A New Way Of Thinking

OUTLINE

BOOK OF ROMANS BACKGROUND

ROMANS 12:1-2 (BREAKDOWN)

o “Therefore” – a Transition word

o “I urge you brothers” – an encouragement to come along side

o “In view of God’s mercy” – Mercy summarizes first 11 chapters e.g., Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10)

o “Offer your bodies a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God”

o “this is your true and proper worship”

BACKGROUND ON JEWISH SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM

WHAT IT MEANS FOR US TO BECOME LIVING SACRIFICES

• Our act of worship

• Spiritual act

• Lifelong

• Key passage on how to do it – Romans 12:2

DO NOT CONFORM….BUT BE TRANSFORMED

• Do not be shaped by the world’s patterns (e.g., dishonesty, rudeness, crudeness, etc.)

• Rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind that comes through Holy Spirit

• Daily renewing comes through regular obedience to the promptings of Holy Spirit

OUR OBEDIENCE BECOMES AN ACT OF WORSHIP

If you have your Bibles with you and would like to open up to Romans 12:1. As you know, we have been going through the four core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. As I mentioned last week, we are going to be winding down on the focus on these values. By the end of May, we are pretty much going to be done with these values for now. For the summer, I want to kick off some sort of a new series yet to be named because I haven’t really thought it through yet. But anyway, we are going in a new direction in the summer. Today, what I would like to do is just give one more focus on this value of worship. We spent a lot of time on worship, actually eight months that we have been going through these values. Hopefully, you are beginning to learn and beginning to see that worship is something that is not confined to these four walls or any of the four walls of any church. Rather, worship is something that needs to be carried out into your life. As we see today as we look at the book of Romans, it should become a lifestyle of worship. As Paul describes a living sacrifice. We are going to look through those passages.

But I am going to give you a little bit of background. The book of Romans is a pretty heavy book. It is a really good book. It is actually a letter, but it is a letter that contains pretty much a nice summary of all the major core beliefs, the core doctrines of the Christian faith. The apostle Paul does a great job of kind of laying out those doctrines, laying out those beliefs in a very logical and very systematic way, covering some of the key areas of what believe today including the sovereignty of God, the righteousness of God, the sinfulness of man, and really the redemption that comes through Jesus Christ. I would love to be able to spend many weeks on going through the book of Romans. Unfortunately, I can’t spend much time on it today, but it is a good book and worth reading. Today, I want to focus just on the first two verses of Romans 12 because, to me, what those two verses do is they take these deep theological ideas and they put them in some very practical application. What I am going to do is quickly read through those two verses and then we will go back and look at them in detail. Once again, reading from Romans 12:1-2. (Scripture read here.)

The first word I want to consider is the first word there. It is called ‘therefore’. There is a saying around churches that has been around for years that if you come across a passage in the scripture that starts with the word therefore, you need to ask what is it there for. What it is there for is basically to mark a key transition in basically Paul’s letter. A transition from these high doctrinal beliefs to how those beliefs should impact behavior. As I have said before, what we believe should act out somehow in our behavior in life. Belief should affect behavior. So he is making that connection. This therefore is a transition.

Then he goes on to say “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy”. First I want to focus on these words “I urge you”. What Paul is saying here is I am not commanding you. He is saying kind of like I strongly encourage you. Some translations actually say beseech if you use the King James. I don’t know if some of the other translations use beseech, but the underlying word there basically has the idea of coming alongside of somebody, really coming alongside their way of thinking. That is what Paul is saying here. I am not commanding you but I strongly encourage you to come along my way of thinking. He says “brothers” which basically gives us an indication of who the letter is directed to. It is directed to the Christian brothers and sisters in Rome.