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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) All songs are from the CanRC/FRCA Book of Praise Hymn 5 Psalm 99:1-3 Psalm 24:1-3 Hymn 1 Psalm 97:1,4,5 Scripture reading: Hebrews 12:1-17 Catechism lesson and text: Lord's Day 44 and Hebrews 12:14 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
They say it’s good to have goals. We could apply that to what we confess in Lord’s Day 44. Let’s think about where we want to be in 10 years’ time. Do we want to have a larger degree of obedience to God? Do we want to be living more consistently according to the commandments of God? In 10 years, do we want to see ourselves being more humble and aware of our remaining sinfulness, so that we turn to Christ more? Do we want to be striving more to be renewed after God’s image? Are these your goals?
This is about what we desire. Our desires are what the Tenth Commandment addresses. Not only are we to put away covetous and evil desires, but we’re to put on godly and holy desires. It should be our goal to become what God wants us to be.
What God wants us to be is holy. To be holy means to be set apart from sin and consecrated to God, reserved for him. God is holy – in fact, the Bible says he is holy, holy, holy. That’s the Bible’s way of saying he is infinitely holy. And he says he wants his people to be holy as he is holy. That’s something we should have as a goal.
Our passage from Hebrews 12:14 drives that home. It tells us to pursue holiness. So that’s the theme of the sermon this afternoon: Pursue holiness!
We’ll learn about:
1. What holiness looks like
2. Why we pursue it
3. How we pursue it
The Bible speaks of holiness in different ways. For example, there’s the holiness which we have through Christ. His holiness is imputed to us, or credited to us. This serves the basis of our justification, our being declared righteous by God. If you’re already a Christian, this holiness isn’t something you can pursue. This is something you already have, and it’s something you already have in full measure. If you have this holiness of Christ, you can’t be any more holy. So obviously the author of Hebrews isn’t referring to holiness in this sense.
One way you could describe the holiness here in Hebrews is to call it practical holiness. It’s about putting holiness into practice. Another way you could describe it is to call it sanctification. In fact, the word translated in the ESV as ‘holiness’ could also be translated as ‘sanctification.’ Sanctification is the process of becoming increasingly holy, becoming increasingly godly, becoming increasingly Christlike. So the author of Hebrews is urging Christians to pursue sanctification, to make that a goal in our lives.
What would it look like for us to do that? The beginning of verse 14 speaks of one way. If we were pursuing sanctification or holiness, we would “strive for peace with everyone.” We wouldn’t be content with unresolved conflict in our lives. If there’s a conflict, if there’s a problem with someone, we do what we can to end it. We want to have wholeness and healthiness in our relationships with everyone.
Loved ones, being a peacemaker is closely linked here with the pursuit of holiness. If you would be striving for sanctification, you need to be striving for peace with all. If you have a difficulty with someone, go and speak with them and try to sort it out. Don’t let conflict fester in your life. Our Form for the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper speaks about this. It warns those who are guilty of certain sins to abstain from the sacrament. One of those sins is cherishing hatred against your neighbour and refusing to be reconciled to him. If you don’t strive for peace with all, you have no business partaking in the Lord’s Supper. As much as it depends on us, we have to prioritize peace in all our relationships.
The following verse speaks of another way we pursue holiness. It refers to the root of bitterness, which springs up and causes trouble and defilement. Resentment and animosity in our hearts needs to be addressed. We can’t coddle those things and just let them have a place in our lives. Pursuing holiness means rooting out bitterness.
Last of all, in verse 16, we find that sexual chastity is also another way to pursue holiness. Back in Genesis, Esau sold his birthright for a meal – he gave up his inheritance because of his lust for food. Similarly, many people turn away from Christ and what he has to offer because of their lust for sexual pleasure. That could be premarital intimacy, extramarital intimacy, that could be pornography – whatever it is, a life of sexual immorality is inconsistent with the pursuit of holiness according to Hebrews. Instead, Christians are to value sexual chastity inside and outside of marriage – this is another way we strive for sanctification in our lives before God.
Now we can turn to the question of why we should pursue holiness. Verse 14 tells us. It’s because without it no one will see the Lord. We have to unpack that.
It’s true that no one will see the Lord apart from the holiness of Christ. We need his obedience and righteousness credited to our accounts. But again, that’s not what’s in view here. As I mentioned a few moments ago, we could say, “Pursue the sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord.”
But when we put it like that, that raises an important question. Doesn’t this make it sound like our salvation is dependent on our sanctification? Doesn’t this sound like our personal practical holiness is our ticket to heaven? The answer is no, and I’ll explain why.
First and foremost, Scripture is clear that our works can never contribute to our salvation. No one can receive eternal life through their own personal practical holiness. It’s only through what Christ has done for us. Everyone who will be saved must be looking to Jesus Christ alone.
Now, once someone has become a Christian, change takes place in that person’s life. Real change. Noticeable change. There’s a change within, in the heart. And there’s also change evident on the outside too. Before someone becomes a Christian, there’s no fight against sin. There’s no struggle. But after someone becomes a Christian, then there’s a struggle, there is a fight. The Christian hates sin and wants to fight against it. There is a desire to strive for personal practical holiness.
If that desire isn’t there, that means the person isn’t really a Christian. It means they haven’t really taken hold of Christ by faith and repented of their sins. They don’t have eternal life.
You see, when Hebrews says that no one will see the Lord without sanctification, it’s following a certain logic. The person who will see the Lord pursues sanctification. That person cares about holiness because the Holy Spirit is dwelling in them. The person who will not see the Lord doesn’t pursue sanctification. He or she doesn’t care about holiness, because they have no connection to Christ, the Holy Spirit doesn’t live in them. So if you don’t care about sanctification, about holiness, you’re not going to see the Lord, and ultimately it’s because you’re not a Christian. You don’t look to Christ in true faith, you’re not connected to him. Ultimately it’s about Christ.
So loved ones, this calls for self-examination. Do you care about personal practical holiness? Do you pursue it? Do you want to pursue it? Even if your desire for it is weak, even if your implementation of it is inconsistent, if it’s there even in a small measure, you can be comforted that you will see the Lord. Again, not because of yourself, but because these things are proofs of God’s work of grace in your heart. These things show the fruit of a true faith in Jesus Christ. As you’re pursuing holiness, God gives you assurance of your faith, and of the eternal life you have in Christ.
So why should you pursue holiness? Well, you need holiness to see God, and that’s because it’s the proof that you actually have saving faith in Christ. The fruit proves that there is a root.
There are other reasons to pursue holiness that aren’t mentioned here in Hebrews. For example, Scripture mentions love for God. There’s also gratitude, which is the motive our Heidelberg Catechism focusses on. There’s the glory of God, and there’s also our benefit and blessing.
Now let’s switch gears and learn about how we are to pursue holiness. If holiness or sanctification is so important, how do we go about striving for it?
The answer is at the beginning of Hebrews 12. The author compares the life of a Christian to a race. The race is long distance. It requires effort on our part. In the race, there are challenges. You could be weighed down, you could run out of energy and give up. However, God has given us the means by which we can successfully run.
Verse 2 tells us that we can get what we need to run the race by “looking to Jesus.” Verse 3 says the same thing when it tells us to consider him. Fix your eyes on Jesus. That’s the way we run the race, that’s the way we pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
We look to Christ for what we need in our justification, our being declared righteous with God. But here we’re taught also to look to Christ for what we need in our sanctification. For the strength to pursue holiness, we look in faith and trust to him.
Now at this point that still sounds abstract. Let’s make it more concrete.
One of the most important ways we look to Jesus is through prayer. Our Catechism highlights this in QA 115. It mentions our lifelong striving for sanctification. But it does that in the context of prayer to God “for the grace of the Holy Spirit.” We’re to be constantly praying to God for the Holy Spirit of Christ to strengthen us for this striving, this pursuing. We need him. Without him, we can’t do it. Because that’s true we need to be pleading for his presence and work in our lives.
One author suggests we think of the situation like this. Think of your Christian life like a ship. How does a ship know where to sail? These days it comes from the GPS. How does a ship get underway to where it needs to go? The power comes from the engine. The law of God is our GPS, showing us where we need to go if we want to be holy. What Christ has done for us in the gospel is the engine driving our pursuit of holiness. The Holy Spirit is the fuel for the engine. Without him, no one goes anywhere.
So, loved ones, pray daily for the Spirit of Christ to help you pursue holiness. Pray like this, “Father, I’m weak. I want to pursue holiness, but I’m too weak to do it on my own. Please give me strength with the Holy Spirit of Christ. Let him be my motivator and my guide.” That’s a prayer God will be pleased to hear and he will answer it.
Praying for the grace of the Holy Spirit is where it begins, but that’s certainly not where it ends. Christ works through means and part of “looking to Jesus” is making use of those means. We call them the means of grace. They are the Word of God and the sacraments.
The Word of God is a means of grace. It is a way in which Christ works in our lives, including the working of sanctification. If you want to pursue the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord, then you need to be busy with the Word of God. Loved ones, if your goal is to be a better Christian ten years from now, you are not going to reach that goal by spending less time reading and studying the Bible. If your goal really is to pursue holiness, you’ve got to be in the Word. If the only time you ever read the Bible is in church, there’s a problem. You can’t be serious about pursuing holiness when you’re ignoring the very book which Christ uses to guide you to holiness.
So I want to encourage you to be reading the Bible for yourself, also the children and young people here. Read the Bible. Don’t just read a devotional, but actually read the Bible for yourself. But it’s also beneficial to read and study the Bible with others too. Make time for Bible Study with your brothers and sisters. They’ll have insights that you don’t have, and you’ll have insights that they don’t have. We can be iron sharpening iron as we pursue holiness together.
There’s more to say about the Word of God, because there’s also the Word as it’s read and preached in church twice each Sunday. Here again, if you’re really a Christian and your goal really is to pursue holiness, you’re not going to be moving in that direction by staying home from church when you could be there. No one grows in pursuing holiness by choosing to go to church less. This is because the Word of God as it’s preached is a way that Christ shapes us and leads us in holiness. When the Bible is preached faithfully, Christ is speaking to us. As we look to the Word preached, we are in fact “looking to Jesus.” We hear him proclaimed as our Saviour, but also as our Lord and Master. Loved ones, to pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord, make it your aim to be in church as much as you possibly can.
Then there are the sacraments, also found in public worship. They’re also means of grace which Christ uses to strengthen us for pursuing holiness. Let’s just briefly consider baptism.
Whenever there’s a baptism, there’s a temptation to think that the sacrament only involves the one being baptized, and if the one being baptized is a baby, then also the parents. That would be a big mistake. Every time we witness a baptism, we are participating in it as well. You should think of it as a reminder or even re-enactment of your own baptism. The water of baptism reminds all of us that we have an eternal covenant with God. We have a special relationship with him, the covenant of grace. In that covenant of grace, God promises to be our Father through Christ. But in baptism, Christ also calls and obliges us to a “new obedience.” Every baptism reminds us that there are gospel promises, but there’s also a call to pursue holiness after we’ve received those promises through faith. Baptism reinforces the message of Hebrews 12:14: Christian, pursue holiness. Look to what Christ has given in the washing away of your sins, and respond with striving for sanctification.
So when it comes to the how of pursuing holiness, it comes down to looking to Jesus. Looking to Jesus through prayer and through the means of grace. As we do that, we’ll receive the strength to run after holiness, just as we’re called to do.
Loved ones, what do you desire for your spiritual life? What are your goals? On the basis of Hebrews 12:14, I’d urge you to have the pursuit of holiness near the top of your list, if not at the top. In 10 years’ time, I pray that you’ll have come further in that pursuit. In 10 years’ time, I pray that you’ll be still striving for more sanctification, never satisfied with the status quo until, as our Catechism says, “after this life we reach the goal of perfection.” AMEN.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the holiness of Christ which has been accounted to us for our justification. We thank you for the gospel which not only gives us hope, but also motivates us to live for you. We pray for the help of Christ’s Spirit to pursue holiness in our lives. We need his help, because we are weak and sinful. Please help us always to look to Jesus for the strength we need, also through the Word and through the sacraments. Please help us to strive for sanctification, knowing that this glorifies you, and is also for our benefit and blessing.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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