Are You Performing or Being Transformed? // Romans 12:1-8

and we are back in Romans 12 today. So grab your journals and your Bibles, and I will meet you there in just a second. But 15 years ago, this month was a significant time in my life because I turned 18 years old. And do you know the first thing that I got? A pack of cigarettes. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I got an iPhone. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mom and dad surprised me one day when I got home from basketball practice with my very own iPhone 4S. If you remember that phone, it was the first iPhone to have Siri, the thing that really still hasn't improved over however many years it's been, and the first iPhone to have iMessage. And I distinctly remember setting up that phone and looking through the iMessage settings and seeing this thing that you could toggle on called read receipts. And I distinctly remember having the thought why in the world would anyone ever turn that on, right? Because if I'm not going to respond to you, I don't want you to see that I'm not responding to you. If you have your read receipts turned on, I don't know what it says about you, okay? But it says something about your personality. The introduction of read receipts, why do I tell you all this? The introduction of read receipts taught us something, and it's that we like to receive text messages immediately while maintaining the liberty to decide if, when, and how we respond to them. And I think a lot of times as Christians, we can have the same mindset with the gospel, right? As Christians, we love us some Savior Jesus, right? We are real eager to receive Jesus in all that He offers us in the gospel, but we're not always as eager to respond in obedience. We tend to be a little slower on the uptick in surrendering to the lordship of Jesus in every single area of our lives. But today in Romans chapter 12, the Apostle Paul is going to say, no, it doesn't work like that. If you have received Jesus, if you have received God's mercies, then you will respond to God's mercies, right? For 11 straight chapters, the Apostle Paul went through the Book of Romans, basically unpacking all the different aspects of what it means to receive Christ. And today we're turning the page to Romans 12. This is a hinge point in the Book of Romans, and the point that Paul is going to make, and really this is the main idea for our message today is it's time to respond. It's time to respond. We're going to walk through the first eight verses of Romans chapter 12, and we're going to see three ways that every Christian should respond to the mercies of God. They're not really cute or clever, they come right out of the passage. Okay, present your body, renew your mind, and use your gifts. And before we jump in to the text, I have been sitting knowing I was going to preach this for a while, but for the last

couple of weeks, looking over this passage, I have become personally convinced that what we are about to look at may be the clearest description of the Christian life in the whole Bible. Okay, so no pressure. Here we go. Romans chapter 12, verse one, it says this, "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." Okay, so Paul begins here with an appeal or a strong encouragement for us to present our bodies as living sacrifices. And I know many of us who've been in church for a while, we've heard that, we've read that, but in order to really understand what it means, we have to see that Paul is here expanding on a practice founded the Old Testament called the burnt offering. Okay, his original readers would have understood this, but we often don't because by the time we get to the book of Leviticus and the Old Testament in our Bible reading plan, right, we have crashed and burned. Okay, but what Paul is showing is that the burnt offering or what we have to see is that the burnt offering was one of the primary ways that the people of God responded to God in worship for centuries. Okay, and there were a couple of important things that I want to tell you about it. Okay, the first is that the burnt offering was continual. Okay, it was something that the people of Israel did every single day, morning and evening, right, it didn't matter if they felt like it, it didn't matter if they had brunch plans, okay, it wasn't a seasonal or occasional, it was continual. Okay, it was also a covering for sin. And here's what we know is that every single person wants their sin to be covered. Everybody, Christians and non-Christians alike, we all want our sin to be covered. And so we have a tendency to try and cover it by either hiding it or minimizing it or rationalizing it. But what we have to see, what we have to understand is that if you cover your sin, the Bible says that God will uncover it. Numbers 32, 23 is not a verse that I see on very many people's coffee mugs because here's what it says. You can be sure of this, that your sin will find you out. It typically happens in this life, but even if somehow you're successful at denying it

or ignoring it or hiding it or whatever, for your whole life, when you stand before the Lord God in judgment, the Bible says that it will be uncovered. Okay, but on the flip side, the good news of what the Bible teaches, right? The good news of the gospel is that if you uncover your sin, God in his grace will cover it, right? Praise the Lord that ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God has been in the business of covering over our sin. That's why he's a good God, that's what we worship him is because he's been in the business of covering our sin. And in the Old Testament, the burnt offering was one of the ways that he did that. Okay, how it worked was the worshiper would bring one of their animals, their best animals, an unblemished animal, and they would put one hand on the animal's head to symbolize the transfer of guilt from themselves to the animal. And then they would take a knife and kill the animal to show that the just penalty or punishment for sin was falling on the animal instead of them. Okay, and then the offering was consumed, right? The whole thing was consumed. There were certain offerings in the Old Testament where a portion was held back, either for themselves or their family or even the priests, but not this one. Okay, the whole animal was placed on the altar and the entire thing was consumed in fire. Nothing held back, right?

Which shows us that the offering was also costly, right? It was the conscious decision of the worshiper, right? To take something, right? That was precious and that, you know, was valuable and say, I'm not gonna use this for myself. You have it, Lord. Here it is, all of it, okay? And with all of this context about the burnt offering, here's the point that Paul is trying to make in verse one. Okay, it's that the true response of worship on this side of the cross has only gotten more costly, right? Like while this old offering costs the believer the death of their best animal, the new offering, the new response of the Christian on this side of the cross costs the believer their whole life. The thing that pleases God, right? The pleasing aroma, if you will, is it's no longer a sacrificial death of an animal's body. It is the sacrificial life of the Christian's body. Okay, that's the point that Paul is making here in verse one. So what does it practically look like? Like very tangibly for us. What does it look like to present your body as a living sacrifice? Well, first, it means that every part of you is surrendered. Not too long ago, I read a civil war story about the Battle of Fort Donaldson in 1862. So Ulysses S. Grant was not present yet. He was a general in the Union army. And as the story goes, they had surrounded the Confederates

inside of Fort Donaldson. Okay, and so the Confederate general, right? Seeing this and knowing that they're surrounded, right? He tried to send a letter back to Grant and negotiate the terms of their surrender. And this was Grant's reply to him. He said, no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender will be accepted. And I remember reading that and thinking, that is exactly what God requires of us. Right, part of what it means to be a living sacrifice is to stop negotiating with God and start surrendering. Every aspect of your being, right? What you touch with your hands, what you look at with your eyes, what you listen to with your ears, right? The ways that you spend your time, the things that come out of your mouth, every aspect is surrendered as an instrument of worship. Okay, and if every aspect of your body is an instrument of worship, that means that every place you go becomes a place of worship, right? Sacrifices were offered on an altar, right? Which means that for the living sacrifice, every place you go becomes an altar, a place of worship. And the problem with some of you is that this altar, right here at the front of every one of our campuses, this altar is your only altar, right? It's the only place where you worship and serve the Lord.

Okay, and don't get me wrong, like we want these altars at the front of every one and pray and repent and be encouraged and be prayed over. We want that the part of what Paul and therefore the Lord is saying through this passage is, "Hey, you can do business with me at your workplace too." And in your car and at your kids' soccer games, like church family, imagine with me for just a second about what God might do in your life if you started to view the average places in your life as altars, like students, high school students, college students, what might God do if you started to view your school as an altar? And if every morning when you wake up and you drive to school or you go to class, wherever you go, Reynolds, North Davidson, Davey High, Carolina University, wherever it is, and you said, "This is not just where I get an education. This is where I worship the Lord and live on mission." Parents, moms and dads, what could God do if you started to view your kids' bedtime and their bedroom as an altar? And every night at 6.30 and you finished dinner and before you walk in that room, you say, "This is not a speed bump on the way to the couch for me to watch my TV show. This is the place where God has given me to point my children a place where God has given me to point my children to Him so that generations and generations might worship and serve the Lord." See, church, part of why we exist is to saturate our homes and our cities with the aroma of Christ. We want Winston Salem and Moxville and Lexington and Mount Aerie and Kerner'sville and wherever you live to smell more like Christ. And the only way, right? The way that that happens is when all of us every day present our bodies to the Lord as living sacrifices. Okay, that's the first way that Paul says we respond. Okay, a second we're going to see in these verses that I'm about to read is by renewing our minds. Let's look at it together starting in verse two. It says, "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." So Paul ends this verse talking about the will of God and Christians, right? We can get bejigity about the will of God sometimes. You know, it's like, "Who should I marry and where should I go to school and what kind of deodorant should I buy?" Right? But we need to see that the will of God in the Bible is a lot less about making a right decision and more about becoming a right type of person, right? It's about becoming the kind of person who honors God with all of the decisions that we make. And what Paul is saying in this verse is that the way that you and me, the way that we become that kind of person is by being

transformed, not by being conformed, okay? To be conformed is to be pressed or shaped into a mold. One of my least favorite things to do with my kids is Plato, okay? Not to be the guy that is complaining up here from the pulpit, but I guess here we go, okay? I don't like Plato. I don't love the way that it smells. I don't love the texture of it on my hands. I don't love picking it out of my kid's teeth after I've told them repeatedly not to put it in their mouth, okay? But nevertheless, when we find ourselves inevitably doing Plato, what they do is they grab a mold like a tree or a puppy or something and they press, they conform the Plato into the image of the mold. And what Paul is saying by using this word is that our lives are a lot like Plato. If we just kind of float through life and remain passive, we will be shaped, conformed into the mold of this world. In that church, that should serve as a warning for us. I know you, I don't like to think of myself as a very impressionable person, okay? But the reality is that we are being shaped and molded by a lot more than we realize, right? Your algorithm and your parents' expectations and your peers, right? Your music and your TV show choices, all of these things that we interact with out here, right? They have the power to shape us in here, right? What we love and what we believe and what we pursue. And if I could be so bold as to speak to the parents for just a second, the same goes for your kids. I have served as a pastor over our our kids ministry for a couple of... Is to realize that there are kids in our kids ministry who have been shaped by their iPad instead of their parents. You say, "Come on, how do you know? Trust me. I know. Come and spend a morning or an afternoon in our upper elementary classroom and you will know too." Okay, and listen, I'm not here to like heap shame or guilt or condemn anyone, right? Raising your kids to know and love and follow Jesus may be the hardest thing that someone can do, but as Christians and as Christian parents, it just underscores the importance of guarding our inputs and our children's inputs because what, if we don't, right? They are going to shape regardless. They are going to shape us. Okay, Paul says don't be conformed, but he says be transformed, right? Which is the exact opposite. Transformation is not changed. It occurs from the outside in, but rather from the inside out. Okay, it occurs from the inside out. I was never very good at Greek in seminary, but the Greek word translated transformation here is a metamorpho, okay? Which is where we get the word. It probably sounds familiar. It's where we get the word metamorphosis from. Okay, and if you've ever read the book, a very hungry caterpillar, right? All the toddler parents in the room are like, please, no, right?

We already have it memorized, right? If you've ever read it, you know that the caterpillar doesn't get to the end of the book and have a butterfly costume on, right? The very fabric of his being has been changed or transformed. Christianity is about transformation. Okay, let's just like, that's what all of this is about. It's about being changed from the inside out, right? It's why we say all the time that Christianity is so much different from religion, right? Religion is about performing and pretending. It's about, you know, wearing the right things and saying, giving the right answers, right? Praying nice sounding prayers to give off the impression of godliness, right? It describes the Pharisees in the New Testament to A.T. and it's the reason that Jesus consistently was rebuking them, right? Because they were performing like godly people, but they were not transforming into godly people. God calls us as Christians to the hard work of transformation. And the way that he says we do it is by renewing our minds. Okay? And what's interesting here is that Paul does not say change your mind. Okay? He says, renew your mind. And I think that shows us that the problem with us oftentimes is not always what we think. It's how we think. This, this, this came home to me a couple of weeks ago at community groups. So I'm at group and I'm standing in the kitchen talking with another guy in my group and all of a sudden I hear this loud banging sound coming from down the hall. Okay? And so I walk down the hall to see what happens and I open the door. And, and the four year olds are in our group are in this room by themselves, which, you know, is a problem in of itself. Okay? But what they're doing in the room is they have these hard little cars and I kid you not. They are chucking them as hard as they can against the window. Okay? So me, you know, being a pastor and I'll walk in very calmly and just say, hey guys, what are we doing? And this is what they tell me. This is not a joke. They said, we want to hear the birds outside. So we're trying to break the window. Okay? And, and you know, I thought about that. I'm like, you know, the, the problem was not a problem of, of logic, right? They were, they were actually thinking very clearly. It wasn't what they were thinking. The problem was how, right? Shattering the window is not the best safest or even easiest way to hear the birds outside. Right? And I tell you that story because I think as Christians, a lot of times our sin struggles are not necessarily problems of logic. Right? Sometimes our sinful decisions, the sinful decisions that we make are some of the most thought through and calculated things that we do. Right? We can think things like if we cohabitate, we will save money on rent. If I have another drink, my problems won't feel as tangible. Right? If and when we find our family finds the perfect church that meets all

of our preferences, then our family is going to start to thrive. You see, the problem with all of that thinking is not necessarily that it's faulty logic. Okay? It's just that we believed false premises. Right? Cohabitating might save you a couple hundred bucks on rent, but it's the favor and blessing of God is not going to rest on your relationship. Right? The third and the relationship with God and other people, right? Your family is not going to thrive by finding this idealistic perfect church, right? Thriving comes when a family chooses to commit to an imperfect one that God is in the midst of. Do you know why the Bible frequently refers to Satan by the name deceiver? It's because if he can get us to believe those false premises or lies then sinful behavior is the natural result. Okay, so if you, all over, and I had every campus, if you've checked out, I need you back right now because this is a massively important principle, okay? You ready? Every sinful behavior in your life stems from a sinful desire and sinful desires come from lies. Let me say that again. Sinful behaviors oftentimes come from sinful desires and sinful desires stem from lies. This is exactly what happened in Genesis 3, right? It's why it's, that's in one of the first couple chapters of our Bible, right? Satan comes to Adam and Eve and he says, "Guys, you won't surely die. God is holding out on you." And then what happens? They believe that lie in their heads, then they desire the fruit in their hearts and they reach out and grab it with their hands. Okay, by the way, this is why the transformation that oftentimes we so desperately seek does not come through just modifying our behavior. Okay, I can't tell you how many guys I have sat down with who confess some addiction or struggle with pornography and they've got covenant eyes and they've gotten a dumb phone and an accountability partner and they're still not seeing a ton of victory over their sin. And the reason is because at the core, like at the bottom level, they're still believing a lie that joy and satisfaction, ultimate joy and satisfaction are going to come through immediate and unhindered sexual fulfillment. But that's a lie. Okay, one of the problems, one of the reasons that some of us are not seeing the change or the transformation in certain areas of our lives is not, is not sometimes due to a lack of trying. It's not necessarily a lack of effort. Okay, sometimes we don't see the transformation we want because we're focused on renewing the wrong thing. Paul says, be transformed by what? Renewing your mind. Hey, how do you do that? Well, let me give you four things that I have seen or found helpful in my life or in time with other people, four ways that you can renew your mind. Okay, the first is by identifying the lie, right? If every sinful behavior sins from desire and

desire from a lie, right, then we have to start by identifying the lies that our minds are prone to believe. And very practically, here's what this means. You can't stop at just confessing your sin. Okay, I know oftentimes as Christians, you know, we talk about confession and yes, I mean, of course, it's super important. But if you want to be successful at killing your sin, you have to begin to see confession is just the start. Okay, after confession, you move to interrogation, right? You're not just saying that you did something, but you're trying to do some digging to find out why. And very practically, here's what this could look like. You know, let's say you've been unwise with your finances and you've lost some money on sports books. Okay, you have to ask the question, why, right? Why do I gamble on sports books? Well, it's because I like it. Okay, why do you like it? Well, it's because it gives me an adrenaline rush. Okay, why do you need that adrenaline rush? Because maybe I've believed the lie that God is boring. And he's insufficient to meet my God-given need for adventure. You guys track in with that, like in order to renew our mind, we have to start by identifying the lies that our minds are prone to believe. And then after that, you saturate your mind with truth. And these don't necessarily go in order, right? But you saturate your mind with truth. Like our minds are absorbent. They're like sponges, right? Just like a sponge sits in, absorbs whatever it's sitting in, our minds absorb the content that they're sitting in, which, again, is why it is so important to be auditing our inputs, right? And asking ourselves the question, is my mind being saturated more by the truth about God and his word or by like real, countless reels on Instagram and, you know, college football, which i love but you get it you know it's like we And as Jin Wilkin has said before, this is why this is so important to saturate your mind with truth, because she said before that your heart cannot love what your mind does not know. Your heart can't love what your mind doesn't know. So if you come in here every Sunday and remain completely emotionless through every single worship song, and you find yourself not really having much of a desire to share the gospel or meet your neighbors

or whatever it is ever, then it's like the only logical explanation is that you probably just don't know God very well. Because if you know Him, you will love Him. And if you love Him, then you will serve Him. Okay, so you saturate your mind with truth. And then another thing, you obey the truth. Okay, like here's another really helpful principle is that lies lose their power in the context of obedience. When I was doing college ministry at UVA, I would frequently find myself sitting down with a guy that I was investing in, and not to make this about me, but a guy that I was investing in, and he would confess some sin struggle, and so we do the thing of identifying the lie. And then this is what we do. Okay, we would get up, we would walk over to the dining hall, we would get some food, and then we would sit down at a table with some guy that neither of us had ever met before. Okay, it's kind of awkward, but like that's what we would do, and I would encourage him to try and share the gospel with this guy. Because if I could get him to see that God is not boring, right, let's go back to the sports book illustration, for example, like if that's what he's struggling with, if I could get him to see that, wait a second, God is not boring, and His mission is more than sufficient to meet my God given need for adventure,

then you know what happens? Sports books, all of a sudden, they look a little bit less attractive, okay? Identify the lie, right, saturate your mind with truth, obey the truth, and then lastly, you ask the Holy Spirit to do what He does. You ask the Holy Spirit to do His thing, right? When is the last time that you prayed to the Holy Spirit? Right, the Holy Spirit is not an it, okay? He's a person, right, the third person of the Trinity, and one of His primary purposes is your transformation. And do you know when He does His most transformative work? When His people ask Him to, right? When Christians get serious before Him and they say, Holy Spirit, I don't wanna believe lies anymore. I don't wanna behave like this. Like I want you to do what you say you're gonna do and change me and make me more like Jesus, okay guys? Spiritual formation is impossible, apart from the work and the power of the Holy Spirit. So let's be a people who asks Him to do what only He can do, okay? Two responses we've talked about so far, okay? Presenting your body and renewing your mind. And in these next verses that we're gonna look at, Paul is gonna make the transition from talking about your body to talking about Christ's body, okay? And we're gonna see that a third response that we should have to the mercies of God is by using our gifts inside the context of a local church. Look at verse three with me.

Says this, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of Himself more highly than He ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. So one of Paul's favorite metaphors for the church is the body. And I think it's the most helpful one because it teaches us so much about what the church is and how we as Christians should relate to it, okay? And one of the things that the first things that Paul is saying by using this metaphor is that if you are a Christian, you are a body part. I know it's kind of a weird thing to think about yourself as, but like that's what he's saying, right? And body parts can exist in several different states. Right, just think about it. Like a body part can be detached, okay? So like, not to freak anybody out here with this illustration, but I'm just gonna go for it. Like a body part can be detached. Imagine you got up for a second after this service and you, after waiting to get down or whatever, like you go in the bathroom and you open the stall door and there on the ground is a severed human hand, right? Like you would lose your mind.

At least I hope you would, right? Like if not, you've probably got a bigger problem, right? But because in that scenario, right, there are two massive problems. There's a hand on the floor, okay? And also, there's a dude walking around our building in serious trouble. He's suffering and he's making a mess, right? Okay, I tell you that because those same problems occur when Christians get detached from the church. Not only do we suffer individually, but the church suffers corporately. And I don't want to be naive, like detachment happens, some of you find yourself there now. Like maybe you've been at a church for a long time, or your church attendance is sporadic at best. I don't know why those things happen, but they do. Like maybe you had a bad experience with the church. Or maybe, you know, you've recently moved or you've recently had a baby or your kid's schedule. You know, I don't know, but if you're there, I want you to hear this encouragement. It is okay to stay there, or it's okay to be there, but it will be detrimental if you stay there. Right, because you were designed by God to need the church and the church was designed by God to need you. We're going to see this in just a second, right? But if you are a Christian, you have the spirit of the living God inside of you, and you have gifts that you can use to meaningfully contribute to the mission of a church. Okay, so a body part can be detached. It can also be numb, which is also not great. I don't know if you have ever woken up in the middle of the night and had this thought. I cannot feel my arm, okay? And so what do you do? You do one of these numbers where you're like flinging it off the side of the bed, you know, and trying to like getting it to wake up again so that it can feel something, right? In that scenario, like your arm is attached to your body, like it's 100%, it's fully there, but you just can't feel it, and it's not really doing much of anything. It's numb, okay? And I say that because that definitely describes some people in this church. There are some people here like at our Winston-Salem campus and at the Lexington campus and at the David campus who you're attached, like you're here physically and you're probably attending consistently and you would even call this your church home, but if you're honest,

you're not contributing much of anything of your time, talent, or treasure to the mission of this church. And if that's you, I want to encourage you. We don't want that from you. We want it for you. So much so that we would say if for some reason you feel like you can't do that here, we would encourage you to consider doing it somewhere else because we don't want you to miss out on some of the most meaningful and powerful and effective means of grace that God gives us to flourish in the Christian life, okay? And then lastly, a body part can be engaged, right? Obviously, it can be engaged, right? The hands doing what the hands were meant to do, the mouth doing what the mouth was meant to do, right? All of the different parts of the body moving and functioning in synchrony, right? In the way that God designed them and the way that the Bible talks about this is operating in the spiritual gifts. And that's what Paul turns to next. Let's look at this. These are the last couple verses that we will look at, picking up in verse 6. Paul says, "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy and proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness." So a lot of Christians in our kind of stream tend to view, I would put myself at a season in this sort of mindset, we tend to view the spiritual gifts sort of like a tuna fish sandwich. You know, it's like, that seems like it would be healthy, but it like looks and smells kind of weird. And so like, if you like it, good for you, I'm glad, but like I'm not going to get within a mile of that thing, okay? And usually people have that kind of mindset either, not because they've had some deep-seated biblical conviction about it, because they've seen either a person or a church practice the spiritual gifts in ways that are maybe just different or strange or wrong, right? We tend to believe, and then we just kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know, but we tend to believe like what Sam storms as an author, he's called the 11th commandment of evangelicalism, which is thou shalt not do at all what someone else has done poorly, right? But what I want us to do, just for a second, is not look at or talk about what other Christians have done with the gifts, I want us to just look at and talk about what the Bible says about the gifts, okay? There's so much that we are not going to be able to do. but I want to talk about a couple of quick things. So first, the Bible teaches that spiritual gifts should be desired by the church.

Okay, Paul talks about this a lot more in first Corinthians, but somehow we as Christians live in a culture where we are desiring to be gifted in just about every area of our lives, except our spiritual lives. You know, and I feel like sometimes God is up in heaven going, where are the men and women who want to be gifted spiritually? You know, it's like, I know you want to be gifted at work or in your golf game or in your like making your sourdough, but where are the men and women who want unique spiritual power and effectiveness for ministry? You know, the problem is not that God's not willing. The problem is that we oftentimes don't want him to, right? He is willing, do you want him to? Do you want to be desired and gifted? Do you desire to be gifted spiritually? Because the spiritual gifts should be desired. They should also be discovered in the church. A spiritual gift should be discovered in the church. Can I talk for just a second about online spiritual gift tests? Okay, I'm not here to be the guy that bashes on things, right? But let's just think, like do you think the Roman church had a spiritual gift test? You know, were they just helpless and hopeless to figure out what their spiritual gifts were? No, they were not, right? Because spiritual gifts, God designed them to be discovered in the context of a local church.

You know, it's like if my son comes to me and asks me, hey dad, what sport do you think I'm good at? You know what I'm gonna tell him? I don't know son, let's go play him and we'll find out. You know, so if you're here and you would say, I don't know what my spiritual gifts are, but I want to discover them. Let me give you two things that you can do. Ready number one, just immerse yourself in the local church, okay? Start serving all over the place, right? Get in a group, start investing in someone younger than you in the faith and then ask people this question. Ask them this question. What people that you trust, ask them what about my life and ministry uniquely blesses other people? And then lean into and leverage those things, right? For the good of other people and for the glory of God, because here's the last thing, spiritual gifts should be deployed, not for you. Not to have a boosted self-esteem, right? For the good of the church, right? The point, Paul could not be more clear, right? The point of spiritual gifts is to be used, right? Spiritual gifts are to be stewarded and not sat on. So which one are you doing? If you call to a city's church home, are you stewarding and leveraging your gifts for the glory of God and the good of others? And so many of you are, I know, like so many of you are

and we want to say thank you. We see you were so grateful for you and you are the reason why so much ministry is happening in and through our church. And secondly, I just want to ask you, could God be calling you to steward them somewhere else? Maybe on the mission field or with one of our church plants? You know, I'm not saying that he is, that's obviously between you and the Lord, but you know who's probably not going to go? The people who are currently sitting on their gifts. Right, God typically sins stewards, okay? And let's just, let's not forget that faithful stewardship is not just asking, is not just using our gifts, it's asking the question where God do you want me to use them and how do you want me to use them? We talked about three different responses that Christian should have presenting your body, renewing your mind and using your gifts. And as we close, I want to go back and re-read something that I intentionally skipped over from verse one. Romans 12 verse one says this and this is where we'll close. 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. So, if you're following along in your copy of the Bible,

you'll probably notice that that phrase spiritual worship has a footnote by it. And the reason is because another way to translate that phrase is rational service. And what Paul is trying to communicate with that phrase is this, that when the mercies of God become real to you, these responses are rational. Right, when the grace and mercy of God become real and tangible in your life, the only, And so as we close at every one of our campuses the question is not how you doing with those things How you doing with responding with using your gifts and renewing your mind the question for you? Is are the mercies of God real to you this morning? God's grace God's mercies right the mercies of God are most broadly understood as God's mercy and his grace Okay, and I once heard pastor John Piper unpacked the difference between mercy and grace by asking the weirdest question Yeah, he said mercy or grace. Which one can you show to a pet? The answer he said was mercy right because mercy is a response to misery and a pet right can fall on illness or injury and Be miserable and therefore receive help or mercy But he said you can't show grace to a pet because grace is a response to guilt And pets cannot sin against a holy God But what we have seen clearly in the book of Romans is that you and I can and we have Like we are guilty of sin before a holy and just God and you know what that should result in is Misery it should make us miserable because we know that we are headed for Eternal punishment and there is nothing that we can do no amount of church attendance No amount of good deeds that we can do to write that ship And it's there in our guilt and in our misery that Jesus Christ steps in 2,000 years ago church the grace and mercy of God were put on full display when Jesus Christ came after us Okay, he took on flesh humbled himself lived a perfect life with no guilt

Completely innocent and you know what he did Presented his body as a sacrifice Jesus Christ climbed up on the altar and was consumed not with fire But with the wrath of God drinking the rat the cup of God's wrath to the very bottom There's not any more for you even though you deserve it and I deserve it The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ traded places with you and When you understand that When that goes from a theoretical abstract truth to a personal reality that hits you right here the only Rational thing to do is respond And so that's what we're gonna do And we're gonna respond at all of our campuses by taking communion together So you should have received one of these little cups on your way in and if you didn't I would invite you to slip your hand up now and one of our ushers will bring them to you But In just a second our bands gonna come back out and they're gonna lead us in two more songs Okay, and I'm actually we're gonna do it a little bit different this morning at all of our campuses I'm actually not gonna lead you through the taking of these elements I'm gonna give you the opportunity to take them as you feel led Okay, so they're gonna come out and we're gonna take them but before before we do there are two things that I'm gonna ask you to do observe his body observe Jesus's body and then offer your body Because when you take these elements like when you take communion You are holding in your hand tangibly bread and juice to symbolize the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus for you And when you consume them or when you eat them, here's what you're saying that counted for me That counts for me. I receive that Which means that if you're here or at one of our campuses and you would say this morning that you are not a Christian You're not a follower of Jesus. I would ask you to just let this moment pass pass and consider instead taking Christ Do not please don't take this symbol without first taking the substance Which is the grace and mercy of God freely extended to you through what Christ has done You can receive that this morning before you live simply by offering up a prayer

acknowledging your guilt before God in receiving his grace But for the rest of us I Want you before you take these to call to mind the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus for you You know, maybe as our band leads us you just need to take out this And I'm not talking about the you that you want everyone else to see. The real you, the you that still repeatedly feels envious and jealous because you're comparing yourself to other moms. The you who still fights that addiction, the you who still is discontent with all that God has done for you, right? Maybe you just need to bring this forward as our van leads us and you need to come up here and you need to hold it in your hands and remember and call to mind all that you have done against God and yet God's posture towards you this morning is not shame and punishment and condemnation but it's grace and mercy and ask him to make those things real and tangible and then after calling all of that to mind then offer your body, right? Take a step this morning. You can't take every step but you can take your next step maybe for some of you. You remember when you presented your body as a living sacrifice and it's been years and life has taken some unexpected turns and maybe you've made some decisions that you're not proud of and you find yourself away from the altar this morning and you may need to come up here and you say, "Lord, here I am, I'm back." I'm getting back up on that altar and my entire life is yours. Or maybe you or a loved one, you're watching them or a child, one of your kids, you're watching them conform to the world and you need to come forward and you need to beg and plead and ask the Holy Spirit to do what only he can do and change them to make them more like Christ. Okay, this morning at all of our campuses our band is going to come out. They're going to play a couple songs. You take these elements as you feel led between you and the Lord and then we will respond. God's word to us today church is it's time to respond. Observe his body, offer your body and take these elements as you feel led. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the way that we have access to grace and mercy, that you are grace and mercy, that you gave yourself for us, that we might have life. We pray Holy Spirit that you would make us individuals in a church that look more and smell more like Jesus. We pray that you would ask, we pray and ask that you would do what only you can do and make us more like your son. We pray all of that in Jesus name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]