Progressive Sanctification, the Pursuit of Holiness, and the Quest for Full Assurance: 2024 Summer Sermon Series

 Progressive Sanctification, the Pursuit of Holiness, and the Quest for Full Assurance

Lake Country Bible Church

2024 Summer Sermon Series

Sermon 1- Confusing and Abusing Grace in the Name of the Gospel

Jude 3-4; Romans 6:1, 15-18.  

 

Sermon 2- Working Out Our Sanctification as God Works in Us.

Philippians 2:12-13

 

Sermon 3- Fruits of Genuine Faith  (Pastor Josh)

1 John (sermon overview of the entire book)

Sermon 4- The Hole in our Holiness and the Great Commission Omission.

Titus 2:11-14; Matthew 28:18-20

Confusing and Abusing Grace in the Name of the Gospel. Romans 6:1, 15-18; Jude 3-4 (part 1)

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to (go the opposite direction) and to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (WHY?) For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, these are ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 3-4)  

Jude understood how glorious it is to celebrate our common union in Christ.  Magnifying the redemptive grace of God and our undeserved salvation never gets old, does it?  Having said that, this emergency 911 epistle (aka Jude), illustrates that it is pastorally negligent to ignore a clear and present danger!  To act like everything is spiritually ok, when it's not, is both dangerous and wrong!  True shepherds protect the flock at all costs (John 10).  On the other hand, when danger appears "hirelings" leave the sheep unprotected.  Jesus reminded his disciples that hirelings really only care about themselves.  Their personal comfort and well-being is what they are most concerned about.  Add to that, Jeremiah 6:14 reminds us that false teachers say, "'Peace, peace!' when there is no peace at all."

After a wonderfully enriching five year journey through the signature Gospel of John, my original plan was to begin a new expository study of a brief, yet power packed, epistle. Philemon. Sadly, I cannot do that at this time.  Though the heresy of flown blown Antinomianism has NOT crept into our beloved church family (as was true in Jude's case), hyper-grace sanctification and lower-case “a,” Reformed antinomianism- has!  To do nothing and just hope for the best would be a dereliction of duty.  

Allow me to illustrate. How would you react if you heard that your city fire station captain responded like this?  "Fire station 401. Fire chief Caleb speaking."  "Sir, please calm down!  So just your attached garage is on fire? Well, we’re really busy waxing our trucks and few guys are catching up on sleep. We had a really busy weekend… Please call us back if the fire spreads to the entire house- bye for now!"  You would be outraged...and rightly so!

Don’t Mistake Your Passion for Theological Precision

Caring Enough to Be Careful

I’m glad there are people in the world—most people in the world, it turns out—who know more about cars than I do. I don’t want good-natured well-wishers to replace my alternator. I want someone who has paid careful attention to the intricacies of auto repair. I want someone who cares about precision. I want someone who knows what he’s doing. I want an expert.

To act as if no one knows more than anyone else is not only silly; it’s also a serious mistake. In his book The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols cites a survey from a few years ago in which enthusiasm for military intervention in Ukraine was directly proportional to the person’s lack of knowledge about Ukraine. It seems that the dumber we are, the more confident we are in our own intellectual achievements.

Nichols relays an incident where someone on Twitter was trying to do research about sarin gas. When the world’s expert on sarin gas offered to help, the original tweeter (a world-class “twit” we might say) proceeded to angrily lecture the expert for acting like a know-it-all. The expert may not have known it all, but in this case, he knew exponentially more than someone crowdsourcing his research online. And when it comes to chemical warfare, I’d like my experts to have as much expertise as possible.

We live in an age where passion is often considered an adequate substitute for precision.

We’ve swallowed the lie that says that if we believe in equal rights, we must believe that all opinions have equal merit. Nichols also tells the story of an undergraduate student arguing with a renowned astrophysicist who was on campus to give a lecture about missile defense. After seeing that the famous scientist was not going to change his mind after hearing the arguments from a college sophomore, the student concluded in a harrumph, “Well, your guess is as good as mine.” At which point the astrophysicist quickly interjected, “No, no, no. My guesses are much, much better than yours.”1