Sanctifying Grace
A Journey of Grace • Sermon • Submitted
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Please Take a Seat in the Waiting Room.
Please Take a Seat in the Waiting Room.
This morning we are going to take a seat in God’s waiting room along with the disciples as we wrestle with sanctifying grace. First lets review the journey of grace so far. Prevenient grace is grace that goes before, it’s grace that leaves the 99 to find that one lost sheep. It’s the grace that initially calls us to follow Christ. Saving grace is the grace made possible through Christ death burial and resurrection, and is immediately at work when we respond favorably to the calling of prevenient grace. Which brings us to our next leg of the journey of grace and that’s sanctifying grace.
14 For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.
Now let us take our seats in God’s waiting room. The Disciples are told in Luke 24:49 to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. Jesus in Acts 1:8 reiterates the promise.
In Acts 1:12-14 we see the disciples returning to Jerusalem and taking their seat in the waiting room and united in prayer.
Sitting in a waiting room is hard. I know for me the longer I sit in a waiting room the more antsy and impatient I get. Sitting in God’s waiting room allows time for self examination, allows time for us to quiet our lives, and allow the deep work of the spirit to shape our hearts. The work of sanctifying grace happens and it is all because of the Holy Spirit working in and through us.
Remember the Holy Jeans
Another way of seeing the work of sanctifying grace is through an authors pen. Before we responded favorably to the call of God to follow Christ we controlled the pen. We were writing our story. When we decided to follow Jesus, we were saying God my story is messed up I need you to re-write it and handed him the pen.
As we sit in God’s waiting room sometimes we get antsy, we get impatient and go back to our default settings, go back to what we know. We take back the pen.
In the list of disciples in the waiting room Peter’s name is mentioned first. We are going to take a look at Peter’s reaction to waiting in the waiting room and see what God through the work of the Holy Spirit did through Peter, because he allowed God to have the pen.
Sanctifying Grace in Peter
Sanctifying Grace in Peter
14 Then Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, “Listen carefully, all of you, fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem! Make no mistake about this. 15 These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming. Nine o’clock in the morning is much too early for that. 16 No, what you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel:
After patiently waiting for the promised Holy Spirit, Peter boldly steps forward and bears powerful witness to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was not a story of Peter’s writing but of the work of the Holy Spirit that transformed Simon son of John and empowered him to be Christ witness.
When Jesus first called Peter to follow him, he was a simple fisherman. That many believe was uneducated and illiterate. Acts 4:13 You might even say he lacks the qualifications for the ministry God has in store for him. Simon the fisherman is incapable of writing the story God has laid out for his life. Peter the disciple of Christ allows Christ to re-write his story.
Remember now back to the waiting room. The anxious anticipation, the impatience that sets in, perhaps even the discomfort that sets in thinking of past mistakes, ways your life is not going the way they should. With this in mind let’s look at another waiting room experience of Peter.
1 Later, Jesus appeared again to the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee. This is how it happened. 2 Several of the disciples were there—Simon Peter, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples. 3 Simon Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” “We’ll come, too,” they all said. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night.
After the resurrection in John’s Gospel Christ appears to his disciples twice as they are all gathered in the waiting room. Eventually Peter speaks up breaks the silence. Perhaps he can’t take the waiting anymore. Perhaps he can’t shake the guilt from denying he even knew who Jesus was three times. Peter speaks up and says I’m going fishing. He returns to the life God had called him from and takes back the pen.
What happens here is the story of Simon son of John continues. Jesus shows himself again and once again calls them out of the fishing boat.
So complete was Peter’s reversal that Jesus reverts back to calling him Simon son of John. John 21:15 After this Peter gives the pen back and never gives it back.
It’s in this waiting room at Pentecost that God through the work of the Holy Spirit in and through Peter, God continues to write his story. This is sanctifying grace at work in the life of Simon son John changing his heart and transforming him into who God called him to be. All made possible the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Let’s allow God to have the Pen
Let’s allow God to have the Pen
The only reason Simon son of John, the sword carrying fisherman. Who too often spoke before thinking, chopped off someone’s ear, denied Christ three times, and returned to the life God called him from, could stand up and boldly proclaim the gospel of reconciliation is because through the work of the Holy Spirit Peter is no longer bound by his past failures but set free to new life in the Spirit. This is the work of sanctifying grace. God’s work in us happens as we work with God to name and confess the elements of our past, present and future that hinder the journey of grace.
Peter hindered his journey when he took back the pen and went back to fishing. Let’s allow God to have the pen and through the work of the Holy Spirit continue to allow him to write our story, and the story of Leicester Church of the Nazarene.
Through sanctifying grace the Holy Spirit allows us to live a life fully consecrated to God.
“Entire Sanctification is a lifetime of persistent renunciation of self centered existence and the continual submission of nonresistant obedience to the ways and will of God.
The only way this can happen is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Allowing him to change our heart and to write our story and the story of God’s church.