This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. Hi, I'm Pastor Tom Holliday. We're
looking together at the book of 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 this
week, day one of our look at this chapter, verses 1 to 3.

It's a chapter, 1 Thessalonians 4 is a chapter that's all about the pursuit of
excellence in our lives as believers. We're going to talk this week about how to
pursue excellence, real excellence, how God brings that kind of excellence into
our daily lives. Everything that Paul has to talk about as he wrote to these new
young Christians in Thessalonica is about faith, how to live the faith life that
God wants you to live, how to live the excellent life that God has made you to
live.

As I read this passage, there is something for me in every line of this passage
it seems. There's a way for me to live out the life of faith, beginning in verse
1. Verse 1 says of chapter 4, "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live
in order to please God, as in fact you are living.

Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. " That
last couple of words, more and more, that's important. In the New American
Standard it says that you may excel still more and it echoes again in 1
Thessalonians 4 verse 10.

We urge you, brethren, to excel still more, again to do it more and more. When
the Bible says something twice, then you begin to think there is something I
better listen to. God's trying to get my attention.

And so this week we're going to listen to what God has to say about excellence
in this chapter because God's call is a call to excellence. I think any of us
appreciate someone who has excellence as a goal anywhere in our society. When
you see excellence expressed, there's something exciting about it.

It might be in a sports world where you see a baseball catch or in the art world
where you see a white canvas come alive or a rough stone become real, or in
music where a composer writes a symphony in his mind and then watches it play
out on paper and then in an orchestra, or in science, travels into space,
discoveries on other planets, something in the tiniest we find and we end that
discovery, there is some kind of excellence and there is something about
excellence that awes me, that awes us. The most important place to build
excellence into our lives is excellence when it comes to our faith. We should
settle for nothing less.

I remember once seeing a sermon being preached on excellence. It was on the
Christian life of excellence and the title was misspelled on the sermon notes.
Sometimes we act like that as believers.

We act like, "Well, I want to be excellent, but Jesus will understand. He'll
forgive. If I make any effort, even a little small effort, that'll be all right.

" Jesus appreciates anything that we give to Him, but He calls us to a life of
excellence. That famous quote from D. L.

Moody, "The world has yet to see what God could do through one completely
committed man. By the grace of God, I will be that man. " God calls us to that
kind of commitment.

This chapter, in fact all of 1 Thessalonians, is for the unsatisfied. A
run-of-the-mill faith or an off-the-rack religion is not what this book is
about. It's about those who desire a genuine excellence in their faith, a real
faith in a real world.

Paul points out in the beginning of this chapter two primary decisions that you
and I can make for attaining excellence in our lives. I think you're going to be
surprised. This is one of those chapters where two or three times as you look
through it, you think, "I'd never thought of it that way.

" In verse 2, Paul talks about the growth in excellence when he says, "For you
know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. " And in
verse 3, "It is God's will that you be sanctified. " God's will is your
sanctification.

Before we even get into the specifics, we have to start there. God's will is
your sanctification. You want to know God's will?

A lot of people want to know God's will. What's God's will for my life? Well,
here it is.

It is your sanctification. God's will is that you should be sanctified. It is
other things, but it says here very powerfully that God's will for your life is
to make you more like Jesus Christ.

The word sanctification means growth. It means becoming more and more like
Christ in our lives, in our attitudes, in our heart, in our actions. In fact,
there are three words that you need to be aware of when it comes to your
salvation in Jesus Christ.

Justification, sanctification, and glorification. There are words that you have
to come back to again and again, and these are three words with salvation that
you have to come back to again and again. Justification, sanctification, and
glorification.

Justification is what happened the moment you became a Christian. All your sins
were wiped out. God forgave you of everything.

He justified you. He made you right in His presence. The technical meaning of
justification is being declared not guilty.

You are justified. The book of Romans talks a lot about justification. In fact,
if you haven't done a study of Romans yet in drive time devotions, I'd encourage
you after you finish this study to go to the Saddleback Church website and do
that study next.

It's all about justification. Justification is God declaring you not guilty. And
then sanctification is the process of growing in the Christian faith.

And these verses say that's God's will. That is something that is happening
right now in your life as a believer. And glorification is what will inevitably
happen when we go to be with God in heaven.

It is God's promised glory in His future. And glorification will become
instantly like Jesus Christ and we enjoy God's presence for all eternity. All
three are important.

Justification is once for all. It's done with. And now that you're a believer.

Sanctification is, well, it's the words we just looked at. It's more and more.
It is excelling still more.

That's what this passage is all about. It's about how I grow in the Christian
faith. And so God's will is your sanctification.

And then glorification is that future hope that we look forward to. And when it
comes to sanctification, as we talk about this more and more, just as we begin
this chapter, because I've had some questions. People write in about this.

It's important to remember that there are two focuses of sanctification. As the
Bible talks about sanctification in the New Testament, it talks about the fact
that sanctification is once and complete, the moment we become a believer. It's
already decided that we're going to become like Jesus Christ.

But it's also something that is day to day and continuing. A lot of times people
ask me, and I've heard questions about this the last few weeks as we've been
going through these verses of 1 Thessalonians together. Is it one or the other?

Is it something that's going on day to day? Am I growing day to day? Or is it
something that God has promised that will happen at the end of time?

You might remember a few weeks ago we looked at the idea that we were looking
forward to that day when we'll stand blameless in His presence, that promise.
Which is it? Well, it is both.

Now, I know that's a paradox, and I know for some of you it's difficult to live
with these kind of paradoxes. But in the Bible, God is more than willing to
confuse our minds a little bit with the truth. I say that little tongue in
cheek, but what I'm saying is this is a truth that is above and beyond us.

It is greater than us. God is making us holy, but God has already made us holy.
The word sanctification, by the way, comes from the root word of holy.

It has the idea of God making us different, God making us holy, God making us
more and more like Himself. And throughout the New Testament, we are taught that
the moment we became a believer, the moment you became a believer, immediately
God decided that He was going to make you like His Son, Jesus Christ. And He's
heading you towards that moment when you will stand in His presence like His
Son.

That is a joy that we look forward to. God also is working in your life moment
by moment in this world to make you more like His Son, Jesus Christ. He's making
you holy towards that day when you will be holy.

You might think, "Well, what's the use of making me holy now? Why not just look
forward to that day? " I do not know all the ways that these two truths
interplay with each other, but I do know that they do.

I know that as I cooperate with God's process now, I trust Him in faith that it
looks forward to that day when He's going to make me holy with His Son, and it
increases, it magnifies that day. And I know that as I look forward to that day
when I'm going to be holy in His presence, it inspires me today to become more
and more holy and grow in Him. It takes both of these truths in order to grow to
become more and more like Jesus Christ, to be encouraged in that growth.

God's will is your sanctification. And as we begin this week and take a look at
some practical truths that God has to teach us about sanctification, I would
like to pray for you. I'd like to pray for you and your growth in your faith.

Lord, I pray that as we look together at your word, that you would use your word
to help us to grow in faith. Jesus taught us in His prayer right before He died
that He wants to grow us, He wants to sanctify us, and that your word is truth.
You use your word to help us to grow.

So I pray, Lord, even as we read these verses, as we think about what they mean
in our daily lives, you help us to see not just with understanding, but you help
us to see with life change. Help us to see how these truths could begin to
infect, to affect our daily lives, to impact us in ways that make a difference.
Jesus, we want to change, we want to grow, but we can't do it on our own.

It's you who make us more and more holy. And so we come to you and we trust in
you. We ask that you would do in us what we cannot do in ourselves, and we pray
that we would give all that we can to you so that you can do that in us.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well tomorrow, Paul goes straight at one of the
two keys to sanctification that are at the beginning of this chapter. We're
going to be looking together at verses three to eight.