This morning to Romans chapter 12 and verse 1. Brother Dan tried to steal some of the sermon this morning in his Sunday school lesson. It's very fascinating to me when there's that overlap sometimes. But we're going to talk this morning about the title of the message is the Christian glorifying God by his life. Now, of course, this means we're taking a bit of a detour out of Mark. We've been in Mark chapter 10, looking at the first 12 verses where it talks about marriage and divorce, and we've laid a foundation for that. But I do wanna, before we go any further, I do wanna add one more thing that I left out of last week's message. It's really important, and I don't know how it happened, I just skipped ahead in my notes a little bit, but I want you to, we were talking, we were in Matthew chapter 19, actually, in verse nine, and that verse says, and I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery. What I did, the one point I left out that I wanted to make that's very important, is that in this verse, Matthew implies that a remarriage, in the case of sexual immorality, is permissible for the believer. And I didn't make that statement. We talked about divorce, we jumped around everything else but that one thing. And that one thing is very important, I think, and for us to remember. If there is a marriage and a believer leaves that marriage because of sexual immorality, then the believer is free to remarry. And that's something we need to remember. But what I want to take, what I want to do now is extend what we've said about marriage and divorce. to the high calling that we have to glorify God with our lives. Marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his bride. And that is demonstrated when we live our lives in a way that glorifies God. I read something this week that I found interesting. It said that people should be less concerned about being politically correct and more concerned about being biblically correct. And I believe that. Political correctness has gotten us into a big mess socially and in our society. What we need to do is go back to the Bible. And if we are living according to the Bible and the commandments of God and the Bible, then we wouldn't have a lot of the problems that we have today. But the people don't wanna do that. They wanna make up their own rules. But let us be clear, the Bible, not society or our culture, must be the guide for our lives. Society, culture will lead you astray quickly, but you will never go astray if you read God's word, study it, and live your life according to what it says. But that is our calling. And I want us to think about that in this morning's message. This is taken from our last fifth Saturday meeting we had a few weeks ago, a week ago yesterday, I guess. And the two topics that were preached on that morning were the Christian glorifying God with his life and the Christian glorifying God with his death. And because Brother Raines was unable to make it, I had the second message. And someone has said that maybe I should think about re-preaching that. I had already been thinking about that. And so we'll get to that after this one. I want to begin with this one, though, because how we live our life leads into our death and how it glorifies God as well. For our text this morning, I wanna read Romans chapter 12, verse one. Let's read it and have a word of prayer. 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. Let us pray. Our kind and most gracious heavenly Father, we do come before your throne of grace here this morning to worship you and to lift up your name to be glorified. I pray, Lord, that we can do so in the strength of lives that have been lived this past week that have indeed brought honor and glory to your name. That makes our worship this morning that much sweeter. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit will speak to our hearts that you will show us the things that we need to change, the things that we need to do better, the things that we need forgiveness for, the things that we need encouragement for, that we might indeed bring honor and glory to your name through the lives that we live. Lord, I just pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. So as we look there in Romans 1, and we're gonna be here just for a moment, and then we're gonna go on to several other verses of scripture for this message, but Paul, in speaking to the Romans, he says, I beseech you, this is a strong term, he's urging them strongly by the mercies of God, and the only way we can do any of this, the only way we can live a life that is pleasing to God and brings glory to his name is by his mercies. his mercies wherein he is long-suffering towards us, where he is patient with us, whereby he teaches us over the course of time how it is we are to live, where the mercies he extends to us that gives us the ability to do this, the ability to take into our lives the righteousness of Christ, and that righteousness be lived out through us. All of these things add up by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. You know, the Old Testament and the law is built on dying sacrifices, right? When you made a sacrifice to the Lord in the Old Testament, something died. When Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, he died. But then that makes, that changes things. His death, the salvation that we have through him, we are changed and we no longer are dealing with dying sacrifices. We ourselves now become a living sacrifice. And as we live out our lives, that should be a sacrifice unto the Lord. Now, we have quickly gotten into territory that a lot of people don't want to hear about. You see, a lot of people want to hear preaching that tells them all the good things that God's going to give them, and all they got to do is show up and accept them. Well, yes, God does bless us. He blesses us more than we deserve. But He also calls us, as we see in this verse and others, to live a life of sacrifice to Him. That means giving things up. That means suffering sometimes for the cause of Christ. And he has called us to do that. A living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is a reasonable service. Reasonable. And people don't like to hear that either. What do you mean, I've got a sacrifice? What does God expect of me? Well, what he expects of you is reasonable, considering what he's done on your behalf. Oh, don't come whining to me about making a sacrifice for God with your life, because it's obvious to me that you haven't given consideration to the great sacrifice that Jesus made with his life. Whatever it is you're being called upon to do does not compare to what Christ has already done for us So it is a reasonable thing for God to expect this of us So that's gonna lead us into our points here Turn to our first passage. We're gonna look at Isaiah chapter 43 verse 7 Isaiah 43 7 The first point that I want to make this morning is this. God created us for his own glory. He didn't create us for our glory, for us to be glorified, for us to gain glory. He created us for his own glory. Now we must begin with a simple premise here. Simple. but apparently hard for some to grasp. And this premise is that God did not need us for anything. God was not lonely before he created us and before he created the universe. God in himself, the three parts, the Trinity, God, the Father, God, the Holy Spirit, God, the Son, of course, they were content and fulfilled in themselves. They did not need to create you or me in order to find some kind of fulfillment, in order to find pleasure. But they did create us, God did create us for pleasure, his pleasure, for his own glory. In Isaiah 43 verse 7, we read, even everyone that is called by my name, for I have created him for my glory. I have formed him, yea, I have made him. When it comes to life and the sanctity and the preciousness of life, It is so because God is the one who gives it. It is a God thing. Therefore, we should protect life in every way. But it is for his glory. Ephesians chapter one. Verses 11 and 12, we read these last Sunday night, but they apply here. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ. We are to be to the praise of his glory. That's why he created us. That's why he chose for himself, out of his creation, a people for his son, that we, those predestinated, might be to the praise of his glory. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31. One more verse I want to use here. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Is that a guiding point in our lives? Now we may put on nice clothes to come to the worship service, to worship with the congregation. And that is a, something we could point to and say, I've done this for the glory of God. What about the rest of the week? What about the rest of our lives? What about the activities that we commit ourselves to and that we participate in? What about our jobs and the work that we do on that job? What about the decisions we make? Everything, everything we do, should be done with the thought in mind that this is for the glory of God. The glory of God. The fact that we are created to glorify God gives significance to our lives. Though he did not need us, but he did create us for a purpose, shows us that we have eternal importance to God. Eternal importance. Turn to John chapter 10, verse 10. This leads us into the second point. The Christian glorifying God with his life gives purpose to the life of the Christian. This gives us purpose. From God's perspective, we have been created to bring him glory. From our perspective, we discover that in bringing him glory, we enter into a relationship with him that brings great delight to us. John 10, 10, the thief cometh not, but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. Who is the thief? Who is the thief? The argument can be made, obviously, that Satan is a thief. Death is a thief. The thief comes, but to steal and to kill and to destroy. Jesus says this, I am come, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Jesus came so that his people could have life Spiritual life by the way, that is God's intent for us is that we live spiritually And with that spiritual life We not only have life but we have abundant life Why because spiritual life brings us into a relationship with God that not only is eternal, but it is meant for our good and his glory. It is a life that he means to be abundant. Not just in glory when we get there, and we can't imagine the abundance of that life when we get to glory, okay? But I believe in abundant life here. Now, the problem comes in in how people define an abundant life. For some, it's all focused on material things. The more stuff I have, the more abundant my life is going to be. But that's not what it's all about. An abundant life is about being in that relationship with God. There is an abundance of things that is poured out upon us when we enter into a relationship with God. Peace is probably the one most overlooked or less thought of. But I'm gonna tell you, it should be at the top of the list of precious things that we get from God. Being at peace with God makes for an abundant life. But all the joy that we have in God makes for an abundant life. Too many people take the attitude that God and his commandments take all the fun out of life. Well, if your perspective is strictly material, you could probably say that. But I'm going to tell you that because and through the spiritual life he gives us, the commandments that he gives to us don't take away from the joy of this life, they add to it. They give us structure. They explain to us and teach us what it is that will really give abundance to our lives. By the way, let's remember who creates this life. God does, right? Shouldn't the creator be the best one to tell us how abundant that life can be and what that consists of? Well, I should think so. That's something we should study and that we should learn. To be in his presence brings us a joy and a pleasure that is incredible. We learn to delight in the excellence of his character. Psalm 1611, it says, thou wilt show me the path of life. What were we just saying? God is the creator of life. He is the one, therefore, that can show us the path of that life. He will show me the path of life. And the verse goes on, in thy presence, that is in the presence of God, is fullness of joy. At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. fullness of joy, read those words, listen to those words, so that we might discover more of our purpose in this life. Psalm 73, we might turn there, Psalm 73, verses 25 and 26. These are a couple of verses that I often read at funerals. Sometimes we reserve some scriptures that get read at funerals, but don't really get read any other time, and I think that's failing on our part. Some of these scriptures are wonderful. Psalm 73 is one of them. Verse 25 and verse 26. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. That should be on our minds all the time. Our thoughts ought to be on God in heaven and God on this earth. And he should be the desire of our souls. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth. Remember I said something about people who are all focused on material things? Physical life and the material things of this life will all fail and come to an end. People get caught up with their bodies, and listen, we ought to be, and I'm a fine one to be speaking, we ought to take care of our bodies, we ought to be trying to keep our bodies in shape and everything, but some people get way carried away with that. That becomes their focus in life, they leave God out. That's not good. This body is going to fail at some point. Praise God, it's gonna be replaced with one even better, much better, completely better. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. God is the strength of my heart, the strength of my spiritual heart in life. That spiritual life that he gives to us can never fail. because God sustains it. And that is his promise to us, that he will sustain it forever. That's why we call, when we get saved, we call it receiving eternal life, or everlasting life. Because it's so, you can't lose it. It can't be taken away from you. He keeps it. He preserves it. He is the strength of my heart. Now, if it were left up to me, I'd lose it. But it's not left up to me. It's in the hands of God. He is the strength of my heart. He is my portion forever. He sustains that forever. So what should this bring about in the Christian's life? And I ask this in terms of attitude. And I believe this is very important for us to grasp here, because Christians sometimes can have the most awful of attitudes about life, about what's going on, problems we face. We are so prone when something goes wrong. We start looking inward, and we start feeling sorry for ourselves and we get down and we get depressed, real easy, too easy. Should that be our attitude? Should that be the attitude of one whose very soul is preserved for eternity by the power of God? Should that be the attitude of one who is created to bring glory to God? No. Because what we've got to understand is no matter what happens in our lives, God still is glorified, and he still takes pleasure in his people, and he will see us through. We want to make it all about me. And we have got to learn how to get those eyes off of self and get them to looking around us, to see what's going on around us, so that we can learn what it is God is teaching us. God allows things to happen to us that are painful, that hurt, that can bring struggle. Why does he do this? So that he can teach us his ways. So the normal heart attitude of the Christian should be this. It should be rejoicing in the Lord and in the lessons that God teaches us. the lessons of life that he gives us. Turn to Romans chapter five in verse one. Romans chapter five, verse one. And let us, I could have gone with just a couple of verses within these first five, but looking at this, I had to back up to verse one. I have to go through verse five, because it all goes together. It all begins there in verse one. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now justification is a complicated thing. And there are, the scriptures give us a couple of perspectives on this. We are justified by Christ in what he has done, okay? When he died for us on the cross, he justified us or made us just in the sight of God the Father. so we can stand before God. Without Christ, we can't stand before God and live. But because of Christ, we can stand before God with a righteousness, not from within, but that is given to us by Christ himself. So when it says, therefore being justified by faith, what faith does, and by the way, we know faith is a gift given to us from God. We also know that that faith is not something, again, that is ours inside of us. It is given to us, it is, therefore it must come from somewhere else, and it comes from the very faith of Christ himself. That faith is given to us, and it becomes the means by which we understand that we have been justified, not by ourselves or by any deeds that we have done, but by the work of Christ. And it's at this moment that we have this peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You, listen to me, And in born-again truly born-again Christians struggle with this sometimes We think we have peace with God because of what we do and People sometimes are constantly scraping scratching trying to do something that's going to bring peace between them and God We have peace with God because of what Christ has done for us So we don't have to scratch and claw Now, obedience is important, and we're gonna get to that. But we have peace with God, as it says, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse two, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. The same thing, as we were talking about justification, faith also is an access way for us to come to understand that we have grace in the sight of God. He has demonstrated grace towards us. And it's in that grace that we are standing. Faith helps us to see that, okay? We see that we're standing in its grace and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Rejoicing ought to be part of the Christian's life. In fact, it ought to be a big part of the Christian's life. In fact, it should be so big that we learn to rejoice not only when things are wonderful and going to suit us, but also when things are going bad outwardly for us, we still rejoice in the Lord our God. No matter what our circumstances may be, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now you might say, that the glory of God is what makes all of this happen and work. I want you to consider that. You see, this puts God's reputation on the line. This puts us in a position where We can understand that God is not going to fail us and let us down. You see, that's the challenge of bad circumstances, things going wrong. It can lead you to begin to think that somehow God has let you down. And that's not so. And that's why we have to learn how to rejoice in those circumstances. because we understand through faith that God's not let us down. He hasn't let us down. He is sustaining us. He is seeing us through this, and he is getting glory from this. If God were to ever, and this is an impossibility, understand this, but if God were to ever let one of his people down, his glory would suffer. That would take away from his glory. That's not gonna happen. God is omnipotent. He is too strong for that to happen. He is too wise for that to happen. He knows too much for that, He knows everything for that to happen. He never changes, so it will never happen. but we should be able to rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Verse three, and not only so, make sure you're reading this, make sure you underline this, but we glory in tribulations also. What? I thought that's where we get to gripe and complain. No. When tribulations come our way, we glory in those. Why? How? Remember what I said a few moments ago, the normal hard attitude of the Christian is rejoicing in the Lord and in the lessons of life that he gives us. Well, here you go, listen. We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience. Has any one of you ever said, I need more patience? Have you ever asked God for more patience? It's one of those things, be careful what you ask for. I've heard people say, I wish I had the patience of Job. The next words out of my mouth are, are you willing to go through what Job went through to demonstrate that patience? Hmm. We back up a little bit. But that's what tribulation does in us. It works in us patience. Patience to wait on God. To wait for God's timing. To wait for God's deliverance. Knowing that tribulation worketh patience, verse four, and patience experience. Is experience good for us? Oh yeah. I think this is where faith grows in us. When we experience God's deliverance from this, the next time we face something similar, we can look back and say, God delivered me there, he's gonna deliver me here. Experience. I'll tell you a great example of that from the scriptures is David. As a child, as a young boy, what he fought, what, a bear and a lion? Remember all that? And God delivered him, and what did David take away from that? The experience of knowing God can help me overcome the impossible. How did that help David? Well, the next thing we know, In fact, he refers back to this during this occasion. Next thing we know, he's walking down a mountainside to the valley to face the giant, Goliath. And David himself says, God's delivered me from those animals. He'll surely deliver me from this even. That's blaspheming his name. That's faith. That's faith. Faith built on experience, and that's important. And experience hope. Hope is precious. Hope, hope, that's what gets us through tribulations. And it is a precious gift from God in and of itself that we ought not to take lightly and that we ought to be very thankful for and rejoice in and experience hope and hope maketh not ashamed. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, hope maketh not ashamed. Have you ever been ashamed to be a Christian? Likely, there's been a point here or there, or maybe you were, or at least close to it. But when we go through these lessons and we learn these things, that gets taken away so that we can stand in tribulation and not be ashamed. Because God's love is shed upon our hearts by the Holy Ghost. We're going to close, and we're not done with this message. This'll be a part two coming up next Lord's Day, if he's willing, as we get more into the obedience aspect of this. But turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter five, verse 16, 17, and 18. As we talk about this normal heart attitude, here are some instructions for us. 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 or 16 two very short verses one regular verse here verse 16 rejoice evermore doesn't say rejoice when everything's good rejoice evermore let's work on that rejoice evermore verse 17 pray without season. We need that too. Tribulations will strengthen your prayer life. And if it were not for tribulations, our prayer lives would grow mighty weak because they would be consumed with self. But when we are at our wits end, when we are up against the wall, when we realize we can't get through whatever this is without God, It's amazing how much stronger our prayer life becomes. Pray without ceasing. We need to learn to do that no matter what. Verse 18, in every thing give thanks. I was told a story a long time ago, heard a preacher share this about another preacher who was having some health issues. He goes to the doctor, has tests run, comes back to the doctor, who sits him down and tells him, I've got bad news for you. You have cancer, and it's bad. To which the preacher says, praise the Lord. Thank you, Lord. And the doctor looked at him and said, what? You must not have understood me, it's cancer, it's bad. He said, yes, thanks be to the Lord. Whatever it is, I can be thankful for God has a purpose in this. God has a purpose in our lives, you see. And his purpose, rarely matches up to how we think things should be. He has a purpose in our failures. He has a purpose in us in our sin, not that he causes us to sin by no means, but he still has a purpose. He shows us more of himself in that. That doesn't mean, as Paul will say in a similar situation in Romans, doesn't mean we should rush out to sin just so we can see what God's purpose is, and that's not what we're saying. But in everything, there's a purpose that God has in us that redounds to his glory. And we must be thankful. In everything, give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ. concerning you. I've had people in the past ask me, Brother James, I really wish I knew what God's will for my life was. And what they're wanting is some sort of roadmap as to how they should live and decisions they should make, and they want it laid out for them. And it doesn't happen that way. Usually God gives us what we need as we need it. We don't know what's gonna be that next step sometimes, often. And people wanna know that. Well, that's not the will that we need to know. The will we need to know are things like this. The will of God and Christ concerning you is to give thanks in everything. You wanna know what God's will for your life is? Read the Bible. He tells you. It's right there. If you focus on doing the things that you find in the Bible, That's gonna take care of a lot of the fears and the concerns and worries about the future that you might have. Take each day as it's given, and in each day, obey God to your fullest. That will lead us into our next point for next time. You see, when we realize that God created us to glorify himself, and when we start to act in ways that fulfill that purpose, we will experience a joy that is inexpressible. And all of this gives us the key to glorifying God, and that is obedience. Obedience. Think on this. Consider this. Pray to God about this. Grow in this. That's what we need to do. We'll look more at obedience next time. Let's bow our heads. Our kind and most gracious Heavenly Father, oh Lord, we thank you for this time. We thank you for these words. We thank you for your glory and what it means to the believer. Help us to comprehend these things more, to understand them better. but then more than that, to live them out in our lives. Lord, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your precious salvation, for that eternal life that you give. And I pray that everyone here would be the recipient of that eternal life. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Let's all stand. What number shall we sing?