Good morning. We’re at the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians today. And Paul expresses his confidence in GOD to sanctify these believers at Thessalonica. “May God HIMSELF sanctify you completely!” May your ENTIRE BEING, inside and out, body, soul and spirit, be kept blameless at the coming of Jesus Christ.  Then he gave them this promise: “God who calls you is faithful and He will surely do this.”  He will accomplish this. God will MAKE this happen!

This is a prayer of blessing, a benediction. It was to infuse them with courage to live a godly life. It is to infuse us with courage to live a godly life.  You CAN live the extraordinary life that you are called to because God HIMSELF will work this in you.  

If God doesn’t do this. All we have is a dead religion. All we have is pressure to perform. All we have is a heavy load of commands.  But Paul said, GOD will do it!   

When I was at ISU God got a hold of my life.  I wanted to be a “radical for Jesus”, to make disciples, to impact the campus, to shake the world, to be something for God. There was some good in those desires but it was too heavy for me to carry.  I was thinking I was going to do that. It crushed me.  I felt that performance kind of religion and I saw what it did to me. I couldn’t carry it.

To the young people, please do not view the Christian life as something you have to go out and perform on your own. It is not mainly just following rules.  Parents don’t turn Christianity in just a high pressure morality for your kids. Don’t make it just about their obedience to an outward list of rules.  You can’t live the Christian life that way and they can’t either. And it will turn them off and make it into something dreary and heavy and they won’t want any thing to do with it. 

Paul urged the Thessalonians throughout this letter to be holy, to abstain from sexual immorality, to love each other, to live in peace with one another, to rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances, and much more.  And we should diligently seek to obey everything God’s word tells us to do. But he reminds them, they are NOT on their own to do that! The God of peace HIMSELF will sanctify you completely!

If we make the Christian life mainly about obeying commands, without emphasizing the surpassing greatness of God’s power to accomplish this IN us, then life becomes an incredibly heavy burden. We begin to think and feel that everything depends on us; that we are on our own to be good, and holy; that we have to carry ourselves to the end of the race.

And that turns our eyes inward, on ourselves. It gets our mind off the glory of Christ and the grace of God and onto ourselves and our performance. It sabotages our joy, saps our spiritual energy and creates a spirit of heaviness. 

Paul frees us from all that and says, GOD IS GOING TO DO IT! Of course we pursue godliness! But we pursue it from a place of REST and confidence that God is doing the heavy lifting!   I think it was Spurgeon who asked “Is your religion carrying you or are you carrying it?” That is a great question!  If you feel life is MAINLY YOU carrying this heavy load to perform for God that is not the gospel. Christ himself bore our sins in HIS body.  With HIS stripes we are healed! So that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  HE made us alive to God.  

In Christianity God is carrying us. We aren’t carrying Him. That is not just a comforting thought!  It is straight from the Bible! 

Isaiah 46:1-4 “Bel and Nebo (Babylon’s idols) are borne by beasts of burden. Their images you carry about, are burdensome, (they are) a burden for the weary….. (But)
3“Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob.. I (the LORD) have upheld you since your birth, and have carried you since were born. Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

It’s pagan religion that is like carrying a heavy burden. John said, “His commandments are NOT burdensome because whatever is born of God overcomes the world”.  You have the power of a new life within you. It’s called being “born of God” and that new life overcomes sin and the devil and the world and THAT makes God’s commandments NOT a burden but a joy!  God did that!

In Numbers 11:14 “Moses cried out to the Lord, I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.” Whenever we think it all depends on us that is where we end up. Weighed down, weary, groaning, depressed and discouraged.  

I cannot count the number of times I’ve said, Lord you carry the church, take us where we need to go. You carry the business, I can’t take it by myself.  Lord you carry me to the finish line, you make me holy. Lord, please make me the elder and pastor I need to be.  The peace and rest that comes from trusting God to undertake these things this is life-changing.  

I find great comfort in Hebrews 13:23,24 Now may the God of peace who brought up the dead the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, (May God) equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight!” Think about those phrases!! God equipping you to do his will in EVERYTHING!  God working in you all that is pleasing in His sight! What peace that gives! What boldness for life that gives!  That’s Paul’s confidence here.  Paul knew HE couldn’t sanctify them completely.  He knew the Thessalonians couldn’t sanctify themselves. But he KNEW God would surely do it!  

If you know Jesus and love God, God has a hold of you and He won’t let go. David said, The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; and though he falls, he will not be cast down, for the Lord is holding his hand.” Psalms 37:24 The Lord is never NOT holding your hand.  If you belong to him, you will NOT be hurled to the ground because God had got a hold of you.  He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it!  “He WILL completely sanctify you and make you blameless in spirit, soul and body.” 

Let’s go back and work through these verses. Paul addresses his prayer to the “God of peace”. Peace comes from God.  We HAVE peace WITH God through our Lord Jesus Christ. God brings peace into our relationships and into our hearts. God brings peace INTO our lives BY sanctifying us!  

God said, “There is no peace for the wicked.” Is. 48:22 Sin brings calamity and misery and turmoil and destruction in the end. The total opposite of peace. The farther you get from God the farther you get form peace. But God said Is. 32:17 “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”  

If you want peace in your life, if you want to to be free of a lot of calamity and turmoil in your life then you will WANT to be sanctified.  Hebrews 12:11 God’s discipline, or we could say His sanctifying work in us “produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness”!  Peace comes from holiness, living in agreement with God’s ways.  

*Next Paul said My God HIMSELF do this, and we’ll get to that, but first what exactly was he asking God to do? To sanctify them completely!  And what does that mean? That God would make them holy, pure, blameless, through and through.

Sanctification means to be set apart, to be consecrated, to belong to God for HIS purpose. You are God’s man. You are God’s woman.  That’s your identity, that’s how you think about yourself. Sanctification is being transformed from a life of sin to a life of holiness. Eph 4:24 describes is as “putting off the old self corrupted by it’s sinful desires, and putting on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Paul prayed “may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”,. That explains sanctification quite well!  It is every PART of you, your body, your mind, your personality, your soul and spirit to be COMPLETELY holy or blameless. 

You will never find God’s purpose for your life until you see that His plan for you is the complete renovation of your heart mind and body. God is not satisfied for you to clean up a few outward gross sins, or bad habits.  He wants all of you.  

When we come to know God we become concerned about being sanctified or holy.  The writer of Hebrews said,”Without holiness no one will see the Lord”. Because a lifelong pursuit of holiness is the very essence of God’s work in us.  It’s evidence that we have come to know God. 

1 Cor. 7:1 “Therefore, beloved, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that defiles body and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

Titus 2:14 “(Christ) gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” 

Of course we ARE loved and accepted WHILE we are being perfected!  But the goal is Christ FULLY formed in you. 

Paul prayed for complete sanctification for the Thessalonians. That is what you pray for other people when you love them and when you have God’s interests at heart.  Sure, you pray for health, and needs to be met, and problems to be solved. For safety and to enjoy their vacation, or to get their house sold, good grades, and all those things.  I hope you pray for those kind of things for those you love.  

But IF you have God’s interests at heart, your PASSIONATE, ALL CONSUMING prayer will be for them to be godly, sanctified, pure, doing the will of God, faithful to the end.  

Epaphras prayed this for his brothers and sisters in the Colossian church. Epaphras, who is one of your own, (is) always striving earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand (perfect) and mature and fully assured in all the will of God. 

Paul prayed this way in Philippians 1:9-11 “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

1 Thess 3:13 “May the Lord cause you to increase and overflow with love for one another so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

Pray like this for those you love, for your kids, your grandkids, your brothers and sisters here in the church. Their sanctification matters!     

*Then we come to that important word, HIMSELF! Your holiness only happens by God’s ACTION in your life.  He HIMSELF is working on you. 

Your holiness is a work so big, so humanly impossible, that the only way you can hope for this to happen is for God himself to do it.   

This doesn’t mean we go completely passive or make no efforts. So often I hear people say, “If I am ever going to be patient God’s going to have to do it. I know I can’t.” Or “if I am ever going to have victory over this sin God’s gonna have to change me cause I can’t.” There is truth in that. But there is an error in that too.  And it’s an error that will keep you stuck right where you are.  

God sanctifies you by working in YOU, strengthening you, willing IN YOU all those things that are pleasing to Him.  We work because God is working. You fight sin because God puts in you a hatred of sin. You put sin to death because the Spirit of God is IN you leading you to do that!  You chose to please God because GOD Himself puts that desire into your heart.  

Philippians 2:13 Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” You work out your sanctification because God HIMSELF is giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him. Nothing would happen without HIM.  And with HIM it will happen!

*And Paul ends with this! Verse 24 “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” The God who called you to Jesus is FAITHFUL! He is reliable, trustworthy. He is faithful to you and His plans to sanctify you. ESV He will surely do it! NASB He will bring it to pass.  The goal of your sanctification will be reached BECAUSE of GOD!

This is great news! Sin is powerful. It captivates, enslaves destroys, plunges lives into misery. Paul describes “women who are weighed down with sins and led astray by various passions”. Some of us have seen first hand the way alcohol, pornography, sexual sin can ruin lives. Think the way anger, or hatred, or self pity, or complaining and bitterness can dominate our personality. We need the work of God to make us different people!  And thank God He is faithful to transform us! He called us to Christ and HE WILL DO IT. 

This is good news!  Spurgeon said, “We would have joy like those who are already in heaven if we believed with unstaggering faith, “faithful is He who called you and he will also do it.”

How then should we live?

*We should live with a passion for holiness!  Get on board with God’s purpose to sanctify you completely! Seriously seek to please your Heavenly Father in every thought, every attitude, every word, every expression on our face. 

*Don’t live like life is a burden. Or that being a Christian is a burden.  God HIMSELF is working in us. Christ Himself has borne our sins, and the Spirit has been sent into our hearts to purify us.  We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  We are more than conquerors even in our sanctification because of all the provision of God for us to be sanctified.

*Live with confidence that God is finishing His work in us! Phil. 1:6 “We are confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Because of God I am going to make it. Because of God I am going to finish strong. Be confident of this very thing, because of God!

*Avoid false substitutes for deeper Christian life.  There will always be someone telling you about a new book or a program to get free, from your past or your sins or your emotional baggage.  God HIMSELF will do it. Put your hope in God HIMSELF to transform, heal, sanctify, make you into the person He wants you to be. 

*Live life from a place of rest. “Faithful is He who calls you and He will surely do it.” Applies to our sanctification and everything God calls us to.  Whatever you are going through this morning. Whatever has been given to you.  God will do what needs to happen. So REST. Cast your burden upon Him. Believe God to do what needs to be done. Of course, do what God shows you to do, but do it from a place of rest, and confidence peace that the work will get done. Because God is faithful and He will surely do it.