Change The Child...Change The World: The Transformation Work TTV Seeks to Do With Our Children

Jason Plumer

First Baptist Church Litchfield

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Change the Child…Change the World

I am reminded of a story I read recently from a book written by Matthew Kelly. A man was sitting down in his den one morning to write a speech for the employees of his company. The company had a rough year and was in jeopardy of shutting down. His speech was going to explain to them how he was going to turn the company around and save their jobs.

As he sat down to write the speech his wife asked him to watch their five-year-old son while she ran some errands. He reluctantly said he would watch the boy knowing his speech was hanging in the balance. He had no idea what to say and now he had very little time to prepare it.

As his wife walked out the door the man looked around his office to try to find something to entertain the boy. He found a picture of the world in a magazine. Knowing his son has no idea what the world looks like, he cleverly ripped up the picture and put all the pieces on the floor in the living room. He told his son he would give him $20.00 if he could put the world back together again. The boy, excited about the prospect of getting $20.00, immediately went to work and the father sat down to write his speech figuring he would have the afternoon to finish it.

About ten minutes later asking for his twenty dollars. The father said he would get the twenty dollars after he put the world back together again. The boy replied, “I did” as he held up the taped page of the world. Son, the father asked, “How did you put the world back together when you have no idea what the world looked like?” The boy relied, “Well, there was a picture of a man on the back of the picture of the world. Since I know what a man looks like, I just kind of put him back together, and if a piece looked out of place on the world, I would just change the man. You see dad, if you change the man, you change the world.”

“Change the man and you change the world.” There is a great deal of truth in that statement. The key to change is knowing what the agent behind the change is. Some scientist may say that change lies in genetics. If you alter the bad genetics for good genetics one can change the man. Some psychologist will contend that the agent of change is cognitive therapy. If you change a person’s thinking along with some medication, you change the man. Our culture contends that progressive thinking is the right agent of change. If we can change traditional values for progressive ideas, we can change the man…literally. Now, all of these do bring about change to some degree, however, they do not bring about true change. None of these ideas can truly and deeply change mankind because their metamorphosis cannot transform our broken condition. Only Christ can restore, reconcile, and redeem our broken hearts. The gospel of Jesus Christ is how God changes the world. And the mission of the church is to joyfully advance the kingdom of God by making much of Jesus in the church, community, and home for the purpose of changing, transforming God’s image bearers into the image of His Son.

Jesus Transformed Paul To Change the World

When the gospel changes a man the world truly changes. Consider the apostle Paul, the writer of the Roman epistle. Acts describes Paul’s zealous hatred for Christians. In Acts 7:54-60, Luke says he condoned the murder of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. In

Acts 8:3 HCSB

Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison.

In his own words in a letter to Timothy, Pau describes himself as the “Chief of all sinners” for the way he persecuted the church. Then comes Acts 9, Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.

Paul receives the good news and three days later his blindness is lifted, and he is a changed man, and the world is changed because of his transformation. Who in this church has not been touched by the life of Paul? The renowned German scholar, Adolf Deissmann, once declared:

“There is no single person since Nero’s days who has left such permanent mark on the souls of men as Paul the New Man.” He also noted, “rising from the mass of the insignificant many” he is “still molding the world at the present moment.” Adolf Deissmann

You see, you change the man with the gospel and you change the world. Paul is proof of this. He believed it and preached it, and it is one of the reasons why he wrote the book of Romans, particularly

Romans 12:1–2 HCSB

Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual 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.

Tending The Vine: Empowering Children To be Transformed By Christ

Our purpose statement for TTV is

“We exist to help children abide in Christ so that they will advance the kingdom of God by making much of Jesus in the church, community, and home.” John 15:5

Jesus tells us that He is the true Vine of life and that if we abide in Him, He will abide in us, and produce much fruit (John 15:5). We want to do everything we can to connect our children to Jesus, and that is why TTV began as a Sunday School program. It began as an intentional discipleship for children who came to church. God is his sovereign wisdom has transformed TTV to be a discipleship program that intentionally serves children outside our church who are in our community, which is brilliant on so many levels.

You change the child, you change the world!

It was no coincidence that the father of the boy tore up the world. That is what men do. It was the child who put the world back together by putting the man back together. Make no mistake about it. Children cannot change the world with the power of being naive or simple, however, a child who has been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ can change the world now and when that child becomes an adult.

They can have the power to love God with all their mind, heart, soul, and strength, and love their neighbor as themselves. They an have the power to live righteously with a commitment to justice. They can be pillars of wisdom in their community and Models of fidelity to their families. hey can break generational cycles of poverty. They can have life, and have it abundantly. You change the child, you change the world!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is The Power that Transforms the Child

If you look at our text this morning, you will see the word “therefore” in verse 12:1: “I Paul, therefore, urge you…” The word “therefore” carries the weight of the previous 11 chapters. It forces you to look back and see the context of the letter: ‘“Therefore,” in light of the previous 11 chapters, I urge you.” We ask the question, “What is the “therefore” there for?”

The letter to the Romans is Paul’s fullest explanation of the transformational power of the gospel. The church in Rome is going through some difficulty. Christians enjoyed a certain degree of freedom in Rome until Claudius told them to get out. Five years later they were allowed to come back, and when the church gathered, it was ethnically diverse with Jews and Gentiles. This was causing a lot of division. Paul’s solution to their problem was the gospel. If the gospel can change a man like him, it can change the world, and it can transform a broken and divided church into a unified gospel living kingdom advancing church.

Paul’s letter to the Romans explains what the gospel can do in four movements. In chapters 1-4, Paul explains the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. Mankind has a problem. All of us are guilty of idolatry, both Jew and Gentile. We need to be rescued and made right in God’s presence. Jesus is God’s power to save people. Through Jesus, God can save sinners from his wrath and give them a righteous standing before him. That is called justification. Justification is being made right with God. The sinner receives justification by faith, believing in Jesus’s work of atonement. A justified sinner is given a new status, a new family, and a new future. All of this comes through faith in Jesus. One commentator summed it up well,

“Jesus became what we are so that we can become what he is.”

From the first four chapters, the rest of the letter unfolds in more detail about God’s rescuing and justifying sinners. In chapters 5-8, Paul explains that the gospel creates a new humanity. Through Adam, sin entered the world, enslaving mankind to idolatry and impurity. Justification by faith creates a new humanity through Jesus. The justified sinner now can leave the old Adam way of sinful living and can embrace the new life in Christ of obedience, faithfulness, and love. Furthermore, the newly justified sinner is given the Holy Spirit to help him walk in this new life.

In chapters 9-11, the gospel fulfills God’s promise to Israel. In the past Israel rejected God’s covenant with Him. Their rejection accomplished God’s will to bless the nations by bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. The new covenant is not based on keeping the law but by faith. By chapter 11, Paul explains that God is not done with Israel and that one-day Jesus will be recognized by His people.

In the final chapters, 12-16, Paul shows how the gospel unifies the church through love and forgiveness. Chapter 12 is a litany of ways to serve one another, with chapter 13 expressing the need for the heart to be humble and eager to forgive one another. Paul uses chapter 14 to say let grace give the benefit of the doubt. The gospel brings together so many different people who have nothing in common but Jesus. Love shows grace when you disagree on non-essential issues.

You see, Romans is about how the gospel changes people, and in effect changes the world.

Paul was hoping for the Roman church to be the center church for reaching Spain and the rest of the world. Paul believed, if you change the man, you can change the world. He believed that the holy hope a sinner has for restoration, reconciliation, and redemption is the gospel of Jesus. The only hope for true transformation is Christ.

Tending The Vine is a ministry that is committed to truly changing the world by reaching the hearts of children with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul might speak most clearly about this change in

Romans 12:1–2 HCSB

Paul exhorts the Romans that it is God's will to worship Him with a renewed mind that is orchestrating a Holy life that has been transformed by the gospel not patterned after the world.

What does a transformed life look like? How does someone who embraces God’s mercy in Jesus respond with their life? How do they change?

A Jesus-transformed life becomes a Conduit of Mercy (Romans 12:1)

What is mercy? Mercy is the act of withholding deserved punishment. Mercy is hat God has given everyone who turns from their sin and accepts his gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Instead of receiving the wrath you deserve for violating his holiness, God extends you mercy by withholding the punishment you deserve and instead puts it on His Son at the cross. This is the good news of the gospel, which is what Paul had been talking about for the first 11 chapters of Romans. Sinners who deserves God’s judgment for falling short of his glory are given eternal life through His gift of Jesus Christ if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

But God’s mercy is not just appreciated in our past confession. God’s mercy is manifested in our life by the Spirit’s inward work of making us new. We experience God’s mercy everyday as He removes death’s power over our lives and empowers His grace to now reign over us (Romans 5:21). Grace reigning over us empowers us to live righteously, obeying what Jesus’s commands. Hi mercy enables you to love Him with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength. and His mercy enable you to love your neighbor as yourself, and that is where you become a conduit of mercy.

A conduit is a channel that allows water to flow trough it. Copper wire acts like a conduit to allow electricity o flow through it. God has given you mercy to know him, and love him, and serve him, so that you can be a conduit of His mercy toward others. Tending The Vine is a ministry that urges those who have experienced God’s mercy and are living in God’ mercy, to be a conduit of God’s mercy toward broken people whose only hope in this world is God’s mercy given in Jesus’s redemption.

Do you want to change the world? Change the heart of a child. Do you want to change the heart of a child? Be a conduit of God’s mercy in their life. Enter their broken and messy and complicated life not with eyes of judgement and condemnation, but with sympathy and compassion; eyes of mercy. Enter their life knowing you are just as broken as they are, but God’s mercy has redeemed, restored, and reconciled your life to him and your neighbors. Enter their life with the intention and expectation of leading them our of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom if light. Be a conduit of God’s mercy by giving them Jesus.

A Jesus transformed life becomes a Consecrated Life (Romans 12:1)

Paul urges the Roman church to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord; this is your spiritual act of worship. When Paul says “bodies” he is referring to the whole person; your personality, your preferences, your practices, everything your life encompasses form your body to your mind, all of it is a living sacrifice. Nothing in your heart, mind, soul, and strength is off limits to God. All of it is a living sacrifice.

Sacrifice usually refers to something that is dead. In the Old Testament, sheep and cattle, were killed as a sacrifice for sin. The bible says without the shedding of blood their can be no forgiveness of sin (Hebrews 9:22). An animal sacrifice was made to atone for the sin of God’s people. As we know, animal’s could not cover the depth of man’s sin against God. God sent His Son to be a sacrifice for our sin. Jesus came, lived a perfect life of obedience to God’s law, and died on the cross, shedding his perfect blood, which was accepted by God when he raised him from the dead. Jesus’s death atones for our sin if we accept it by faith. He makes us right with God. Notice that the sacrifice has to die. But Paul says that we are to be a “living sacrifice.” What does he mean?

Paul speaks of presenting our bodies as instruments of righteousness three other times in Romans.

Romans 6:13 HCSB

And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness.

All parts of yourselves, like your arms and legs, tongues, eyes, and ears, and sexual organs as weapons of righteousness.

Romans 6:16 HCSB

Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey —either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?

Romans 6:19 HCSB

I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to moral impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification.

The point Paul is making, when you were lost in your sin, you used your body and your life to commit moral impurity and lawlessness. You cursed your neighbor and blasphemed God with your tongue. You committed adultery and fornication violating God’s design for marriage and creation. You listened to nonsense and watched nonsense with your eyes. You were enslaved to sin.

But now that you have experienced God’s mercy and been transformed by the power of the gospel, use your arms and legs, tongue and eyes and ears and you sexual organs for righteous living. That is, live a consecrated life.

Consecrated means that you re set apart. Your life is sacred to the service of God and His kingdom. Your life reflects God’s holy character. Your heart is motivated by pleasing God and he is pleased with your life. Your life is given entirely to God. It’s an act of surrender everyday to the Lord’s will. C.E. B Cranfield wise;y says

An Exegetical Summary of Romans 9–16 12:1

Although the believer belongs to God both by creation and by redemption, he must also belong to God by self-surrender, an act that must continually be repeated

You self-surrender is an act of worship. Worship is not limited to songs on Sunday morning. Worship is about adoring God everyday with my hands; helping the lost and hugging the broken, adoring God everyday with my eyes; making a covenant with God to not gaze upon worthless things; adoring God everyday with my feet, blessed are the feet of those who bring good news; adoring God everyday with my mouth, from the abundance of my mouth my heart is revealed. A consecrated life is a life entirely committed to making much of Jesus everyday in even the most mundane things (1 Corinthians 10:31). This, Paul says, is well pleasing to the Lord. God delights in his people living a consecrated life making much f Jesus.

We are a place in our society where our culture needs Christians to live consecrated lives for Jesus. We are seeing the largest abandonment of fathers in the home without a war or depression that America has ever experienced. There are children being born today with no father in the house to lead them, to protect them, to care for them. Drug overdoses have skyrocketed among young people. Suicide is creeping up to the number one killer of young 20 somethings, especially white males. 1-5 children will suffer hunger.

The children we serve at Tending The Vine are not exempt from these problems. Who is going to show them there is a Father in Heaven who will never leave or forsake them? Who is going to show them that abundant life is lived in the truth and that lies lead to death? Who is going to help them see God’s good and perfect design for marriage and family? Who is going to tell them that the lust of this world, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, is all passing away. So do not love the world. A Jesus transformed life that is committed to living a consecrated life making much of Jesus will be what helps them be transformed.

A Jesus-transformed life is committed to a continual transformation of God approved mind (Romans 12:2)

In 12:2, Paul says, “Do not let yourself be conformed to this world.” The word conformed conveys the idea to be molded after a pattern, or "be formed like, be conformed to, or be guided by.” Don’t let yourself be molded in the same way a potter molds clay into a pot. Mold by what pattern? Paul warns to not be mold by the pattern of the world.

Paul uses the word "αἰῶνι" for world. Paul has used the word “world” eleven times in Romans. It refers to this present evil age. he has used this phrase other times in other letters. For example he says in

Galatians 1:3–4 HCSB

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

That is the idea behind “world” in 12:2. Do not allow your life to be patterned after this present evil age. This present evil age is ruled by Satan and wrought with the works of the flesh

Ephesians 2:1–3 HCSB

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

Paul describes the works of the flesh in Galatians

Galatians 5:19–21 HCSB

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I tell you about these things in advance—as I told you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Do not pattern your life after this present evil age that carries out the inclinations of the flesh and thoughts and desires.

If you look at

Ephesians 2:3 HCSB

We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

Paul makes the connection of your thoughts and desires and actions. Carrying out is your action, your follow through, your movement. What are you carrying out? You are carrying out what you have been thinking and feeling. In this case, its the inclinations of your flesh.