جارٍ تحميل الأرشيف الحي.
Part 1 of 8
Romans 12:1-2
واصِل الاستكشاف
مرتبطة بالمقطع الكتابي أو بموضوعات مشتركة.
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I'm teaching on the subject of refusing to fit in. We'll be looking at two passages: Romans 12:1-2 and a story from Exodus 34 about Moses. I want to use the King James Version for these verses so we can examine what certain words mean in the original Greek, giving us a fuller understanding of what God was trying to communicate to us.
Let's start with Romans 12:1 from the King James Version:
"I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
Notice that Paul starts with a very particular word: beseech, which means to beg or to plead with urgency. Why is an apostle and man of God begging the church in Rome about this one topic? He's begging because at that time, people thought they could serve God spiritually while doing whatever they wanted with their bodies. They believed, "Yeah, I serve God, but my body is my choice. My body is mine. Serving God is spiritual, but what I do with my body is nobody's business."
Paul is begging with urgency because the world's culture had crept into the church. He's pleading: Your body is not your own, child of God. Your body belongs to the one who died for you—Jesus Christ.
He calls it a living sacrifice. Sacrifices are normally killed, but he says this one is living. A sacrifice means something valuable that you're willing to give up. If it costs you nothing, it's not a sacrifice. We often want to follow God and receive all his blessings without any cost. We say, "God, I want all your blessings, all your favor, every door opened." But when God says, "I need something from you," suddenly we hesitate. We want the blessing without the cost. But if you're going to serve God, it has to be a living sacrifice—and sacrifice means it will sometimes hurt.
He describes it as holy and acceptable. The term holy means sacred or set apart. When something is holy, it's sacred. God says, "Be ye holy for I am holy"—meaning, I am sacred, nothing to be played with. He tells us not to even use his name in vain. If God is holy and sacred, then your body is also sacred. Not everyone can touch you. Not everybody can have access to you.
This means not everybody can see what God created to be privately yours. We used to call them "private parts" because they were meant to be kept private. Not everybody can get close to you. Not everybody can get handsy with you because your body is sacred and belongs to God. Everybody shouldn't be able to see what God created for you and your spouse alone.
This is why I say Only Fans is demonic. God didn't create your body to be gazed at and lusted after for a dollar. It's high-scale prostitution. And we act like because people make money, it's not wrong. But all the evil things pay good money—that's why people sell their soul.
What Paul calls this is your reasonable service. In Greek, service is logicos latria, which means literally logical worship. God isn't asking for some mysterious worship. He's asking for practical obedience that matches what you say you believe.
People do this all the time. They say, "I worship God. I come to church. Oh God, you're so good!" But then they go home and do whatever they want with their body. That's not logical. We can't be so spiritual that we don't make sense. What is logical worship when your body is a living sacrifice? It means what I do on Sunday doesn't matter if all the other six days of the week I'm not glorifying God with this same body.
Yes, it's the Lord's day, but I'm saying your body is the Lord's body. What you do with that body matters to God. God is challenging us to say, "Okay, my body matters. What I'm doing with it matters." Being spiritual but living in sin with your body is an oxymoron.
We live in a culture of super spiritual people who do whatever they want with their bodies all the time. God is asking: Is this logical? Is this logical worship?
Just pause for a moment and ask yourself: Does my worship make sense? Does God get glory out of what I'm doing? When you pick something up, ask yourself: Is this giving glory to God or something else? When you're getting in bed with someone, stop and ask: Does God get glory out of this? Does God get glory out of what I'm doing?
Don't ask the pastor. Don't try to live for the approval of a man. That's why so many of you live saved around people but sinful by yourself—because you're still trying to prove something to people. Don't prove anything to the pastor. It's about God getting glory out of your life. Don't just be saved at church; be saved at home. Before you go to certain websites or click certain videos, ask: Is God getting glory when I do this?
Now look at Romans 12:2:
"And be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
The word world here means aon, which means age or era. So it's not just "don't conform to the world." It's literally saying don't conform to the era. Why? Because every age and era brings its own different set of rules and beliefs. Every generation has what we call a shifting culture—new beliefs, new trends, new addictions, and new relational standards.
Think about fashion. One generation wore bell bottoms, then we went to jeans with big straps, then to skinny jeans so tight you could barely see your shoes, and now to super wide jeans where you can't even find your legs. Trends are always changing. But God says our life is not about submitting to the era. The word of God remains the same yesterday, today, and forever more.
Relational standards change all the time. Now people are saying it's cool to be in polygamous relationships. They say it's how it was in the Bible. And God never condoned it. In fact, Jesus came and explicitly shut it down. Jesus says to be the husband of one wife. He did this because men were running wild—sleeping with women until they got tired and married someone else. As long as they had money, they could get another partner. Women were nothing but transferred from one person to another, bought and sold.
Women, you fought for thousands of years to get your freedom. Why would you give it back over to sexual addictions? It doesn't even make sense.
This is why he's saying: You cannot conform to the era because there's always going to be a new age, a new belief that tries to change what you know about God. But you have to stick to the word.
You cannot discover your identity in Christ if you're conforming to the culture. Instead, you have to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The word transformed is metamorpho—where we get metamorphosis from, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
This is powerful. God is calling you to evolve—to become who he created you to be. When you hear the word "transform," you might think God is making you into somebody totally different from who you were. But he says, "No, it's already in you what I created you to be." The butterfly was always in the caterpillar.
God told Jeremiah: "Before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you and I ordained you there to be a prophet. I anointed you and gave you your assignment." What happened was culture tried to change you. Pain tried to steal it from you. Trauma tried to reshape you. But who I created you to be is now time for you to find that and become that.
Ask yourself: Who was I supposed to be before the culture got its hands on me? Before trauma tried to change me, before pain tried to reshape me, who did God create me to be? Before your mother even gave you a name, God placed something on you. God placed an anointing on you that only he can uncover.
You'll always say, "I can tell there's something different in me." Yes, you can. Because God placed an anointing in you that only he can bring out.
You're going to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The term renewing means renovation. It takes real and deliberate effort. In the original Greek, it literally means not to renew but to renovate.
Why is that word important? When you renovate something, you're not completely tearing it down and building from the ground up. When something has to be renovated, the frame is good—it just got messed up in the process.
Catch this: God says, "When I made you, I called you good and very good." The mind I gave you was good, but the stuff you went through messed that mind up. The pain that was inflicted on you messed it up. The stuff you watched messed it up. Your relationships messed it up. Your family messed it up. You need a renovation, which means don't lose who you are, but sanctify who you are—covered in God's blood.
For some of you, you're naturally goofy. God isn't saying that because you're saved, you can't be goofy anymore. Be goofy and anointed. Some of you are serious all the time, never laugh. That's okay. That's who you are. I'm not asking you to be like me. But God is saying there's a renovation that needs to happen in your mind. You need to go into your mind and ask:
I need God to do everything brand new on the inside of me. This is what following Jesus actually means. It's not just some spiritual, thoughtless journey. It takes real thought and intentionality. Following God means renewing your mind.
Here's the good news: Yes, you can renew your mind. Your brain can change because it's plastic. This is called neuroplasticity. New habits and thought patterns can take root at any stage of your life.
I don't care if you're old and set in your ways—you can change. I don't care if you're 50. You can be different than "I've always been angry." You can be different than "That's just the way I am." You can start right now and become somebody different. You can create new habits and new ways at any age, no matter how long you've been a certain way.
But here's the catch: Your brain loves what's familiar. It will fight new habits because the old ones feel comfortable. This is why you can come out of sin, but it's comfortable. You like how you feel when you're in it. You don't have to drink, but you like how you feel when you do. You don't have to smoke, but you like how you feel. You don't have to be sexual, but it's fun. You feel comfort in the arms of somebody who isn't yours, and even though God is saying "No," you keep doing it. Why? Because you forget your body is not your own. You're a living sacrifice.
Your brain likes the old stuff, and it will fight any new habit. But it takes repetition and patience. I used to think it was 21 days to create a new habit, but it actually takes 60 days to keep it. This is why when you do a prayer fast at the beginning of the year, you're up every morning at 6 a.m. praying. After 21 days, you're right back sleeping. The new habit feels good—you feel light, you feel God is with you. But the moment the fast is over, what time is it? Six in the morning again? No. Why? Because it takes longer to keep it than to create it.
You have to work on yourself to keep the new habit. You have to have patience with yourself. Your natural tendency is to go back to what you used to do, to go back to what you like.
You have to start small. If you're trying to create a new pattern in your head, don't expect to wake up and pray for an hour if you're not used to praying. Give yourself five minutes. Even that feels like forever if you're not used to praying because you run out of things to say in 45 seconds. "God bless me. Thank you for the day." But you have to start small and then begin to build up this pattern and rhythm in your head.
Repeat the new behavior every single day. Surround yourself with reminders every single day. It's going to feel awkward and hard at the start, but you have to give yourself persistence and grace to create this new habit. You have to learn to push yourself through and say, "God, I really want my mind to be different. In order for my mind to be different, I have to train it to be different."
Instead of waking up and grabbing my phone, I wake up and hit my knees. It teaches me to put God before anything else that's going to hit me on my phone. No email, no phone call, no bill is more important than me spending time with God.
Verse 2 says:
"That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
The word prove means to test and to discern after trial. When you actually transform your mind and renovate it, you're able to test what is good, what is acceptable, and what is the perfect will of God. You cannot know what is good and acceptable and perfect if your mind is still conformed to the world. If your mind still thinks like the world, you'll never know when God is speaking.
That's why so many of you pray and say, "Pastor, I pray but I feel like God never responds to me. I don't get anything." Well, yeah—because you spend more time on social media than you do with God's word. If all you do is fill yourself up on the music you listen to, social media, Netflix, and movies, you spend no time with God. So when you need an answer, you don't hear God. You just hear what your socials tell you. Now you have to go back to YouTube or Instagram to get confirmation from the people you actually follow.
You have to allow room and create space for God to move. There are things that any of us would do, and it's not until your mind starts to be renewed that you realize: I can't do what I used to do.
I'm a fun guy, goofy. I post whatever I want on social media. People got mad one time and I said, "Why is everybody so serious? I'm just playing." Anyone who knows me knows I'm just cool and goofy. But then God was like, "But you don't represent you. You represent me. Right under your hashtag, it says 'man of God.' Which means that every person that sees you will attribute you to my reputation."
Once your mind starts to be renewed, you start realizing: I actually can't do what I want to do because I'm submitted to a higher authority.
Good, acceptable, and perfect means good, satisfying, and complete will of God. Notice it doesn't say "good OR acceptable OR perfect." It says good AND acceptable AND perfect—all three together. Good is good. Acceptable means satisfying. Most of you don't know that living for God is supposed to be satisfying.
I know people talk about picking up your cross and dying daily and how hard it will be. But Jesus said, "I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly." He wants your life to be satisfying.
The only time my life wasn't satisfying was when I was straddling the fence, trying to follow God while holding on to my sin. It was hard because I never had enough God to be free, and I never had enough sin to be happy. I was always back and forth.
It wasn't until I said, "Okay, God, I have to get off the fence. I can't be lukewarm. I have to pick a temperature." I put my sin down to go completely after God. And I realized that peace was satisfying. Joy was satisfying. Love was satisfying. My mind was finally free. Freedom was satisfying.
Now you can test and prove what is good and satisfying. And the word perfect actually means complete. So it's not saying that life is going to be perfect or that you're going to be perfect, but you can finally feel complete.
The only thing that will complete you is God. Stop punishing your partner because they don't complete you. You'll be a terrible partner and a terrible spouse because you're asking a human to do the impossible. Nobody can complete you if they didn't create you. The only one who can complete you is the one who created you.
Because God completes me, I'm not asking my wife to be my everything. I'm asking her to be my partner. Only God can complete me.
Let me show you one example to finish. Moses is a perfect example of somebody being set apart by God but conforming to make other people comfortable. Moses wasn't a perfect man, and God uses his life to show us that even at the end, Moses missed the promised land. But what did Moses do?
Look at Exodus 34:28:
"Moses remained there on the mountain with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights and all that time he ate no bread and drank no water and the Lord wrote the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, he wasn't aware that his face had become radiant because he had spoken with God."
This is the power of encountering God. Your face becomes radiant when you've been in God's presence.
