Romans 12:1-2
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Romans 12:1-2
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
I want us to really focus in on verse 2 and sometimes a story helps.
The book of Ruth is mainly about Ruth, her journey, and eventually her relationship with Boaz. We often talk about Ruth and/or Boaz but I think her mother-in-law Naomi can be helpful to us in understanding what it means to not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
The book of Ruth opens by telling us that it takes place in the time of the Judges. If you are not familiar the time of the Judges was not a great time. The overall narrative is summed up a few time by saying,
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.
The time of Judges was tumultuous. There are some wild stories in Judges. It was not a time of peace but generally disobedience and war. People were not following God, they were doing whatever they wanted.
One Judge sacrifices or at least plans to sacrifice his daughter.
One Judge has relations with a woman of the night. Then lives with a woman who is actively trying to get him killed.
One Judge killed all his brothers.
The people had just got into the promise land and they were acting like people who did not know God. They had gone their own way. Nearly kind of perversion was seen in them. It was a time of me first and forget about you.
It was a time of doing and interpreting life based on what each person saw. It was a time of evaluating life based on personal feelings.
This was the age they lived in. This was Naomi’s current age.
So this man, his wife, and two sons move to Moab which was not Israel’s land. While there the two sons and the man die. The wife Naomi is left only with her two daughter-in-laws. She blesses them and tells them to leave. One leaves and the other, Ruth, stays and commits to stay with her.
Naomi looses everything dear to her. She has nothing left and now she has to return home in shame and destitute. She was once someone and now she is little more than a beggar. She has nothing she has lost everything.
She is so frustrated and angry and she is angry at God. She feels like God is against her
I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has opposed me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
Her name Naomi means pleasant or more specifically my delight. She has a name, she has a calling but she feels like God is against her and she now wants to be called Mara which means bitter.
What we see in the story is that at no point does God or anyone else call her bitter. She feels that but she is the one who does not have her mind right. She had conformed to the age she was in. She was allowing her situation and culture to determine her identity.
Remember she is not some random person, she is am Israelite. Part of the promised people.
The age can be defined by that line in Judges,
Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
She looked at her circumstances and what her eyes could see and she made that the truth. She forgot about the promises of God.
She wore her pain like a name badge.
This is so often how we feel. We feel like God is against us, the world is against us, everything possible is out to get us so we become bitter and we make our identity our bitterness.
Maybe it is not bitterness. Maybe it is something else and maybe you are stacking your negative identity. We start to let the culture, the current age determine our name.
PUT ON NAMES
God says don’t do that. Don’t let the current age define you. Don’t let what you see be more important that I have said.
It does not mean what we see does not matter, it matters, but what God says matters more. Instead
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Transform your mind, transform your thinking. Repent. Repent of your current thinking and change your mind.
Change your mind and you change your life.
We so often operate out of insecurities and our perceptions. We see or think we see and we conform. We have so identified ourself with our past and our pain that we do things so often from that place with that name attached to us and we do not even realize it.
Because we feel shameful and have let that become our identity we do things our of shame.
Within the heart of every addict is a sense of shame—shame because of feeling unlovable, unworthy, and unwanted—shame resulting from repeated failure. This shame within an addict produces behavior and beliefs that are most predictable.
June Hunt
We may have made some mistake and because of that we wear it like a scarlet letter. We allow it, often unwillingly, to be the thing known about us.
If you grow up poor you develop a poverty mindset. You start to believe that things will never get better, this is the way it is. You can never have more. You need to spend it while you got it because it will disappear.
We let the current age determine who we are and we conform to it but this is wrong.
If you were something then when you come to Christ you are no longer that thing.
More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ
Everything before Christ called you, everything before the cross is dung. That is what the Bible says. Then it says understand your new identity. Understand what He has done and who He says you are.
Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed.
A caterpillar sheds its own body to create the chrysalis. At this point its own digestive system dissolves most of the caterpillar and then it is rebuilt into a butterfly. What it was is not just no longer what it is but it cannot go back.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
At the end of the Book of Ruth, Ruth has a baby and the baby is placed on Naomi’s lap, the women around here say,
The neighbor women said, “A son has been born to Naomi,” and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
She thought it was over and she had nothing and now she holds one in the linage of Jesus. We think our situation is over but we need to change our thinking. We need to be transformed.
So often we think that God has forgotten about us, that He has dealt with us severely but really the situation is there to bring us to where we need to be. Our call is to remember that, to understand that, and to transform our minds into what God calls us.
CHILD OF GOD SHIRT
We ask why God, what are you doing God, where are you God? When first we have to fix our thinking so when He answers we can hear Him.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Renew your mind, change your thinking, remove the old labels, call yourself what God calls you and then you can discern His will.
So much of what we have been talking about here in Romans leads us to this very point that we can renew our mind.
He made us righteous, so you are a Child of God.
He made you Holy, so you are a Child of God.
He forgave you, so you are a Child of God.
He loves you, so you are a Child of God.
He redeemed you, so you are a Child of God.
He gave Himself for you, so you are a Child of God.
We need to fix our mind and start calling ourselves what He calls us. We don’t conform to the current age we conform to what He says we are.
This doesn’t mean we always get it right but we always come back to what He has said. Then it changes the way we walk and the way we pray.
When we understand who God says we are it changes us.
Then when we are changed we start to understand His good and perfect will and it becomes our desire.
My question this is morning is what are you calling yourself? Are you letting the current age define you and give you identity? Or are you going to let God give you identity?
If we get that right the first verse becomes easier and common practice.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.
We can live like a living sacrifice because our identity is right. We understand He is our Father and we are living sacrifices. We become willing ones who lay down our lives like Jesus did. We will fight over who gets to lay down on the alter.
We start to say things like, “Use me Lord”
When people are ugly to us we go to our Father in prayer and ask, “God what happened in their life to make them this way?” How do I help them?
Are we going to be like Naomi and let the current age define and change our name or are we going to renew our minds let God define us.
Will we say, I am a Child of God
Alter call