February 12, 2012

Unconformed and Transformed

Romans 12:1-2

I want to start out today by telling you a horror story. The French writer Victor Hugo, who lived in the 1800's and wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, tells us that hundreds of years ago in China, for the amusement of the nobility, they developed the art of molding people into bizarre shapes. Those who did this would take a child of two or three years old and place him in a porcelain vase, perhaps a vase with an odd shape, a vase without a bottom or a top. Only the child's head and legs would protrude from the vase.

The child would be kept in the vase for years, standing in the daytime, and laying down at night to sleep. During this time his small and pliable body would be growing, and filling the contours of the vase. After several years in the vase, the child's body would take on the shape of the vase and become deformed, and the child would become a freak, a very strange looking human being.

The child would become as twisted as the vase, and the damage to the child's body would be irreparable. When the ones who had put the child into the vase thought that enough time had passed, and the child's shape had become permanent, they would break the vase and remove the child, who would now be about 8 or 10 years old. Before them was a child shaped like a vase, a source of amusement to the noblemen and rulers of China.

This strikes us as a horrible thing, and it is. That anyone could be so cruel as to take a child and do such a terrible thing to it strikes us as incredibly evil, and it is. The idea that anyone would force such a thing on a helpless child in order to amuse somebody makes us angry, and it should. We do well to be angry at such a thing.

In Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, we learn that the world wants to do a similar thing to us. The world wants to mold us into it's likeness, and keep us from being the beautiful and Christlike people that God would have us to be. If the world had it's way with all of us, we would all have deformed minds. If the world had it's way with us, our souls and our spirits would become twisted things, turned to evil, turned into ugly things that prefer evil over good, wicked things that conform to the world. The world is an enormous vase, and all of us are born into it. Since everybody is born into this vase, and because we don't see it, we aren't aware of it, we don't notice it. Because it is part of the territory, we take it for granted that's the way things are.

Worst of all, very often we don't even notice that we are deformed, or that the people around us are deformed. We see it all the time, so we come to think of it as natural, as if that's the way things ought to be. No. It shouldn't be that way. God has made provision for us to escape from the world's vase, and it is in Romans chapter 12 and verses 1 and 2. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

The book of Romans is a great lesson for every Christian to study, the first 11 chapters tell us how sin and salvation take place, then starting in chapter 12, we get practical application. How we can put truth into practice on a day to day basis. Head knowledge that transfers to our hands and feet. How what Christ did at the cross leads to what we do when we get out of bed tomorrow.

It starts out saying "I beseech you therefore, brethren." This is like saying; "Since God did this to save you, therefore, here is what you would expect to live like as a result of that." How do we do it? "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God." God is the initiator, He is the One who is merciful, He came after us, brought us to Himself, justified us in Christ, gives us the indwelling Holy Spirit, and gives us our security in Him.

All that we have, and all that we can accomplish, are because of the mercy of God and the grace of God toward us. That is what makes us family. That is what makes us what we are. We don't get it by working for it, but now that we have it, we behave in such a way that it reflects who and what we are.

If you had to be constantly doing something to earn God's mercy, and weren't sure you had done enough, how could you really love Him? How could you be thankful for a mercy that you weren't sure you had obtained? How could you go and live your life for God with a joyful heart? You couldn't, you would be too busy worrying whether or not you were gaining enough credits or brownie points in the process.

What we do for God has to come from the same motivation that we have in any other loving relationship with somebody. They love us and they show it by doing things to please us, we love them and we show it by doing things that we know will please them.

Back to verse 1, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." I assume we are all familiar with the word consecration, consecration means "dedicated to the worship and service of God." We are being urged here to consecrate our bodies to the worship and service of God. Notice the word present; back in the day when people brought a sacrifice to the altar, an animal of some sort, they would present it at the altar. They would bring it and give it to God. That is what we are being called to do. Christ has offered Himself up to God for us, He has given Himself for us, and now we are being called to do the same thing in our relationship to Him.

It is as if Jesus comes to us, looks us in the face, and puts His life in our hands, in our hearts, to save us, and now we need to do the same thing for Him. We need to put our lives in His hands, to do with as He thinks best.

Have you ever done that? Perhaps there was a time when you trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, you knew that He died for your sins, and you trusted in Him to save you from your sins, and you wanted to live for Him, but you were never sure how to live for Him? That's what we are talking about here.

When a person gets saved, God consecrates that person at that moment by the Holy Spirit coming to live in that person. We know that because of what we read in Hebrews 2:11, "For both He who sanctifies - God - and those who are being sanctified - believers - are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren."

So God does something to us, and in us, and with us at the moment we get saved, we become part of Him, and He becomes part of us - but what about us? What do we do? That is what this verse in Romans 12 is talking about, it is reasonable for us to do something as well. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." If you are a Christian, if you have genuinely trusted Christ for salvation, then God has already done something, now He calls on us to do something, and it is not a one-time thing that we are called upon to do.

Some of us know what it's like to be married, there comes a point where we say "I do," or "I will." Ok, that's the ceremony, what about next week? Or next year? If it's a real marriage, you will be saying and living out those words from now on, right? You make a commitment and it is not a one time thing, it is an ongoing thing, you have to do it and live it out every day, or the marriage will have some rough spots, right?

You have heard me say before that one of the problems with a living sacrifice is that it wants to keep crawling off the altar. That won't do, God calls on us to make our commitment to Christ on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, on a minute to minute basis. All day long, we will be presented with choices of how we act, and with every choice we can present ourselves to Christ as a living sacrifice, or we can crawl off the altar and choose our will and our way instead. To the extent that we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, to that extent we worship and honor God, and allow Him to guide and direct our lives.

Notice that it says to present our bodies. It does not say to yield or to surrender our bodies. Here's why that is important; in a couple of days it will be Valentines Day. Let's say that somebody gets you a present and they hand it to you and say "I would like to yield this to you." Or maybe they say "I would like to surrender this to you." Kind of makes you wonder if they really want to give it to you or not... If it's a present, you ought to give it like it's a present, right? If you are giving your body to God as a living sacrifice, you don't want to be dragging yourself to Him with a long face, or deep sighs, and a pout, and yielding or surrendering, you want your present to be a present. God plans to make you happy for eternity, and you are going to be spending your forever in His presence and it is going to be very joyous, so as you present your body to Him, don't do it like a petulant 5 year old.

Notice that really is our bodies that we present to God, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." All of us think of ourselves as body, soul, and spirit, and that's true, and there's a Greek word for that, but that's not the word that is used, it is the word that means our physical person, our skin and bones.

Why did God direct Paul to use that word? The Greek philosophers downplayed the body but exalted the spirit, however the Bible values the body. Someday God is going to raise up our bodies to be like the glorious body of Christ. Christianity and Judaism are the only two religions in the world that place a high value on the body, so God must think it's important.

Secondly, our body is how God chooses for us to interact with His world. Our bodies are what we use to serve God, or serve the devil. In Romans 6:13, our bodies are called an instrument of righteousness, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Whatever we do, we do with our bodies. We work, we play, ladies, you use your bodies to have babies and nurse them, all the things that we do, we do with our bodies. Christ took upon Himself a body like ours, so bodies are important.

Third, the world in Bible times and the world today is a place that is given over to every sort of sexual sin and temptations of every kind, and all of those sins and temptations involve the body.
Just as the body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the body is also the dwelling place for sin. If our consecration to God does not involve our body, then it is of no value, it accomplishes nothing.

Imagine somebody who puts their spiritual life up on one level, and their physical, bodily life down on a different level, it would be possible for such a person to get involved in bodily, physical sin, and yet pretend that it doesn't affect them spiritually, because that's on a different level. It doesn't work like that. That's why our consecration to God has to involve our bodies. You can't give your heart and soul to God and still give your body to the devil.

Back to the verse again, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." Living, as opposed to dead. Back when they did animal sacrifices, the sacrifice died, but God has called us to newness of life in Christ, and God wants us to be very much alive. He wants us full of energy, vibrant, powerful, moving.

The verse also says holy. Holy takes us back to that word consecrated, dedicated to the worship and service of God, and a good example of that is found back in 1st Chronicles 29:2, King David is speaking, he is preparing to obtain the materials for Solomon to build the temple, and he says "Now for the house of my God I have prepared with all my might:" and then he lists all the gold and silver and good things he has set aside for the work, and then he says in the last part of verse 5; "Who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the LORD?"
:6 Then the leaders of the fathers' houses, leaders of the tribes of Israel, the captains of thousands and of hundreds, with the officers over the king's work, offered willingly.
:7 They gave for the work of the house of God five thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze, and one hundred thousand talents of iron.
:8 And whoever had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the house of the LORD, into the hand of Jehiel the Gershonite."

The Hebrew word for consecrate is literally, "to fill the hand." If you are going to consecrate yourself to the Lord, then you need to fill your hands - literally and figuratively - with what you can use to serve Him. If someone is hurting and needs to talk, can you be a patient listener? If someone needs something, can you get up and go for them? If someone has a problem, will you stop what you are doing and think about their problem? If someone needs something and they don't have the money to get it, can you give them some of your money?

Being consecrated to God and using your body means using your brains, your feet, your hands, your ears, your wallet, and when you do that as unto the Lord, you present an offering acceptable to Him. That is the sort of thing that pleases God, it is an offering He will certainly accept.

This is not complicated and it is for everybody. Depending on your religious background, maybe you think that some of this stuff is for preachers or people in full time Christian service, but not for so-called regular Christians. That is not Biblical, the New Testament knows nothing about the concept of clergy and laity. These verses apply equally to all of us, to the office worker and the guy in the shop as well as the preacher behind the pulpit, every one of us are equally called to be committed to Christ 100%, 24/7. Some Christians think it's ok to go through life committed to Christ 100%, 1/1. 100% committed for one hour on one day a week, when you come to church, but it doesn't work that way, and that attitude is the opposite of what we see in these verses.

Coming to the end of verse 1, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." Your reasonable service. This is another one of those places where English can't do justice to the Greek, the word translated reasonable is also the word for logical, of the mind, using your intellect. The word for service is a word also implies worship. So it would sound clunky, but we could translate this part of the verse to say "your reasonable and logical, intelligent service of worship."

The world likes to imply that believers are ignorant and that Christianity is irrational, but God specifically tells us to be logical, to be rational, to think this through, and then do what makes sense to us. God wants our worship to be a proper understanding of truth, of knowing God for who He is, and what He is like. It is acting and worshiping with our brain in gear.

So as we see in this verse the concept that we are to worship with our brain in gear, to be logical, to be intelligent, to serve God with our bodies and with our minds, then all of a sudden it becomes impossible to worship God just on Sunday morning. It means we can't compartmentalize our lives into worship here, and then everything else the rest of the time. It means that if we come to church to worship - and meanwhile we have been ignoring God for the rest of the week - then our coming to church is a sham. It's ridiculous. It's hypocrisy. How could we use our bodies and our minds to go throughout the week and ignore God, and operate just like the rest of the world, and then one day a week switch gears and come among God's people to worship and think God is going to be cool with that?

That doesn't even make sense to us, why would God approve of it? He wouldn't, and that is what we are being told here. We can't crawl into the world's vase all week, and have it deform us, cripple us, damage us, and then think that we can get out of the vase one morning a week to go worship God and think everything is healthy, because it's not.

Which is what we see in Romans 12, verse 2, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Do not be conformed, the word for conformed is the Greek word schema, think of the paint scheme you put on something, it is the outward appearance. How you act, what you look like, how you come across. Your manner, your external behavior for public consumption. The externals, the superficials, the fashions, fads, and trends, what's in this year is out next year. And we are told not to be conformed to the world in those things.

This word world - once again, the Greek is a better language, you could also use the word age, the Germans have a word for it - zeitgeist - the spirit of the times, or the spirit of the age. All the opinions, the prejudices, the likes and dislikes, all the things which characterize the world are constantly changing. In my lifetime I have seen the world's attitude toward Christianity change, it's attitude toward homosexuality change, what was one thing 40 years ago is the opposite now, we see the world's opinions and values constantly changing, so God tells us not to be affected by it. It doesn't matter what the world thinks, give it a some time and it will change. It doesn't matter what the world approves of or disapproves of, just give it some time, it will change too.

So God tells us not to get involved. Don't chase the wind. The world is always going to have it's own value system or worldview and it is always going to either distort, or be contrary to what the Bible says. At some time periods it might seem to get closer to God's truth, at other times, not so much. It doesn't matter. With an election coming up, we especially need to remember not to get seduced into thinking that politics is ever going to become more Christianized or godly, it's not. The world is always going to be contrary to godliness and it is always going to try and squeeze you into it's mold; don't let it. It will sometimes appear to impersonate Christian values, or Christian ways of doing things; don't believe it. That is just another way of applying pressure on you to try and get you to allow it to squeeze you into it's shape; don't be fooled. It's a con game, recognize it and let it go.

What do you do instead? Back to verse 2, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." We get a negative and then a positive: don't do this, do that instead, it's better. Believers should not be like unbelievers, we should not think like them, we should not act like them. So we are told to be transformed. If you are familiar with the Transformers movies, the Transformers could change externally, they could appear to be different, but they were still exactly the same internally. Their motives and attitudes didn't change at all. They were still just as good, or just as evil, regardless of what they looked like. Christians might look somewhat different from before they trust Christ and get saved to after they get saved, but the biggest change is going to be internal, it is a change in their nature.

2nd Corinthians 5:17 says "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." Not only have all things become new, they are continuously becoming new. Where the verse in Romans says "be transformed," it is present tense, which suggests a continuing process of renewal. You did it yesterday, you need to do it today, you will need to do it tomorrow also. The world is constantly trying to get you to slip back into its vase and get pushed out of shape, so you need to continuously be being transformed on an ongoing basis.

Something else about the phrase "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," I feel like I have spent a lot of time today on the mechanics of language, but this phrase implies that there is an external agent involved, which would be the Holy Spirit doing the transforming, not us. However, we all have free will, and we are responsible for cooperating with the Holy Spirit, allowing and encouraging Him to work within our hearts and minds to accomplish the task.

So what happens when we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this? Our minds are renewed. The quality of our thinking is improved. The freshness of our thinking is enhanced. Have you ever been around someone who was always going over the same thing over and over again, they were stuck at some level of whatever, and they were like a broken record, they were just sort of stale? The Holy Spirit keeps us fresh, He gives us new things to think about, new things to do, we get a quality of life that stays fresh. Part of being conformed to the image and likeness of Christ is to be able to think more and more "Christianly" about life.

Let me suggest to you that the Christian mind is characterized by five things: first, it has a supernatural orientation. It sees all of human life and human history as something that is guided and controlled by God. I remember back in high school, I thought history was incredibly boring, and it was, because it was being taught with no reference to God. Once you see history as something that God always has a hand in, filled with people that God is using, and taught that way, everything changes.

Secondly, a Christian mind has a new awareness of evil. A Christian believes in absolutes. The doctrine of original sin makes perfect sense to a Christian, because we see men and women being drawn to evil because of their fallen natures. We see the evidence all around us, and it's just like the Bible says.

Thirdly, a Christian mind has an accurate concept of truth. We read the Bible and it makes sense. The creation, the incarnation of the Son of God, His redeeming work, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming, all of those things make sense, they resonate within us, and we recognize that they are true.

Fourth, the Christian mind has an acceptance of authority. As we submit to the authority of God in our lives, as we see His truth brought to life in our lives, we find that our lives take on purpose and value, and we discover a joy in the journey.

And fifth, the Christian mind is characterized by a concern for others. In the fellowship of the church, we learn about God's love for us as people, and we learn to love one another. We live in a world that is cruel, impersonal, and detached. Within the church, we learn to care for each other, and we learn what it means to have a forever family.

That is what it means to be transformed, let's go over the verse again to see it's ultimate results: "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

Prove. The Greek word translated prove means to test, to examine, to find out and approve something, so in this context it means to prove or to test and know what the will of God is for you. Only a person with a renewed mind can know what the will of God is for their life. The heathen cannot know what God's will is for them, and the Christian who is walking carnally cannot know either, or at best all they are going to get is just a glimpse once in a while. It is the person who is walking in such a way that the world is not deceiving them, and they are having their mind renewed, who is going to be able to discern God's will for their life.

In practice, as we read the Word of God, as we turn it over in our heads and think about it, the Holy Spirit uses that to renew us and conform us to what God wants for us. Maybe we run into some ethical problem that is complicated, or some situation where the solution is not obvious, God is able to work within our renewed minds to have us discern what it is He would have us to do. It would be nice if all of life was black and white, if everything for a Christian was simple, but life's not like that, and that is where discernment comes in. As a believer grows in Christian maturity, he or she is able to recognize what it is that God is showing them, what it is they need to do. Meanwhile, the world is constantly trying to fill our heads with its stuff, trying to conform us to it's way of thinking and doing things, so we need to constantly be being renewed in order to have Christian discernment.

The last part of the verse ends up "that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Good and acceptable and perfect - to God, well sure, and also to you. The more you walk with God, the closer you stay to God and walk in His will, the better you are able to discern His will, and the more you will come to appreciate it. You will recognize and appreciate that it is good. It is morally good, it is practically good. It is beneficial to us, it is good in all sorts of ways.

We discover that it is acceptable. The more we do it, the more agreeable it becomes to us, the more logical and reasonable it seems, the more it simply makes sense that it is a good thing to do. And as we do it, we discover that it is perfect. God is perfect, He is not unfair or unreasonable in any way, He is unselfish 100%, so all His choices for us have to be in our best interest according to His perfect wisdom. His will for us cannot be second best, by definition God's will for us has to be perfect.

Which also means that God will never ask us to do something that we can't do or something we can't measure up to. If God asks us to do something, then obviously we can do it. Not that we will ever do anything perfectly, only Jesus Christ ever perfectly fulfilled the will of God, nevertheless if we determine to do what God wants, if we determine to do His will, then He will enable us, and give us whatever grace we need to succeed.

In a nutshell then, God's plan for us in this life is to think and act and live as Christians, in a Christianly fashion. This plan of God is opposed by the world, the world dangles all sorts of tempting and tantalizing stuff in front of us, trying to tempt us to crawl back into the vase and let it squeeze us into the same shape that all the other unsaved people in the world are in.

We don't have to let that happen. God has provided us with a way of escape, a way of victory, and that is by a continuous consecration of our bodies to God.

We do this by presenting our bodies to God as living sacrifices, and we do that in two ways; the negative is to not be conformed to the worlds way of thinking and doing, the positive is by continuously being transformed by the renewing of our minds. The ultimate purpose of our being transformed is that we might know the will of God for us in our lives, and then be able to do it and appreciate it for how good it is.

In a couple of days it is going to be Valentines Day, let me suggest to you that today would be a great day to begin a new habit, the habit of giving the One who loves you best a very special, but very reasonable present. No one loves you better than God, Jesus Christ died so that you might live forever, no one else ever loved you that much, and it would be appropriate for you to give the Lord the present of yourself.

I suggest that you ought to do exactly as these verses say, present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Maybe you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior but you didn't know about this. Now you do. Maybe you have done this at some time in the past, but you forgot about it, you forgot to keep doing it, now's a good time to start doing it again. After all, this is not supposed to be a one time thing, this is supposed to be an all day, every day thing, and right here, right now at the end of this service is a great time to get into a good and godly habit.

Present yourself to the Lord now, do it again later today if you are tempted to do something unChristlike, do it tomorrow, do it frequently because that's the normal, healthy way to interact with someone who loves you.

So I'm going to ask you to join me as we go to prayer, I'm not asking anybody to come down front or do anything but simply go before the Lord right where you are and give yourself to Him afresh, get a fresh start right now, and then make it a constant practice, because it really is your reasonable service. And after we have all had time to pray, I'll close. Let's pray.