Please turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. We're continuing our introduction to this amazing section in God's Word, Romans 12 through 16. And as you're turning in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12, I would like to talk with you about a matter of some importance and urgency, not only for our church, but for all of the churches in North America. We are part of the Master's Fellowship, and that is where I go to have fellowship with other like-minded pastors and elders. We're thankful for the opportunity to rub shoulders with other local churches here in the state and to keep in touch with faithful pastors all across the world. Through the Master's Fellowship, it's just an encouragement for pastors who love God's Word and want to preach the truth. Last week a call went out from Pastor John MacArthur to the churches of the Master's Fellowship to stand with our brothers and sisters in Canada who are facing a difficult situation. Let me inform you as to what has been going on. Bill C-4 was passed in the House and Senate of Canada and was given the royal assent on December 8th and it came into law on January 8th, and so this being the following Sunday after that bill was actually put into official law in Canada, the pastors in Canada are asking for all of the faithful churches to address the subject of homosexuality and transgenderism because Bill C-4 has in effect made it illegal to believe the Bible on these matters. As many states in America, and even cities like Lincoln, Nebraska, have instituted bills to try to outlaw what is known as conversion therapy, the Bill C-4 has been so vaguely worded, and probably on purpose, so as to not just outlaw a certain kind of therapy, but to outlaw a belief. And here is some details on that from a Canadian pastor Andrew DeBartolo, who wrote this letter to Pastor John MacArthur and he shared it with us in the TMF. Thank you so much for your willingness to shine a light on the situation here in Canada, but also your partnership in calling other men to preach on biblical sexuality on January 16th in unity and solidarity with ministers here in Canada. We are truly grateful. He goes on and talks a little bit about the bill, and he mentions in the preamble of the bill, it says that the belief that heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions is a myth. According to Canadian law, writes Andrew, As of January 8, 2022, the belief in God's design for marriage and sexuality will now be seen as a myth, according to the law. The bill defines conversion therapy as, quote, a practice, treatment, or service designed to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual, change a person's gender identity to cisgender, change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth, repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior, repress a person's non-cisgender identity, or repress or reduce a person's gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth. So that definition of conversion therapy is intentionally broad. Andrew writes, it can clearly be used against any preacher or elder who either speaks against homosexuality or transgenderism or who counsels a person to obey Christ and abandon their homosexual transgender actions and or lifestyle. This means as of January 8th, 2022, it will be against the law to preach, teach or counsel regarding God's design for marriage and sexuality. He also says, everyone who knowingly causes, and this is a quote from the bill, everyone who knowingly causes another person to undergo conversion therapy, including by providing conversion therapy to that other person, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years. Similarly, everyone who knowingly promotes or advertises conversion therapy is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years. So a parent who seeks therapy, biblical counseling, if we could use that word, for one of their children to turn away from homosexual desires, that parent could be threatened with up to five years in prison. On January 16, 2022, that's today, faithful men across Canada, and many in the United States as well, will be preaching on God's design for marriage and biblical ethic of sexuality. We will be doing so illegally, declaring to the state that there is one God and one Lord over his church, and that Christ alone gets to both define marriage and dictate what is required in the pulpit. We are honored that our American brothers will be joining us in this. Since we are in Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, it is providential that this is a passage that deals exactly with this type of issue. This is a broad passage, but if you're looking at specifics of what it means to not be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, well, this is exactly the type of thing this verse applies to. So, let us do a reintroduction and review of what we learned in Romans chapter 12, verse 1 last week, as we head into Romans chapter 12, verse 2 this week. Last week, we began by promoting a great book that I still recommend for you. If you need another recommendation, you know, sometimes somebody has to recommend something to you up to five times before you actually take action. Have you heard that statistic? So I'll keep recommending it and we'll see if you take action. Get Francis Schaeffer's book, How Should We Then Live? And that book does an excellent job of talking about how your worldview, what you believe about life, meaning, purpose, God, humanity, all those big questions at the root of theology and philosophy, what is the nature of reality, what does it mean to be good, that these are things that will inform your ethic, how you live your life. And as the world has tried to replace the foundation of the biblical worldview, this is God's world and we're God's creatures who have fallen into sin and are redeemed through faith in Jesus Christ, as they seek to replace that foundation with a humanistic, atheistic worldview, we're just matter in motion, objects in space, you're going to find that there's going to be a vast difference in what they think is the right way to live. And it's taken some time for this difference to be played out, but now we're seeing it, especially in our time and our generation, that there's a difference between the Christian way of life and the non-Christian way of life, and that these ways are, in fact, incompatible with one another. There's going to be conflict between these worldviews. Jesus Christ has taught us that in that conflict, we are the sufferers. We are the persecuted. We do not abuse, we do not bully, but we are the ones who take the abuse and take the bullying for love for those who do not know God and do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'm not here to bully any homosexual or any transgender person. I've never promoted bullying of anyone and I specifically denounce bullying of those who are in any lifestyle. We are here as servants to all men. We are here to proclaim a gospel of hope and good news that Jesus Christ is the answer to all of the hearts questions and all of the evil that is in the world. God has a plan and it is for all who call upon the name of the Lord. We are here as servants and that's what I want to do in this sermon today to you and to anyone who might hear it outside of our church. How should we then live? Well Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 tells us exactly that in general. And then the details will be applied as we continue throughout the rest of the chapter. Let's go ahead and take a look at the outline. Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. Last week we got through verse 1 looking at the appeal of mercy that Paul was appealing to us as brothers through the mercies of God to present our lives a living sacrifice. We focused on the humility of Paul and the mercies of God and we focused on this presentation of a sacrifice using that Levitical temple terminology to talk about how we are to conceive of our life and how we are to offer up our lives as a offering to God. So verse 2 in this chapter is going to then detail what it looks like, what it means to present your life as a holy sacrifice to God. And this idea of holiness that we explored in part last week, looking at verse 1, is going to be developed in verse 2. Let's go ahead and read the verses once again. Follow along in your Bibles. Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. 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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. That is a great pair of verses, one that we could all do well to memorize And so, as we think about this appeal to present ourselves as a sacrifice to God, I wanted to remind you of how Peter does this very same thing. 1 Peter chapter 2, as he begins his exhortation on how to live a practical Christian life, he does much the same thing as the Apostle Paul, not commanding as an apostle, but speaking to beloved brethren and urging That exhortation that comes from a heart of love that as sojourners and exiles we would abstain from the passions of the flesh. Notice that sojourners and exiles. We are sojourners. We are pilgrims. We are a people who does not belong to this society, this culture, this world that we live in. We're going to be discovering that all throughout this morning's message. That what is distinct about the people of God, what makes them holy, is that they are not like everyone else. There's something different about us. One of the key differences here that Peter is talking about is this abstaining from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh include, of course, sexual behavior, but includes all kinds of behavior. That the sinful deeds that we read about in Romans chapter 1 All of that that flows out of the idolatrous culture, out of the idolatrous heart, all of those are the deeds of the flesh. And those are the things that we as Christians do not engage in, we do not participate in. We are going in a different direction morally than the way that the world is going. And don't be surprised if the world thinks we are the good guys and you are the bad guys because you're going in a different direction morally than we are. Because everyone always thinks, well, I'm the moral one. And everyone who's living the way that I am is moral and good. And anyone who's against what I'm for, well, they're the bad guys. That is the deception of the foolish human heart. And so we have to examine God's Word and find out what is the good way, what is the right way. We can't just assume that our way of thinking and our way is the good way, but we have to listen to what God says on the subject. And so Peter is urging us, the people of God, to live different from the world, to live as sojourners and exiles with a different ethical standard, a different ethical pattern than what we find for those who are in the flesh and not in the spirit of Jesus Christ. And these passions, they wage war against your soul. He doesn't say you don't have any of these desires. He says you are to abstain from these desires because they are detrimental to your spiritual self. Now, the word holiness is one here that I really want to highlight. The sacrifice that we present to God, this living sacrifice of our life, is to be characterized by holiness. Holiness means it is sacred. It means it is hallowed. It means it is set apart. It means it is special. It's not common or ordinary, dirty or vile, but on the contrary, a holy life is a clean life, a morally pure life. This concept of holiness is developed throughout all of scripture and is one of the most important foundational ideas in order to be able to understand God's will. If you don't understand holiness, you don't understand the Spirit of God. He is the Holy Spirit. If you don't understand holiness, you don't understand the character of the Creator. For the angels in heaven cry out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. If you don't understand holiness, then you don't understand the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why did he get so angry with what was going on in the temple when they were selling sacrifices and cheating the people? Why did he get so angry when there was sin among the people of God? If you don't understand holiness, you can't understand the person of the Father, Son, or the Holy Spirit. As we talked about last week, we are spiritual beings. We are rational beings. You see that there at the end of verse 1? This offering up of our lives as holy sacrifices to God, this is your spiritual worship. And that word spiritual is the word logikos that you have there in this quote from Epictetus, a contemporary of Paul, who was a Stoic philosopher, not a Christian. And he says that we as rational beings, we sing hymns of praise to God. We worship God with our mind, we worship God with our spirit. And that's what Paul is talking about here, is the worship that we offer up to God is a worship that comes from your mind, your spirit, that rational part of the human soul. And so that emphasis on the mind is going to connect with the emphasis on the mind in verse two, when we talk about the renewal of the mind. that the life is transformed as the mind is renewed. So our thinking must be conformed to that of God. And then I also wanted to remind you of this verse we looked at last week in Hebrews chapter 12 where the writer to the Hebrews gives this same metaphor, he uses this same picture of the spiritual temple that we are and the spiritual sacrifices that we are to offer up to God and Hebrews 12, 28 gives the command in this way. It's basically the same command as Romans chapter 12, verse 1. Therefore, let us be grateful that the mercies of God that have given us this kingdom, that's what this exhortation is built upon, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken and thus, with this grateful life, Our offering of thanksgiving that is our own life, offering it up to God's service, we offer to God this acceptable worship. The same word acceptable there that Paul uses here to describe the worship. It's living, it's holy, and it's acceptable. This acceptable worship with reverence and awe. And then Peter also uses this same picture of the spiritual temple, offering up spiritual sacrifices that come from our rational soul. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So, you are the temple of God. You are the ministry of the temple in this present day. There are no literal temples where literal sacrifices are being made. There are spiritual temples with spiritual sacrifices, and that's the perfect understanding of what the church is. A church is not a place of religious entertainment. The church is a group of people who are offering up their lives as a living sacrifice to God. What we're doing now is we're not doing church. What we're doing now is we're equipping church. Because church actually takes place, the temple service, the priesthood of the believer, is not me preaching, it's you offering up sacrifices to God. Offering up praises to Him when you wake up in the morning, praying to Him throughout your week. doing the will of God from the heart, keeping morally pure in your life. All of that is the temple worship. That's the church being the church, and right now you're being equipped to do that by the truth, the word of God that transforms and renews your mind, your thinking, your heart, so that you can be this holy people of God. Amen? Amen to that. What an awesome work God is doing among us. And so, with this, Living sacrifice, we're ready now to look in detail at verse 2, the transformation, not conformation. Transformation, not con-formation. The world wants to squeeze you. It wants to conform you. It wants to make you like itself. It wants the church to be compromised. It wants the church to be scared. It wants the church to be fearing man rather than fearing God so that we'll live the way that the world wants us to live rather than the way the Word of God tells us to live. This is a warning to us that we cannot be a church. We cannot be the people of God. We cannot offer up holy and acceptable sacrifices to God. We can't sing His praises. We can't be involved in His work unless we are transformed and not conformed. What does it mean to be conformed? You see the word there? The command. Do not be conformed to this world. To be conformed means to be made in accordance with a pattern, a schema. You guys know about schematics? Schematics are a pattern for how to build something. And the world has a schematic. It has a pattern for how it wants you to build your life. And the Bible says, do not build your life according to that schematic. what your culture, what your world is telling you, this is what you're supposed to be, this is what you're supposed to do, you say, no, I'm not gonna be that, I'm not gonna do that, I have a different schematic by which I am building my life, and the schematic by which I'm building my life is Christ. Christ the Lord. Do not be conformed to this world. It's so easy to say, oh, I love Christ, oh, I worship God, but it's so hard to not be conformed to the world. And for those who are conformed to the world and say they love God, they are self-deceived. And they're lying to themselves, they're lying to the church, they're lying to God, because you cannot be a lover of God and be conformed to the world. The world and God are going different directions. They've always gone different directions. They're still going different directions. It hasn't changed. Let's look at some verses about being holy. being separate, being unlike the world. I've got pages and pages and pages of verses on this, and I'm just picking out a few, okay? This is the emphasis. This is the demarcation. This is the message of the church. And if a church doesn't preach this message, they've lost the plot. They can talk about the grace of God and the love of God until they're blue in the face. If they don't understand this, they understand nothing. And if they hide this, they are unfaithful to the truth. 2 Corinthians 6, verse 17. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you. Here Paul is quoting from the Old Testament. You read through the Old Testament and you look at how God took such great pains to separate his people and to urge them to holiness in contradistinction to the idolatry and the immoral lifestyle of the pagan nations. This is God's design for the people of Israel. Everything he did for them, everything he commanded them, everything he showed them was to create a people who were holy and distinct, a people for God's own possession, a people who were not idolaters, a people who were not immoral, a people who were holy. They failed in that. They were conformed to the world. They became like the Canaanites. They became like the Egyptians. They became like the Assyrians. They became like all of the peoples around them. They worshipped their gods, they followed in their lifestyle, and God judged them for it. There is no pleasing God without holiness. The Bible says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Without holiness, you will not see the Lord. Hebrews chapter 7, verse 26. A great verse on holiness. It was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. Again, we're using this priestly temple terminology. Well, our high priest, what's the first characteristic of him? He's holy. He's holy. He's innocent. He's unstained. He's separated from sinners. These are all different words describing the same idea, the same concept. Purity, holiness. And he's exalted above the heavens. This is our great high priest. This is the pattern by which we are building our life in his example. Now, a couple other verses here. Turn in your Bibles to Titus chapter 2. I want you to see this in its context. After Hebrews, or excuse me, right before Hebrews, I should say, you've got Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus. And in Titus chapter 2, you've just got some tremendous verses here. that are also well worth memorizing. Titus chapter 2, I want to read with you verses 11 through 13. I put verse 12 up here, but I'm going to read the surrounding verses as well. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Grace, salvation. That is the foundation. But notice the grace of God and the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ has a purpose in our practical daily life. And that's what verse 12 says. This grace of God, what does it do? This salvation of God, what does it do? It trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. If Christians are living ungodly lives, if they have worldly passions that are controlling them, then they have missed the whole point of God's salvation, of God's grace. The grace of God hasn't appeared just so that you don't have to suffer for your sins. The grace of God has appeared so that you no longer dishonor God because of your sins. Let's have a God-centered focus in the gospel. The grace of God has appeared to train us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. We're a holiness church. We are a holiness church. We preach holiness. We expect holiness. We're going to encourage one another to holiness. This is a holy club. If you want to be a part of this church, then expect people to expect holiness from your life. And if you're not living a holy life, hopefully someone will be there to point it out. Not because we're arrogant, or proud, or self-righteous, but because we love God, and we love you, and we want God's purposes to be accomplished in your life. Next verse. Jude, chapter one, verse 19. Well, you holy people, you're so divisive. Can't we just all get along? Can't we just love one another, accept one another? I'm not the divisive one. according to scripture, according to God. You might say, well, Timothy, you seem kind of, you know, black and white and you're making all these divisions. Who causes divisions? It's worldly people. Worldly people cause divisions. God has done a work of creating a holy people. You go back and you look at Old Testament Israel. Was it the true prophets of God that were creating divisions among the people of Israel? No, the people of Israel were supposed to be holy. The people in Israel who were calling people to love God and obey God's law and worship the Lord and not worship idols, those were the ones who were calling for unity. They were calling for Israel to be unified in what it was called to be. And so in the church, the people who are calling the church to holiness, they're not the ones who are dividing the church, it's the people who are dragging the church away into compromise, into conformity with the world. into being common and worldly. The worldly people are the ones who are devoid of the Spirit. Devoid of the Spirit. That's what worldliness is. You wanna know a good definition for worldliness? Jude gives it to you. It means you're devoid of the Spirit. And what Spirit are we talking about? We're talking about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. We're not talking about the Spirit of enthusiasm. We're not talking about the Spirit of happiness. We're not talking about the spirit of confusion. We're talking about the Holy Spirit. I hope that you sense God's desire, God's passion for a holy church. Now let's focus also on that word back in Romans chapter 12, this world. When Paul writes, do not be conformed to this world, what does he mean? Well here you've got the same word world being used by Paul in another verse and I underlined it for you because there's actually two words in Greek that have been translated as world in the English Standard Version and this is the one that is less often thought of. Normally when we think of the word world in the Bible we think of the Greek word cosmos which we get cosmology from that word. It has to do with just the created order. The physical universe is the cosmos. But the Bible also uses the word cosmos, not just to refer to the physical order of the universe, but to the spiritual order of the universe in its fallen sinful state. And so the Bible does not use the word world in a positive way. But when it's talking about spiritual things, the world is used in a negative way, in what is immoral, what is ungodly, what is not pleasing to God. But this is not the word cosmos that Paul uses in Romans 12, verse 2, nor here in 2 Corinthians 4, 4. Rather, it's the word aeon. And that has to do with the time period. Cosmos is more of the place, or the structure, the order. Aeon is more of the time. They're both used negatively in this way, in this context. And they're both talking about worldliness. One focuses on the place, the other focuses on the time. But really they're kind of near synonyms in this particular usage. And I pull out the ones which are most similar to the way Paul is using it in Romans 12. So what does 2 Corinthians 4.4 say? In their case, the God of this world, or you could translate it as age, focusing on the time period, this age, this sinful age that we live in while we're waiting for the renewal of all things and the kingdom of God and the return of Jesus Christ to bring in the age that is to come. There's the present age and there's the age that is to come. The present age is ruled over by Satan, the age to come is ruled over by Jesus Christ. That's the difference here. So the God of this age, this world, this evil world, which is the connotation, He has blinded the minds of the unbelievers. Notice the age and Satan, the God of this age, and the minds of the unbelievers are all linked together here. So in a similar way, the age to come and our God and Father and our minds of believers are to be linked together as being the opposite, going in a different direction. Okay, so you've got the God of this age versus the God of the age to come. You've got the minds of the unbelievers versus the minds of the believer. And the key difference here is the mind of the unbeliever has been blinded to what? In order to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Then when you see Christ, when you understand Christ, like Isaiah saw the Holy One sitting on his throne, And Ezekiel saw the Holy One riding on his chariot through the sky. But when you see God and you understand His holiness, it is a transformative vision. Now, I have not physically seen God. We're not talking about a physical vision. We're talking about a spiritual vision. The eyes of the heart, the eyes of the mind, when you apprehend, when your mind comprehends the glory of God, it changes you. It transforms you. Look with me at Romans chapter one. Come back from Romans chapter 12, let's go back where our scripture reading was in Romans chapter 1. The mind of the unbeliever is blinded and they don't see the glory of Christ who is the image of God. This is exactly the opposite, well, actually it's the same thing, and then the opposite is what Paul writes in the command of Romans chapter 12 verse 2. that to be transformed by the renewing of your minds is to be able to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And the opposite is to be blind to it. So those who have the worldly worldview, they are blind to Christ. They might say they love Christ, they might say that they worship Christ, but they've got no understanding of the actual character and nature of Christ, and this is what the Bible refers to as the spirit of antichrist. The spirit of Antichrist has already gone out into the world. The apostles were dealing with it in the first century. Don't think that we're not dealing with it in the 21st century. The spirit of Antichrist has grown, it has not shrunk, and we're still dealing with people who think and use the words that we worship Christ, but they don't have the biblical Christ. They don't have the biblical God. And so back in Romans chapter 1, notice in the second half of the chapter where we are talking about the nature of God and how he has revealed himself to all of mankind ever since the creation of the world, starting there in verse 18, and how they, in verse 21, even though God has revealed himself in his creation, they did not honor God or give thanks to him. So, the heart orientation, that's what the fine print says there in the middle, The heart orientation is either away from God or towards God. There's basically just two orientations of the human heart. The human heart can be oriented towards God, or it can be oriented away from God. Now the human heart that is oriented away from God, it has fleshly desires, ungodly desires. And those ungodly desires, they lead to the sinful actions. The problem isn't the sinful actions, The problem isn't even the fleshly desires. The problem is the heart orientation. Once the heart orientation is corrected from being away from God and is restored to God, which is what the Bible refers to as repentance and faith, When you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you repent of your sins, you're reorienting your heart away from sin, which is everything that is against God, and towards God. You're turning back to God, is the biblical terminology and language. So when the heart reorients, when it turns back to God, this creates holy affections, holy desires, and that's what leads to the righteous deeds. So this is the consistent pattern and this is what you see playing out in Romans chapter 1 and in Romans chapter 12. Romans 1 shows you the orientation away from God and everything that issues out of that. Romans 12 shows you the orientation towards God and all of the holy life that issues from that. So when you present your life as a sacrifice to God, that is what empowers and strengthens holy affections and righteous deeds. Your heart is oriented correctly. Now, when you're talking about sexual orientation, heterosexual, homosexual, or whatever else you want to throw into the mix there, that is part of this fleshly desires and sinful actions in contrast to the holy affections that God has given towards us for heterosexual one-man, one-woman marriage. Now, evil desire is not just homosexual, but there is also evil heterosexual desire. When a man or a woman allows their soul to lust after a man or a woman who is not their spouse, that is an evil desire. That's an evil desire that comes from not being properly oriented towards God. So don't think that a heterosexual lust is better than a homosexual lust. They're both coming from a heart that is not oriented towards God. The problem is the heart orientation. It manifests itself in many different ways. Now, Paul makes it clear here that he singles out homosexual desire as a particularly dishonoring and shameful evil desire and action. You come down a little bit further, after they didn't honor God or give thanks to him, how they became fools. What does God do in response to the idolatry of mankind? It's the idolatry of mankind that is the wrong orientation of the heart. The idolatry of mankind is when they worship and serve the creation rather than the creator. Once this important decision is made within the heart, to worship the creation rather than worshiping the creator, that's when God judges that heart. And God has wrath, he judges the heart that is not worshiping him, but instead chooses to worship something that God has created by doing what? Well, he says it in verse 24, he says it in verse 26, and he says it in verse 28. God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up. Three times. What does he give them up to? He gives them up to a debased mind in verse 28. He gives them up to dishonorable passions in verse 26. He gave them up to the lust of their hearts in verse 24. So God He hands over the idolatrous heart to fleshly desires. This is actively done by God. It doesn't say God allowed them to be taken over by fleshly desires. It says God handed them over to these evil desires as his judgment on the idolatrous heart. I think that's important to understand. what you see happening in culture today, which is not that different from what was happening in culture when Paul wrote Romans chapter one. It's not like God is up in heaven wringing his hands saying, oh man, I just can't do anything about all this evil that's filling culture and I really wish that people would just be more moral and be good. God doesn't want people who are just more moral and good. God wants people whose heart is oriented towards him. He wants a conversion of the soul, not merely a reformation of the life. If there were a bunch of idolaters running around, who didn't worship God, but worshipped and served the creation, but they had a biblical Judeo-Christian ethic, wouldn't that be great? No. That's not what God is trying to create in the world. We're not trying to create a culture with a Judeo-Christian ethic, and we're not using worldly methods in order to try to accomplish a culture with a Judeo-Christian ethic. What we're trying to do is restore souls to God. We're trying to restore souls to God. And the world needs to know that, and the world needs to see that, and the church needs to feel it. Now, it might be nice if we could live in a moral culture. I wouldn't mind it. You know, I'm not going to vote against that. That's not our purpose. That's not our mission. That's not what God is doing. And so let's not waste our time trying to reform society when God is actively handing idolaters over to evil desires. We might be found working against God. God says, I want these people to experience the consequences of not loving me. I want them to see what it's like to live without God. You think you can be good without God? Give it your best shot. And he hands them over to the prison of evil desires to demonstrate and show how self-destructive how culturally destructive it is when the human heart does not love its creator. Come back to Romans chapter 12. So we're talking about not being conformed to the world, which is Romans chapter one, but instead we're gonna be transformed as our minds are renewed. We behold Christ and we are transformed. So the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, Satan, is hiding Christ from their minds. And what the gospel does is it reveals, it unveils Christ. And God's Holy Spirit, He shows Christ. And the light of Christ dawns in our heart, and that's the transformation. That is the work of God. That's the work that we get to participate in. I can't turn the light on in anybody's heart, but I can preach the truth. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, he can take that truth and he can open up the heart to be able to see and understand the image of God, Christ himself. Galatians 1.4, another verse for our consideration this morning. You see that Christ, he gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. That word age is the same word that Paul uses here in Romans 12 verse 2. Don't be conformed to this age. Don't be conformed to this world. In Paul's thinking, in thinking of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit, the present age, this present time period that we live in, it's evil. There's a God of this age, and he's Satan. And the minds of the people of this age are blinded to not see and understand Christ. But Christ, he gave himself. for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age. So we're not supposed to be conformed to the present evil age. We're supposed to be living transformed lives like our Savior. Also, another word here, the course of this world is the same as the word world or age in Romans 12 verse 2. Ephesians 2 says, in these sins you once walked. hold yourself above people in the world who are given over to evil desires. You don't say, oh, I'm so much better than all these people. No, you were exactly like them. And the only thing that has made you any different is the mercy and grace of God. So don't be proud, be humble. Don't look down, look around. And share what God has given to you, to others, with a spirit of humility and gentleness. You once walked in the same way, following the course of this world, the age, ion, of this cosmos. You are following the age of this cosmos. You are following the ion of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. There is a spirit at work in the world, and it's not the spirit of God. Just the opposite. And there's a spirit that is at work in the church, and it's not the spirit of the world. It's just the opposite, the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is now transforming us from the inside out. One more here on ION, the age of this world. Mark 4, 19, Jesus was speaking, different responses to the gospel. Some people hear the gospel and they accept it, they're excited about it, they start coming to church and learning, but the cares of the world There's our same word, the age, this evil present age that we live in. The cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful. That is the opposite of Romans 12 too. We don't be conformed to this world, to its desires, to its deceit, to its cares. The world is going to try to make you care about what it cares about. It's going to try to make you believe the lies that it believes. It's going to try to make you desire what it desires. And if so, what's going to happen is the Word is going to be choked. That seed of God that is planted in the soul, it's supposed to grow, it's supposed to bear fruit, it's supposed to issue forth in this transformed life of a living sacrifice to God. And so don't be conformed to the world. Don't become unfruitful in your Christian life. Well, we're gonna have a three-part message here on Romans 12, 1 and 2, because it's just so packed. There's so much in here. And we're just scratching the surface, really, of what we've covered so far. And I'm excited to have another full sermon to be able to preach on Romans 12, 2. And you will not be disappointed by having any lack of content there.