Lawson Romans 12

When Christianity Gets Real – Romans 12:9-13

OnePassion Ministries May 7, 2020

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Father, every time we come to Your Word, we are mindful that we are dependent upon Your Holy Spirit to guide us into all the truth, and You work through human teachers whom You have given to the church. And so, I pray that You would fill me with Your Spirit so that I would say only that which is true, but far, far beyond me we need the master teacher, the Holy Spirit, to illumine our minds and our understanding. So, we look to Him, we look to You, and ask now that You would take over this study and own it. This is Your Word. This is not my word. This is Your Word and we want it grafted into our lives and hearts. So, do Your work now in Jesus’ name. Amen. Okay men if you would and ladies who are joining us, take your Bible and turn with me to Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12, and today I have verses 9 through 13 for us to look at. I hope I can get through this, Romans chapter 12. I want to just read the passage starting in verse 9. “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another and honor; not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.” The title of this lesson is “When Christianity Gets Real,” and in these verses this is the first time that the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans becomes very specific in what is required of us as believers in our daily walk. Everything to this point in chapters 1 through 11 has been laying a doctrinal foundation, and by the way, this does underscore the importance of theology and doctrine. Paul doesn’t begin the book of Romans in Romans 12 verse 9. He belabors laying this foundation of truth, doctrinal truth, theological truth, upon which he will now build. So, everything to this point has been intensely doctrinal, and then even in Romans 12 verses 1 through 8 it has been general requirements of us as believers to present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice and exercise our spiritual gifts, but now beginning in verse 9, suddenly Paul becomes, let me say, painfully specific. This is where Christianity gets real. This is where the rubber meets the road, men. This is taking Christianity out of the ethereal and down into the real. This is down in the weeds. This is where you and I are to live every moment of every day. This is personal holiness spelled out. So, what we have in the verses that I just read, verses 9 through 13, are thirteen virtues of love 13, thirteen distinguishing marks of love. These all are in what we call a participle. There is no main verb. These are all participles, and participles support the main verb. And there is no main verb. So, the way we are to understand this is at the very beginning of verse 9 where it says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” All of these really are defining marks of love. This is really like 1 Corinthians 13, the thirteen virtues of love in 1 Corinthians 13. You remember it says, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not take into account a wrong suffered, love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” This is Romans’ version of 1 Corinthians 13. So, that is why this is very challenging. It is in one sense easy to know sound doctrine. The challenge is to live out sound doctrine. I can go buy sound doctrine at the Christian bookstore. The putting it into practice is the challenge. So men, I need to put out a warning. This is going to hurt. This is the answer to all your wives’ prayers. This is what they have been praying for in your life and in my life. So, Amy has a smile on her face right now, Kent. She just doesn’t know why she has a smile on her face. It’s because this is going to be brought home to your life, my friend. Okay, so as we go through this, to make this simple I have reduced each of these thirteen virtues to one word just so I can have a hook to hang each of these on. So, I am going to give you thirteen words for these thirteen virtues. I am breaking every homiletical rule in the books, but I think this will help us. And the first word as we start in verse 9 now is “sincerity.” Paul writes, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” And as he begins here, we see that love never fakes it. Love must always be genuine from the heart in action. So, let us look at this. He begins, “Let love be.” Actually, “let” and “be” are not in the original Greek. It just says, “Love without hypocrisy.” The word “love” is a word you are familiar with even if you don’t know Greek. It is the word agape, which was rarely used in the Greek culture, and it was a very foreign concept in Roman society. It was not something that was desired. However, it became the leading distinguishing mark of the church and of true believers, and what the world wanted no part of was to be what would mark the believers. It would be their love for the other believers. Certainly, love for God, but in this context, we are dealing with love for the brethren. I mean that is obvious, like at the end of verse 10 he says, “give preference to one another,” and then in verse 13 he says, “contributing to the need of the saints and practicing hospitality.” So, the whole context here is, “loving the believers,” “loving other saints,” and this is reinforced, as you well know, throughout the entire Bible. I just want to give you a couple of cross-references to underscore the importance and the priority of loving one another in the body of Christ. In John 13 verse 35, Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, that you have love one for another. It is really the badge of discipleship that we have love, one for another. In 1 Corinthians 13 and verses 1 through 3, Paul says, “If you speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love,” I am a spiritual zero, I am in the negative, “I am nothing,” Paul says. “And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” And then at the end of this, in verse 13 he says, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” This should scream volumes to you and me of the priority and the imperative that I love you, that you love me, that we love one another. In the next chapter here in Romans 13 and in verse 8, he says, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” He says in verse 10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.” So, we see how important love is. Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is,” what is number one on the list, “love.” You would think this would get through to me and you would think this would get through to each one of us, “the fruit of the Spirit is love.” So, first and foremost is love. And I guess I just need to read one more cross-reference in 1 John 3 and verse 14, only because this is so critically important. How would you know if you are a believer? How would you know if you are born again? It is a pretty good question. How would you know that you have eternal life? Well, this verse will tell us. 1 John 3 verse 14, “We know that we have passed out of death,” referring to spiritual death, “into life,” referring to eternal life, “because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death,” meaning you are still lost. You are still unconverted. You don’t have one drop of spiritual life in you if your life is characterized by selfishness, by just self-focus, that the mark of a true believer that you have passed out of death into life is that you have love for the brothers. What is love? Love is sacrificially giving of yourself to seek the highest good in another. Love is always giving, not taking. Lust takes; love gives. And you give in a costly manner, costly to you. It is sacrificial giving. So, love is selfless, love is self-giving, love is self-denying, love is sacrificial, and I think it is really because love is so important in the Christian life. There is a sense in which it is at the very epicenter of the Christian life, that it is really worth our taking these few moments to drill down and to underscore what love is and why it is so important. If I genuinely love you from the heart, I will promote your best interests. I will do what will build you up and affirm you and help you in the Christian life. Love is others-oriented. I remember the story of General William Booth who was the founder of the Salvation Army in London in the nineteenth century. It was a ministry that was raised up really to provide street corner preaching to spread the gospel through London and use the venue of loving others in tangible ways as a platform to preach the gospel. And they would have an annual convention of the Salvation Army workers, and one particular year they all gathered in a large banquet hall and General William Booth would address all of the workers who would be preaching the gospel on the street corners of London. And one particular year, as he walked to the podium, he looked out into the faces of all the people and his entire address was one word. He just looked at everyone and just said, “Others,” and then walked back to his seat and sat down. Everyone just like looked around at each other. I mean, that was even shorter than Churchill’s speech, “Never, never, never give in.” Just “Others.” And that is what Paul is saying, that if you present your body as a living and holy sacrifice to God, that leads to something, and that leads to others. It leads to serving others. That is what verses 3 through 8 was all about, about spiritual gifts and serving others. But now beginning in verse 9, Paul really begins to peel the onion back and Paul now really begins to talk in the specific ways that we are to love one another. And I think we can even put it this way: If we are not loving others like this, it is because we have not presented ourselves to God as a living and holy sacrifice, because he says when we present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to God, he says in verse 2 that “you will prove what the will of God is.” That means, you will come to know by experience what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. And now, he is giving us the first steps in the will of God, that will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect. Here are the real steps that you will take in the will of God. And so, in verse 9, here is the first step. He says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” So, the first heading is “sincerity.” Real love is without hypocrisy. Now, the word “hypocrisy” means “without disguise,” and let me give you the historical background. In the first century, one of the leading forms of entertainment was to go to what we would say today a play or theater. There would be a stage and there would be steps that would be on an incline, and there would be like a Greek play, a Greek drama, and the actors would have memorized their lines. And when they would go onto the stage for a Greek play, they would put on a mask, and we have all seen caricatures of that. There would be a happy mask for some actors. There would be a sad mask for other actors, and they would go on stage and in essence hide behind this mask and pretend to be someone other than what they really were. And they had already memorized their lines, and they knew the vocabulary and they would emote and they would know how to control their voice and their body language, and they would carry out a role. It would be role playing, and they would be this kind of person or they would be that kind of person. Then when the play is over, they would come off the stage. They would take the mask off and they would go back to being who they really were in real life. And so, Paul draws on this, and he says love cannot be like that. You cannot put on a mask when you come to church or when you are around other believers and pretend to be someone that you are not. In other words, you are one person on Sunday morning. You are someone else in the office on Monday afternoon, and you can’t just put on a show when you are around other believers and just pretend to be spiritual and know the vocabulary and know how to give appearances, that real love is not with just mere words and playing out a part. Real love is without hypocrisy. Real love is authentic. Real love is genuine. And this heading, “sincerity” could have just as easily been “honesty,” that you are real as you are with other believers, real in your expressions of concern, real in your expressions of encouragement, real when you say, “Hey, I’ll be praying for you,” real in “How’re you doing?” So, this is where Paul begins and it is very challenging and it is very convicting for me and for all of us, and the only way we can love without hypocrisy is as we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, as we walk not according to the flesh because our flesh always comes out with hypocrisy and pretense. It is when we are filled with the Spirit, walking in the power of the Spirit, yielded to the Holy Spirit, that the fruit of the Spirit is love, real genuine Christian love. So, this is where Paul starts, number one, sincerity. So, I think each one of us needs to look inward and audit just our own life and ask God to remove any sense of hypocrisy. And remember the Pharisees had mastered the art of religiosity and with that, hypocrisy. And you remember in Matthew chapter 6 Jesus addresses this and Jesus says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them,” like you are on a stage, “otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full,” which was just to be seen by men. God has turned His eyes the other way. “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you pray, go into the inner room, close your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” They filibuster God in public when they pray and just go on and on and soar to the heights of heaven, and it is all just a show. So, this is saying we cannot be like the Pharisees and be hypocritical in the show of our love. Well, enough said at this point. Let us move to the next one, and not only sincerity, but second, “purity.” We go on to see, “Abhor what is evil.” And by this we learn that true love despises the evil that hurts others. All of this is in the context of love, loving others in the body of Christ. And when he says, “Abhor what is evil,” the focus is in the immediate context here of genuine concern for other Christians. So, when he says, “Abhor what is evil,” he is saying abhor the evil that hurts loved ones, that hurts others in the body of Christ. Now, the word “abhor” is very strong. It is the opposite of “love.” So, this is a sharp contrast. This is kind of the love-hate contrast. That is the word I mean, juxtaposition. And the word “abhor” means to despise. There is an evil we are to hate. It means to hate exceedingly. It is more than just dislike. It is to have abhorrence for evil and to utterly reject it and to refuse it, and the evil here is what is injurious to others. It is whatever is wicked and sinful that will bring harm to others. And this evil could be in my life and be a call for repentance, because sin in my life does hurt others. Sin is never self-contained. Sin is never just kept to myself. Whenever I sin, it has an effect upon those who are around me, and so I need to abhor evil in my own life, sin in my own life. And I need to abhor evil as I would see it in other believers, and that is why Matthew 18 talks about if your brother is caught in a trespass, go to him and show him the fault of his ways and if he hears you, you have won your brother. You have done the most loving thing you could possibly do to him, is to help remove this log out of his eye. I am to remove the log out of my eye first before I go to remove it from him. And if he doesn’t hear me, then I am to bring two or three brothers or sisters with me, all in the intention of love. But it is we abhor the evil that we see that is festering inside of you. So, we are not to be neutral towards evil. We are not to be passive. We are not to just look the other way. This is genuine Christ-likeness. Jesus abhors evil, Hebrews 1. So does God, Psalms 5, 7, 9, and 11. Evil grieves the Holy Spirit. How can we be indifferent towards that which grieves the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 4 verse 29? A doctor who loves his patient will hate the cancer that he sees in the patient and will do everything he can do to eradicate the cancer from him because he loves the patient and because he loves health. And so, this calls upon us to abhor what is evil in true genuine love. Evil destroys true love. Love is not genuine when it allows evil to fester in yourself or in others. So, abhor what is evil. Third, “positivity.” Third, positivity. He says, “Cling to what is good.” So, if we are to abhor what is evil, we are to cling to what is good, and true love holds tightly to what is good for others. This verb “cling to” comes from a noun that means “glue,” and so we are to be glued to what is good. And what is good here refers to what is good for others. The word “good” here means that which is inherently right or upright, that which is morally excellent, that which is honorable, and so what is good for others is holiness and godliness and righteousness. We are to cling to what is good in our own lives. We are to affirm the good that we see in the lives of those that we love, and we are to be always promoting that which is good, to place a very high value on what is good, and we are to influence others for the good, whether by the example of our lives, whether by our words, whether by the sacrifice that we make for them. We are to be always promoting the good in others, and here this good is that which is holy and righteous. So, let us think about how we can truly love one another by doing everything we can to remove what is evil and to promote that which is good. Now, we come to verse 10. The fourth word that I have is “loyalty.” True love is fiercely loyal to others. Love never lives in a revolving door and it is just in and out, changing with the weather. No, there is a loyalty that is to exist between brothers and sisters in Christ. So, he says at the beginning of verse 10, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.” We are to be committed to one another is what this is saying, and “to one another” is referring to fellow believers in the family of God. And that would begin with our own church and those that we worship with. It certainly begins with our own family and those who are believers in our own family, that we are to be deeply committed and fiercely loyal to one another in brotherly love. Now, these two words, “brotherly love,” you will recognize this in the Greek. It is literally philadelphia, and which is the city of brotherly love. You remember, they booed Santa Claus at the Philadelphia Eagles game? But anyway, it means to have tender affections for those in your family. And true love, it starts at home and it starts with those who are immediately around you and that you have an ongoing relationship with. Let me just tell you, the easiest thing for me to do is get on an airplane and fly to the other side of the world and be with somebody for three days, because I don’t really know them, they don’t really know me. Everybody is on good behavior. It is kind of like a honeymoon. You know, everybody is just super nice to one another. The challenge is when I come back to Dallas, and I am with you guys, okay? That is the challenge. And be nice to Kent, and I think you understand where I am coming from with this, the people that you associate with on an ongoing basis. That is where the rubber meets the road. That is the acid test. That is the reality. And it says that we must be devoted. We must drop anchor and not be swayed and not be in and out of relationships. There is a stick-to-it-iveness, and we would say, put it this way, that true love remains loyal through thick and thin, that there is an unconditional resilience about true love through good times and bad times, when you are nice to me and when you are not nice to me. Then fifth, the word, “humility.” He goes on to say in verse 10, “Give preference to one another in honor.” That is humility, considering the interests of others to be more important than your own. True love yields to others. This verb, or it’s a participle, “give preference to” means to go before, and the idea is that true love lets others go before you. An example of this would be men what you do when you approach a door and your wife is with you. You open that door and you let her go first. When you go to a restaurant and you are seated, you pull her chair out and you help her be seated first. She goes before you and you slide the chair under her, and then you come and seat yourself. That is a good visual of what Paul is saying here, “Give preference to one another.” And the “one another” here refers to fellow believers. He says, “in honor,” and the word “honor” here means respect, showing esteem and admiration, really the idea of elevating the other person. You allow them to go first and in so doing you put them, in a sense, on a pedestal. You assign to them a special place of honor. That is what Paul is saying that true love does that. It doesn’t put others down; It lifts others up to a place of honor. And Philippians 2 verse 3 that I just quoted, verses 3 and 4, but let me read the whole two verses. “With humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” In Ephesians 5:21, “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” So, again, this is yet another challenging mark of true love. And our own flesh wants to rise up and elevate ourselves to be the hero of our own stories, but true love gives preference to others in honor and giving them a place of dignity. Number seven is the word “urgency.” He says, “not lagging behind,” as we began verse 11, “not lagging behind in diligence.” This says that true love is swift to take action as you see a need, an opportunity to minister to someone. True love is not procrastinating. It is not dragging its heels. “Not lagging behind” is a Greek word that means not hesitating, not being slack, not being slow, not shrinking back or holding back. “Not lagging behind,” he says, “in diligence,” and diligence is the opposite of lagging behind. It is the same as not lagging behind. Diligence means zeal, enthusiasm, wholeheartedness, like your heart is really in this. You are not doing this because you have to. You are doing this because you want to. So, we could say this, delayed love is no love. Prompt love is true love. True love does not drag its feet. And another synonym for this “urgency” could have just as easily been “immediacy,” that there is an immediacy about true love. Sometimes, I think we want to just pray about something too much, when we just need to step out and do it. The next word, number seven, “fervency,” and you see that is the very word that is used, “fervent in spirit.” This means that true love is fired up to step in and get involved with others. True love really just gushes out of the heart, and that is the idea of spirit, “fervent in spirit.” That is a small “s.” It could be translated to capital “S” because it is generated by the Holy Spirit, but I think it is properly translated here “in spirit” with a small “s.” In the original language, there is not upper or lower case letters being used. And so, down in your heart, there is a fervency, there is a fire, and the word “fervent” means burning, boiling hot. There is a warmth. You are warmhearted. There is a glow about you as you are set on fire. And with fire there comes intensity, which is another synonym for “fervency.” So, what Paul is saying here is, “Be on fire with intensity to reach out to others. Don’t be dragging your feet and don’t do it just going through empty motions. Have your heart in it.” And sometimes people will even put up a “No, no, no, I couldn’t let you do that.” I mean true love is so fervent in spirit, you just kind of work your way in because of the intensity of your love for others. And I think they sense the genuineness when there is fervency. Then, at the end of verse 11, number eight, “activity,” “serving the Lord.” And this is important that serving the Lord follows fervency in spirit, because if it was just fervency in spirit it would just be kind of a feeling type of thing. To follow up with “serving the Lord” shows that this fervency is put into action, that that your shoulder is to the plow, that you are actually serving with dynamic activity. And it says, “serving the Lord.” Isn’t that interesting that as I am loving others I am serving the Lord? And this says that my love for others is to be as unto the Lord. You remember in Matthew chapter 25 when Jesus said, you know, “When did you visit Me in prison and when did you clothe Me and when did you feed Me?” And Jesus said, “Well, you did it when you did it to the least of these.” I mean, we are actually serving the Lord when we serve others, and the others are those first and foremost in the body of Christ. We are to love everyone, even our enemies, but there is a prioritizing here of loving the brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, which actually has an effect on a watching world. It makes them want to be on the inside of the circle of our love that begins with believers. It really has a subconscious effect of wanting then to become a believer because they see all this love that is flowing within the body of Christ. Then when he says “serving,” this word for serving literally means to be a slave. It is translated other places in noun form as being a slave or a bond-servant, which would more accurately be “slave.” Paul said in Romans 1 verse 1, “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus,” doulos, a slave of Christ Jesus. Well, this is the verb form of doulos, which means “to be a slave and be subject to the lordship of Jesus Christ.” Now, to fill this out, “serving the Lord” means not being lazy toward others, not being just a spectator toward others, not being idle, not being slothful, not being inactive, not being this kind of a Christian that you just walk into church, everybody caters to you, everyone is nice to you, everyone serves you, everyone brings things to you, everyone does for you, and then you just get up and walk out, and the rest of the week you are just self-absorbed. You come back to church and somebody opens the door for you. Someone hands a program to you. Someone smiles at you. Someone is nice to you. Someone prepares a table for you. Someone brings you coffee. Someone provides free donuts for you. Someone has studied for you. Someone preached to you. Someone led you in singing. Someone on and on and on, and then you just get up and walk out. I mean, here is a spiritual cul-de-sac. Everything is flowing into you. Nothing is flowing out of you. No, Paul is saying true love is serving the Lord, and in reality you are serving the Lord by serving others. True love puts the game jersey on and gets out on the field and is in the game and is active, is involved in whatever the capacity, even if it is just looking for personal and practical needs in the lives of others and stepping in as you have opportunity to meet them. Alright, let us press on here. We come to verse 12. Or I tell you what, I probably need to stop. I have been going a long time. Kent, do you think I can keep going? Okay, Kent said, “Sure.” Okay, see when you are nice to Kent, it comes back to you. You cast your bread on the water. So, with selfish motives, I am nice to Kent. So, okay, I got it. Here we go. You ready, guys? Can I get an “Amen?” Audience:        Amen. Okay, “Amen.” Don’t make me beg. Alright, number nine, and it is the best word I have got for this is “hilarity.” And these are all ending in “I-T-Y” or “C-Y.” If you have got any better, please give them to me. “Hilarity,” because he goes on to say, “rejoicing in hope.” True love is not dour with a sour face. True love is not being just mechanical in cranking this out. True love is not being stoic and “I’m just doing my duty.” True love, really, there is a rejoicing as you are loving others, and that means as much as whatever it is you are doing for them. It is not just what you do; it is how you do it. It is not just what you do in loving others; it is how you love others, and it has to have this element of rejoicing, of being vibrant and positive and upbeat. The word “rejoicing” means being glad, being exuberant, being exultant, being cheerful. That is good medicine for others. That ministers to them many times as much as whatever other need it is that you are meeting in their life. Rejoicing is contagious. Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” What is number two on the list? Joy. I mean, these are frontloaded in their importance. Now, our rejoicing is to be, he says, “in hope.” The word “hope” is a positive expectation about the future, about the one that you show love to. In other words, “I think very highly of you regarding your future that you are going to be growing in the Lord.” Listen to 1 Corinthians 13:7, “Love hopes all things.” Did you hear that? That means love expects the best of others. Love believes in others. And so, as I am rejoicing as I am serving you, there is this positive expectation that you are going to be advancing in the Lord, and you do it with rejoicing, not begrudgingly and not with a martyr spirit, but with a great attitude, with supernatural joy. Number ten, “tenacity,” tenacity. He says “persevering in tribulation.” That is to say true love keeps on keeping on. True love never stops loving. True love presses on even in the face of opposition and difficulty. The word “persevering” here is a compound word in the original language, and it means to “abide under,” and the idea is to “abide under pressure.” It means to bear up under, to endure in loving others. And then he says “in tribulation,” and the word “tribulation” here is an interesting word from the original language. It means when you are under pressure from both sides. And we would say in the vernacular “when you are between a rock and a hard place,” and there’s no way out. You are in dire straits. You are squeezed in from both sides. Paul is saying, “Persevere in loving others even through the difficult pressure of certain trials.” That is when you really need to amp up your love for others. In other words, don’t be a fair-weathered friend to just love others when the sun is out and it is shining. No, we need to love others through the storms of life. Now, listen to 1 Corinthians 13:7, “Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things.” Love is like a clock that just keeps on ticking and the battery will just never run out. Number eleven, “dependency,” dependency. At the end of verse 12. It says “devoted in prayer,” and this is devoted in prayer for others. This is a part of our loving one another in the body of Christ that we pray for others. And in a real sense, prayer is the greatest thing you can do for someone else. I mean, sometimes the easiest thing to do is just to give them something. What is hard is in prayer is to give them time, interceding before the throne of God. So, we are to be steadfast in our earnest prayers for the spiritual good of others. Let me quickly wrap this up, verse 13, “generosity.” He says, “contributing to the needs of the saints.” True love is large-hearted and open-handed with what you have to share with others. The word “contributing,” interestingly enough, the noun of this verb, the noun form is “fellowship.” It comes from the very same root word. You have heard the word koinonia, fellowship. Well, this is verb form of koinonia, and it means “sharing with in order to meet the needs of the saints.” So, true love gives to meet the needs of others. And then finally, “hospitality,” number thirteen at the end of verse 13. And men, is this quite a list? I don’t know about you, but this is overwhelming for me. This would be a whole lot easier just to go back to the doctrinal section, and let me just do some word studies for you. You know, this is making a great demand upon us. I don’t want to minimize in any way what Paul is saying here. So, number thirteen, “hospitality.” He says, “practicing hospitality.” Or let me just begin with the word “practicing.” It means to pursue, so that the picture here is that you are running after the person that you love in order to pursue them to show hospitality. And the word “hospitality” is a compound word: phileo, to love; xenia, strangers. You have heard “xenophobia,” which is the fear of strangers. This is the opposite of xenophobia. This is the love of strangers, and the idea is to welcome believers into the fellowship. In other words, you just don’t have your own little holy huddle and nobody gets inside your ring of relationships. That you are always looking for the new believer, the new saint, to bring into circles of fellowship and you are showing kindness to them. And I cannot tell you how this has been shown to me as I have traveled literally the world these last several years, and many people probably even watching this on different continents around the world, watching today, who have taken me in as a stranger and have treated me like family and have given and given and given hospitality and generosity to meet needs. It makes you feel like you don’t want to leave. You just want to stay inside that circle of love that is being shown to you. And it is a mark of an elder in 1 Timothy 3 that you show hospitality to strangers, but it is a mark of a mature believer that you are always kind of looking beyond the people who are normally around you into the corners of a church, to see who is standing in a corner, who doesn’t really know anyone. And they may even be just passing through town and they have come to worship, and you find them and draw them into the circle of fellowship. That is just a mark of love without hypocrisy. So, men, this has been quite a study. I have no idea what time it is, and I have probably run so many stop signs, which I have. So, forgive me for that. I tell you one reason I did all this is I just didn’t want this to end up being one verse at a time. I wanted you to feel like we are making some progress and it just takes some time to make some progress.

A Transformed Life – Romans 12:2

OnePassion Ministries April 23, 2020

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Father, as we open Your Bible, we ask now that You would open our eyes and open our hearts, open our minds that Your Holy Spirit would teach us and instruct us the truth of this passage and of this text. And so, we come to You now desiring, not only to know the truth, but that the truth might possess our lives. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. Alright, I want you to take your Bible and turn with me to Romans chapter 12, and today we’re going to be looking at just verse 2, Romans 12 verse 2. The title of this message is “A Transformed Life,” a transformed life. So, let me begin by reading verse 2, and I think I’m going to begin reading in verse 1, which is what we looked at last time. “Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Now, here we are for today, verse 2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” A transformed life – it’s been well said that the goal of Scripture is not merely information, but transformation. In other words, it’s not enough to learn the truth; we must also love and live the truth. It’s not enough that we master the Word; the Word must master us. And so, as we are in the Word, the Word must be in us and be transforming us into the very image of Jesus Christ. And this transformed life that Paul addresses in verse 2 is what we call “sanctification,” progressive sanctification, that we are being progressively becoming less and less of what we once were and becoming more and more of what we are becoming which is becoming like Jesus Christ. And this transformed life affects every area of our life, and Romans 12 through 16, will trace out all the various aspects of this transformed life. But verses 1 and 2 are like really an umbrella over the whole of Romans 12:1 through 16. So, that’s why it’s really worth our time for us to make certain that we understand what this transformed life is like. Now last time we were in verse 1, and I gave you four headings. I just want to quickly repeat those. We noted “The Connection,” the word “therefore” that connects Romans 1 through 11 with 12 through 16. “The Motivation,” “I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God,” the entirety of God’s work in salvation must motivate us to live this transformed life. And then third, “The Presentation,” Paul says, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. And then, “The Calculation,” which is your spiritual service of worship, best translated “your reasonable or rational service of worship.” So we come now to verse 2, as we continue in this train of thought. And I have three main headings that I want to set before us as we continue to walk through this. And I want you to note, first, “The Insulation,” the insulation. We are to live, it’s contagious, Kent, we are to live in insulation from the world’s value system. Now, we are to be insulated from the world, but not isolated from the world, in this sense – we are to be in the world, but not of the world. We are to have our boat in the water, but there is to be no water in the boat. So, as we live our Christian lives, we must insulate ourselves from the world’s pressures. And he says, “And do not be conformed to this world.” That could be rephrased, “Do not be squeezed into the mold of this world,” “Do not be pressed into the shape of this evil world system.” Now, it’s very important that we clarify what “the world” is here. He’s not talking about the people in the world, we are to love the people in the world and we are to reach the people in the world, and “the world” is not referring to the planet that we live on. “The world” here is referring to the evil world system that is all around us. It is the world’s thinking, it is the world’s values, it is the world’s agenda, it is the world’s perspective, it is the world’s mindset in which everything revolves around man. And the world’s system could be rephrased this way, “For from man and through man and to man are all things. To man be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” “The world” here refers to secular humanism. It refers to godless ideologies. It refers to religious superstitions. It refers to shameful morals. And we must resist the seductive lure of the world to pull us back into that out of which God has delivered us and saved us. We once were a part of the world, this world system that is governed and controlled by Satan himself, who is the god of this age and the prince of this world. And he is over the world of education and the world of media and the world of music and the world of politics. And Satan has his dominating influence over all these various aspects of one world large system, that is the kingdom of darkness. And so, as we live our Christian lives, we’re like points of light in this dark evil age. And Paul is saying to the believers in Rome, we can imagine the pressures that they were feeling to be squeezed into the values of the Roman Empire, “Do not be conformed to this world system in which you are living.” Now, there are some cross-references that I think would be extremely helpful for us to look to. And so, I want to direct us to 1 John 2 verse 15, 1 John 2 verse 15, in which John, the Apostle John writes, “Do not love the world.” We need to be reminded that there is a love that God hates, and there is a love that you and I need to hate. And we must not love the world, referring to the world order that is under the control of Satan, the invisible spiritual realm of evil that is governed by the god of this age, and it is in opposition to God and the standard of truth that God has set. It is in opposition to the morals that God has established. It’s against the family. It is in rebellion against God. It is antichrist, and it is anti-Christian with its secular philosophies and ideologies. He’s saying, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world.” That’s best understood, “Do not live for the stuff that’s in the world.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with having things. What’s wrong is for things to have you, for you to live in order simply to be in an acquisition mode rather than setting your mind on things above and not on things of this world. This world is completely antithetical to the values of the kingdom of God. So that is why, as long as we’re on this earth, we are strangers and aliens. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we don’t fit the system here in this world, and that’s part of the pressure that we feel. We’re a round peg in a square hole as we live in this world. And John is saying, what Paul is saying, “Do not be squeezed into the mold of this world, and do not love the world.” I want to say it again, there’s nothing wrong in having possessions – what is wrong is for possessions to have a death grip on your heart and upon your life. You need to hold your possessions with an open hand and realize that you are but a steward of the possessions that God has entrusted to you. And you are to use your possessions for the glory of God, not cling to them as though you love them and cherish them. No. Love God and use what has been entrusted to you for His glory and for His kingdom. In the next verse, verse 16 of 1 John 2, John writes, “If anyone loves the world,” if anyone lives just a one-dimensional life for the physical things in this world, and not just for the things but for the fame and for the fortune of this world, for the admiration of this world, he says, “The love of the Father is not in him.” The love of the Father and love for the world cannot coexist in the same heart. One will displace the other. When the love of the Father moves into our heart, the love for the things of the world are displaced and moved out. But if we allow love for the things of this world to move back in and establish a beach hold, it will greatly diminish our love for the Father. The two cannot coexist under the same roof at the same time. And so he says, “The love of the Father is not in him.” And as John writes this, he’s thinking really in black-and-white categorical terms, and he’s actually saying here, “If you’re living for the things of the world, it is a sure sign you’re unconverted and do not know the Lord. Because the love of the Father is not in him,” or that’s at the end of verse 15, excuse me. Now, verse 16, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh,” that’s the cravings of an evil heart, “the lust of the eyes,” the insatiable hunger for more and more and not to be content with what God has provided, “and the boastful pride of life,” which is really just the arrogance and the pride to exalt yourself. He says, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father.” He says in verse 17, “The world is passing away,” this whole system is self-destructing, and it is imploding, and it is cannibalizing itself. It’s “passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” I think it’s good for us to hear this because it’s easy for us to feel too at home in this world. And we need to remember, while we’re living here with the joy of the Lord in our heart, and I do believe that we as Christians can enjoy what God has created more than anyone else because we’re not living for it. So therefore, we can enjoy it because we love the One who has bestowed all of this for us to enjoy. But we need to hear this and be reminded. It maybe even sounds somewhat strange to hear these verses even read, especially with the prosperity gospel, the health-wealth gospel that is so prevalent in so many shallow churches today. “Do not love the world nor the things that are in the world.” If you would, please come quickly to Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 2, and we just need to hear this verse that Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. And in Ephesians 2 verse 2, he says, “You formerly walked according to the course of this world,” the “you” refers to the believers in the church at Ephesus, and “walked” refers to the daily lifestyle with which they once conducted themselves. This is what we could call their “BC days,” “before Christ.” “You formerly walked according to the course of this world,” they formerly, just like we once were, were like dead fish floating downstream, just going according to the flow and the course of this godless age. And then he says, “According to the prince of the power of the air,” a reference to Satan and his demonic hordes who dominate this evil world system. There are powers behind the thrones of this world, and there are evil powers behind authorities in high places that are controlling and governing the direction of this age. And then he says, “Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience,” this spirit is an evil, satanic, demonic influence that is powerfully, in full operation in the sons of disobedience. That’s referring to all unbelievers. They are a part of the family of Satan, and their lifestyle is disobedience because they’re just like their father, the devil, John 8 verse 44. This is just Bible truth. Now, I want you to turn with me to an even more shocking verse, to James chapter 4. And James, not to be left out, James the half-brother of Jesus, who really was the spiritual overseer of the church in Jerusalem. James chapter 4 and verse 4, this is a hard-hitting verse, so I hope you’ve got your seatbelt on. James begins this way, “You adulteresses.” Now he’s not talking about sexual physical adultery; he’s talking about spiritual adultery. He’s talking about those who have made a covenant with God to serve God and to love God, but you have broken, as you will, your marriage vows, and you have gone after other lovers. You have forsaken your first love, Revelation 2:4, and you now love the world, and you love the things of the world. And James has very strong language to address those. And he says, “You adulteresses, do you not know?” and when he says, “Do you not know?” that’s another way of saying, “You know this, I know this, everyone knows this. Every Christian knows this. This is Christianity 101. This is kindergarten in the school of discipleship.” “Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” “Friendship with the world” means you become too chummy with the things of this world. You’ve gotten in bed with the evil world system, and that is hostility toward God, meaning enmity and warfare against God. James is saying, “You can’t straddle the fence. You can’t have one foot in and one foot out. You can’t be a friend of the world and a friend of God at the same time. Choose which will it be. It’s either-or, not both-and.” And then he says, “Therefore,” and this is maybe an even stronger punch. The end of the verse, James 4 verse 4, “Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world,” and the word “friend” here is phila from which we get “Philadelphia,” it’s the city of brotherly love, and the idea is mutual affection for other people, here it’s for the world system. Whoever wishes to be a close confidant of the world, whoever wishes to be best friends with the world makes himself an enemy of God. Now, I didn’t write this. I’m just the messenger, and this is the message that we cannot dabble with friendship with the world. Now, please do not misunderstand. We are to go into the highways and byways of this world, and we are to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that involves rubbing shoulders with next door neighbors. That involves reaching out to work associates. That involves being involved in the lives of unsaved people. But as we do, we must remember, we cannot buy into the evil world system and go soft on the world because if we do, we have postured ourselves in a place of hostility toward God. So, let me ask you, have you become too at-home in this world? Have you forgotten that your citizenship is in heaven? Have you become a friend of this evil world system? If so, I caution you and warn you that you are setting your face against God, who calls us to come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. What fellowship can there be between Belial and Christ? What fellowship can there be between darkness and light? And the answer is, there can be no compatibility between that which we have been called out of. So we are to be isolated, or excuse me, yeah, we are to be isolated from the world…excuse me, insulated but not isolated. I’m too clever for my own good there on that, Kent. So, I think you’ve got the point and I’ve got the point, and I need to have this down in my heart and soul. Now second, “The Transformation.” He says, “But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The first half of the verse is the negative, “Do not be conformed to this world.” Now the positive, it’s not either-or; it’s both-and. It’s the heads and tails of the same coin. One is the brake; the other is the gas pedal. One is the cold water; the other is the hot water. It’s both-and. “But be transformed,” and the word “transformed” means to be radically changed from the inside out into Christ’s likeness. “But be transformed,” it’s used of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and the transformation that takes place in our Christian lives really from what we once were into what God is now conforming us to become. “But be transformed.” How are we going to be transformed? “By the renewing of your mind.” It’s so important, R.C. Sproul named his radio program “Renewing Your Mind” because he understood rightly from this text that the battle for the Christian life is the battle for the Christian mind. Our emotions can fluctuate, be up and down and all around, but it is the mind that is really what is driving our Christian lives. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” Proverbs says. And so, “By the renewing of your mind,” means that our mind must have God’s thoughts and God’s beliefs. And our convictions must be rooted and grounded in Scripture. And we must have a Christian worldview. And we must have an eternal perspective so that we can assess life as God would have us to assess it. As the mind goes, so goes the life. Colossians 3:2, which I’ve already quoted, “Set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth.” In other words, be focused upon God and Christ and eternal things. Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” A transformed life necessitates a transformed mind, and high thoughts of God and Christ and His kingdom produces a high and holy life. This begins with being immersed in the Word of God. So therefore, we must read the Bible, we must study it, we must hear it in that we sit under its preaching and teaching, we must meditate upon it, we must memorize it, and we must apply it. Jesus said in John 17:17 in His prayer, “Sanctify them by Your Word. Your Word is truth.” The instrument that God uses to sanctify our lives is the Word of God, and it is that which renews our mind. Well, this now leads to the third heading that I want to set before you, “The Realization.” We’ve talked about “The Insulation,” we’ve talked about “The Transformation,” now “The Realization.” What is the result of not being conformed to the world and being transformed by the renewing of our mind? Here it is, “So that,” in other words, “Here’s the bottom line on this,” “you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” When he says “that you may prove,” the word “prove,” it’s a verb that means “to test and to try,” “to come to know by experience.” In other words, it will lead you into the personal experience of the will of God. God has a chosen path for us to walk in this world. He has already marked it out. And we must depart from the evil world system and be on the path that is marked out by Scripture, which is the narrow path that leads to life. And he gives us three qualifiers of this. He says, “That which is,” referring to the will of God, number one, “it’s good,” it’s what we would choose for ourselves if we were only as wise as God. It is so good, the will of God. And any other path that we walk in life is bad – this is good. And then he adds “and acceptable.” The word “acceptable” means well-pleasing, and it is acceptable to us as we have this transformed mind, this renewed mind. And then he adds “and perfect,” and the word “perfect” here means “complete,” “whole,” “lacking in nothing.” In other words, it’s comprehensive for our entire Christian life. The entirety of our Christian life is to be lived out in the will of God on this narrow path. There is no part of our Christian life that is to be lived outside of the will of God. And so, the word “perfect” here actually speaks of its comprehensive nature. So, as we bring this to conclusion, and we’ll have time for questions, I want to ask you, so how do you resist being conformed into this evil world system? How do you tap the brakes and resist this lure and temptation? And the answer is that there must be a greater love and a greater affection for God and for Jesus Christ that is so powerful that you would never settle for the things of this world. I mean, when you were converted, you gave up dirt for diamonds. Why would you go back to the dirt, now that you have been entrusted with the diamonds of God’s grace? And I think of an illustration. Kent, you and I have been to Edinburgh, Scotland, together, and I’ve had the privilege of taking you to a statue that is up on Prince Street. It is of a man named Thomas Chalmers, who was one of the greatest preachers and ministers in the history of Scotland back in the nineteenth century. And it’s an interesting story about Thomas Chalmers, he was a brilliant young man. He went to the University of St. Andrews, and we’ve been to St. Andrews together, and he majored in mathematics. He had a brilliant mind for mathematics. And he became a professor of mathematics and instructor at St. Andrews University, which was a very prestigious university, while at the same time also pastoring a church. And he felt it was so easy to pastor a church that he could just do that two days a week, and the other days of the week he would just give to the study of mathematics. Unknown to him, he was unconverted. And there was an elder in his church, in the Church of Scotland, who would come by on Saturday evenings and walk by his house and call on him. And the elder said, “Why do I never see you reading your Bible on Saturday night?” And he gave an answer to the effect, “I’ve studied it all I need to to preach tomorrow.” Well, he came down with tuberculosis, Thomas Chalmers, and was fearful of his own death and life, and God used that to bring him to saving faith in Christ. And he suddenly was born again, and as you can imagine, he became a totally different preacher. The power of God was upon his life, and he eventually went to Glasgow and pastored the very famous Tron Church there, where Sinclair Ferguson also pastored, and Eric Alexander also pastored. Well, Thomas Chalmers back in the nineteenth century pastored there. And he preached a sermon on 1 John 2 verse 15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world,” and he converted it into a book, and that book is called, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” that when you’re born again, there is an explosive power within your soul that gives you a new affection for the things of God. And so, what Chalmers wrote in this book, and he says, “What cannot be destroyed,” which is our former love for the world, it’s still in our drinking water. “What cannot be destroyed can be displaced by another, greater love.” He says, “Displaced affections need to be replaced by the far greater power of the affection of the gospel.” So in other words, the way to have a decreasing love for the world is very simple. You have an increasing love, which is far greater, which is for Christ. Why would you go back to the dirt? Why would you love the dirt if you truly love the diamond of God’s grace? And so, Chalmers also said in this very famous book, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” he says, “One taste may give way to another taste,” and by that he means, if you just taste the gospel, the world’s not going to taste the same. The world will taste somewhat bitter as you taste the sweetness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, one taste will give way to another taste, and it will lose its power. And he then concludes, and I say conclude, it’s a whole book, but he adds, “It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction.” In other words, love for the world is just not going to naturally go away if we just kind of, with sheer will power, just say, “Well, I’m not going to love the world, I’m not going to love the world.” That’ll last about a day or two. You’ll be back unless, Chalmers argues, there is a far greater affection. It is like a man who loves golf and loves to play golf, and he’s a single guy, and he just lives out at the golf course until he meets another single girl. And suddenly there’s a far greater love, and instead of playing thirty-six holes, he may shorten it down to nine holes, so he can get in his car and drive to where this new love and this far greater affection that he has. And if he just tried to give up golf, he couldn’t just give up golf. It’s kind of in him. But if there is a new love, a greater love, that’s what will pull him away. And so, the point I think is this, that, as Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world,” that’s a struggle. That’s hard because we can still so easily be pulled back and lured. There’s got to be a new love, a far greater love that we have for the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Chalmers argues, and as Paul writes, and as John writes, and the whole Bible writes, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you.”

Living on the Altar – Romans 12:1-2

OnePassion Ministries April 16, 2020

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Father, as we now come to look into Your Word, we ask that Your grace would be upon each one of us and that You would work through me to be a mouthpiece for the teaching of Your Word. I pray that You would be meeting with everyone who is watching this right now, that Your omnipresent Holy Spirit would be working both sides of the aisle and be at work in the minds and the hearts and the lives of everyone who is watching. So, may You extraordinarily bless them through this study this morning. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, I want you to take your Bible and turn with me to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 12, and we have just crossed the continental divide and we have stepped into the last major section of the book of Romans. Now, there are still five chapters to go. So, it is not as though we have come to the end of Romans. In fact, we have come to everything that the Apostle Paul has been building towards, which is how to live your Christian life. The title of this lesson this morning is, “Living on the Altar,” and that is where each and every one of us needs to be living, is on the altar. And the problem with a living sacrifice is they crawl off of altars. So, we must stay on the altar as our life is presented to God as a living and holy sacrifice. So I want to read the text, Romans chapter 12 beginning in verse 1. I am going to read verses 1 and 2, and to be honest I don’t know if I can get to verse 2. We will how this plays out, but some verses just beg for us to, as Kent would say, tap the brakes and just slow down a bit and give careful look at it. So, this is what it says, this is how it reads: “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” What we learn from these verses is that it truly matters to God how you and I live our Christian lives. Just because we are saved by grace does not give us a free pass to live however we want to live. That is fools’ talk. No, because of the grace of God in our conversion and salvation, it is incumbent upon us that we live in a manner that is pleasing to God. It is not enough to God that we are saved. God desires that we be sanctified and that we be conformed into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. So, as we come to these verses, Kent, this is where faith gets real. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is shoe-leather Christianity. This is getting it out of the ivory tower and into the marketplace and into the home and into the office and into relationships and into the daily flow of life. And so, these two verses, verses 1 and 2, are two of the greatest verses in the entire Bible and it is well worth our careful attention. So, you have tuned in on a Bible study that could really be one of the greatest Bible studies you have ever been a part of. Not because I am teaching. That has nothing to do with it, but because of what the Apostle Paul has written in these verses and how they need to be in our lives. I want to repeat this. This could be the most important Bible study that you will ever be a part of. So, as we walk through this passage, I have several headings upon which I want to hang our teaching as we walk through this passage, and we are literally just going to go through this word by word, phrase by phrase. And of the headings, number one, “The Connection,” the connection. The very first word in verse 1, “Therefore,” and I just have to pause and see what the “therefore” is there for. This is one of the most important words in the Bible, is the word “therefore.” And the word “therefore” really serves as a bridge that connects Romans 1 through 11 with Romans 12 through 16. This is the tiny bridge that connects two massive continents. I used to live in Mobile, Alabama, and pastor there. And as you would go from the city of Mobile across the bay, there is just one tiny little tunnel that you go through, and massive traffic jams would stack up just to go through this tiny little tunnel. Well, this word “therefore” is a relatively small word, but the whole of Romans 1 through 11 is having to pass through this narrow passage of the word “therefore” that leads now to the other side of the bay, that leads to the rest of the book of Romans. And here is what is taking place here. In Romans 1 through 11, we have instruction. In verses 12 through 16, we have application. In the first eleven chapters, we have doctrine. Now, we have duty, and the two have to be married together. In the first half, it is all about the mind, but now in the second half it is about the heart and the hands and the feet and the eyes and putting this into practice. So, our beliefs have to be married to our behavior. And the word “therefore” is the golden pipe that this doctrine must flow through now into our lives and we begin to live it out. To put it another way, in the first eleven chapters we have the indicatives. Now, we move to the imperatives. We go from knowing to doing. We go from learning to living. And so, this word “therefore,” I am not going to pause for every single word as we go through this, but this word “therefore” just literally leaps off the page and grabs me by the lapels and secures my attention. And I want it to do the same for you. And so, before we move on, I want to say this, there must be a “therefore” in your Christian life. There must be a “therefore” that is a bridge that connects what you know of sound doctrine to how you live in daily Christian living. And so, as I said in the introduction, we have just crossed over the continental divide and we now have gone over the summit and we are coming down the other side of the mountain now that will lead us down into the valley where Christian life is lived on a daily basis. So, number one, “The Connection.” Number two: “The Motivation,” where Paul continues. “I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God.” Do you see the motivation? The Apostle Paul doesn’t just tell us. He is going to persuade us. He is going to motivate us. He is going to light a match and strike a fire and put it beneath us to ignite within us a motivation to live for the glory of God. That is what he is saying. “I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.” This word “urge,” that is a strong word. This word “urge” means, “I implore you,” “I appeal to you.” “I summons you.” “I exhort you.” “I entreat you.” “I beseech you.” “I plead with you.” “I compel you.” What Paul is saying here is, “I want to move you.” And I have underscored this with all of these synonyms so that we can feel something of the warm passion and zeal that is in the pen of the Apostle Paul as he now leads into this practical section. It is not enough for Paul just to toss it out there as if to say to us, “Hey, you can take this or leave this.” No, Paul is after us, and every preacher and every Spirit-filled Bible teacher is always after the reader or the listener to move you in a particular direction. It is not enough just that you be a didactic instructor with a professorial tossing out of a data dump where you give an encyclopedic lecture and as long as it is in your notebook, that’s all that I care about and that you can answer the exam. That is not where Paul is. No, after eleven chapters of strong doctrine, Kent, condemnation, justification, sanctification, glorification, election, predestination, he has stacked it up. He is now coming after us. And he is saying, “I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God.” And I want you to know that if we had a Greek New Testament here and we opened it up, these three words, “I urge you,” are frontloaded at the beginning of the sentence the Apostle Paul writes. We call that the emphatic position, that if you want to stress something in the original language when you write a sentence you lift it up and you move it to the beginning of the sentence. So that it is like taking a yellow highlighter and highlighting it, then getting a pen and underlining it, drawing a circle and then out in the margin you draw an arrow to it and then maybe add an asterisk. “I urge you” is the emphasis that Paul is making here as he is aggressively seeking to persuade. And I know some Christians, even when I stand up to preach, they have hanging around their neck a “Do Not Disturb” sign. They think if they just show up to church or just show up to the conference or to the Bible study, that that is enough. Paul is ripping the “Do Not Disturb” sign from the neck of the reader, from me, from you, and saying, “I want to move you. I want to win you over to living the truth.” You may say, “Wow! That sounds manipulative.” No, it is not manipulative. It is God working through the teacher and preacher of His Word to move you. It is God seeking to really to urge you and to plead with you. So, that is the motivation. “I urge you, therefore, brethren,” and really here is the sum of the motivation: he says, “by the mercies of God.” And “the mercies of God” is a condensed summary of Romans 1 through 11. It is the saving sovereign grace of God that Paul has just laid out in the first eleven chapters in what is the greatest presentation of the mercies of God found anywhere in the entire Bible. “Mercies” is in the plural. It represents all of the saving mercies of God, and it includes giving careful thought to where you once were before you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, the pit in which you lived, a pit of sin and darkness. These mercies refer to what God did to intervene into the affairs of your perishing life by sending His Son into this world on a mission of redemption to save your soul. It speaks of the sending of the Holy Spirit by God to awaken you out of your spiritual stupor and to bring you to faith in Jesus Christ. That is a part of the mercies of God. It is also the fact that you were crucified with Christ. You have been buried with Christ, Romans 6. You have been raised with Christ. Your life is dramatically and radically changed and transformed by the power of His grace. This is “the mercies of God,” and how now He has put His Holy Spirit in you and me and He is now leading us every moment of every day into a totally new life, and the fact that we can never fall away from this grace, that those whom He foreknew He predestined, whom He predestined He called, He justified, He glorified. We are eternally secure in this grace. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus and that out of this common lump of clay of humanity, God the potter has chosen some to be vessels of mercy who were predestined and foreordained for glory.  All of that is bound up in these in these five words, “by the mercies of God.” There could not be a more compelling motivation that the Apostle Paul could bring to bear upon your heart and my heart than to play that card, to play “by the mercies of God.” And if you have truly given careful consideration to the mercies of God in your life, it will so motivate you and ignite a passion within your soul to want to live in a radically distinctly different way. So that is the motivation. And I pray that God will pour gasoline on that fire in my heart. I pray He will do the same in your heart that we will not be stoic saints and just sitting around staring at our navel and just glad that we have a notebook full of stuff, but that the Word of Christ will richly dwell within us and that we will wake up every morning putting two feet on the floor in the go position ready to live for the glory of God. That is the motivation. Now, third: “The Presentation,” the next four words. Let me start at the beginning, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God,” now the next four words, “to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice,” that is more than four words, “to God.” So, when he says now to present your bodies, this is God’s will for your life, that you be presenting your bodies a living and holy sacrifice to God. This is drawing upon Old Testament priestly sacrificial language. What an Old Testament priest would do is he would take a sacrifice, an animal sacrifice, and he would slay the sacrifice and the sacrifice would be dead, and he would come to the altar and he would lay the sacrifice on the altar as has been prescribed by God. He would bring the very sacrifice that God required and present it in the manner with which God has required, because any other kind of sacrifice would be unacceptable to God and would be displeasing to God and would be rejected by God. And so, the priest could not have a self-made religion and come up with his own kind of sacrifice in the manner in which he wanted to present it. And so, he would come and present it and place it on the altar and then take hands off and it would be totally given to God, totally yielded to God. And what Paul is saying is that God requires that you and I present not an animal sacrifice on to the altar, but to take your own life and to place it on the altar, and for it to be totally given to God, and for it to be hands-off for God now to use your life however God desires to use you as long as you are on planet earth. He says, “present your bodies.” The word “bodies” here really represents the entirety of your being. It is metaphorical language. It represents every inch and every ounce of who you are and what you are. If you could picture this from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, the entirety of your being, your mind, your emotions, your will, is to be completely yielded to God, that you hold no part back for yourself, that it is 100% placed on the altar before God. It begins with your mind, that your mind is given to God, what you believe, what you think, how you understand, that you are going to believe what God says in His Word, that you are going to think God’s thoughts, that you are going to understand with divine wisdom, that you are not going to allow the encroachment of the world’s ideologies to shape your mind. Your mind is given to God. Your eyes are given to God, what you look at, what you see, your worldview, what you gaze upon. Your ears are given to God, what you listen to, what you allow to come into your mind. Your mouth is given to God, what you will say and what you will speak, that it will all be governed by that which glorifies God. Your hands will be completely given to God, what you lay your hands to do, what you are engaged in, what your work is. And your feet are given to God, where you go and where you travel. All of that is just breaking out “presenting your bodies to God.” And as you do this, he then adds, “a living and holy sacrifice.” Now, in the Old Testament it was a dead sacrifice, a slain sacrifice that was presented to God, but here it is a living sacrifice. And that is a greater challenge because this means now twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week that I am to live on the altar. This is my address. This is where I live constantly and continually, I am to be living as a sacrifice for God. And then he also then adds, “and holy,” a living and holy sacrifice. And the word “holy” here means to be set apart for a very special use, to be set apart from just common, mundane, pedestrian living, to be set apart from living for the cares of this world, to be set apart from living for the temporal, and to be living always for the eternal and for the heavenly, and setting our mind on things above. It means that we are to live a transcendent life that rises above the muck and the mire of this world, to live with God-purpose and to live with God-direction. And the word “holy” here also signifies purity and to be unstained by the contaminations and the pollutions of this world. This is calling for the pursuit of holiness and godliness. This is calling for what Leviticus 11:44 and 45 said, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And it is only this sacrifice that is acceptable to God. Notice the next three words, “acceptable to God.” So, there is a Christian life that is acceptable to God, and there is a Christian life that is unacceptable to God. I am not talking about your eternal standing. You have been justified by faith, but it is possible for someone who has been justified by faith, let us say in a season of their life, to be living in a way that is unacceptable to God. So, this says, “acceptable to God.” Anything less than being a living and holy sacrifice is unacceptable to God. Now, this word “acceptable” means, literally out of the original language, to be well pleasing, to be well pleasing to God. So, as a believer who has been justified by faith, the manner with which I live my life must be done in a way that is well pleasing to God. And I want to give you some cross-references here, just three cross-references that I think would be very important for you to hear at this point, because I know what some people will be thinking right now. “Steve, that’s legalism. That’s legalistic.” And I want to say to you, if that is your response to this, you wouldn’t know legalism if it walked up and shook hands with you, that this is Bible truth and you are arguing for what we call license, antinomianism, that you can just live your Christian life however you want to live and it doesn’t matter, “God is just pleased with me however I live.” And you have bought into a lie, my friend. Now, I want to give you three cross-references, and these are very important, and I want the weight of these verses to weigh strongly upon us. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 9, the Apostle Paul writes, “We have as our ambition.” Now, you need to have an ambition. I need to have ambition, and it needs to be God’s ambition for our lives. “We have as our ambition, whether at home,” meaning living in this world, “or absent,” meaning going to heaven, “to be pleasing to Him.” That must be our ambition, and the mere fact that he says this implies that it is possible for you to be living in a way that is not pleasing to Him. Ananias and Sapphira were not pleasing to the Lord, and God took them home. There were Corinthians that were coming to the Lord’s table in an unworthy manner and they were not pleasing to the Lord and some of them were dying. When Moses struck the rock, it was unpleasing to God. And God said, “Go up to the mountain and die.” So, we must be living pleasing to the Lord and that necessitates that we be rightly motivated, not by guilt but by grace, by the mercies of God, and that we present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice to God. Let me give you another verse, Ephesians 5 verse 10, “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” You and I must be trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. That is the way husbands are with their wives, is it not? It takes a lifetime for us to learn what is pleasing to our wives and vice versa they towards us. And the same is in our spiritual walk with the Lord. We have to be learning what is pleasing to the Lord. One more verse, Romans 14 verse 18 says, “He who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God.” So, there is a manner with which we serve Christ that is acceptable to God. Therefore, that clearly implies there is also a manner in which we would serve Christ that is not acceptable to God. So, the motivation here is to live our life in a way that is acceptable and pleasing, well-pleasing to God, which is that we present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice to God. I can only pray that this very moment the Holy Spirit of God is at work in your mind and in your heart bringing the truth of this text into the very epicenter of your soul. Now, this leads to number four, “The Calculation.” He says at the end of verse 1, “which is your spiritual service of worship.” The word “spiritual” here requires some help. It is a Greek word. I am going to pronounce it only because you are going to hear an English word. You are going to hear several English words in it. It is a Greek word, logikos, and you can hear “logic,” “logical,” “logarithms;” that is referring to that which is rational, that which is intelligent. When he says that “which is your spiritual service of worship,” I think it is best translated, and commentaries would bear this up, that which is your reasonable and rational service of worship. Now, what Paul is saying to the Romans and to us is, “I want you to do the math because it would be totally irrational for you not to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to the Lord. The only reasonable way for you to live your Christian life is to present it on the altar to God.” So, Paul is saying, and we get the mathematical aspect of this logikos when we do this: “Add it up. Add up all of the liabilities that you had to give up and then add up all of the assets that you gained. So, what all liabilities did you give up were just wiped off the books?” Kent, you are businessman. You know how to look at these T-squares better than I do. So, what was taken off of the books and is no longer a liability in your life? Guilt, sin, condemnation, hell, judgment. That is quite a list of liabilities that has just been taken off of the books, forgiven. So what has been added now to the asset side? What assets did you acquire in your conversion? Forgiveness, righteousness, the indwelling Spirit, a new heart, a new mind, a new path, a new direction, a new destiny, all of this and more is what you have acquired. So, what Paul is saying when he says “which is your spiritual service of worship,” he is really saying, “which is your reasonable, rational, intelligent decision” to make in your life. Think of what you have given up and think of what you have gained. How could you possibly live for yourself? How could you possibly live for this sin-soaked world? How could you do anything other than living for the glory of God? That is where he is driving this. And then he adds, “of worship,” “which is your spiritual service of worship.” Now, we normally think, Kent, of worship as being Sunday morning from 9:45 to 11.00 or 10:30 to 12.00, whenever your church meets, and when the Bible uses the word “worship” it opens up the lens and gives us the big picture. It has in mind the macro, not the micro. Now, coming to church on the Lord’s Day is vitally important to every believer’s life and I think even a necessity, but coming to church on Sunday morning is only to prepare us to be worshippers the entire rest of the week. I mean, it is like a gas station. We just come to get filled up so that we have got gas in our tank to live the rest of the week. And what this is talking about here is a lifestyle of worship, that your entire life is a worship service. That is what this is saying, “which is your spiritual service of worship,” that your entire existence, to put it this way, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you are never out of the sanctuary. You are always in a posture of on your knees, eyes lifted up to heaven, mouth open, giving praises to God. And we glorify God in every aspect of our life. It is certainly when we are in the Word and in prayer throughout the week, but it is also as you go to work. It is also as you go to school. It is also as you are walking with friends. It is also as you are in forms of recreation. Wherever you go, you are to be living on the altar, and your life is to be a worship service given to God.