Your Next is Now

YOUR NEXT IS NOW

Set apart for His Glory

Jos 3:5  Then Joshua said to the people, “Sanctify yourselves [for His purpose], for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders (miracles) among you.”

They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, due to their forefathers sin of doubt.  While in the wilderness they fell into cycles of sin.  In Shiteem Numbers 25 the nation was seduced and fell into sexual sin with the Moabite women. 

Israels sin is symbolic of many of our journeys, because our sin is cyclical, we prohibit our own advancement because of our behavior, mindset, and history, familial, trauma based, and more.  When we don’t allow God to intervene, we allow those cycles to dominate us.  Have you ever felt like your life was going in circles, and cycles?  Praying the same prayers, harboring the same unforgiveness, telling yourself the same stories? 

God had to get the worldly mindset out of them.

He was ready to take them into the promise land.  He tells them to sanctify themselves.   

Sanctify = Quadash

By sanctifying themselves, God wanted the people to:

  • Wash outwardly(clothes, bodies).
  • Abstain from defilement(ritual and moral).
  • Dedicate themselves inwardly(repentance, prayer, obedience).
  • Break with the past(no wilderness baggage into the promised land).

Grief, loss, regret, cycles of sin,

  Unbelief (refusing God’s promise).

  Complaining (grumbling against God’s provision).

  Idolatry (golden calf, Baal worship).

  Rebellion (against Moses and Aaron).

  Disobedience (ignoring God’s clear commands).

  Immorality (sexual sin and indulgence).

Submit to you that your closer than you think to walking in your promise. 

The place they launched out from was formerly a place of failure.  3:1.

God has a way of launching you to your next from places that you’ve failed.  

NT reality is that

  • Sanctification is God’s work of making believers holy—set apart for Him—through the Spirit, the Word, life and conformity to a Christ centered life.
  1. Positional Sanctification (Past – What God has already done)
    • At the moment of salvation, you are set apart as belonging to God.

1Co 6:11  And such were some of you [before you believed]. But you were washed [by the atoning sacrifice of Christ], you were sanctified [set apart for God, and made holy], you were justified [declared free of guilt] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God [the source of the believer’s new life and changed behavior].

Washed, Sanctified, Justified, in Christ

Col 1:21  And although you were at one time estranged and alienated and hostile-minded [toward Him], participating in evil things,

Col 1:22  yet Christ has now reconciled you [to God] in His physical body through death, in order to present you before the Father holy and blameless and beyond reproach—

Estranged, and hostile minded participating in evil.

Reconciled through His death Holy, blameless and beyond reproach

            Eph 4:30  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God [but seek to please Him], by whom you were sealed and marked [branded as God’s own] for the day of redemption [the final deliverance from the consequences of sin]

  • Sealed and protected by being set apart.
  1. Progressive Sanctification (Present – What God is doing now)
    • The ongoing process of becoming more like Christ in thought, word, and deed.
    • 2 Corinthians 3:18 – We are being transformed “from glory to glory” by the Spirit.

By the Word: John 17:17 – Jhn 17:17  Sanctify them in the truth [set them apart for Your purposes, make them holy]; Your word is truth.

By the Spirit: 2Th 2:13  But we should and are [morally] obligated [as debtors] always to give thanks to God for you, believers beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through the sanctifying work of the Spirit [that sets you apart for God’s purpose] and by your faith in the truth [of God’s word that leads you to spiritual maturity].

Included but not limited to:

Trials and tribulations

Failure and restoration

Sickness and healing

Lack and provision

Correction and redirection

Purposeful sanctification

  1. You begin to identify areas in your life that you can clean up and work on.
  • Heb 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who by faith have testified to the truth of God’s absolute faithfulness], stripping off every unnecessary weight and the sin which so easily and cleverly entangles us, let us run with endurance and active persistence the race that is set before us,
  • Heb 12:2 [looking away from all that will distract us and] focusing our eyes on Jesus, who is the Author and Perfecter of faith [the first incentive for our belief and the One who brings our faith to maturity], who for the joy [of accomplishing the goal] set before Him endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God [revealing His deity, His authority, and the completion of His work].
    • Confession 1 John 1:9
    • Repentance 2 chron. 7:14
    • Heb.10:24-25

Sanctification means:

  • God sets you apart from sin.
  • God sets you apart to Himself.
  • God changes you to look more like Jesus every day until the work is complete.
  • You commit to walking out your faith and conforming to God’s Purpose for you.

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