Romans [Season Two]- Ian Graham-Romans 12vv1-2: The Logical Response To Mercy

Pastor Ian Graham looks at Paul’s exhortation to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, hello friends.
Hello, good to see you.
We've got some friends thatwere early day Ecclesia people
and we've got some people thatare brand new.
It's so lovely to see youwherever you fall on that
spectrum.
So what a gift it is to betogether today.
We've been in a teaching serieson the book of Romans, a
famously easy book to read.
So we've just been swimmingright along and we've been in

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Romans 9 through 11, which isprobably the most famously easy
portion of a very famously easybook.
And now I am done with Romans 9through 11.
So we're moving to 12 and it'sgoing to be great.
We're going to touch on 11 alittle bit today, but just to
get into something a little lessconceptual that feels a little
less heady.
Are you with me?
All right, you don't reallyhave a choice, because this is

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just where we are All right.
We are beginning in Romans 12,verse 1.
A beautiful verse.
Make it your life verse.
The invitation is from God foryou.
Let's hear the word of the Lordtogether.
I appeal to you therefore,brothers and sisters, by the
mercies of God, to present yourbodies as a living sacrifice,

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holy and acceptable to God,which is your spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to thisworld, but be transformed by the
renewing of your minds, so thatyou may discern what is the
will of God, what is good andacceptable and perfect.
Okay, so we start with a,therefore, which then leads us
back into what has come before.

(01:28):
So we're going to touch on thevery end of chapter 11.
I want to read some verses foryou that came just before our
verse that we read here inRomans 12.
Paul writes as regards thegospel, they are enemies for
your sake, but as regardselection, they are beloved for
the sake of their ancestors.

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Do you see what I mean byRomans 11?
All right, for the gifts andthe calling of God are
irrevocable.
Just as you were oncedisobedient to God but have now
received mercy because of theirdisobedience, so also they have
now been disobedient in orderthat, by the mercy shown to you,

(02:12):
they also may now receive mercyFor God.
So I want to highlight that wehave indeed spent a considerable
amount of time in Romans 9-11.
That is available on ourpodcast, which is just a fancy
way of saying you can go listento what came before at your own
leisure.
This section summarizes whatPaul has been saying throughout
Romans 9-11 and then moves usinto chapter 12.

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Romans 11-29 answers thequestion of Romans 9-6
resoundingly, the question ofRomans 9, verse 6, resoundingly,
and I just want to put up avery oversimplified sequence of
events from Romans 9 through 11that helps us trace.
Here's what's going on here.
So Paul is talking about thesituation with the covenant
people of Israel, the Jewishpeople, and he's describing the

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fulfillment of ancient promisesin the person of Jesus of
Nazareth.
But he's also aware that mostof his countrymen and
countrywomen, that being ethnicIsrael, have not received Jesus
as their Messiah.
And so he's saying if God hasfulfilled his promises, and yet
all the people that were theoriginal recipients of these

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promises have not responded tothem, the question that he then
beckons in Romans 9, verse 6, ishas God's word failed or did
God change his mind?
Did God say hey, you know, wetried the covenant people thing,
we tried doing the thing withthe law, but none of that was
working.
So now, in the middle ofhistory, plan B Jesus, get down

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there, get in there.
We need the Son of God.
Nobody else will do.
And Paul's saying absolutelynot, that the incarnation was
always the purpose that God wasoutlining in the story and so
that's kind of a very broadoverview.
Again, you can go back to thoseprevious chapters.
So has God's word failed?
No, the gifts and callingRomans 11, verse 29, of God are

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irrevocable.
The summary is then offered inverse 30.
And I want to read that for youjust briefly here Just as you
were once disobedient to God,meaning you Gentiles, you people
who were not the covenantpeople Again Paul's talking to a
mixed orientation, church, jewsand Gentiles, broad people

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groups at issue here and he'ssaying just as you Gentiles were
once disobedient to God, butnow you have received mercy
because of their disobedience,so they now have been
disobedient in order that, bythe mercy shown to you, they may
now receive mercy.
Paul says elsewhere in thislittle section of scripture I

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hope that the Gentile responseto the gospel makes my people
jealous, and so this is kind ofwhat he's doing here.
And then to gather it all intothe mystery and the wisdom of
God, romans 11 verse, verse 32.
Everybody is invited to receivethis mercy.

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Yes, we have free agency, wehave free will.
We can harden our hearts, butJesus' mercy, his arms extended
on the cross are extended toevery single person, wrapping
the entire world in an embrace.
This leads us into thisbeautiful exhortation doxology

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that Paul.
It's almost like he's writing,and those of you who are
creators maybe you've had thisexperience where you're working
at your craft and all of asudden things are falling into
place.
It does have this feeling whereyou just want to stand up and
be like that's it, that is it.
And if you toiled at it for along time you get that sense
even greater lengths.

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And I think Paul is just he'swriting this letter.
Phoebe's reading this letterand I think she has this
intonation in mind.
As Paul outlines all thesethings, he comes to verse 33,
and he can't help but stand upand say this is who Jesus is.
Listen to this.
Oh, the depth of the riches andwisdom and knowledge of God.

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How unsearchable are hisjudgments, how inscrutable his
ways.
For who has known the mind ofthe Lord, or who has been his
counselor, or who has given agift to him to receive a gift in
return?
For from him and through him,and and to him are all things.

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To him be the glory forever,amen.
This section started with Paul'sabsolute destitution.
He's saying I wish I could becut off for the sake of my
people.
The fact that they haven'tresponded to the gospel fills me
with such despair and sadness.
And now this section thatstarted with destitution ends in

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exaltation.
Verse 36 is one of my favoritein all of the scriptures.
It is the foundation of allphilosophy, the shorthand of the
very purpose of the entireuniverse and the purpose of
every human soul, which includesevery single one of you, that
the world exists through theexuberance and the sustenance of
God.
It is from him as a gift, it isthrough him, by his power, and

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it is to him that he is worthyto receive everything that we
have heart, soul, mind andstrength.
Back in worship, that is goodnews.
Ecclesia, paul has essentiallytaken us up to a high mountain
and said look at it, look howbeautiful this good news is, so
that we can survey all that camebefore.

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And then he leads us into ourpassage for today.
Therefore, in light of thatkind of beauty, I urge you,
brothers and sisters, in view ofGod's mercy, to offer your
bodies as a living sacrifice,holy and pleasing to God, which
is your reasonable act ofworship.
Now I've taken two differenttranslations and kind of melded

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them together, the NIV and theNRSV, because I think there are
important word choices in eachsection.
Paul says here that the onlyreasonable thing to do in light
of all that he said, in view ofthe stunning mercy that has been
unveiled in Jesus, the Messiah,is to climb up on the altar and
to be set ablaze.

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Now, if you're following thelogic, I love that.
He says this is your reasonableact of worship, this is the
logical thing to do.
What is the problem withsacrifices Is that you kill them
, right, like?
That's a fundamental problem.
And Paul's saying listen, theonly reasonable thing to do is
to offer your entire life onthis altar.
Or, to use a previous analogy,it's almost as if Paul has

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brought us up to a high mountainto show us all that he could
see the flowery fields of God'smercy below.
And now he's saying the onlyreasonable thing to do is to
jump off this mountain and findthat you can fly In the language
of sacrifice, climb on thealtar, realize that you are not
consumed, but rather that youare infused with more and more

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life.
The language of sacrifice hereis obviously temple language.
For the Jewish people,sacrifices were offered daily at
the temple in line with theLevitical commands, the fire on
the altar burning day and night.
One of the great Jewish hopesduring this first century of the
new millennia was that Godwould renew and restore proper

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worship to the temple and thatthe renewal of God's presence at
the temple, that the glory ofthe Lord would descend upon it
in smoke and fire andthundercloud, as it did when
Moses would enter the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, or as it
did when Solomon dedicated thetemple.
The temple, for most of itsfirst century existence, before

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it was destroyed by the Romansin 70 AD, was largely a
compromised institution in theeyes of most Jewish people,
under the control ofRoman-sponsored Jewish
aristocrats, a character in thegospel stories we know as the
Sadducees.
Jesus judged the temple duringthe last week of his life for

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its many excesses, but he alsowas doing something very subtle,
in a way that was only clear,as John points out, after his
resurrection.
He is not only judging thetemple for its excesses, he is
reorienting the temple aroundhis very life, his work and his
story.
In John 15, jesus tells us heis the vine and that we are the

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branches to remain in him.
As today, as we've discussedthroughout our worship time
together, is Pentecost Sunday.
We can hear the story in Acts 2in the key of Romans 12.
We read this earlier Acts 2,beginning in verse 3.
Divided tongues, as of fire,appeared among them of Romans 12

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.
We read this earlier Acts 2,beginning in verse 3.
This reorientation aroundJesus' body, his story, his work
, is then made manifest here atPentecost in the giving of the

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Spirit.
Our lives, our bodies, ourminds are now altars of God's
presence.
No longer is the height ofworship on the Temple Mount in a
specific place, but now isoffered in Jesus' words, in
spirit and in truth, within theconfines of everyday life as we

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consecrate our lives to Him.
Just as the day of Pentecost isdefined by a unity of diverse
languages given by the power ofspirit, paul highlights here in
Romans 12, the church will be aunity of witness of diverse
gifts by the power of the HolySpirit.
Look at Romans 12, beginning inverse 4.

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For as in one body we have manymembers and not all the members
have the same function, so wewho are many are one body in
Christ and individually we aremembers of one another body in
Christ and individually we aremembers of one another.
We have gifts that differaccording to the grace given to
us prophecy in proportion tofaith, ministry in ministering,

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the teacher in teaching, theencourager in encouragement, the
giver in sincerity, the leaderin diligence, the compassionate
in cheerfulness.
As Scott McKnight says, thegifts are what happens when the
Spirit of God takes thesacrifice of an embodied
Christian and uses it for thegood of the body of Christ.

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Douglas Moo points out thatnone of these gifts are
possessions.
They're practices, which is abeautiful thing.
We think of gifts as wow, thatperson has been gifted with
abilities that we can all standback and remark on.
But in the economy of thescriptures, gifts are given to
be used in service of others,and anything short of that is a

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failure to bear witness to thegift that God has given.
One of Paul's core criticisms ofthe world, apart from knowledge
of God, is that the very lensthrough which we process and
decide in the world doesn't workproperly.
It is clouded, it is muddled,it is distorted.
In Romans 1, this is conveyedas the judgment of God.

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Romans 1, verse 28, says thisand since they did not see fit
to acknowledge God, god gavethem over to an unfit mind and
to do things that should not bedone.
God giving us over ecclesia isthe language of God, withdrawing
, the language of judgment,removing himself.

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The judgment of God is aninteresting paradox in that, in
my view, it involves this sortof withdrawal, but it's not as
if God ever leaves us.
We see this viscerally inEzekiel, chapter 10.
Ezekiel is foretelling thatthere will be exile, there will
be doom for the covenant people,and he sees viscerally the

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presence of God get up from thetemple and depart.
But the message of Ezekiel isnot simply about God washing his
hands of his people and sayinggood luck to you.
The message of Ezekiel is thateven through exile, even through
your destitution, I will bedrawing you back to myself, that
these valleys of dry bones willlive again, that they will rise

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up.
And so there's a paradox.
There are two parallelmovements that are happening.
God will respect our wishes andthat should scare us at times.
Right, if we say God, we don'twant you here, he will say
absolutely, I take a step back.
But at the same time, his stepsaway from us are never him

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saying well, good luck to you,let's see how that goes.
He, still in the midst ofjudgment, is faithful even when
we are faithless.
And here Paul's invitation isthat by offering our lives as
blazing sacrifices, as portablealtars, we are finding the
renewal of our mind, as Romans 8, verse 6, reminds us, is life

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and peace.
The juxtaposition here is beingconformed to be pressed into
the mold of the world, versusbeing conformed to what Romans 8
calls the image of Christ andwhat Paul uses here.
He says don't be conformed tothe mold of this world, don't be
pressed into its shape anylonger, but rather be

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transformed, the Greekmenomorphao to be moved anew, to
be made something new.
We got one of those butterflygardens that you can order
online, which is I don't know.
It's very funny to order livingcreatures that are delivered to
your door, but we got them ascaterpillars.
You get this little enclosurethat is a net zipper, where the

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caterpillars will have a habitatto grow in.
And we got the caterpillars andyou're like, as they arrive in
this packaging, you're askingyourself are they dead, are they
alive?
We had a mishap with an antfarm that we don't talk about
anymore, but the caterpillars,thankfully, as far as we could
tell, were alive and they havebegun to form into chrysalises,

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which I think is the plural.
They're definitely not cocoons,as my kids have readily
informed me.
Chrysalis, chrysalis, and it'samazing to watch these
transformations take place.
And you're seeing thecaterpillar gets into this
chrysalis and goes into theshell and you can observe the

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transformation that's happeningexternally.
But then I was curious.
I was like what happensinternally?
What sort of change is going tohappen?
Does this caterpillar justsprout wings?
That's not at all what happens.
Do you know, a caterpillarinside a chrysalis is completely
liquefied, like it breaks downto these subsequent parts and

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then out of that raw material,god, through his artistry, and
nature through its motions, iscreating this butterfly.
We see these transformations onthe exterior.
We see them often at muchslower paces than we see these
transformations on the exterior.
We see them often at muchslower paces than we see the
caterpillar transform.

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But the sort of transformationthat Paul is talking about here
is the transformation that Godundertakes when he takes up
residence in our lives, when theHoly Spirit is present on the
altar of our lives given to Himas a living sacrifice.
God is doing so much more thanwe could see and so much of it

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is happening subtly, and it'sonly at moments, fits and starts
, that we can see it externally,that other people can see God's
life in us, and I want todayjust to focus on a couple of
points of what a renewed mindlooks like, of what God is
trying to transform in usindividually.

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And anytime we're talking aboutaltars of God's presence, we
have this dichotomy, these twothings that are held at once,
that God is doing something withus individually, but also in
something in us collectively.
And so what are the things thatGod is doing in renewing our
minds and resisting confirmationto the pattern of this world?

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A couple of things I keptthinking about.
If I were just to describe ourworld in sort of one phrase, one
word, what word would I use?
And really the word that hascome to me often in this setting
is the word shallow.
There's just so much that's soshallow, so attention deficit in

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our world.
It forms a lot of our vision asEcclesia.
Our vision as a church is thatpeople would have a deep life
with God and a deep love for theworld.
That we would be a people that,because of our life with God,
we're drawn in not only into hisstory but into the way that God

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feels about our place, ourpeople.
That we would be drawn intoGod's aching yearning for people
to come home.
And this is who we are asEcclesia.
But in contrast to theshallowness that is so often
evident in our world, I want tooffer just a couple of thoughts
about how we are beingtransformed by the power of the

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Spirit.
In a world of shallow waters,we are plumbing the depths.
Nicholas Carr, in his bookcalled the Shallows, says this.
He says what the net and hemeans internet seems to be doing
is chipping away at my capacityfor concentration and
contemplation.
Whether I'm online or not, mymind now expects to take in

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information the way the netdistributes it In a swiftly
moving stream of particles.
Once I was a scuba diver in thesea of words.
Now I zip along the surfacelike a guy on a jet ski.
Jet skis are fun.
I don't know if you've had thisexperience.
Has your ability to interactwith information changed in,

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let's say, the last 15 years?
I don't know what happened inthat time frame.
2009, steve Jobs stands up atApple Con and is like here's an
iPhone, it's going to be awesome, it's going to be great for you
and there are great thingsabout it, right, but we have had
a fundamental shift in ourtechnological approach to the
world that's been dropped intothe middle of most of our
lifetimes and, for some of youwho are younger, the whole of

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your lifetimes.
And so how do we live in aworld that is constantly drawing
us towards the shallows?
Well, first of all, we arerivers, not floods.
Rivers are deep, narrow andgood for so many areas of life
power, food play, irrigation,beauty, life power, food play,

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irrigation, beauty.
Floods are very, very shallow,but very wide and destructive.
Our world of gamifiedtechnology, endless connection
to our work, emails, consumeristfantasies that Instagram
delivers us non-stop, therevenue strategy is all
according to what culturalanthropologist Natasha Dow
Scholl calls addiction by design, and we were designed to be
addicted to God.

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Jacques Eliel foresaw much ofwhat became of our current
scraps with technology.
In his books the TechnologicalSociety, the Ethics of Freedom,
eliel writes about our strugglewith technology.
He says man no longer organizesthe object, about our struggle
with technology.
He says man no longer organizesthe object.
The object has its own life anddevelops like a true organism
according to its own necessity.

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The more it obeys this law ofits own development, the more it
forces itself on man andbecomes a necessity for him.
He's talking about our relationto technology.
Right, and at first, technologyis posited as something that
will help us, that will serve us.
But Eliel talks aboutinevitably, we begin becoming

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acclimated to the technology insuch a way that it sort of takes
on a life of its own.
This is the plot of the movieTerminator, just in case you're
wondering.
Skynet takes on, becomesconscious, right, but it doesn't
have to be that extreme.
The promise of technology mustalways be discerned in light of
who is it serving and what is itconforming, what is it making

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its way into?
There's an old, old movie cameout in 1927, called Metropolis,
by a man named Fritz Lang, andFritz Lang paints this striking
picture of this industrialmachine and he shows these
workers, mindless workers,marching off to serve this
machine.

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And the great reveal at the endof the movie because I know
you're probably not going towatch a movie that's almost 100
years old is that this machineis actually the Canaanite god
Moloch that is consuming hisvictims.
And as these mindless workersare droning off to work, they're
actually being fed to thisbeast.
Christopher Walken describesthis as all devouring them in

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its powerful industrial draws.
He says to the machine theMoloch machine shapes and
figures the bodily movements ofthe workers that tended just as
our own habits, attitudes andmovements are increasingly
molded by the human shapingpower of smartphones and social
media.
Now, I say all that to say I amnot a Luddite, I am not Amish.

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I use social media.
Our church uses social media.
Some of you may have found usinitially on social media.
Welcome, we're so glad you'rehere, or at least on our website
.
But at the same time, paul saysso that you will be able to
discern what is good.
And so we pay attention to theway these technologies both are
shaping us and are trying toshape us, that we understand

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that not everything that positsitself as neutral is actually
neutral, and that we're tryingto pay attention to the way the
world is trying to draw us intobeing conformed to this present
age.
We have been invited not to beconformed but to be transformed
by delighting in God's words tous, by devoting ourselves to

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worship and obedience, byencountering both the spiritual
classics and the myriad ofbeautiful books that have been
written in the last severalyears.
Do you ever have this anxiety?
I have this anxiety about allthe books I haven't read.
Do you guys get that?
No, no, that's what heaven'sfor, though, friends, that's
what it's for I know some of usdon't feel like intellectuals in

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here, that our idea of a goodtime is not sitting with a book
in a quiet room.
But Paul is not trying to makeus all into literature
professors or insufferablepastors who spend all their time
with books.
What are you laughing at?
He's trying to lift us out ofthe fray of the pattern of this

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world.
Some of the greatest intellectsare those formed in the hours
working with one's hands.
Brother Lawrence, a 17thcentury French monk which you
may say, okay, he's got time tosit around and read books, but
that wasn't his day-to-day.
He spent his day as a cook wasassigned the role of cooking for
the other monks as such a greatmodel of a life with God.
Because what Brother Lawrencedid wasn't like, hey, I need

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eight hours to go think.
He said God is present in mywork and what I'm going to do is
I'm going to invite him intoeverything that I'm doing and
I'm going to acknowledge God'spresence in everything that I do
.
And Brother Lawrence has somany beautiful insights from his
life with God.
But he says this.
He says this is what Paul talksabout when he talks about

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praying without ceasing.
This is the kind of life, thiskind of openness, and this will

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absolve a lot of our sinfulness,of the mythology that it needs
to survive.
We need to be covert, hidden insecret for a lot of these
things to have the allure thatthey have upon us.
But if we just acknowledgeGod's presence, so much of that
is immediately stripped away.
The scriptures make it clearthat we become like what we

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behold.
This is the fundamental to ourhuman architecture.
It's the way that God designedus.
We were designed to behold theface of God, just as a little
child, a little baby, is formedby the face that is looking back
at them, for good or for ill.
Psychologists talk about theways that babies learn to love,

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learn to be emotionally safe inthe world because they see a
face that is beaming over them,and they also talk about the
lack of that and what that doesto our psyches and to our
emotional strength.
But you, every single one of us, were designed to stare back
into the face of love that hasnever once taken its eyes off of

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you.
This is who we were made to be.
But the other side, the shadowside, of that architecture, is
when we behold idols, we becomelike them.
Idols can't see, idols can'tspeak, they can't think, they
can't reason, they can't doanything.
And we become hardened in heart, we become calloused, when we

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fix our eyes on things that areless than God.
Look at what Paul says in 2Corinthians, chapter 3, one of
the just really beautifulsections of scripture.
Here Now, the Lord is theSpirit, and where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is freedom.
And all of us with unveiledfaces, seeing the glory of the
Lord, as though reflected in amirror, are being transformed

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into the same image from onedegree of glory to another.
For this comes from the Lord,the Spirit.
As we behold God, you arebecoming like Him.
This the Orthodox call theosis.
You are being made like God.
Amen, in a world all right.
Second point In a world withshallow roots, we are deeply

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rooted in Christ and with oneanother.
A transition point we are at inRomans is that Paul's folding
has all this gone before inRomans 1 through 11 into his
reflections on how the churchshould function as a body.
So Paul's brilliant attransitions and he's sort of
drawing us into what he's doinghere in Romans 12.
Pentecost, as we've talked about, is the birthday of the church,

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the body of Christ, with Christas the head, which tells us
that we are not isolatedindividuals.
Elsewhere, Paul will say a toecan't say to the body I have no
need of you, or the body can'tsay to a finger I don't have any
use for you.
We need each other.
We are not isolated individualscoming here to get our
religious fill.

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We are a living organism, anecclesia of different parts,
different gifts, and we allreflect the manifold wisdom of
Christ.
The world tells us that weshould take our claim into
individuality, that we have tofind ourselves at all costs and
that this is a mission ofisolated discovery, where we are
left on our own.

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Christ tells you good newsthere's nothing to find.
You don't have to go lookingfor an identity.
That is some far-flung thing.
You have to discover.
You don't have to find anything.
There's only a gift to receive.
We receive the gift of ouridentities in Christ, but we do
so through the paradox of dyingto ourselves.

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Those who want to find theirlives, jesus of Nazareth says,
must lose it.
In losing ourselves to Jesus,we receive ourselves fully alive
.
In climbing up onto the altaras living sacrifices, we find
that we are not consumed butrather infused with divine life,
and we can only do thistogether, in community, in

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mutuality.
This is why Paul will instructthe church just a few verses
later, here in Romans 12,rejoice with those who rejoice,
weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with oneanother.
Do not be arrogant, butassociate with the lowly.
Do not claim to be wiser thanyou are.
So our primary allegiance andorientation becomes not our

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preferences, our projects, butour Lord Jesus and his body.
This means that when dearbrothers and sisters are fearing
for their livelihoods and thatof their family because of
increased immigrationenforcement, we don't throw the
laws of the United States atthem.
We appeal to a higher law, thelaw of the Spirit of God that

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unites us, because ourallegiance is not to this nation
.
Our allegiance is to King Jesusand his eternal kingdom that
has no borders, that is notdefined by a place, but it's
defined by worship, in spiritand in truth.
In a world that so often istrying to pull us into different

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corners, we don't just simplyrun up the middle and say, okay,
we're holding all these thingsat once.
We say, jesus, I want to offermy body as a living sacrifice so
that I can discern what isGod's perfect will, his pleasing
, acceptable holy will, and wetry to be his people.
And that is our call to bedeeply rooted, to be identified

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by our sisterhood, brotherhoodto one another under the
lordship of Jesus Christ.
Deeply rooted means that we arerooted in Christ and what he's
done, all right.
Last point In a world ofshallow soil, oh, can you put
the thank you very much In aworld of Thank you very much In

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a world of One more?
The last one, ah, there we go.
In a world of shallow selves,we receive our true selves as a
gift of God.
Sanctification is just a fancyword for the complete renovation
and transformation that ourlives are undergoing by the

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faithfulness of God, His lovefor us, the power of His Spirit.
Paul juxtaposes the pattern ofthis age, calling it the flesh,
with the pattern of the age thatwill never end, the Spirit.
Look at what Paul says inRomans 8, beginning of the flesh
, but those who live accordingto the Spirit set their minds on

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the things of the Spirit.
To set the mind on the flesh isdeath, but to set the mind on
the Spirit is life and peace.
For this reason, the mind thatis set on the flesh is hostile
to God.
It does not submit to God's lawIndeed, it cannot.
And those who are in the fleshcannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh,you are in the Spirit, since the

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Spirit of God indwells you.
Anyone who does not have theSpirit of Christ does not belong
to him.
But if Christ is in you, thenthe body is dead because of sin,
but the Spirit is life becauseof righteousness.
If the Spirit of him who raisedJesus from the dead dwells in
you, he who raised Christ Jesusfrom the dead, if we submit
ourselves to God's loving care,he is faithful to transform us.

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It may have all the appearancesof a hardened little shell, like
a caterpillar in a chrysalis,but God is doing magnificent
things in the interior that willbear witness on the exterior,
and this will involve a lot ofrepentance, a lot of refining,
and I want to absolve so many ofus in here of the notion that
you sort of repent once and atthat point you're just like,

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okay, I shouldn't have to dothat anymore, I shouldn't have
to say I'm sorry anymore,because, honestly, this is the
dynamic that keeps so many of usat arm's length with God.
It's not God God's saying Ipaid for all of your sins, and
so often we think that, god, wereceive this forgiveness from

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the Lord.
We say thank you, I'm so like,I'm just so filled with life to
be forgiven by you, and then wethink we're on our own.
But sanctification tells ussomething very different that we
reside with the power of theSpirit.
Some of us have been shaped bythe image of this world in such
a way that we experience solittle freedom, and you've been

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constantly beating yourself upever since.
For many of us in here, we canidentify struggles in our lives,
patterns that have beenconstant in our lives.
I want to name one todaybecause I think for so many it
has such an eroding effect onour life with God.
The demonic scheming that ispornography in the hands of big

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tech that we talked aboutgamified addiction for many of
us, got its clutches in ourtender hearts at the age of 10,
11, 12.
You've come to freedom inChrist, but you feel like you
can't be free and you carry somuch shame because you've tried
so many times to put it away andyet find yourself falling down

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again.
And I want to say to you plainlythat, yes, this is wrong, both
systematically wrong,institutionally wrong that you
were drawn into this perilousaddiction at such a tender age.
And wrong, yes, that youparticipate in it.
That it is sinful, yes.
And this goes for any othersins, whether habitual or

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harbored within the darkestcorners of our lives.
But within all of that, withinthe systemic institutional
wrongness of it, within thewrongness of our participation
in it, there is the mercy of Godthat says yeah, that's what I
went to the cross for, that'swhat it's for, that's what grace
is for.

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God delights in giving grace,that's who he is.
And so for so many of us, wehave this expiration date on
God's grace, or we think that ithas only so many uses, and then
, once you get to five or sixtimes, they're like really, the
problem is with you, and I'mhere to tell you that that is an
absolute lie.
That God is faithful totransform us, that he delights

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in sanctifying us, that he iswanting to transform us into the
image of His Son, and he ispatient.
He will wait as long as ittakes.
As long as we turn to him, wefind mercy and mercy anew.
God forgives sinners.
God heals those who need adoctor.
God delights in repentance.
Don't give up.

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Don't let shame drive you awayfrom the Lord, who is staring
down the road waiting for you tocome home, because the Lord
will not reject any who come tohim.
As Paul says elsewhere, all whocall upon the name of the Lord
will be saved, and salvationwill give birth to
sanctification.
It may feel painful and slow.

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You may be embarrassed for howslow your pace is.
You may be a 20-minute milerunner.
God's like.
I'm with you, I'm here.
God is transforming us fromglory to glory.
Now, two times in this passage,paul does something so subtle
and yet so beautiful.
He mentions pleasing God.
Now, for many of us, we've beenraised on this diet of

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theological discourse that saysyou can never please God because
pleasing God has all of theappearances of putting God in
your debt.
You can do something that wouldmerit favor with Him, but
that's not the kind of thingwe're talking about here.
We're talking about pleasingGod in light of the kind of
Father that he is, the kind ofFather that delights in us, that
rejoices in us.

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You know, every time I pick upmy phone, you know big tech here
we go.
I've got all these variouspictures that just scroll of the
people in my life, my wife andmy children.
And just about every time Imean, look at that, silas, he's
like it's just like a chunk likeso awesome, just delight.
And I pick up the phone and I'mlike wow, and oftentimes it's

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like a moment where I can likesort of remember what was
happening or just something.
That is a posture that is justso evident of the kind of kid
that they are.
I pick up my phone and I justlaugh, I delight, and Paul is
saying here that our attempts atserving God by the power of the
Spirit do in fact please God,and he's inviting us to see that

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the Father delights in us,rejoices over us, and that
sanctification is a process thatGod signed up for and that he
is here to walk alongside of usin the power of the Spirit,
giving the Spirit withoutmeasure what the Spirit of the
Lord is.
There is freedom as we gaze uponHis face.
He is transforming us fromglory to glory.
Amen.
I'm going to invite the worshipteam forward.

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And so we pray, in light of allthat God has done, that we
would not be conformed to thepressures of our age, that we
would not be pressed into itsmold, but we would be
transformed by the renewing ofour mind, and so often the
renewing of our mind involvesrenewing the vision of God that

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we have.
And so I ask you, as we pray,for the Holy Spirit to come,
because we are confident, notbecause we've done anything to
merit God's favor, but becauseGod delights in drawing near to
His children.
We are confident that God willmeet us here, and I want to
invite you, if you are allowingshame, to define your life with

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God.
I almost want to absolve you ofthat attempt and just say what
does God look like?
Is he arms folded, arms length,staring at you with
disappointment?
I mean, for so many of usthat's the experience we had

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with parents or with dear lovedones, and we just project that
onto God.
Or is he arms open, embracingthe world, saying Do not be
conformed to the pattern of thisage.
Be transformed by the renewingof your mind and start with your
image of what I look like, whatI've done for you, that God
delights in you and that he hassigned up for the project of

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renovation, with all of itsmeandering, with all of its
shortfalls, with all the timesthat it goes over budget, he is
in with you.
He is faithful when we arefaithless, and he delights in
our smallest attempts to befaithful to him by the power of

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his Spirit.
Let us pray, jesus, we pray.
Come Holy Spirit, god, will wesee that, offering our lives on
the altar of your presence, godwill not consume us, god, it
will not diminish us, lord Jesus, but it will set us free.
That life with you is life andpeace, god, that there is no

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condemnation for those who arein Christ Jesus, not a little
condemnation, not somecondemnation, not the
condemnation that we sort ofallow ourselves to spend some
time with our sins, lord, andthen come to you after a couple
of days.
There is no condemnation forthose who are in Christ Jesus
because of your rich andabundant mercy, because of what
you've done on the cross,because we are no longer defined

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simply by what we do or don'tdo, but we are defined by what
you have done.
And so, god, may we see theriches of your mercy here today.
God, would you transform ourminds, lord, jesus, as a people,
individually.
God, would you work yourpresence here in this place that
we would never be the sameagain?
Jesus, we pray these things inyour name, in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the HolySpirit.
We pray Amen.
Friends, I'm going to inviteyou to stand and respond in
worship.