Happy first of the month! Wow! June already? This past weekend I discovered a female Cardinal had constructed her nest in our yellow rose bush behind our house. Taking a closer look, I peered in and beheld two speckled eggs. Aww J That same rose bush was host to a Mockingbird family a couple of years ago. And I ask… who taught those birds how to build nests and raise and feed their young like they do? The same One who said…

Matthew 6:26

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them…

It’s kinda cool (I think) that God cares for His creation. To me, it’s just another indicator of God’s lovingkindness. And, oh my, such love hits you like a ton of bricks… and after it does, you see it absolutely everywhere!

And God loves in so many different ways. Today, let’s look at another way God is named in the Bible. And I hope to show how His love fits in this name…

Leviticus 20:8

And you shall keep My statutes, and perform them: I am the Lord who sanctifies you.

JEHOVAH M’KADDESH = The Lord Who Sanctifies

First off, know that to sanctify is to make set apart… to be set apart is to be holy.

And so who is Holy? God.

And what do vile sinners become when they are converted? Holy.

Who is the One who enables a broken and vile sinner to be spiritually reborn through faith? God.

So if God is the One who enables a repentant sinner to be reborn and to be reborn is to be set apart, then God is the One who sanctifies.  JeHoVaH M’Keddesh See?

I can illustrate this with my own life. I grew up going to All Saints’. I did the Eucharist class and got sprinkled. As a young kid at the time, I believed that Jesus was a real person. Later on, going to youth group/ mission trips/ whatnot, I read my Bible in fits and spurts, I got confirmed and I even tithed.

But all that time I was growing up to be a self-deceived hypocrite. I played the part and walked the walk. But… any truly righteous and discerning person who would have looked closely at me would just have to hear me talk to know my true character…

Luke 6:45

…For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

And “hanging out” late during my college years, I would say and do all kinds of things that would be a cause for shame… doing such things in church (Browsing porn, getting drunk, etc. etc.) was unthinkable.

But after decades of deceit, my guilt caught up with me, and the burden of my wicked life weighed me down. There was no relief for my conscience. Such was the weight that forced me down into a prostrate position one day. And I let loose with a full confession of all my accumulated yuckiness. I wanted nothing of it anymore.

But I did not know how to be rid of it. Painfully conscious of my hopeless condition, I cried out for mercy to the God whom I gave years of lip-service to, begging Him to forgive me. I was finished trying to run things myself. I surrendered completely and totally everything I had and would ever have.

And during that intense time, during a moment of quietness before Almighty God, Who was my Judge…an inner peace flooded my conscience and I knew then that God was now my Father, my heavenly Father who loves me… and loved me during all those ugly years too. And borrowing the words of John Bunyan (From Pilgrim’s Progress)…

“…there never came thought into my heart before now, that showed me so the beauty of Jesus Christ: It made me love a Holy Life, and long to do something for the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus; Yea, I thought that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body , I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus.”

And this desire is still with me, and I know it shall always be with me. I know I can never go back to a life of unrighteousness…

1^st John 3:9

Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His (God’s) seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

I still commit sins despite my desire not to, but “cannot sin” means to have a continual, unregenerate and habitual form of unrighteousness. Looking back at Leviticus, you can see how I can’t continue to sin… And without His enabling, I could never hope do it!

2^nd Corinthians 3:5

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.

God truly is the Sanctifier of His own!

1. Why do some bad habits seem impossible to overcome?
2. How does God enable?
3. Do you have stories of being refined by the Refiner’s fire?

Peace,
Jim