Untitled Sermon

Romans 12:1-3

Romans 12:1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

I appeal- Paul is here making an apeal- an urge, an exhortation- strongly encourage or urge someone to do something

By the Mercies of God-

What Mercies

Romans 1-11

Our minds are corrupted through sin (see Rom. 1:28-29 “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,”

When we come to Christ, we are transferred into a new realm of righteousness and life (See Rom. 5-8)

Our minds are not immediately changed; our thinking still tends to follow the well-worn ruts of the old way of life. Engage in a life-long process of changing the way we think, and by changing the way we think, we change the way we live.

The person transformed by the renewing of the mind is able to discern and put into practice the will of God.

Outline:

The Condition of the fallen mind

The mercies of God

The worship we are called to

The process by which that worship is possible

The outcome of renewing our minds being Living in God’s will here and now.

What that looks like

Genuine love and overcoming evil with good.

Spiritual Worship- What is worship- Romans 12:1-2 actually give us a big ups on what worship is actually supposed to consist of-

Sacrifices in the old testatement were required by God as an actual service owed him. People going through the process to sacrifice and live a life by God’s law and

Sacrifices were not just about the animal itself being pure, but the one presenting the sacrifice would have to bring it with the right motives and heart behind the sacrifice

The heart behind sacrificing Isaiah 1:11 ““What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.”

God has done great things for you and it is nothing but right that you would dedicate yourself wholly to him.

that every man must be born again, who would enter into the kingdom of God; for in mind and heart we are altogether alienated from the righteousness of God

People worship God by using thier God- given inteligence to honor him.

Offering ourselves to God is done by avoiding the pattern of thinking and behaving that is characteristic of this world and by instead aligning ourselves with the values of the world to come.

The Letter to the Romans The True Worship and the Essential Change (Romans 12:1–2)

Here, we have a most significant thing. True worship is the offering to God of one’s body and all that one does every day with it. Real worship is not the offering to God of a liturgy, however noble, and a ritual, however magnificent. Real worship is the offering of everyday life to him—not something carried out in a church, but something which sees the whole world as the temple of the living God. As the American poet and hymn-writer J. G. Whittier wrote,

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken:

The holier worship which he deigns to bless,

Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,

And feeds the widow and the fatherless.

We might say: ‘I am going to church to worship God’; but we should also be able to say: ‘I am going to the factory, the shop, the office, the school, the garage, the mine, the shipyard, the field, the cowshed, the garden, to worship God.’

Bodies- Whole being?

Paul lays out our true worship to then lay out the radical change for the Christian.

2 - Conform- to conform to, to assimilate, one of two times this word is used in the new testament

1 Peter 1:14- do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

The world is always seeking conformity, conformity to its ways of doing a, b, c… but Jesus calls us to open the eyes of our minds.

be set free by the Gospel

Paul is talking about being conformed to a temporary way of thinking or a temporary way of life that will not have any significance years from now but in the grand scheme of all things it better to be transformed by renewing your mind.

A person’s schēma is not the same at the age of 17 as it is at 70; it is not the same when going out to work as when dressed for dinner. It is continuously altering. So, Paul says: ‘Don’t try to match your life to all the fashions of this world; don’t be like a chameleon which takes its colour from its surroundings.’

William Barclay, The Letter to the Romans, 3rd ed. fully rev. & updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 186.

:2 World- better translated by the word age.

:2 Transformed- to be changed to be transformed, Used in the transfiguration passages, 2 Cor 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Transformation happens through a continual renewal of the mind-

:2 Renewal- Titus 3:5 “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,”

Renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Continually reminding ourselves of the Gospel-

Being a new creation in the world and the Holy Spirit continually renewing your mind.

This leads to us doing the Will of God.

Christianity is the religion of the open hand, the open heart, and the open door.

The Letter to the Romans Christians and Their Neighbours (Romans 12:14–21)

Booker T. Washington said, ‘I will not allow any man to make me lower myself by hating him.’ The only real way to destroy an enemy is to make that person a friend.