God's Purpose in Sanctification
Text: Numbers 6:1-6; Philippians 2:13
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Explain the pattern by which God blesses through consecrated people — using at least three Old Testament examples.
- Explain why God sanctifies those he intends to use — what the connection is between greater blessing and more complete consecration.
- Describe the Nazirite vow from Numbers 6 and explain how it illustrates voluntary, intensive sanctification.
- State what Samson's story teaches about the limits of God's use of an imperfectly consecrated person.
- Identify the three terms — blood-bought, blood-washed, blood-sealed — and explain what they mean for the Christian's fitness for God's service.
Thesis
God blesses men through men. This has been his consistent pattern from Abraham to Christ: the person through whom God works is the person God has sanctified — set apart, consecrated, made fit for the work assigned. The degree of sanctification corresponds to the greatness of the blessing: the higher the calling, the more complete the consecration required. The Christian who has been blood-bought, blood-washed, and blood-sealed is more completely sanctified than any Nazirite or Levite — and is therefore under the greatest obligation to be fit for the blessing God wants to send through them.
Burden
God always does his best for man. He hates sin but loves the sinner. The sins that people commit keep God from blessing them — not because God withholds his love but because sin makes the vessel unfit for the use to which God wants to put it. The question the sermon presses is not theoretical: God wants to bless men through us. Has he been able to? Are we fit?
Introduction
"For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). The verse is one of the most compressed statements in the New Testament about how God accomplishes his purposes in the world: he works in people, and through that internal working, produces external effects. He does not accomplish his purposes in isolation from human beings — he accomplishes them through human beings who have been made fit for the work.
The Nazirite vow in Numbers 6 is the clearest Old Testament illustration of this principle applied voluntarily. A person who wanted to be specially set apart for God's service could take a vow — to abstain from wine and grape products, to let their hair remain uncut, to avoid contact with the dead — for a designated period or for life. The vow was not required of everyone; it was the response of a person who wanted to be more completely consecrated than ordinary Israelite life required. God's law made provision for it, which tells us something about the kind of consecration God welcomes.
I. God Blesses Men Through Men
The pattern is consistent across the entire biblical narrative.
Abraham was blessed that he might be a blessing to others (Gen. 12:2). "And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing." The blessing God gave Abraham was not intended to terminate at Abraham — it was designed to flow through him to the nations. The blessing that comes to a consecrated person is never purely for that person's benefit; it is the mechanism by which God reaches those whom the consecrated person can reach.
Laban was blessed through Jacob (Gen. 30:27). "Please stay, if I have found favor in your sight; I have divined that the Lord has blessed me on your account." Laban, who was neither a righteous man nor a consecrated one, received material blessing because Jacob — consecrated and blessed by God — was living in his household and working in his fields. The blessing God intends for others passes through the person through whom God works.
Potiphar was blessed through Joseph (Gen. 39:5). "It came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house on account of Joseph; thus the Lord's blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field." Joseph was a slave — legally a piece of property — and through him God blessed the household that owned him. Consecration is not dependent on social position.
Israel and Judah were to bless the nations (Isa. 19:24-25; Zech. 8:13). The blessing God gave Israel was the platform from which the whole world was to be reached. The nation set apart for God was set apart not merely for its own sake but for the sake of every nation that did not yet know the God of Israel.
Through Christ, God blessed all nations. The fullest application of the principle: "In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice" (Gen. 22:18). What Abraham's partial obedience began, Christ's complete obedience accomplished. The one who was most completely set apart — "holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens" (Heb. 7:26) — is the one through whom the blessing reaches every nation.
II. God Always Sanctifies Men That He Uses
The connection between being used and being sanctified is not incidental — it is structural.
God has always had a sanctified people upon earth. In every era of redemptive history, there has been a people set apart for God's service — from the patriarchal household to Israel to the church. The world has never been without a consecrated community through which God works.
The greater the blessing through men, the more completely the sanctification. This is the principle that runs through the escalating consecration from Israel to Levi to Aaron. All Israel was sanctified and set apart from the nations. But within Israel, the tribe of Levi was more completely set apart — they had no land inheritance; their portion was the Lord (Num. 18:20). Within Levi, the house of Aaron was more completely set apart still — the priests, the ones who approached the altar and entered the sanctuary. The graduated sanctification corresponds to the graduated nearness to God and the graduated weight of responsibility before him.
He sanctified Israel, then Levi, then Aaron. This is the pattern: the calling that carries greater blessing requires greater consecration. The person who wants to be a greater blessing will need to be more completely set apart.
III. God's Nazirites
The Nazirite vow represents voluntary consecration beyond what the covenant normally required.
Nazirites were specially sanctified for God's service (Judg. 13:5; Luke 1:15). Samson was a Nazirite from birth — the angel announced it to his mother before he was conceived. John the Baptist was similarly consecrated from before birth (Luke 1:15: "he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb"). For both, the consecration was not self-chosen but divinely appointed before the person had any capacity to choose.
The Nazirite vow makes this explicit (Num. 6:1-6). The vow of the Nazirite was a formal, legally recognized act of self-consecration: the person dedicated a period of time — or their entire life — to God in a degree of separation beyond the ordinary. Three external marks: no wine or grape products, no cutting of the hair, no contact with the dead. Each was a symbol of a deeper orientation: the rejection of what intoxicates, the visible commitment to the vow's duration, the separation from death in order to serve the God of life.
IV. Samson
Samson is the study in what happens when a person called to a high degree of consecration does not maintain it.
God's purpose was to use Samson to overthrow the Philistine with one man. The angel's announcement was unambiguous: "he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines" (Judg. 13:5). One man, against the dominant military power of the region, by the strength God would give through the consecration he had appointed. The calling was as specific and as large as any calling in the judges period.
God would have accomplished much more with Samson if he had remained holy, fit, sanctified. This is the painful lesson of the story. Samson was capable of feats that no other person in the narrative performs — killing a lion with his bare hands, carrying off the gates of Gaza, bringing down the house of Dagon. But the consistent pattern of his life was the squandering of consecration: Philistine women, the forfeiture of the Nazirite vow, the disclosure of the secret that only God should have known. The strength was real; the consecration was compromised; and the combination produced less than the calling had promised.
God is not responsible for Samson's choices. God used him in spite of them. But the operative phrase is "used him as he was prepared to be used." The vessel that is fully consecrated can carry more. The vessel that is cracked by compromise still carries something — but less than it was made to carry. Samson delivered Israel from the Philistines. He was supposed to do more. The gap between what he did and what he could have done is the measure of what his compromised consecration cost.
V. Christians Are More Completely Sanctified Than All Others
The highest consecration in the biblical narrative is the consecration of the Christian.
They are blood-bought, blood-washed, blood-sealed. Blood-bought: "you were bought with a price" (I Cor. 6:20); the price is the blood of Christ (I Pet. 1:18-19). Blood-washed: "Be baptized, and wash away your sins" (Acts 22:16); the washing is with the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 1:5). Blood-sealed: "In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation — having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:13). The Nazirite was set apart by a vow and some abstentions. The Christian is set apart by the blood of the Son of God.
A Christian in view of this sanctification should be a power. The consecration is greater than any in the old covenant. The resources available are greater. The calling — to be God's instruments in bringing the blessing of the gospel to the whole world — is the greatest assignment ever given to human beings. The Christian who understands what they are and what they have been given should be the most powerful instrument for blessing in any community they inhabit.
God wants to bless men through us. This is the direct application of the pattern. As he blessed through Abraham, through Joseph, through the Nazirites, through Israel — he wants to bless through the church, through each person in it, through the life that is fully consecrated to him. The question is direct: Has he been able to? Are we fit?
"Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever" (Heb. 13:20-21). God will use us as we are prepared. He equips those who yield; he accomplishes his purposes through those who are fit for the work to which they have been consecrated.
Application
Three questions follow from the five sections:
What are you keeping that is making you unfit? Samson's weakness was not external force — it was internal compromise. The Philistines could not defeat him in the field; Delilah defeated him at home. The thing that makes a consecrated person unfit for God's use is rarely what the world throws at them from outside; it is what they have allowed to remain inside.
Is the blessing that God wants to send through you reaching anyone? The test of consecration is not internal peace — it is whether other people are being reached by the God who wants to reach them through you. Abraham's consecration produced a blessing that reached generations and nations. The Christian's consecration is greater. Is it producing anything proportionate?
Have you taken the Nazirite position seriously enough? The Nazirite vow was voluntary — but once taken, it was binding and costly. The Christian's consecration is not taken once and forgotten; it is lived in daily, it is renewed in worship and obedience, it is renewed every time the decision to be fit for God's use is made again.
Conclusion
God blesses men through men. He has always had a sanctified people. The degree of blessing he can send through any person corresponds to the degree to which that person is fit — set apart, consecrated, made ready. The Christian is the most completely sanctified person in the history of redemption: blood-bought, blood-washed, blood-sealed. The calling that rests on that consecration is correspondingly great.
He will use us as we are prepared. The preparation is ours to make.
Invitation
The first act of being made fit for God's use is the act of consecration itself: coming to Christ, being washed in his blood, being set apart by the Holy Spirit. The person who has not yet come has not yet been blood-bought or blood-washed. The Nazirite's vow was a voluntary act of dedication — the gospel's call is the same: come, give yourself, be consecrated.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And receive the consecration that equips you to be the blessing God wants to send through you.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sanctify / Sanctification | hagiazō / hagiasmos | To set apart, consecrate, make holy — to separate for a specific use or for God. | Used throughout for the divine act of setting apart individuals and communities for God's purposes. | Sanctification in the biblical sense is not primarily about personal holiness as an internal state; it is about being set apart — dedicated, made fit — for the work God assigns. The holy thing is the thing that belongs to God. | John 17:17; I Thess. 5:23; Heb. 13:12 |
| Nazirite | nāzîr (Hebrew) | One who is consecrated, separated — from the Hebrew root meaning to dedicate or to abstain. | Used of the person who takes the voluntary vow of separation in Numbers 6 — applied in the sermon to Samson and John the Baptist. | The Nazirite represents the highest form of voluntary consecration available under the old covenant. The Christian's consecration, accomplished by Christ's blood rather than personal abstentions, surpasses it. | Num. 6:1-6; Judg. 13:5; Luke 1:15 |
| Equip | katartizō | To mend, restore, fit out, equip, make complete — used of mending nets, restoring dislocated joints, and making people fit for service. | Used in Heb. 13:21 for God equipping the believer in every good thing to do his will. | The word describes what God does to the consecrated person: he makes them fit. The fitting is God's work; the yielding is the person's. God will use us as we are prepared — and he is the one who does the preparing, as we submit to it. | Heb. 13:21; Eph. 4:12 |
| Sealed | sphragizō | To seal — to mark with an official seal indicating ownership, security, and authenticity. | Used in Eph. 1:13 for the Holy Spirit as the seal given to believers at the moment of faith. | The Christian has been officially marked as belonging to God. The seal is the Holy Spirit — not a symbol of ownership on a document but the living presence of God in the person. Blood-bought, blood-washed, blood-sealed: three aspects of the most complete consecration in the history of redemption. | Eph. 1:13; II Cor. 1:22 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "God at work in you to will and to work" — the pattern | Intro. | Phil. 2:13 |
| Abraham blessed to bless others | I.1 | Gen. 12:2 |
| Laban blessed through Jacob | I.2 | Gen. 30:27 |
| Potiphar blessed through Joseph | I.3 | Gen. 39:5 |
| Israel to bless nations | I.4 | Isa. 19:24-25; Zech. 8:13 |
| Nazirite vow — voluntary consecration | III.2 | Num. 6:1-6 |
| Samson — Nazirite from birth | III.1 | Judg. 13:5 |
| John the Baptist — consecrated from birth | III.1 | Luke 1:15 |
| "Bought with a price" — blood-bought | V.1 | I Cor. 6:20; I Pet. 1:18-19 |
| "God will equip you" — used as prepared | V.4 | Heb. 13:20-21 |
| Baptism for remission — the act of consecration | Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 140. Primary texts: Num. 6:1-6; Phil. 2:13 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "Jsa." → "Isa."; "lll." → "III."; "lV." → "IV." Doctrinal audit: God's pattern of blessing through consecrated people developed without works-righteousness — the consecration is God's work in the yielded person (Phil. 2:13; Heb. 13:21), not human achievement; Samson treated as a cautionary study in compromised consecration rather than a heroic figure — God used him as he was prepared; Christian sanctification affirmed as more complete than Nazirite consecration because it is grounded in Christ's blood; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
