Isaac just opened in prayer, and so I'm going to jump right in. I'm going to ask you a couple questions. And then, a little toward the end of my message, I'm going to give you a kind of an object lesson that I want you to remember as we go out of here. But for right now, when you think of Jesus Christ, and just think for a second, what stands out? What is the picture you see in your minds when you think of Jesus Christ today? Just think for a second. You don't have to answer. What does he look like? And if you'd like to, you can give me an answer that might fit that. What does scripture stress all the way through? It's not scripture, but it's a picture that hung in our home as a child. OK. I know that's someone's idea, but it is something I picture as I think of him and all that he does. OK. Right now, that picture comes to mind. That's what he looks like. And what picture was it? Okay, so you're looking at a man-made, okay. I'm looking for scripture. What does the Bible tell you when you think of Jesus? That's the only way you know what he looks like right now. You haven't met him in person, have you? Okay, how do I look like someone who loves me? That's what I'm looking for. What do you think? Because I'm going to take you into that and that's what my message is going to dwell on. Okay, boy, you're very artistic in your description, but the glory of Christ is what stands out all the way through the whole Bible. It stood out in the Garden of Eden, but you don't think of Him glowing there, do you? when He walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. When you see Him by fire by night and cloud by day, when you recognize His Shekinah glory all the way through the Old Testament, when you see Him transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17, when you see Him coming back in Revelation 19, it's the glory of Christ that stands out. And if you go back and start reading your Bible and looking for that, you'll see it all through there. That's who he is. He's high and lifted up, and there's many things that we can think of that describe him that aren't wrong. But that, when you see him, I always joke on Wednesday nights that when he comes back with all the mighty flaming angels with him, mighty angels, he'll be the bright one in the middle. They will not even come close to what he looks like. in all of his glory. So as you process that in your minds, the next question I want to ask you before I look at this passage, what do you look like? Don't answer me. What do you look like today when other people see you? Think about it for a second. What should stand out in your life that they see? And the simple answer is? Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world and he tells us that we are also light. He didn't tell you to be light in Matthew 5. He says you are light. Let your light shine is what he's talking about. Do you picture yourself in the morning when you get out of bed and you wake up and you, you want to see my hair these days, it's pathetic. But as you look in there and you go, that is not glorious. I don't see anything shining here except the top of my head. But it's what's supposed to stand out. So I have one sermon and 27 that I'm going to cram into it. So I grabbed a book that really stood out, the Book of Romans, and I took two little verses because you want to zero in. I don't want to give you a whole bunch of information you will not remember. You need to read your Bibles and go get all that information. But when you look at the Book of Romans and you get to chapter 12 and verses 1 and 2, where you read these simple words, I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. So Paul summarizes the first 11 chapters of Romans. See, I'm gonna preach through Romans today. And he zeroes in here with an urgent message, a stress to them that he is calling them, encouraging them, exhorting them, admonishing them, beseeching them to do something. That's how you should pick up your Bibles every day. You read somewhere this morning if you're a believer. If you didn't, you should have. I only have one day, so I'll make you mad, I'll make you glad, I'll make you sad, I will do whatever I can do today to get your attention. But the scripture should have been opened up this morning in some way, shape, or form. And when you open it and you're looking at it, you're looking at a message, you're looking at something, how can I become more Christ-like? How can I understand who Jesus Christ is, understand what God the Holy Spirit wants to do in my life, and live it out? Which is all he's doing in chapter 12. So he stresses here, I urge you therefore, therefore what? Based on the mercies of God. When you look at these, I just made a short list. Christ's death and resurrection. And this is from the book of Romans. This is what he's zeroing in on. the peace that he offers, the hope that he brings, forgiveness, reconciliation, righteousness, grace, redemption, justification, sanctification, glorification, salvation in general, and the promised adoption of sons that's coming, that your study Bibles all tell you you already have. But Romans 8.23 says you don't. We're waiting for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies, and we're gonna talk about that a little bit. I just made a short list. You could go on and on and on. In the book of Romans, of the mercies of God, this word carries this specific idea of showing compassion to us. He owes us nothing. And yet in Christ, he owes us everything. We're looking for externals to make us feel good. You come to church with expectations. What is it that I'm looking for? Oh, it didn't meet my needs. Oh, that sermon didn't hit me just right. And so you go looking somewhere else or doing something else, and you're constantly looking. It is not about the externals. It's about Jesus Christ, who, if you're a believer, lives in you. So Paul zeroes in with an urgent message based on the mercies of God and says to them with this picture, and it's not even the command, but he says, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. That's pretty basic, right? Pretty straightforward. And when he goes in and looks at it that way, we understand here, as he's talking to believers, the idea of brethren, that there is a need in our parts to live lives in contrast to a dead offering. This is an oxymoron. There's no such thing as a living sacrifice. If you try to put those two together, they're clashing, and he's doing that on purpose. Because everything the Jews knew and the Romans were a mix. There would have been Jews and Gentiles in that church in Rome. But everything they looked at, any sacrifice was dead. As you presented that offering, you slit the throat, whatever, however method you used to present that to them, it was going to die. And it's just the opposite for us. If you truly know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, how did that happen? Did you earn it? Do you have to maintain it? Can you lose it? It's called a gift. It's called eternal life. And I stress that. Again, here's all my messages. I gotta bring them all in back in here to remind you. Salvation's not something that's loose. Once you have it, it's done. It's permanent because it's what Christ does and he changes us. But once I have received that free gift of eternal life because of his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, and I trust him, I believe on him, I cling to him, I rely on him because he's the only way, the truth and the life. Then I present my body. Now, when I was going through this, I was going, that is interesting to me. Why didn't he say present your spirit? Why didn't he say present your soul? Why does he say present your body? Your body isn't even redeemed yet. And there's a reason for that, and this little illustration will help bring that out. Spiritually, I have been what? What's the big word we use for that salvation regarding the spirit? Justification. All of it regards redemption, but I have been justified spiritually. That's my standing I have. And from there, from my spirit, I begin to carry that out with my soul, my mind, my will, my emotions, my personality, I carry that out. And when I carry that out, we call that process sanctification. Biblical terms, not ones we use a lot. but we should know them well. 1 Thessalonians 4, 8 talks about the need for sanctification in our lives. In verses three and verse eight, as he's carrying that out, I have been justified, that's my position. I am being sanctified, that's my practice. I'm going to be glorified, and which one does that involve? Have I been with you so long? Glorification, brought up in Romans 8. That's the redemption of our bodies. That's the change that takes place when Christ comes back, when we are transformed physically. Do you have that yet? If you think you do, come see me. I will straighten you out. We don't. So what he's zeroing in on, not the justification that has been done, if you're truly a believer, who is the ones he's writing to, that's done. There's nothing I can do about that. I received that free gift. I have been justified, declared righteous. That's my standing, and it will never change. What I can cooperate in is the area of sanctification, walking by the Spirit, obeying God in every area of my life, growing in Christlikeness. This is what Paul was after in Colossians 1, verse 28. To present every man complete, perfect, mature in Christ. That's what he strove for. That's what you're striving for, right? You have a disciple or two or three in your life, right? You have someone who knows less than you, someone that you may have even led to the Lord. Paul didn't lead everyone to the Lord that he discipled. But you're in the process of passing on, kind of taking your little bucket and their little bucket and just giving them a little bit at a time. Helping them to grow in Christ. That's what Paul did with his life. That's what he died for. That's what he was beaten for. That's what he sacrificed himself for. Everything he did was to exalt Christ and to present every man complete in preparation for Christ's return, that his bride would be dressed, appropriately dressed. So he's zeroing in here, and he's telling them, that area I understand, that area I can work with. What's my problem? My problem is my body is not yet redeemed. Have you figured that out? Some of them have other problems, but redemption is not there yet. That's where you're battling. That's why Paul brings it up to the Ephesians about Satan, the world, the flesh, and the devil, as these battles. It's one of the ones I wrestle with because I'm in this carcass, and it's looking more and more like a carcass every day. It's still alive. It's hanging on. But I'm in this body, and it wants nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It hasn't been redeemed. It hasn't been changed. So it battles me. What did Paul do with that in 1 Corinthians 9? I buffet my body. We've always joked. He didn't say I buffet my body. I buffet my body. I make it my slave. Less perhaps. Well, what happened? There's always open book exam. And as I tell you, I told them at the memorial service yesterday for Mary Leavitt, never let a preacher quote a verse or refer to a verse that you don't look up. Don't trust preachers. They're dangerous. They make lots of mistakes. Paul was afraid of being disqualified. Not his salvation aspect, but as the leader that he was supposed to be, the apostle he was supposed to be. He didn't want to disappoint Jesus Christ. And he didn't want to let people down by setting a bad example. And so as he wrestles with this, it's the body that I have to wrestle with. The body is what I need to make my living sacrifice. My body is what I need to buff it. When it doesn't want to get up in the morning to read the scriptures, it won't. Until Christ gives us a new body, it will never change. It wrestles with that. And we have this battle, this struggle going on, and we think it's our spirit. It's not our spirit. The Holy Spirit has justified us. He has set up residence. He's taken up his place as made us his temple. That's not where the problem is. I keep wanting to go to this illustration, and I have to hold myself back. So as he goes down here, it's the bodies that we need to present, and he expels it out as a living sacrifice, one that's alive, possessing physical vitality, that's wholly set apart exclusively for God's service, not to sins. And it's a sacrifice. It is freely offered. Is that what we're doing with our bodies today? Or are we buffeting our bodies? Buffet. Much easier to go to the buffet. But I have to determine, and my mind is set up, I have a goal in mind and I'm dragging my body along. I've always joked about Oreo cookies and all kinds of other things over the years. There's cravings that my body has and sometimes I have to tell it no. Once in a while I'll say yes. You can have two. You can have a little bowl, you can have whatever it is that is my enjoyment, but my body doesn't lead me. I don't have the caboose pulling the train. And so as Paul tries to explain to them here, this was a big danger. He had just gotten done talking about the Jews. 9, 10, 11, people read the book of Romans and they think, oh, 9, 10, 11 doesn't belong there. Somebody came along and just stuffed it in. Then we get back to the good stuff in chapter 12. No, no, no, no. Nine is Israel's past, 10 is Israel's present in that context, and 11 is Israel's future. And he's saying all of the things about salvation, all the requirements of righteousness that are explained in the book of Romans. And he gets up to the best example, the ones who should have been shining brightly. The ones who should have impressed you, because when he chose Abraham, he said there's three things he's gonna have. Land, it's still coming. Seed, they keep dying off, but they're gonna come. There'll be a remnant, and then ultimately the seed. And blessing, and who is that blessing gonna reach out to? all the families of the earth. And so Paul is summarizing when he goes up. Here's the best example of what God has done. His chosen people. Chosen has nothing to do with salvation. It has everything to do with service. I think you've heard a few of these things before. them to impact the world. He worked through them, not because they were super special, not because they had some unique abilities and characteristics. God has blessed them beyond measure for one purpose, that all the families of the earth would be blessed. And ultimately, that would be salvation. So he goes to 9, 10, 11, and he says, how they doing? How have my chosen people done in regards to righteousness and to salvation? Chapter 9, they blew it. Chapter 10, they blew it. Chapter 11, they blew it. God's mercies haven't changed. You go read that. People read chapter 9 and they go, oh, God picked Jacob over Esau. Read the chapter. Read the context. Read the fact of what he tells you in the first five verses and then what he gets to in the latter part of the chapter. He's telling you they blew it. I elevated Jacob. I loved Jacob to where it came across in a comparative way that I hated Esau. He didn't hate Esau. Esau had 12 princes. Esau was blessed. Remember when Jacob met up with him? He said, I don't need your stuff. God treated Jacob in a way that elevated him for a purpose, to have all the families of the earth blessed. And Israel failed and failed and failed. There's only one person that succeeded in all of it. It's Jesus Christ. There's only one person that can change my life for all of eternity, it's Jesus Christ. There's only one person who is presently shining, as I talked about earlier, it's Jesus Christ. When I open my Bible in the morning, and I'm reading in Ecclesiastes right now, I don't know where you're at, but I look for Jesus Christ. I look for God the Son to teach me and to help me to learn more about him. And in the case of Ecclesiastes, to see the wisdom that God provides there. But Paul's trying to make a point here with all of this. He says here that it is your spiritual service. I don't like that word. It's actually a word that's better translated rational or logical service of worship. When you go back and read Romans 1 to 11, go ahead and do it this week. All right? Just sit down and do it out loud. That's even better. And look for the mercies of God and look for Jesus Christ. But as he goes in here, Paul is basically saying, based on what I just shared with you for 11 chapters, the logical thing for you to be doing is to be worshiping. The logical thing for you to be doing is to be putting him first. It's to freely offer yourself for what God wants. That's not our world today, in case you haven't figured it out. Going woke is not just going broke. And who knows, that may change. Going woke is going away from God. It's elevating man. It's elevating the three things in 2 Timothy 3, 1-5. Three things that are loved there with phileo type of love. What are the three? In the last days there'll be lovers of? Self, money, pleasure. How we doing today? That's where our world's at. They're taking their bodies and they're buffeting them. Self, money, pleasure. It's all about me. Problem is, it doesn't satisfy. I've been telling people this for years and years and even decades. Put Christ first, you receive those blessings that he's promised. I don't mean tons of riches, but that may come. I don't mean that everything goes easy for you, because it better not. We're to count it all joy when we encounter various trials, because they produce endurance. They're part of the process to get us toward Christlikeness. Don't take trials away. Don't look for ways to escape trials. Don't go sour because somebody let you down. They will. Men always will. Jesus knew that. He knew the heart of me. I didn't put my focus in ministry on people. If I had, I would have quit early on. I'm still getting stabbed in the back. I'm still having things said about me that aren't true. You should be in the same boat. As you share the gospel with people, they should have a reaction. They're either coming closer to Christ or they will be driven away from Christ. But they will not stay in the middle. It doesn't work like that. And this is what Paul is trying to do with the whole area of salvation, especially aimed at righteousness. People think, oh, I'm religious, and I shared some of that yesterday as well. But I'm a religious person. I go to church, and I give money, and I serve other people, and I hear more and more and more of that. And I said, God's not asking for you to be religious. He's asking for us to have a relationship. That's why I'm in the Word in the morning. I'm not trying to impress anybody. The more I study the scriptures, the more I get back up after seven months and have to preach, the more nervous I am. the more I realize about myself of how much growing I have to do. It's Christ that gets elevated. He's the focus of our lives. He's the one that I'm desiring to please and to emulate and to glorify. How we doing on that? If Christ isn't first in your life, you're wasting your time. you will end up empty, and you will be pursuing love of money, love of self, love of pleasure, because they're looking for something. And this is what you need to understand. When people pursue all the sins around them, it's because they're not satisfied. They're very insecure. They don't have love, genuine love, agape-type love. They don't have joy. They don't have peace. They don't have anything of any value, and they're constantly screaming out. And so here comes a group offering, oh, we've got it, we've got it. And so they join the group, and they start doing what they're doing, and they realize, they lied to me. I remember the testimony of one man who was deep into sin. And he said, when Christians shared the gospel with me, I knew exactly what they were saying, and I knew it was true. But I never let on. Until he finally became a believer, then he finally started admitting. My life was a disaster. Everything about my life was a disaster. I don't mean trials, I mean a disaster where everything's going wrong, nothing satisfies. Relationships are breaking up. All the things that matter to God are torn down. And Paul is trying to tell them, this is why I wrote Romans. You think he just sat down one day and just kind of started, eh, dropped some notes here and there. How long do you think it took him to write the first 11 chapters without a computer? On some kind of papyrus, or that was before his day, some kind of parchment that they would have had. It took him hours to compose this. Because it wasn't just God rotely giving, okay, write this, write this, write this, write this. It was God through the Holy Spirit inspiring him, but it was God using the personality of Paul to make it come out like Paul. That's what he does with us. He doesn't want you to be somebody else. He wants you to be yourself. But he wants you to be yourself with Christ in the controls. And so as I lay down my life as a sacrifice, a living sacrifice, it tells me there that this is acceptable to God. It's will-pleasing. He finds great approval in this. It meets God's strict requirements and gives him great pleasure. And it's an obligation, that spiritual service of worship. It's not an option. I've been bought with a price, and I'm the glorified guy with my body, 1 Corinthians 6. And so as he gets to the second half, he gets to the decisions, he gets to two commands. And when you look at them, the first one is a, present middle voice imperative. The second one is a present passive voice imperative. So it's an ongoing thing in the present tense, but the first one is something I do myself. The second one I allow to be done. It's in the passive. This is where I think a lot of Christians, if they're even trying, have it upside down. They think the first one is up to God to do, and the second one is all on them. And if I don't do it, it won't get done. So let me explain how those two work. In verse two, it reads, and do not be conformed to this world. I zeroed in on one word, and it's the idea of masquerade. What you have done and I have done if we are being conformed to the world is we have taken this new light that has been placed in us where we have been declared righteous. We're now lights because Jesus Christ lives within us. And I've taken the light and I've hung a, what do you want to hang over it? A what? Curtain. Okay, we'll use a curtain. I'll put a curtain over it, kind of like Moses with the veil. But the only reason he put the veil on was because the light started fading and he didn't want people to know. Do I live based on what other people think of me? Is my goal in life to impress people? Never satisfies. If my goal in life is simply to be a tool to reveal Jesus Christ, you can never dissatisfy. They may hate you, they may dislike you, but you cannot dissatisfy. And this is what he's trying to come down here. First off, this present tense imperative is stop masquerading. Stop acting like somebody that you're not. Stop playing games, stop pulling the curtain over you. Stop assuming an outward expression that does not come from within. What do we call that? Hypocrisy. And being a fake. Do we like that? Do you make friends out of people that are, you know, I find the worst hypocrite I can find and that's why I want to be my best friend. That's what our world's doing today. You think they are. Because in politics today, lying is the way to go. And they all lie to each other. And what do you think they do when they're by themselves? What do they say about each other? Nothing good. They don't trust each other. They don't love each other. They're using each other. As long as you go along with me with what I want to go along with, we'll accomplish the same goal. But I don't trust you. And if you deviate just the slightest in politics today, some of you don't watch the news because you don't want to know. But if you deviate just a little bit, what's the term they use? They throw you under the bus. That's because they're really good friends. Loyal, trustworthy, dependable. Paul is talking about something here, and he's telling the Roman Christians, knock it off. You're not helping anybody. Stop masquerading like something you're not. To be conformed here is to assimilate back into the world's pattern. It's mannerisms, it's habits, it's speech, it's styles, it's fashions. What do I want to look like? What do I want people to think of me? It's usually the world standards that I'm grasping. So how do I counteract that? I wear a tie. I showed up at the memorial yesterday, and one of the guys said, oh, good, I'll leave my tie on. Well, why would you take it off? Well, because that's what's expected of me. Is that how you live your life? Is it what people think of you that makes you decide what you do? Shouldn't be. And he left his tie on, but he didn't have to wear a coat like me. But driving over there, I saw the other side of it. We saw a little bumper sticker on the back of a car after we got into Portland, right before we got to the mortuary. And it was a Bible. I went, wow, that caught my attention, a little Bible in the corner of the guy's windshield, back windshield, one of these hatchbacks. And I go, that's interesting. And I got a little closer and I went, it says fake news. That's our world today. And I told him yesterday, I wanted to follow him if he wanted to talk about wherever he wanted. I wanted to follow him, not to attack him. Don't do that. That's never going to help anybody. I just want to ask some questions. First one would have been, why do you think, that is a Bible, right? Yeah, yeah. Why do you think the Bible's fake news? And then listen and take it in, ask more questions, more questions. Basically, you want to get them out far enough that they can hang themselves. Because anybody that says that, in spite of the fake news that often comes through the news and whoever's perspective you're looking at, the Bible isn't. It's the total opposite. It's coming from a God who can only tell the truth, and he cannot lie. So obviously, that guy doesn't know that, which tells me right off with about 25,000 other observations, you've never read it. If you think it's fake news, you think it's fake news that Judas went out and hung himself? No, that's not fake news. You think it's fake news that Abraham lived on planet Earth and had all these, no, no, because of Muslims and the Jews. I said, well, give me, what is it? You put it on the whole Bible. What is it, what are you trying to say? Well, I want to pick some things out of there that I want to call fake news. I said, okay, great. Creation. God could not have created everything in six days. My first question back to him would be, were you there? How do you know that's fake news? Well, because all these scientists have told me. How do you know they're not lying to you? And you could go, and it'd be kind of worthless to go too far into that. But it got my attention to where I realized that's the world today. And he started it. I didn't tell him to put that sticker on his window. So one of my questions would be, why did you put the sticker on your window? Because I want everybody around me to know that the Bible is junk. I said, well, there's got to be. So if I spent time talking with him, you know what I would probably find out? Somebody crammed it down his throat when he was a child, just like they crammed tacos down me. I mean, you can name a whole bunch of things. Do I think tacos are fake news? Have I stopped eating food because my parents made me sit at the table and eat? My mom's spare ribs. I'll pick that one. My mom's going, sorry, mom. However, it may get communicated. I don't think God will tell you what I'm saying. But I hated those spare ribs. I would sit there for an hour after dinner, and I was having this battle. And the problem was, because if it went in, it was going to come back out. Not a pleasant scene. I was actually being nice to everybody at the table. But I had to sit there for an hour one day. My dad says, you're going to eat. Did I eat them? Nope. Did I go to bed without food? Yep. There's all these things we're struggling with. Do I like spare ribs now? Yeah, my mouth changed, my taste buds changed. I could eat my mom's spare ribs today and they'd be just fine. But there's people who have been damaged, and they're being damaged by Christians, and it's not just what I say to them and picking on them and pointing out their sins. It's bigger than that. I'm not being the light. There is no light, and I'm gonna explain that in a second here. I'll get to it in a minute. It's been dampened. It's not because I'm not justified. That is clearly in there, but that doesn't show yet. It won't show until my body has been redeemed. Then the light that is really inside of me will shine forth. Matthew 13, 43. We're going to shine just like Jesus Christ. My theory, am I supposed to stand over to the side? This is Jack speaking. I think Adam and Eve glowed in the Garden of Eden because they were righteous, because they were in the presence of God, just like Moses did in his body. Can I prove that? No. But I can go back to scripture and tell you when Christ comes back, I'm going to glow, according to Matthew 13.43. And I used to be able to say I don't hear any pages turning, but now I don't hear any electronic devices turning. Is that verse correct? You aren't trusting me, are you? I warned you. Paul is stressing to them in a very short time frame in this message he's trying to write that has been passed on to us. that there's a danger in being conformed to the world. This isn't the cosmos. This isn't the world system around us. This isn't the word used in 1 John 2 when he says, love not the world. That's the world system. That's kind of more what the prodigal son did. This is a different word for world here. The idea of what he's trying to describe when he goes in here is it's a present period of time. It's the times in which we are living in. It can be godless, selfish, pleasure-seeking, lovers of money, all the things that we are talking about. But it's a little different than the world as the cosmos. It's this present age. And he's telling us, as he looks at it, he says, do not be conformed, but be transformed. Do not be conformed to this world system. Well, you will be, unless you fight. And I don't mean go after and hurt people. You will be, unless you are walking by the Spirit and resisting the attacks of the world, the flesh, and the devil. There's even a danger with the Holy Spirit. To walk by the Spirit is to, I pictured it at a beach on the sand, and the Holy Spirit's making footprints, and I just put my feet right where he puts his feet. That's walking by the Spirit. If I dawdle and get too far behind and there's other footprints on the beach, I can get lost and don't know which ones are his. But there's another danger. I can run ahead and I don't need his footprints because I'm a super saint. I make my own footprints. I expect the Holy Spirit to follow me until I turn around and, yeah. So I can lag behind, I can get ahead. I don't like being dependent on him. I don't want to submit to him. I don't want to cooperate when he's telling me things to do. Somebody says something really mean and nasty to me. And what I want to do is get ahead of the Holy Spirit, because judgment will come one day, but that's not my department. Or I kind of want to drift back to where he's not paying attention and nail him. They only have two cheeks. Third time's a charm, just boom, plow him right in the jaw. Paul says, stop doing that. This is our world today. This is too many professed believers, many of whom maybe don't even know Christ, because he describes it in Matthew 7, that few there be that find it. There's a narrow path. You're going against all the obstacles. You're not on the broad way that leads to destruction. You're taking the narrow path. It's hard. It's a rabid trail. It's not enjoyable. But the danger is for us to let ourselves be conformed. This is an area specifically of our minds being changed. But he says, stop masquerading. Start being transformed. Allow God to change you. This is a passive. This is a total renovation by the Holy Spirit. I let him move in, and then I let him decorate. What's he want on the windows? What's he want for furniture? What's he want the color scheme to be like? All of that is up to him, and if he wants to change that, and he takes away my ability to walk, or he takes away my ability to think, or whatever it may be that he's taking from me, I say, trust you, thank you, and I succeed in that realm. Jim brought up Fannie Crosby. Very, very angry woman in the early days. Angry at what God had done. And yet you realize when she finally accepted, when she came to Christ and finally accepted that and began to stop being masquerading like one in the world and become conformed to the image of Christ. That he used her in a way that you'll never know. Probably literally never know. Unless they have a Fanny Crosby Museum when we get to the New Jerusalem. And you can sit there for 10,000 years and relive her life and watch everything and learn everything. That's not who I'm going to focus on. I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, all that he has provided, things that I do not deserve, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable, well-pleasing to God, which is your spiritual, logical, reasonable service of worship. And stop being conformed to this world. Stop masquerading. Stop looking like everybody else. But the positive one, allow God. Be transformed. Allow God to change you. This is the metamorphosis. This is a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. It's a radical transformation. You ever open up a chrysalis, some kind of cocoon, when you watch this worm go up and it started spinning? And I used to do that as a kid, watch them a lot. We had the swallowtails that were common where we were. And so you'd watch these things, and you'd look at that, and you'd go, that is amazing. It doesn't look like a butterfly, I mean, like a caterpillar anymore. It just looks like this hard thing with some kind of bony projections on it and just hanging there. So as a kid, what do you do? You open it up. I expected to find a butterfly. What did I find? Goo. And it never turned into a butterfly. Where'd the caterpillar go? Where's the butterfly? What's going on in this process? That's life on planet Earth for you. You're goo. God isn't gonna open you up ahead of time, because you're not ready. But he's working on us, he's making changes here, and he's causing us, the idea again, he's causing us, he's allowing us to be changed, radically transformed. Not like the world, but like Christ. It's through scripture, it's through obedience, the purity of walking by the spirit, through a consistent practice, new habits in my life. until I get tired of it, right? I didn't know any better as a believer. I got saved at seven, got church split at 11, and got back into church when I was 16. I didn't know John through 16, didn't know anything, even though I memorized scripture when I was younger. So I started in, totally embarrassed. My people, you don't know John 3. I remember the guy, one of the kids at the high school group. You don't know John 3.16. He turns to the prettiest girl in the room next to him. He goes, he doesn't know John 3.16. And I kind of melted. But I wasn't living for people. I exploded spiritually. I had been cooped up for years as a true believer at age seven that I'd memorized some scriptures because of lovely neighbors that I'm looking forward to seeing again one day, the Bakers. And when I got back in there, a storm. I got a living Bible and I couldn't read it enough. Was that normal? Does that describe your life? It should. I'm normal. Well, I'm weird, but I'm normal. I devoured that living Bible. I couldn't get enough of it. Just the New Testament. I got razzed at school. I covered it up with brown paper bag back in the day when that's how you covered up your books. It looked just like one of my books. I read it at lunch. I read it at breaks. I read every chance I could. I shared the gospel. I got people mad at me for telling them about Jesus Christ and trying to reach out. And I thought, that's kind of odd. I went to Multnomah Extension, living in San Jose. I went off to Multnomah Bible College, and I was behind everybody. I struggled to get a C average. I didn't know anything, but I was starving. And by the time I graduated from Multnomah, people were coming to me and going, how did you learn so much? Well, it wasn't from class, and it wasn't from getting A's in my report card. Guess what it was from? reading my Bible. I didn't know any better. I thought that's what you're supposed to do, read your Bible. This is what he's talking about. I allowed God, I see things in there, and I go, oh yeah, that's, okay, this has gotta go, let him have control here. That's gotta go, let him have control here. Whatever he wants me to do, missionary, pastor, maybe not the pastor, but the whole struggles, and he says that this is what we're doing. We're allowing him to transform us by the renewing of our minds. And all I get from people often, not from many of you, but I get from people is, well, you know more than I know, okay? How can we change that? Read your Bible. But you're just, you're equipped for that. Really? Have you ever sat down with me at school? Have you ever saw me at seminary when I went on? And I did better, but I come home and there's times I'm just bawling. I can't keep up. They're dumping stuff on you daily. They're requiring papers and they're giving out quizzes and tests and whatever it may be and you're supposed to be making this grade. I struggled the whole way. But guess where I put my focus? The Bible. Secondly, I put my focus on church. Thirdly, I put my focus on school. And I warned a lot of those guys because I'd already been there. I'd been in ministry for a few years. I said, don't make school your focus. Don't make grades your focus. That isn't what Paul's telling you to do here. Make Jesus Christ your focus. Let him transform you. And so I took what I learned in scripture, I took what I learned in school, and I went to the church and I worked it out. And my grades suffered for that. I did better grades in seminary than I did in Bible college, but they suffered because I put people over self, over grades, over impressing people. Did I get rewards or awards when I graduated? No. Was I the most likely to succeed? No. Did I get the prestigious preaching award? No. Did I get any? No. Did I graduate? Yeah. My goal wasn't to impress men. It was to impress Jesus Christ. Let me pull something up here. As he goes in, and let me close the last three and then I'll pull it up. What he's after here is this discernment. You need to be able to prove what the will of God is. And he describes it in three ways. This is what pleases God. This is what the plan of God is. This is the direction he's going. You want to know what that is so you can walk by the spirit, so you can follow after. And he says the will of God is three things that the world does not understand. Unbelievers do not understand. It is profitable in the sense that it is good. Agathos is beneficial. It's good in character to where it helps you. Romans 12 as you go over to verse 21, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. That's the same word. It helps you overcome evil. When you know what the good things are and you're going to focus on that. Those things that are beneficial for you. It's the long-term perspective. He says it's also pleasing or acceptable, and it's well pleasing to God. He approves of everything to do with his will. It meets his strict requirements. It gives pleasure to God. It's not disappointing. Like the first one, it's profitable. It's not harmful. But the last one, it is practical in the sense that it is perfect. This is what Paul strove to do with everybody in his life. present every man complete in Christ at the cost of my own life, the cost of my money, the cost of my prestige as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, the cost of my countrymen hating me and persecuting me and wanting me to suffer, and you get a long list in the book of Corinthians as to what Paul went through. That's okay. I love God more than I hate pain. I love people, and I'm willing to suffer the things that let me get to them. So when he puts you in jail in the coming days, we've been sharing our Wednesday nights. You think that America is static? You think that what we're doing right now is going to stay the same? No. Sin is never satisfied. And when you read Proverbs 29 and you realize that the ungodly hate the godly and the godly hate the ungodly, or at least they should hate ungodly things. It's just how it works. That's why they crucified Christ. What do you think they're going to do to you and me? So am I going to receive that? Am I going to rejoice in that? Am I going to trust God when my credit card, my bank cards, and my don't work anymore, when they take my house away from me, I don't have access to food? Then what do you do? You get excited. You count it all joy. I get to be fed just like John the Baptist, or with, well, I don't like that stuff. That's honey and locusts. I get fed like Elijah, where the ravens bring it to me, who are very selfish birds. That's God's sense of humor. You think you're gonna die before God wants you to die? No. But what am I learning right now? How am I fixed? in my walk. What do you think it's going to take for the world, unbelievers, to look at us and say, you're different. What's going on in you? Explain to me the hope that you have, because it's real. And it's not based on circumstances. It's not based on stuff. It's real. This is what God wants us to be. What is perfect, what has been brought to completion, cannot be improved upon. I've been talking, Jim brought it up in Sunday school, trying to explain to people, well, nobody's perfect. That is not in the Bible. Jesus is perfect, first off, that's where I would correct that, and he's a man. But secondly, he expects us to be perfect. Where does that fit? Matthew chapter 5, last verse, what's it say? Be ye perfect as I am perfect. Oh, but he doesn't mean perfect. Yeah, he does, he means this exact same word. Complete, without shortcomings. Cannot be improved upon. No, no, no, no. Christians are, Christians can't be perfect until Jesus comes and takes us back. It's just the opposite, folks. God is expecting perfection out of you, because it doesn't come from you. It's you and I allowing God to do it in us, to stop making excuses for sin, Oreos, ice cream, whatever it is that I'm struggling with. Stop making excuses for having a bad attitude. I had one the last couple days. Strike that from the record. Too many pressures and things that are going on. And so as you're looking here, this is what he's after. You have to get on your knees before God as a true believer. And I don't want to make that assumption. I've met so many people who profess to be believers over the years. Some 10, 15, 20 years that I knew them, only to see them really come to Christ and then see Christ in them. I could tell they weren't saved. They wouldn't listen to me. I've watched people on deathbeds many times. And I can tell right away, believer, unbeliever. Because those kind of pressures bring out the best and the worst in you. The issue here comes down to a little illustration. This is crude, no excuses, but it's crude. This is Holy Joe. Can you see Holy Joe? I'm not blocking anybody right here. Ignore everything about Holy Joe, except the three light bulbs. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, that's what they looked like. Their spirit was alive, their soul was alive, their body was alive. When they sinned, what happened? All three of them changed instantly. Death came instantly for the spiritual realm of their life. It came for Adam 930 years later to the physical realm when he finally died in Genesis 5. And this is where they struggled. And it was evidenced in their son, their two sons. Because Cain went away from God, Abel followed God. Abel obeyed and submitted to God and brought the right offering. Cain refused. Cain elevated his soul, his mind, his will, his emotions, and took over as God and murdered his brother. Eventually, you'll see down the road a little bit that Seth comes along, and Eve is greatly relieved that she now has another man-child, and that man followed God. So Seth's line brought them back toward a pursuit of God. The question today is, where do you stand with these light bulbs in your life? If you have genuinely received Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior, which light bulb gets lit up? Not all of them. Your spirit. So I should have little signs hanging here that say spirit, soul, body, so you'll understand. I finally gave up. I was trying everything under the sun to make this work better. And you know I'm not an artist. That came a lot in you. And this came along. You have a new nature. I don't have a lot of time, but I'm going to cover just a few things. When you become a believer, you have a new nature, and the second thing that kicks in is a new lifestyle. This is the maturity. You instantly were right with God when you came to Christ. You weren't that way before coming to Christ. What about my body? What does Romans 8.23 tell me? Romans 8.23, I'm waiting for what? My adoption. And then he clarifies that, comma, describes adoption as the redemption of your body. That's this part. When Christ returns, voila. But until then, this is the flesh. This is the physical realm that we're dragging around with us. Because that's all we have. Present your body and live in sacrifice. Why? Because it's not going to cooperate like these two do. But when I allow sin into my life, what happens to my soul? It never goes out. But it diminishes. Too many Christians are living around like that, making excuses, playing games, moving from one sin to the next sin to the next sin. What does God want us to be like? He wants us to look just like Christ in us, by our mind, will, and emotions, by our cooperation, by our submitting to Him. Matthew 13, 43, did anybody look that up? What are we gonna do someday? And it's quoting from the Old Testament. We're going to shine how? Don't trust the pastor. Always look him up. Shine forth as the sun in the kingdom. Do you understand the glow that's going to come off of me? Bing. Never to go away. Matthew 13, 43. So you're supposed to check it to make sure I gave you the right one. Good, good, good. It's hard to figure out where that's being taken from, but the New American puts it in capitals. The righteous will shine forth as the son and the king of their father. And so as you realize what's coming, right now I'm struggling in this realm. This is what I'm really battling with. And so there's a wrestling between my flesh and my spirit. But the thing you don't have is an old nature. When I came to Christ, I got a new nature right here. Sorry, new nature. That hasn't changed. And now I can walk by the spirit. I don't have to carry out the desires of the flesh. And I don't have time to develop this. This is a book. This was a book that I wanted to read or to write at some point. And just entitled, Man. So the people understand, but I'm finding too many Christians, they're wrestling with this, and they don't understand. Or they'll tell you there's only two parts to man, that a man is a, the whole picture there is immaterial and material. They call those dichotomous. But scripture tells you in 1 Thessalonians 5.23 that Paul writes to the Thessalonians, and what's he want them to do? 1 Thessalonians 5.23. You have to look it up. You're not going to remember anything I did. You'll remember this holy joke. But you won't remember what I was doing with it. What's that? 1 Thessalonians 5.23, Paul desires? Sanctify. This is sanctification, remember? Completely in what three areas? Spirit, soul, body be sanctified. Set apart. Dedicated to God. Justification, sanctification, glorification. One man. Each true individual believer. What we have today is too many people running around and there are no lights on. But they're claiming to be children of God. 1 John 3.10 says the children of God and the children of the devil are Obvious. Why aren't they obvious in our world today? Because the Christians are, even though they have a light on, they're barely shining. The unbeliever can't even tell the difference. You look just like me. I'm moral at times. I don't always do everything wrong. Maybe I'm even religious. What's the difference between us? This is the difference. They need to see Jesus Christ running my life. That doesn't mean I live like a Pharisee, because Pharisees weren't saved. Pharisees did not have the lights on. They thought they were earning their way. It's when I finally come to faith in Christ and I trust him and him alone for my salvation that I realize I never could earn it. The wages of sin is death. I deserve to spend eternity in hell. Apart from the mercies of God, that's where I would have gone. I don't care how good of a person or moral or kind or nice to people I may have been. The wages of sin is death. And he didn't just mean physically. He meant spiritually, soulishly. Which one are you? Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. You are the light of the world. Let your light shine in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. And as we're equal with them in the realm of the physical, the body, and we struggle with them, may watch us go through cancer, Loss of a limb, loss of a loved one, loss of a job. Whatever it is they're watching, they should see a big difference in us. But that's only going to happen because I'm walking by the Spirit, and I'm in God's Word, and I'm letting my mind be renewed day by day. It's not magic. I get out of the Word for a few days. I hate vacations away because it makes it so hard. I have to force and make time because I'm out of my norm. But if I get out of the Word just for a few days, you start plotting. I'm running on battery and it isn't God's. God doesn't have a battery. Does this kind of help make sense? I want to stop and end it. But I wanted you to see something here. This is what we're supposed to look like. This is what we're waiting for, the redemption of our bodies. You're not going to get that. Stop fixing your body. Stop trying to do abnormal things and surgeries and whatever else. And I got to be careful because there may be some of it in here. I'm not trying to pick on you. We're all like that. So I'm not going to get specific about anything. Make it look the best you can. Don't get me wrong. If the couch is worn out, maybe throw a blanket on there. But it's like, whatever it may take. But that's not my focus. I'm not spending thousands of dollars to have some kind of physical surgery done so that people can be impressed with me. Because you know what most of us do when we look at somebody like that? We're not impressed. You should have saved your money. You can't fix it. It's dying. And if you make it look good for five minutes and maybe with some brushing and whatever they do to pictures and stuff, you go, ah, that's really impressive. But that's not reality, you hypocrite. Focus on what can't change. Imitate Jesus Christ and the one living in us, in our spirit. That's what he's after. This is what I think Paul's trying to get to. And so he moves from there. So then when you're done with the first 11 chapters, understanding the mercies of God, then go to the final 12 to 16 chapters and figure out, OK, what am I supposed to be doing? Because that's what the Book of Romans is all about. See, you got a whole message from Romans in one day. This is what I'm practicing in my life. This is why I told you to read your Bibles. This is what my wife knows most about me when she sees me when my light goes dim and when my light comes up. She loves me anyway. This is what I do to non-Christians around me, sinners who sometimes do horrendous things. God forgave me my sin debt, far worse than anything anybody can do to me because of his holiness. I need to forgive them. I don't mean excuse them. And I don't mean justify them. And I'm not saying to encourage them because if they're living in sin, guess what it's doing to them? It's destroying them. When I hear people on the radio say, I better turn this off and let it cool down. But when I hear people on the radio say, I don't care what they do in their bedroom, that's just one popular one that I hear a lot about. You better. Because if you say, I don't care what they do in their bedroom, you're saying, I don't love you. I've had a lot of friends die from a lot of sins, and a lot of unbelieving friends. They wanted nothing to do with the truth, and I couldn't help them. They wouldn't take the free gift of eternal life. They wouldn't let Jesus Christ change them. They wouldn't give up control. I am in charge. I have my own destiny, whatever the phrase is. Have you truly trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Is the light on in you? then it's gonna shine out of you. Because God spanks his own. He doesn't let his own children live in sin. You may play around with some things once in a while, but you'll come along and whack. And God knows how to spank just right. He will, you will be conformed to the image of his son. You have received that free gift, he will work with us. I watch for that in people's lives. If I see somebody claiming to be a believer, but they're living in sin, I pray for them. I share with them. I watch. If there's no conviction, if they're comfortable with the way they're living in their sin, they're not saved. If they're not saved, they're going to hell. And they're not bringing God glory. That's what I'm after. That's what Paul was after. Present every man complete in Christ was for God to be glorified. Paul wasn't gonna show up and go, okay, I got my list. Here's 5,332 people that I presented complete in Christ. You owe me. Nope. We're gonna bow before him as I close off and simply say, here I am. I owe you. Anything I've accomplished in my life is because of you. Anything that could be done that has any value is because of you. Is Jesus Christ the focus of your life? If he isn't, you're not saved. It's that simple. And I'm not the pastor, and you're not paying me a salary anymore, and I won't be in that office, and so, eh, so what? Let's pray. Father, we need your help. We're living in a world that is going downhill so fast, and we're really good critics, but we're really poor inspectors of ourselves. Lord, help us clean up things in our life through your word as we cooperate with you. We need you to make us like Jesus Christ. We need you to use our lives to bring glory to yourself and people to salvation. Help us. Help us to stop giving excuses to you or stop expecting the pastor or somebody else to do it. Help us to obey out of love for you and out of a true belief from your word that it's your will. and we want to please you. So thank you for what you're going to do in Jesus name.