We turn in the scripture now and read in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, the last half of that chapter. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 beginning at verse 12. The book in the main has to do with two subjects. One is eschatology, that is the doctrine of the last things. 2 Thessalonians does also, and the subject of sanctification, which is the subject of the sermon, and the chapter ends on that note too. So we're going to begin reading at verse 12. An aspect of sanctification is that we respect our elders, and that's the subject of 12 and 13. This is God's Word. And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake, and be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, Be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the spirit. despise not prophesyings, prove all things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all appearance of evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us. Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And that's the reading of the chapter. The text is verses 23 and 24. where Paul, ending the epistle really, he has just a couple of things to say after this text. 25, pray for us, greet each other with a kiss that's like a handshake, read this epistle to everyone, and then the final short benediction in verse 28. He really is ending the epistle in our text with these words. and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And, I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, faithful as he that calleth you, who also will do it. What a good God we have who, at the end of a book that's full of exhortations, ends with a benediction. And not just that little benediction at the very end, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, but with this benediction in our text. It says, though at the very end of the epistle, He raises both of His hands and He says unto them, God, sanctify you. God sanctify you completely. God preserve you fully in your body and in your soul and in your spirit. And He will do it because He's a faithful God. You see the text isn't an exhortation. The book is finished with exhortations. Read the book. You'll see them. I'll refer to some of them in a little while. But this text is not an exhortation. This text is a benediction. And the difference between an exhortation is this, and benediction is this. An exhortation is a command you ought, and a benediction is a blessing. God will do this for you. God sanctify you holy. And then, and I pray God. And if you notice that I pray God is in italics. It is, that is, it's not in the original Greek. It is a reflection of the tense of the verb, which is not this, you must be holy, but this, God make you holy. So this text is fitting for applicatory. Applicatory often is a sermon that is this kind of word. You ought be holy, but that's not what this text is. There's going to be exhortation tonight in this text, but the exhortation is not first of all, you ought to be holy, but the exhortation is people of God, listen to this word. It's a beautiful benediction and promise of God. May God make you holy. And what God calls his apostles to say to the church in the way of a benediction, you may be sure God wills to do. Our text is unique. And really, if you come to the end of an epistle and you hear something that's already been said in the epistle, that is the doctrine of sanctification, holiness, you probably wouldn't say anything about this text if you were preaching through the book of the Bible, except for the fact that this text brings out something different about the doctrine of sanctification. And the differences are two, and that's going to be the book of the sermon this evening. First of all, it says God will sanctify you not only in one dimension, but God is going to sanctify you in three dimensions, as it were. If you see my gestures, three dimensions. In your body, and in your soul, and in your spirit. That's unique to this text. And what isn't absolutely unique to this text, but important here, is that sanctification is taught in the context of Christ is coming again. He's coming again soon. Remember I said that's one of the main themes of the text, of the book, the second coming of Christ. Look at the way chapter five begins. The times and seasons, brethren, I don't need to write to you because you know perfectly that the day of the Lord is coming, and it's coming soon, and you know the signs. The context of the book is Christ is coming back and now comes our text with regard to sanctification. God, sanctify you in the light of the coming again of the Lord Jesus. So with those two things in mind, let's look briefly at this text for an applicatory sermon under the theme threefold sanctification. Body, soul, and spirit. That's what I mean by threefold. Threefold sanctification. First of all, the truth of it. Secondly, the certainty of it. And third, the blessedness of it. The truth of threefold sanctification. The absolute certainty that God's going to do that. And then in the third place, the blessedness of it. So we start with the truth. And you catechism students know from Heidelberg catechism and from the essentials classes that sanctification is the work of God to, and now I'm going to gesture, separate you from sin and devote you to God. That's the gesture. Sometimes we think sanctification is simply that we're separated from evil so that we're not evil and forget that sanctification is especially the work of God to separate us from evil in order that we may be devoted and consecrated to Him. Sanctification. Or if you would know the Dutch, it's a word that simply is translated making holy. Sanctification is God's work of making us holy. This way, separate you from sin. And this way, consecrate you to God and devotion to Him. Eucatechism students also know that sanctification is one of what we call the steps of salvation or the elements of salvation. Seven of them. Beginning with regeneration, calling, faith, justification, sanctification, preservation, and glorification. what we call elements of salvation. We ought not look at them atomistically, that is, as though one can be given without the other, and this one may be absent and you'll still have sanctification. Not so. You'll still have salvation. Not so. Salvation is of a peace. It's one great work of God that has many different aspects to it. A fundamentally important one is this one. Sanctification. God separates you from sin in order that you may be devoted to Him. And think about that. How that is an aspect of salvation. One more thing about catechism. You essential students know that when you finish the doctrine of God and man and Christ theology, anthropology, Christology, and you come to the doctrine of salvation, soteriology, you're going to treat all seven of those steps or elements of salvation, but in chapter 18, before you touch any one of those seven, you have the doctrine of the covenant. And the doctrine of the covenant is a beautiful biblical teaching that God is our friend and we're His. He's our bridegroom and we're His bride. He loves us as a bridegroom loves his bride. And He draws us to Himself in love as a man does his dear wife. That's salvation. That's the covenant. And if you think of that doctrine of salvation, you understand the seven elements in regeneration. He gives us his own life. In the calling, he calls us to himself, come to me. He unites us to his son by faith. He declares us righteous in justification. You're not sinner in my eyes you're righteous and I approve you and don't see any sin in you and then in that fifth dimension of salvation he actually goes to work on you and cleanses you as Ephesians 5 says a man does his wife beautifying her as only Christ can do to us by the washing of water in his word, goes to work to wash us clean, separating us from sin, so that he may say to us, you are as beautiful as you ever could be. Come into my presence and be devoted to me. That's sanctification. Get rid of your sin. The filth and pollution of sin. The power and enslavement to sin. And now devote yourselves to my fellowship and friendship. What a husband would say to his wife when he wants to draw her to himself. And a woman to her husband when she wants to get close to him. Be holy. holy. And so we sang, didn't we, in 252, holy must thy servants be who in thy temple dwell. Sanctification. That work of sanctification is God's work. We can't belabor this point, but we must state this point that although sanctification is a work of God in us in which we become very active, Be holy, God says to us. It's a synonym to conversion. Put off the old man, mortify him. Put on the new man, quicken him. It's a work in which we are very, very active. This text emphasizes the truth that it's God's work even when we're active. He's the one that does it. And so Paul says, God sanctify you wholly. And we'll see in a while why it can't be any otherwise than that God does this great work. It's God's work. It's a very important work. And I remind you again that it's the way in which he ends the epistle. All kinds of words in this letter about sanctification, beginning especially in chapter three, verse 12, Here's another prayer, benediction-like word. The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do to you, to the end that he may establish your hearts unblameable in Holiness. Here's the subject that he's bringing up in a special way in this book. And then he spells out a number of ways in which we need to be holy. Not all of them, but for the Thessalonian church. This is what they need to hear about holiness. Love one another. That's first. In chapter four, love one another. Abound in love to one another. Abstain from fornication. Work quietly. Don't bother other people when they're working. Eat your own bread. Warn those that are unruly. Now we come into the chapter we read. Comfort the feeble-minded. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. Don't quench the spirit. Don't despise prophesying. All of those are aspects of sanctification, that is, separating from sin and being pure. And then he concludes by wrapping it all up, as it were, with our text. But here's the new element. that he brings up something unique in this book especially. You're gonna be sanctified in a three dimensional way. In your body, in your soul, and in your spirit. That's what is called biblically complete sanctification. or whole sanctification. That word is used twice in the text, the very God of peace sanctify you wholly or completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body, that is your whole spirit and your whole soul and your whole body. That's important. And he's not talking about in the life to come when this work of God will happen to us, even though it might look like that when it talks about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ at the end of the text. But Paul is saying, you're going to be sanctified holy now. And that makes us nervous when we hear that. because that sounds like it may be heresy. It may be the heresy, we say, of perfectionism. If this were the only text in the Bible that talked about sanctification, you might be able to conclude perfectionism from this text. It's not, and therefore you may not, but the heresy of perfectionism teaches that when God goes to work to wash you from sin, pollution, and enslaving power, and separate you from it, he does it in such a way that you do not sin anymore. That's the heresy, I say, of perfectionism. I remember hearing on the radio a number of years ago a minister boasting that he had not sinned for the last two months. And you know he was a Pentecostal pastor, because it's in Pentecostalism usually that this heresy appears, but that man says he had not sinned in two months. And I wish I could have asked him, not one word that was evil, maybe he would have said no. Not one thought that was evil, not one inclination, not one failure to do what God says to do, love me with all of your being in every aspect of your life and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. That's perfection. where there's never sin of commission and never any sins of omission. And you understand without looking at any of the rest of the Bible that that's heresy. But is this text teaching that? That we are going to be sanctified completely in our body and soul and spirit? No. Our sinful nature remains. Romans 7 is true and applies to me and to you. I know that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. And I experience that every day and so do you. I am evil, born in sin. There's a dimension of me that is never going to be clean until I die and that old man is dead. Perfectionism is a heresy. But, and here's what Protestant reformed people need to hear, and reformed people who are taught the error of perfectionism, don't underestimate on the other hand what God does do to us. Don't minimize the extent, the length, and the breadth, and the height, and the depth of that work of God in you that separates you from sin and devotes you to God. It's a significant work. It's a powerful work. It's a work that extends to your body, and your soul, and your spirit. completely in your body and soul and spirit. How to understand that is coming, but don't underestimate the extent, the length and the breadth of that work of God. Don't be satisfied with just a little bit of sanctification. Don't say, well, we're only ever going to have a small beginning, so I'm not unsatisfied with much sin. That's the danger for us who are reformed and deny the error of perfectionism. Put positively, this ought to be encouragement to us who are struggling with a terrible sin. Maybe there's something in your life that you have a great difficulty putting away. What are you going to do? You're gonna listen to this word of God that has the apostle in obedience to God, blessing you with this blessing. God make you holy in your body, in your soul, and in your spirit, and be encouraged by that. He will, that's the second point. But what is this? What is this threefold sanctification? Well, let's start with the words of the text. The text talks about our spirit, our soul, and our body. And everyone knows what our body is. The question is, what does it mean when it distinguishes our inside life between spirit and soul? Here comes the whole reality of biblical psychology. What does the Bible mean when it talks about mind and heart and will and soul and spirit? And it's not easy. In fact, when John Calvin comes to this text, he says that the spirit is a reference to your will, that is, what you want, your desires, and your soul is a reference to your mind, what you think. How you understand things. And I suppose that that's a possibility. It doesn't give any evidence from the rest of the Bible of that. And though that isn't to be rejected completely, we do have that distinction. Inside us there's our thinking and inside us there is a willing But a better way to understand this distinction between spirit and soul is to say that your body is what a doctor can touch and affect with medicine and cut with a scalpel, and your soul and spirit is out of the realm of a doctor's ability to do anything to. Your inner life. your thoughts, your desires, your will, your affections, your love, your hatred. And that inside life of you is distinguished between soul that goes this way and spirit that goes this way. That is the inner life of a creature whose heart beats and cells multiply and moves goes horizontally. Animals have that too. The Bible in the Old Testament says that the soul of the animal is in his blood. That is, an animal has an inner life too. An animal looks this way. He thinks, he desires, he gets angry, he has affections. But he doesn't have that inner life with this dimension toward God. And that's what we have and that's what distinguishes us from animals. So we have an outward life, body, Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet, torso, all of our organs. We have this outer life and we also have this inner life in which I relate to you. That's my soul. I think about you. I have affections toward you. I may have anger toward you. I may have love toward you. You know all of the inner relationships of our life. Take those same inner relationships and look up. And that's our spirit. You think about God. You have desires for God. You have love for him or hatred for him. Every man, every man, not just believers, but every man has all three of those dimensions. A body. An inner life that relates to other people and other things, work, play, possessions. And an inner life that realizes that there's a God. Everybody has that. And this truth is that God is going to work on you and me to sanctify us in all three of those dimensions, to separate us from sin in our body and our soul and in our spirit. That's a beautiful teaching of the Word of God. And we start explaining that now by saying that you mustn't imagine that when God goes to work on you in His saving of you, that He only works on your spirit. That is, that He separates you from evil thoughts toward Him and gives you good thoughts toward Him. and leaves you unsanctified in your inner life as regards your relationship to others, and for sure leaves you unsanctified in your body. Do not imagine that God only sanctifies you in the vertical existence of you. And don't make the other mistake either, that you say, well, I'll admit that He sanctifies me in my relationship to Him, and in my relationship to others, that is in my mind and my heart, but He really isn't going to sanctify me in my body. my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue, my hands, my feet, and everything about me. He doesn't do anything with that. Oh, yes, he does. When God saves you, he preserves you in holiness in all three dimensions. And then notice the order, spirit, soul, and body. You might be tempted to say that's an order of importance. The spirit is really important, my relationship to God. The soul is pretty important, my relationship to you, and the body is really not very important. And that's a serious mistake because the Word of God says that God loves us, not only in our soul, but also in our body. Jesus died for us and redeemed us in our body too. And that's why when we have a Christian burial, we have an honorable Christian burial, and lay that body in the grave gently and carefully, because God is going to raise that body, and in that body, you're going to see him again. Body is important. Soul is important. Spirit is important. Don't make one more important than the other. God doesn't. But this is not the order of importance, but rather probably the order in which God works. Where does God start when He separates you from sin and consecrates you to Him? Right there in your spirit. So the text begins with spirit. He goes to work on your mind as you think about Him and as you think about idols. He goes to work on your inner life as you desire gods so that you don't desire other gods but you desire Him. He goes to work on your love with regard to this relationship so that you don't love your idols, money, possessions, pleasure, but you love Him. And then He goes to work on this relationship so that you have good thoughts toward your neighbor good attitudes toward them, love for them, willing their blessing and good. And then he goes to work on your body, your eyes, what you look at, your ears, what you listen to, your tongue, how you speak. Your hands, what you do, your feet, where you go. And the sexual part of your existence too. But it's got to start here. And that has so many implications that are important for our Christian existence. We don't have time to go into all of them. But let's just make that very, very plain. If you have a problem with what you look at, and you know you ought not, If I have a problem with what I listen to, or how I speak, sharp tongue, evil words, if I have a problem that I do things I ought not do, and go places I ought not go, and use my body sexually in a way that I ought not use it, where do I start? Not by addressing my body, and not even by addressing my thoughts toward you, but here, in my relationship to God, In your life of holiness, fighting sin, putting away evil. In your body. And in your life of sanctification, putting away evil. In your relationship to each other. Boyfriend to girlfriend. Children to parents. Friends in the church. And acquaintances. Don't start with how you think about them. Start with how you think about God. And God will work after you've develop this relationship with Him, God will go to work in your relationship to others, and God will go to work in your body, eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, and the rest. What a beautiful truth of the Word of God. And that's why we may warn each other that though there may be a place, please listen carefully, for Unbelieving counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, experts in the field of the mind and thought. Though there may be a place for them. Be very, very careful people of God because they don't know anything about this relationship. They don't know anything about loving God and they don't know anything about the relationship between your attitude to God and your thoughts toward others. They don't understand that there's a connection there, that if your thoughts are wrong, They may be able to help you to understand the patterns of your thinking and what you ought not be thinking, but always you need a good Christian by your side to help filter out the counsel that's evil and put into the counsel that's good the biblical truth of why what they say is of any value at all and then add to it This, people of God, is the relationship that's so important. And when this is right, these others are possible. Sanctification. And then, before we talk about the certainty of it, just this. Not just part of your spirit, not just part of your soul, not just part of your body, but all of it. Not perfectly. But when he goes to work in sanctifying your spirit, it's not just how you think, but it's what you desire. Every dimension of your spiritual life, God works on to sanctify. And when he sanctifies your soul, it's not just one dimension of your soul, but it's every dimension. And when he goes to work on your body, it's not just your eyes, but also your ears, not just your nose, what you find pleasing to you, and not just your tongue and not just your hands. It's the whole of you that God goes to work on to sanctify. Trust Him for that. And I say trust Him because you may, and that's the emphasis of the text in the second place. Now we can be briefer. In the second place, the text says, when God blesses you with this blessing of sanctification, you may be sure that you're going to receive it, and for three reasons. Three reasons. First of all, you see in the text that in the second part of verse 23, he says, your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved. Blamelessness has to do with holiness, but now look at that word preserved. That's a very important doctrine of salvation too, isn't it? Of the seven, preservation is the last. He's going to give you his life, call you, unite you to Christ, justify you, sanctify you, preserve you. I said last, it's the second to last. And glorify you, finally bring you home. These are the promises of God to all of his people. He's going to preserve you, preserve you. How? in holiness. He doesn't preserve his people in wickedness so that we may conclude that, well, the preservation that God promises me means that I'm just going to go to heaven at the end and it doesn't really matter how I live here. You ever conclude that? then you misunderstand the doctrines of Calvinism and the P of tulip. That's why in my mind it was last. T-U-L-I-P. Preservation. If you ever imagine that God's preservation of you means that you may live like hell here, and then be sure you're going to go to heaven there and then you don't know the least thing about preservation because the doctrines of Calvinism based on the Bible say it's the preservation of the saints. And the way in which God preserves us is in holiness so that if you believe that God will preserve you, you may also believe that He's going to preserve you in sanctification. That's first. You may be sure He will sanctify you because He promises to preserve you. Second, you may be sure of this because of the power of God. That comes out in the text when he says, faithful is he who will do it, who calls you, who also will do it. Will do what? Well, will sanctify you, will make you holy. And here we emphasize what I said in the introduction or the beginning of the first point, whose is the work of sanctification? Who does this work of washing you of the filth, separating you from power, Devoting you to God? Who does that? You? Well, you're active in it, but you couldn't be active in it lifting one finger unless God was powerful to do it. He will do it. He will, and He's able to do it too. Who will take your eyes? and turn them from looking at things you ought not look at when every day you do again and you say, oh, wretched man that I am, I'm going to perish if I don't stop and I can't stop. Who's going to turn your eyes from looking at what you ought not look at? And if that tongue of yours is always speaking evil of others and you find yourself always saying what you ought not say, who's going to help you sanctify your tongue? and listen to what you ought not listen to, and do what you ought not do, and go where you ought not go. Who is going to do that work in you? You know that you are powerless to fight against those sin, to release yourselves from the slavery to that sin. You must look to God and depend upon Him. And here's the point. Here's the point. You may be certain that you will be sanctified when you look to Him and trust Him. He will do it. And then third, this certainty comes out in the text when the Apostle says, Faithful is He that calleth you. Faithful. He made a promise to you. Christ did. The Father said, I'm going to make you clean and pure and bring you unto myself without one spot on you. That's at the very end. But I'm going to do that now too. I'm going to bring you to myself. I'm going to justify you and declare you innocent and righteous, but I'm also going to sanctify you. I'm faithful to my promises too. You know what faithfulness is, children? It's doing what you say you're going to do. It's your parents doing what they promised to do to you, support you and protect you and feed you and clothe you and help you in every way that they can. And you don't want your parents to break their promises. You say if they do, you're unfaithful to me. And your parents want to be faithful to you. And there's nothing more tragic than when we're unfaithful to each other. A man to his wife, a woman to her husband, parents to their children, friends to each other. There's very little that's more tragic than when I make a promise to you and I break that promise. But this you may be sure of, God is faithful. And when God says, I'm going to sanctify you, he will sanctify you. And when God sanctifies you, is there such a thing as an anxiety meter? Hook yourself up to an anxiety meter. and watch it go down as God works holiness in you. Anxiety is the opposite of peace, isn't it? When the text begins, it says, the very God of peace sanctify you. You have to ask yourself, why is he called the God of peace here? You read Calvin, Calvin says, I don't know. Well, Calvin was busy and he didn't know everything, but when you think about it, you know too. And you know when you understand the relationship between your life of holiness and peace. Your relationship to sin and peace starts with justification, doesn't it? You're anxious when you know you've got to meet the judge. You say, I'm nervous. And then God says, you're righteous. I approve you. I don't condemn you. And so you read in the book of Romans, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. There's a connection between sin and peace. The dimension of sin that's guilt addressed by justification. You're not a sinner. I declare you righteous because of my son. And then God says, there's another dimension of sin that I address in my saving of you, and that's sanctification. And to the extent that I sanctify you and you walk on this path of holiness, to that extent, your anxiety meter goes down and your life is calm. And we all know that. When I'm living in sin, I don't have any peace with myself. My relationship with God isn't good. When I'm living in sin against my wife or your husband, you children against your parents and they don't know it, you don't have peace in you. Of course not. You know that by experience. And your experience is because the word of God here teaches that there is no peace, Seth, your God, for the wicked. God wants to meet you at the judgment day, and you're going to meet Him. And He wants to meet you blameless at the coming of Christ, and with a view to meeting you blameless, so that you aren't afraid of that great judge, who's going to judge you, not on the basis of your works, but according to your works. You're going to meet Him, pleasing to Him. Any young women ready to be married? Thinking about getting married? Think about that wedding day, what you want to do all day as you prepare to meet your husband, coming down that aisle maybe, and here he stands, and there you come. There you come. All dressed in white. Pure for Him. Not sinless, of course. We're all sinners. And that's a sinner that's going to meet another sinner. But that's an analogy, isn't it? The day is coming soon that we're going to walk down that aisle, as it were, and the Lord Jesus Christ is going to meet us. We're going to meet Him, and we want to be pure and holy, separated from sin, so that we can be devoted to Him. Peace. Peace be unto you. When God says, I will sanctify you, Amen. Our Father which art in heaven, we thank thee for thy word. May its preaching be the power truly to make us holy, to depend upon thee for that great blessing. May it be the power in us to make us hate the sins that spot the flesh and love the life of the covenant where we have thee alone as our God and have thee from within and know thy name and keep the day holy. That we may love covenant life with our neighbor, respecting and honoring those who are over us, preserving the lives of those who are around us and living chastely. and using all of our possessions for the good of others, especially the poor and the kingdom, and using our tongues to bless rather than curse. Oh God in heaven, bless our evening. As we go home now, may we rejoice in thy great work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that we might be thine. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.