is separate, that God is holy, that God is almighty. At the same time, God has entered into our world through his Son and therefore he can save us and make us like him. There's no other religion that offers such a salvation. So this is the first thing about God. God is holy in his purity, in his moral perfection.

There's no one else like him. In his complete absence of sin, in his separateness from all outside of himself, There's no one like God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. But secondly, the word you want to remember is sacrifice. God is therefore unapproachable apart from sacrifice, apart from blood.

God must punish sin. God cannot be indifferent to sin. And how we need to grasp that. You see, in our culture today what happens when someone sins against you and apologizes? You say, oh wow, I forgive you.

You know, I'm no different, I'm a sinner too. And you forgive him And that's well and good. But you see, God can't do that. God can't say, well, I'm a sinner too. I understand.

God hates sin. Jesus Christ came to die for sin, however. And he is the one who gave the bloody sacrifice. Only a sufficient mediator, a God-man mediator, can provide what we need so that the way can be opened to commune with God, the separate one. Now, it's critical you understand that this mediator must be God and man.

He must be man because the very nature with which we've sinned against God must give satisfaction for sin. So he has to come and live perfectly in our place, which he did for 33 years. But secondly, he also has to be God because only infinite God can satisfy the wrath of infinite God. Finite man cannot satisfy an infinitely offended holiness and justice. So God must send a mediator, if we're ever going to get saved, who is both man and God.

God must, I say it reverently, send himself. You know Abraham and Isaac walked up the Mount together. You see that again and again in chapter 22 of Genesis. They did this together, they did this together, they did this together. And finally Isaac looks at his father and says, Father, we've got the wood, We've got the fire, but where is the lamb for an offering?

And then Abraham says, my son, God will provide himself to be a lamb for the offering. What a profound statement, but that's what happens. God provides himself to be the lamb. And so the only way a holy God and an unholy sinner like us can commune with each other is if God does the two things for us that we can never do for ourselves which must be done for us to be saved. He must bear our sin in his human nature yet being undergirded by his divinity so that it has infinite value.

Payment for sin, that's what we call passive obedience. And secondly, he must actively obey the law perfectly so we have a positive righteousness by which we can approach to God and be holy in his sight. That's what we call his active obedience. He perfectly obeyed the law, loving God above all, loving his neighbors himself all the time. So when you think of holiness of God, think of separateness, then think of sacrifice.

And then the last thing you need to think of is intimacy. And this you will find in very few theological books. It's mostly forgotten, but I think it's a very important concept. God is not a lonely, solitary God. God has a family relationship in his own triune being.

There is a father, there is a son, there is a spirit. God is a God of communication. He's relational. Now why is that important? Well because the very essential character of the holiness of God means that our God finds in his relationship with himself holy ebbings and flowings, holy backs and forth, holy conversation.

There is intimacy in the holiness of God. The Son was in the bosom of the Father. The Father finds all his delight in the Son. In the Gospel of John alone, more than 50 times, Jesus speaks of his relationship to his Father. And again and again and again, the Bible tells us that God does what he does in saving sinners because he loves his son.

This is really what drives the heart of God. It's this profound love within his own Trinitarian being. It's as if God has so much love in the Father-Son-Spirit relationship, the Father loving the Son of the Spirit, the Son loving the Father and the Spirit, Spirit loving the Father and the Son, that he cannot contain himself but allow that love to spill over. And so he creates sin, he creates creatures and he allows sin in order to send the Savior to glorify all his attributes and to pour out that love upon poor sinners like you and me, and to bring us, through sacrifice, despite separateness, into intimacy, into intimacy with himself. I want you to grasp this.

This is stupendous, it's incomprehensible, it's amazing, But Jesus said it. You'd never believe that he said it if it wasn't in the Bible. But he said to his father, and we know that all his prayers are answered. He himself said it. He said to his father, I pray that my people, the elect thou hast given me, I pray that they will experience the same love wherewith thou hast loved me, John 17.

And so what happens, you see, is when we are made holy, that's not something we do by our own effort, but it's something Christ works in us and then we cultivate. But in that holiness, what really happens is the Son reaches out, being bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and communicates with us about his own sacrifice, his own life, his own intimacy with sinners, and he says, come, sinner, I'll take you by the hand and I'll bring you, I'll introduce you to my Father in heaven. That you will know my Father, the Holy One, and be made like unto him and like unto me and we will come and have fellowship with you in this sacred, holy intimacy. And you will know the Father and the Son. You know, my dear friend Sinclair Ferguson once told this story.

He said he was on a golf course with his son and someone's very young. They got down with a hole of golf, took his son by the hand and they're walking to the next tee. As they came around the corner, Who should come around the corner from another green but Jack Nicklaus. And as they walked by each other Jack Nicklaus looked at Sinclair and he nodded his head. Sinclair looked at him and nodded his head.

His son looked at them both and said, ''Dad, he knows you.'' Sinclair looked at his son and said, oh my son, how much greater it is if God and you may know each other, if you may know God because he knows you. Not just with a nod of the head, but with the intimacy of a father-son relationship. So when God says, be holy as I am holy, He's inviting us in his son to come into this sacred intimacy to know him and be known of him. And this relationship is so comprehensive that the call to holiness is entirely comprehensive. There's nothing excluded from this call.

In Jesus' relationship with his Father, His whole being is focused on his father. How many dozens of times in the Gospels doesn't he say, Father, my business is to do your will? Even when he was 12 years old as a boy. His parents are looking for him, his stepfather and mother, looking for him everywhere. And you know what they say when they finally found him, they kind of expressed, well, a little irritation.

We've been looking for you, my son. And he looks at them puzzled and confused. He says, Why didn't you come to the temple right away? Don't you know I must be about my father's business?" You see, everything Jesus did is in relationship to his father. And if you're a Christian, you're called to be like that.

Your whole life is to be focused on the triune God, to be holy, to think God's thoughts after him, to be in relation to him. So nothing is excluded, my friend. My son, give me thy heart. Not my, don't give me a tie, don't give me 10%, don't give me little bits and pieces of you, don't give me yourself only on Sunday. Give me your heart.

Give me everything. That's the call to holiness. So holiness of heart must be cultivated in every sphere of our lives, must be cultivated in the privacy of our hearts and lives with God, in the confidentiality of our homes, in the competitiveness of our occupation, in the pleasures of social friendship, in relation with our unevangelized neighbors, and in relationship with the world's hungry and unemployed, as well as in our Sunday religion. Oracious Bonar put it this way. Holiness extends to every part of our persons, fills up our being, spreads over our life, influences everything we are or do or think or speak or plan, small or great, outward or inward, negative or positive, are loving, are hating, are sorrowing, are rejoicing, are recreations, are business, are friendships, are relationships, are silence, are speech, are reading, are writing, are going out, are coming in our whole man and every movement of spirit embody.

John Calvin put it this way, our whole life is an unending call to piety and to holiness. So, the lordship of Christ must have us all. So think about it this way. True Christianity is either worth nothing, it's either a sham, a farce, or it's worth everything. It's either a hoax or it's what life is all about.

And that's why Elijah could say in the mount to the false prophets and to the masses of people. Choose you this day whom you serve. If God is God, you must follow him totally. You can't keep one corner of your heart for yourself if he's God. If God isn't God, well if Baal's God, if this world is God, follow it.

That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians, if we have only hope in Christ in this life, we have all men most miserable because the whole thing is a hoax. It's like one of those letters you get on the computer that promises you millions of dollars and you know right away. You delete it. It's a hoax. That's what some people do with Christianity.

It's a hoax. But if it's true, it's worth everything you say. It demands the totality of our being. Now here's the point. When it comes to holiness or sanctification, they're really synonyms, The moment we're born again and we're justified in God's sight, you know the same moment, we're regenerated, we're justified.

That same moment God puts in us the seed of holiness. We're transferred from self made darkness into God's marvelous light and we are definitively made holy in Christ that moment. So if you were to die one second later, we would go to heaven. But though we're positionally holy, in the whooping wolf of daily life, holiness has just begun and needs to be worked out. Let me give you an example, the best example I can give.

It's not a perfect example, but I think it's pretty good. When you get married or you got married, the two of you walk down the aisle. You walk down as how many people? Well, of course, two people. But you walked out as what?

Why? Because you've been married. You're entered into a new state with a new family unit. These two shall be one. Positionally, definitively, from that day on all your language should be we and no more I.

You're one. And yet, I was talking to a man a little while ago, and I said, how many children do you have? And he said, I have seven children. Didn't say we. He's still learning the we language apparently.

You see, you don't have seven children all by yourself, do you? The rest of marriage is actually a living out, a becoming one in your soul, with your soul mate. Now that's never perfect here, but neither is a Christian sanctification perfect here. From the moment we're born again, the moment we're made definitively holy, From that moment on, we are being made progressively holy in our soul's condition. In our state, it's all done.

We're made holy in Christ the moment we're justified. But in our condition, we've got to learn it, we've got to live it, we've got to struggle through it, We've got to become it. We've got to be, in practice, what we actually are in principle. So we're called to be in life what we already are in principle by grace. And so holiness is something that we both have in Christ before God, if we're believers, and something we must cultivate in the strength of Christ.

And in reality, what actually happens is something like this. God stops me. I'm walking down life's pathway. God stops me. He turns me around.

I face a God-ward direction and I march my way to Zion. I become more holy but then I sin, become more holy, sin, ups and downs, ups and downs, struggles, struggles of Romans 7, the good that I would not find myself doing, the evil that I would not, or I don't do and the evil that I would not find myself doing. But gradually, gradually you see, there's progress in all the ups and downs of the Christian life. And so the call to holiness now for a believer is a call to cultivate that progress through the means that God provides. Now, here's the tricky thing.

I warn you, it's very tricky. Because the more holy you become, the less you'll recognize it. Have you ever noticed that about all the Christian graces? I don't care what you're talking about. If it's a Christian grace, the more you have of it, the more you feel how little you have of it.

I have a mother who's 90 years old. She's been known all her life for her prayer. In fact, when my parents had their 50th anniversary, they talked about all five of us children talked about one thing we appreciate about each of them without talking to each other ahead of time. We all thank my mother for her prayer life. And yet when she was 85, and I asked her, mother, what would you do differently in your life if you had to live your whole life over again?

Now mind you, in my mind I'm thinking, well, the one thing she's got squared away, she knows how to pray. But now what about the rest of her life? What would she do differently? She said, oh, honey, I'd pray more. You see, the more holy you are, the more unholy you feel.

Why is that? Well, it's like a woman who's going to dust her furniture in her living room and she dusts it and she thinks she's got everything done and she comes back an hour later and meanwhile the sun has come out and shines in the furniture and she sees more dust than there was in the first place. Is there more dust? No, there's less dust. Why does she see more dust?

Because she sees it in light. And the closer we draw to Christ, which is what holiness is all about, we get closer to Christ, the more we come close to Christ, the more we see our own perversity. So be careful here. If you walk out of this room and say, wow that that was a great talk I just feel so holy now, probably that's false conclusion. You see John Newton wrote a sermon on the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear.

And he compared it to babes in grace, young men in grace, and fathers in grace. And that sermon went out to thousands of people, became a very famous sermon, Mark 4-28. And he got a letter back from a woman said, that was a wonderful sermon. I'm so glad to know after I wrote the sermon that I'm one of those fathers in grace. Hmm.

Newton wrote back and said, Dear Madam, I'm so sorry to tell you, but there's one thing I forgot to say in my sermon, that those who are fathers in grace never recognize themselves to be such. Because you see, the more holy you are, the more you feel how unholy you are. All right, well, What am I to cultivate then? What am I to cultivate? My last three points are going to be shorter, obviously.

The first thing you need to cultivate is the imitation of the character of the Father. The imitation of the character of the Father. Be holy, for I am holy. Strive to think God's thoughts after him through his word to be one mind with him, to live and act as God himself would have you to do. That's what a Christian strives after.

I like the way the Puritan Stephen Sharnock put it. He said, the prime way of honoring God is not by eloquent expressions, elevated admirations, and pompous services for him, but rather a conversing with him with unstained spirit to live to him by living like him. Secondly, conformity to the image of Christ. Conformity to the image of Christ. This is of course as you know one of Paul's favorite themes.

Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. If you're going to be holy, you've got to be like Christ. You can't be holy apart from Christ. You know the old church for Father Augustine put it so graphically when he said, when it comes to holiness, if you're going to run outside of the path of Christ, you can be a sprinter and you can run never so fast with all your efforts. But if you do it apart from Christ, It will all be in vain.

And then he said this, It is better to limp on the path, the path of Christ, than to run outside of the path. And that's why John Calvin said, set Christ before you as the mirror of holiness and then see grace to mirror him in his image. Holiness is all about becoming Christ-like. Paul put it this way, Christ is all and in all. That's it.

Also, of my holiness, 1 Corinthians 1.30, he's given of God unto us to be wisdom and righteousness, that is justification and sanctification, That's holiness. Christ is my sanctification. He's my source. He's my fountain. He's my secret.

I must trust him for holiness. So if you boil it all down, Martin Luther was right when he said, We in Christ equals justification. Christ in us equals sanctification. That's it. And thirdly, we must cultivate not only imitation of the character of the Father and conformity to the image of the Son, but submission to the mind of the Spirit.

You see, holiness is Trinitarian. In Romans 8, 6, Paul divides people into two categories. Those who let themselves be controlled by their sinful nature, the carnally minded who follow fleshly desires, and those who follow after the Spirit. And then he describes it this way, that is those who mind the things of the Spirit. Interesting word.

Who mind the things of the Spirit. What's he saying? Well, the Spirit is the author of the Word and the Word informs our mind. And so, those people are holy who open the scriptures and sincerely and profoundly from the depths of their being want to be changed and conformed and transformed and reformed and conformed to what the Spirit writes in the Word of God. That's it.

If you open the scriptures and you say, oh, well, I got to read the Bible again. That's a bad sign. But if you open the scriptures and say, change me, Lord. Transform me, Lord. Make me like this word.

Make me faithful to this word. Help me to bow according to this word. You may be growing in holiness. Let me ask you a question. When is the last time you read something in the Bible that you actually said to yourself as you read it, my life has got to change and your life actually changed because you were in submission to the mind of the spirit.

When is the last time? That's a sign of a holy believer. Imitation of the Father, conformity to the Son, submission to the Spirit, that's what we must cultivate. Well, how do we do it? Third thought, how do we do it?

I've got seven quick things here for you. Number one, you must know and love the scriptures. You must know and love the scriptures. This is God's primary road to holiness and to spiritual growth. And the spirit of God is our master teacher.

And he blesses the reading and the searching of the Word of God. Jesus says, sanctify them, that is make them holy. Through thy truth, thy word is truth. It can't be simpler than that, can it? And yet, it's so profound.

So we must read through the Bible. We must read through the Bible. We must memorize the scriptures. Preferably, it'd be great to have some kind of system where you Read through the Bible once a year, and those systems are out there. Memorize the scriptures, search the scriptures, meditate on the scriptures, live the scriptures, love the scriptures, compare the scriptures with the scriptures, study the scriptures, be people of the book.

Holiness cannot be reached if you never read the book. You know, some people come to church on Sundays faithfully. So they're three hours a week in church, and they're 165 hours a week in the world. And they say, how come I don't get more holy? Well, the odds are stacked against you.

And an elder in my church once called me up just as I was leaving for the airport. He said, Pastor, I'm in deep trouble. So what's the matter? Well, he said, my spiritual life is in shambles. I can't pray anymore.

I can't read the Bible anymore. I can't do anything anymore. I'm so dark. It's impossible for me. I've never been a Christian at all.

Need to come and see. I said, oh dear brother. I'm just unpacked. I got a leaf for the airport. I'll tell you what you do.

I'm coming back in five days. What I want you to do is spend 30 minutes a day Seeking God's face. Ten minutes reading the Bible, ten minutes in prayer, ten minutes in meditation, and then come and talk to me. Oh, I can't do that. I can't do that.

Why not? Well, I'm such a sinner. It's enough. It'd be blossoming in the eyes of God. I said, you do it anyway.

Ask God to forgive you. You do it. Find it. You promise me? Well, all right.

I came back five days later. There's a little note sitting on my chair in the study. No need to call Elder so-and-so. All is well. He's back in the Word.

Are you in the Word every day? Don't expect to grow in holiness if you're not. Number two, use the sacraments. Use the sacraments diligently. It's means of grace to strengthen your faith in Christ.

You know, our forefathers spoke of sacramental assurance and when I studied that subject of assurance for my doctorate at Westminster Seminary. I thought for the longest time when they kept talking about sacramental assurance that they meant some different kind of assurance and I wrestled and wrestled with it. Finally I came to the conclusion they don't mean anything different from assurance through the through the word or under preaching or through the means of grace. But what they do mean is that assurance is so commonly gained through the use of the sacraments that they gave it a label because it's so common. I love the way that the Puritan Robert Bruce put it.

He said we don't get a better Christ in the sacraments than we do in the word, but sometimes we get Christ better. Because God comes so close to us in the Lord's Supper. He puts all five senses into operation. You see, it's in the sacraments that we truly draw close to God and get all kinds of forms of reassurance. So if you want to grow in holiness, use the sacraments diligently.

And don't see the sacraments being over when it's physically over. When the Lord's Supper is communicated, baptism is administered, you should get strength from it for the time to come. For the time to come. The sacrament is not over when it's over. Use them diligently.

Number three, regards yourself as dead to the dominion of sin and is alive to God in Jesus Christ. Dead to sin, alive to God. That's your identity, Christian. Romans 611, that's what Paul says. Dr.

Lloyd-Jones says, to realize this takes away from us that old sense of hopelessness, which we've all known and felt because of the terrible power of sin. I can say to myself that not only am I no longer under the dominion of sin, but I'm under the dominion of another power that nothing can frustrate. When I was in Wales, there was an 85-year-old woman who told me that Three thieves broke into her home. They tied her up. They set her in a chair.

They began to steal all kinds of things, including her grandmother's heirloom china. And she got very upset. And she said to the thieves, The judgment of God will come upon you for doing this. You've got no business here. Now be gone." One thief sat down beside her and began to weep and talk about his childhood.

The other two thieves got really upset with him and began to mock with him. They started arguing amongst themselves. All three of them argued so much they finally got up and left and they forgot to China. But you know, afterwards I was thinking about this woman. That's how we ought to treat sin.

Sin is a feat. If we're born again, you see, We've got no business sinning. We're dead to sin, the dominion of sin. And we're alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We've got no business sinning.

Every sin is a slap, as it were, in Immanuel's face. And we ought to say when sin stands on our doorstep, sin, you're at the wrong address and slam the door on his face and his bunion tells us. He had so much trouble, you know, with sin darting into his mind. If sin stands on your doorstep and you open the door and you see it but you slam the door you don't allow it to come into your mind and ruminate upon it. You have not sinned.

You only sin when you allow Mr. Sin in the door up here. And so you see you ought to say to yourself I just how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And leave your cloak behind if needs be. And run like Joseph in the powers of holiness.

And so every time you're tempted, say, uh-uh, this is not me. The real me is the new man. The real me doesn't belong here. The real man cannot meditate on these things. The real me is in Christ.

And so every time I sin, I'm acting contrary to who I really am in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you remember that, that will help you a great deal. Every time you sin, you're acting contrary to who you are in the Lord Jesus Christ. Number four, pray and work in dependency upon God for holiness. That's the old Puritan model, the Reformation model, aura et labora.

Pray and work. And you know, it's like this. If you're in a rowboat and you're going forward, you've got two oars. If you just use one oar, what's going to happen to your boat? Just one oar.

You're going to go in circles. If you pray and you don't work, it's like being in a monastery. You just go in circles every day and you have your own bad heart with you and nothing ever happens. You stay the same. What happens if you use the other war?

If you do all work and you don't pray, well, you go in circles the other way. But you've got to use both and only then will you go forward. Number five, flee worldliness. Flee worldliness. Love not the world, love not the pride of life, the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh." How would he need to hear that today?

Daniel made up his mind he would not defile himself with a king's choice of food over the wine which he drank. My dear friends, The material we read, the recreation and entertainment we engage in, the buttons we push on the internet, the music we listen to, the conversations we have impact our minds. We need to flee this stuff. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, think on these things. If you stand on the Word, you'll stand above the world rather than with the world.

You'll live above the world and not be of the world while yet you're in the world. And that's what we need. Flee worldliness. Number six, seek fellowship. Seek fellowship in the church.

Associate with mentors in holiness. Now we forget this too a lot because we don't believe very much anymore today in communion of saints, not the way they did in former times. Do you know that in the in the in the Puritan times, Puritans in England, covenanters in Scotland, German pietists in Germany, Dutch for the Reformation Divines, and people in the Netherlands. They all had a thing called spiritual fellowship. They call it by different terms.

I won't trouble you with those terms, but what it meant was real communion where people would just gather together, talk about what they experienced in the Lord, talk about the Bible from heart to heart every week, usually once a week in their homes, they just fellowship about spiritual things. From beginning to end, no talk about the weather, nothing like that, just talk about the Lord, what he's done for me this week, and what I've learned from the word, and my questions, and so on. That's a blessing. That's a real blessing for holiness. Now, association, said Thomas Watson the Puritan, promotes assimilation.

So one of the best ways to get holy is to look around you and say, who do you really want to be like? Is it that elder over there that just seems so godly? Well, associate with him. Invite him over for dinner. Ask him to lead your family worship once.

Get to know him. Ask him how he struggles with holiness. What does he do? Ask questions of holy people. And when you associate with holy people prayerfully, you will become more holy with the Spirit's blessing.

But not just living people, also dead people. The books. Martin Luther said, most of my best friends are dead ones. He meant the books. In fact, Martin Luther said, if David is not one of your best friends, I seriously doubt if you're a child of God, because who can read the Psalms and then identify with David?

I've read books before. I'll tell you, I've had such sweet communion with dead authors. It's unbelievable. I just felt like they know me through and through. It's wonderful, not just the scriptures, but these old books.

You see, what you can do here is wonderful because you can look at whatever aspect of your Christian life is suffering. Let's say I'm getting a little bit soft on sin. Well, I go to The Mischief of Sin by Thomas Watson, Temptation and Sin by John Owen, The Evil of Evils by Jeremiah Burroughs, The Plague of Plagues by Ralph Endy. I read these books and I realize again the heinousness, the horrificness, the insanity of sin. Well, let's say I feel like I'm backsliding.

I pick up Octavius Winslow's Personal Decluncheon, Revival of Religion in the Soul, How That Book Has Fed Me, or John Flayville, Keeping the Heart, or J.C. Ryle, holiness. Are you reading good books? I mean, are you reading the really good books? Are you wasting your time with every passing fad?

Don't read the fluff religious books. Read the substantial ones. We've got 3, 500 to offer you. Number seven, live present tense, total commitment to God. Don't fall prey to the one more time syndrome.

Postpone obedience today is disobedience. Tomorrow's holiness is impurity now. Tomorrow's faith is today's unbelief. Ask for divine strength to bring every thought into captivity to Jesus Christ now. You see, too many people treat holiness the way they treat a diet.

You know the definition of a diet in America is often this, something that's going to start tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll start it, just one more meal. And that's disastrous for holiness. Just one more sin, Lord, and then one more time, and then I'll repent. No, no, no.

Total present tense commitment to God is the only way to cultivate holiness. All right, my last thought then, encouragements for cultivating holiness, I've got four of them for you, I'll give them to you briefly. Number one, God has called you to holiness for your good and his glory. Anything that serves his glory, you as a Christian ought to welcome. And if it's for your good on top of it, it's like icing on the cake.

Why wouldn't you want to be holy? Number two, God makes you resemble God through holiness. Don't you want to be like God and be like Christ, Be like the Spirit, submit to His mind. Well, if holiness makes you resemble God and it preserves your integrity, pursue it. Be encouraged to pursue it.

It gives vitality to your Christian life and purpose and meaning and direction. Number three, holiness gives evidence of your justification and of your election. How do you know you're justified? God doesn't just tell you from heaven. You know you're justified because you're sanctified.

So you work your way backward. Like George Whitefield said, I've got to go to the kindergarten of repentance before I graduate to the University of Election. So You read yourself backward, and you go like this. By the grace of God, I cannot deny that God's spirit is working in my life. I cannot deny that I see marks of sanctification.

I do mourn over sin. I am meek. I do hunger and thirst after righteousness. I do feel my poverty of spirit. I do have some of the fruits of the Spirit.

I can see some of them at least in Galatians 5, love, joy, temperance, peace. Therefore, I must be justified. If I'm justified, I must be elected. I could never have done this to myself. Devil wouldn't do it to me, and I can't do it.

It must be the work of the Holy Spirit. So that's why Peter says at the beginning of this chapter, did you notice that? We are elect, verse 2, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit. When you're elected, you're sanctified. Some people say, well, if it's up to election, then there's no need for holiness.

That's ridiculous. That's what the Armenians often accuse we Reformed of saying. You know, if you don't believe in free will, and you don't believe, if you just believe in election, then there's no motivation for holiness. Well, it's just the opposite, you see. The only way you're going to know that you're elect is if you bring forth fruits of holiness.

We are elected to sanctification, says Peter. And holiness alone fits you for service with God. Holiness fits you for service with God. You see our lives are always doing harm or good. They're always open epistles for everyone to read.

If you're a false Christian, you pretend to be a Christian, you're not living a holy life, you do a lot of damage for the kingdom of Christ. If you're a backsliding Christian, you do a lot of damage for the kingdom of Christ, but if you're a holy Christian, You do a lot of good for the Kingdom of Christ, because holiness gives you validity. It gives you credibility to witness and to evangelize. People can see there's a difference in you. Holiness, after all, is what fits us for heaven.

If we're caught up with this world, we're not really ready for the next. And so holiness is absolutely critical. So please, let me conclude by saying this. Seek the joy of living a holy life. You know, you don't get happy by following happiness.

Happiness is a byproduct of holiness. As you pursue holiness, you find true joy in doing what God wants you to do. You find the supreme joy of fellowship with God. You find the abiding joy of ongoing assurance. And one day, you'll find the anticipated joy of eternal communion with Christ forever.

So go on fighting the battle. Go on pursuing holiness. You've got the best of generals, Jesus Christ. You've got the best of internal advocates to help you, the Holy Spirit. You've got the best of assurances in the battle, the promises of God.

You've got the best of results, everlasting glory. But remember, don't do this without the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll only suffer. Do you really want to be holy? You must begin with Christ.

Do you want to continue to be holy? You must abide in Christ. Holiness is not the way to Christ. Christ is the way of holiness. So remember that.

Holiness is not a list. It's a life. It's a life in Jesus Christ. And so let it be your constant prayer with Robert Murray McShane, Lord make me as holy as a pardon sinner on earth can be. Let's pray.

Great God of heaven, grant that we will cultivate holiness today in Jesus Christ, not out of merit, but out of gratitude, by thy grace, through faith in Christ Jesus. Sanctify us by the blood of Jesus, the Spirit of Christ. Integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org. You