Camp Sunday - Conformed or Transformed

HBI - As we live lives committed to God let us seek to be transformed by Him not molded by the world

Intro

Being Camp Sunday I thought I would go through what our theme verse is for Camp. Our theme verse is Romans 12:1-2. One of the things that we thought about is the thought that it is getting harder and harder to stand firm on the word of God. One of the pressures that our kids are facing is the pressure to be conformed to the world around them. We are told we need to be transformed by the word of God and live differently and all that but then we are also sent into the world to make disciples and the pressure to be conformed to the world is so difficult to resist. This gets to the point where churches even try to change to make it easier for people to enter.

Bass reverberates through the auditorium floor as a heavily bearded worship leader pauses to invite the congregation, bathed in the light of two giant screens, to tweet using #JesusLives. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafts in from the lobby, where you can order macchiatos and purchase mugs boasting a sleek church logo. The chairs are comfortable, and the music sounds like something from the top of the charts. At the end of the service, someone will win an iPad. This, in the view of many churches, is what millennials like me want. And no wonder pastors think so. Church attendance has plummeted among young adults. In the United States, 59 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a Christian background have, at some point, dropped out. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, among those of us who came of age around the year 2000, a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at all, making my generation significantly more disconnected from faith than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as detached as baby boomers were as young adults. In response, many churches have sought to lure millennials back by focusing on style points: cooler bands, hipper worship, edgier programming, impressive technology. Yet while these aren’t inherently bad ideas and might in some cases be effective, they are not the key to drawing millennials back to God in a lasting and meaningful way. Young people don’t simply want a better show. And trying to be cool might be making things worse.

But what it goes back to, what we need to be teaching our kids is that we are called to live lives committed to Jesus in all that we do. We need to seek to be transformed by Him not conformed to what the world has told us we need to do. We need to be willing to stand on the word of God.

Therefore

We are told what we are called to be right at the beginning of verse 1, but first we need to go back a bit.

Romans 12:1 (CSB)1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

we start out with a therefore, which means based on what has been said before. We always need to look back to understand what has been said. The book of Romans goes through the theme of the Gospel. How we are not to be ashamed of the gospel it is the power of God for Salvation and it reveals the righteousness of God by faith. The book of Romans tends to be a theological book dealing with how the life changing message of the gospel should affect our lives and bring us together in unity. Romans 1:16-17

Romans 1:16–17 (CSB)16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

but more then that we focus specifically on the previous chapter to see what was being said before, we go back a bit to chapter 11 and we read about a few things that help this make sense. God punished the people of Israel and because of what they had done. The gospel was starting to go out to the Gentiles and God was using that to make the Israelite's jealous and turn them back to Him. We have been grafted into the family of God, that is we have been added later. But this doesn't make us better or worse, we will receive the same punishment for unbelief as they did. What this does do though is show the mercy of God and His loving-kindness to those who believe and His wrath towards those who do not believe. God’s mercy is seen in the fact that we did not deserve to be grafted into the family of God but we have been given the opportunity to become part of it.

Living Sacrifice

so then we go back to verse 1 and we read that in light of the mercy of God which has made us be able to be grafted into the family of God based on nothing that we have done then something needs to happen. we are called to be a living sacrifice. This may cause us to pause though, the word sacrifice rarely brings with it good images. and though we are called to follow the Lord, even unto death, this says our lives are to be a sacrifice to God. If you continue to read in verse one we are given adjectives to describe what a living sacrifice looks like.

Romans 12:1 (CSB) a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

3 phrases to describe what a living sacrifice is. Holy, Pleasing to God and it is how we are to worship God. so all put together let us look into what this means for our lives. I want to do a bit of cross referencing to get an idea of what else the Bible says about being a living sacrifice. even in the beginning of Romans we read about what this should look like.

Romans 6:13, 16 (CSB)13 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.16 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?

We read here that it means we are to offer our whole selves to God as weapons of righteousness. We are to be bond servants for Jesus, that is to willingly choose to give our lives for Him in service for Him. The only thing that we can offer to Jesus that is of any worth is our whole lives in service to Him based on the message of the cross.

1 Corinthians 6:20 (CSB) 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

Here we read that we where bought with a price. Jesus died for sin so that you might find freedom in Him. This is the price that was paid, that we where bought with. Without Jesus we are all heading to the gallows slowly, our sentence death for what we have done. Yet Jesus, though he did nothing wrong took the death sentence for us and came back to life so that all who believe in Him might be saved from that death sentence. This is the price paid for our sin and being a living sacrifice here we read says that because of this we need to glorify God with our whole body. In everything that we do.

do you see the theme so far? One more verse to get the point across.

Hebrews 13:15 (CSB) 15 Therefore, through him let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

the point of be a living sacrifice is that it is a continual thing. we look to the adjectives in verse 1 used to describe what a living Sacrifice is now and it makes more sense. we are to be a holy sacrifice. That is we are to be set apart, we are to strive to live lives for Jesus. We are to strive to live lives without sin but when we do make mistakes we are to ask forgiveness from God and those we have wronged and grow closer to Him.

a living sacrifice is pleasing to God. The aroma of the sacrifice done the right way was a pleasing aroma to God. Though He always did want hearts that wehjre devoted to Him more then a sacrifice done just because that is what you do. He told the Israelite's that the aroma of their sacrifices where a stench, something he hated because their hearts had turned from Him. But when our hearts are turned to Jesus, to live a life given to Jesus it is a pleasing aroma to God, He wants to see us give Him all of the glory for what He has done.

and lastly it is our way of praising the Lord our God, our reasonable worship. We are to worship the Lord God with our lives, a continual thing we do not just on Sunday Mornings. A sacrifice of praise that confess the name of God to the world around them and praises the Lord God with everything that they do.

Conformed or Transformed

But there is a bit of a catch, there is not a way we can become a living sacrifice unless we first do what is talked about in the second verse Romans 12:2

Romans 12:2 (CSB)2 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.

do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by God. Conformed or transformed. To be a living sacrifice for God we need to allow ourselves to be transformed by Him. The Bible is filled with warnings that we are not to be conformed to this world, here are two of them.

1 Peter 1:14 (CSB)14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance.

1 John 2:15 (CSB) 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The patterns of our former ignorance, the sin we where once trapped in we are not to live like that anymore. But you see we sometimes have a slight problem with this. We have heard the phrase before in the world but not of the world. It is based on a passage in the book of John. But it would be better phrased not of the world but sent into the world. Jesus tells us that we are not of this world as followers of Jesus but we are sent into the world to tell it about Him. The problem is the pressure to conform to the world, the peer pressure that we face when we go into the world.

This was something that was hard for me to do in school. The kids, knowing that I went to church, would ask me to come to a party on the weekend and then say “oh wait, you aren't allowed to drink”. then they would laugh at their joke knowing that I couldn't do what they were doing. The pressure to conform and fit the mold of the world was very high.

and yet we are told by Paul elsewhere in the book of 1 Corinthians that because of our freedom in the law of Christ we are to become all things to all men for the purpose of sharing the gospel. SO we are told not to conform to the world but we are sent into the world and to become all things to all men so we might share the gospel with them. But where is the line between not being conformed to the world and our Christian liberty?

we need to remember a few things.In freedom, for love's sake, you try to overcome unnecessary, alienating differences that cut you off from unbelievers. In freedom, for love's sake, you learn the Maninka language and translate the Bible. In freedom, for love's sake, you eat dinner together the way they eat dinner. In freedom, for love's sake, you dress pretty much like the middle class American natives. In freedom, for love's sake, you get into their politics and their sports and their businesses. And all the while you keep a vigilant watch over your heart to see if you are in the law of Christ.

this is where the next part of it, we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We are to do this so that as we are sent into the world to share the message of the gospel and try to reach out to people from different walks of life, we need to make sure that we are being transformed into Children of God. In doing this we begin to realize, it says, that we begin to realize what the perfect will of God is for our lives. we need to seek to have our minds renewed and transformed by God through living a life for him. By filling our minds with the word of God and growing closer to Him.

There is an old kids song that says garbage in, Garbage out. It talks of the fact that if you put Garbage into your mind then Garbage is going to come out of our life. We must seek to be transformed by the word of God so that wer know how to offer our selves up as willing servants for the glory of the Lord.

So What?

As we live lives committed to God we need to first and foremost seek to be transformed by God so that we may be molded by Him and know His will not molded and conformed to the world. This is so important nowadays because our kids and us are being pressured to conform to the madness of the world and anyone who goes against all this madness is fought against. It is so easy to just give up on the pressures of the world around us. But through it all we are reminded of three things.

Live lives of worship

The first is that we are to be a living sacrifice. In all we do we need to seek to Glorify God and worship Him with our lives. worship is not something we just do on a Sunday morning. What we are going to strive to teach our kids and everyone around us is that in light of what the Lord has done for us, we need to commit our lives to Him and allow all aspects of our lives to be a beautiful aroma of worship to Him.

Not of the World

As we live lives of worship we need to remember that though we are sent into the world we are not of the world. We are sent into the world to tell the world about the message of the gospel, and we are even told that we are to use our freedom in Christ to become all things to all men. How can we meet them where they are at in their life. But this is never at the expense of our walk with God. We are not to return to our former sin, we are not to allow the world to mold us in their image. as we do this we can remember a few questions to ask to help us see if we are slipping into the error of being more like the world.

Are you becoming more worldly minded than they are becoming spiritually minded? If so, you have probably crossed the line of the law of Christ. Christ does not call you to lose your holiness, but to gain theirs.

Is your passion for winning your friends and family growing, or is it shrinking as you become all things to them? If it is shrinking, then you are not in the law of Christ at that point.

We are Ambassadors of Jesus

We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We need to stand firm on the word of God and remember that we are sent into the world on behalf of Jesus. We are His ambassadors, though He does not need us He wants to use us for His glkroy and the furthering of His kingdom. As we go we represent our savior Jesus to the world around us, and sometimes we have not done a very good job of this. But in order to do this we need to make sure we are filling our minds with the word of God, that we are being molded by God, not by the world, that we are seeking to line ourselves up with the will of God.

Christ died to set us free. Free from the wrath of God. Free for love and eternal life. Are we using our freedom to make this good news plain? Or are we so separatistic that we have no connection with unbelievers; or are we so worldly they don't know we have anything radically different to offer?