-I’d like to know!
-I bet you would too.
-I don’t know a person alive, on this earth who would not like to know.
-You’d like to know what God’s will is, wouldn’t you?
-We’d all like to know what God’s plan for our lives is
-Why don’t we know what God’s will is?
-I think Paul gives us the answer in our text
-Look at verse 3
-What does it say?
-“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”
-Did you realize that your relationships with other affects your relationship with God?
-It’s true!
-I’ll give you a few examples
-In the Lord’s Prayer what does it say about forgiveness of trespasses?
-It’s in your bulletin, read it along with me
-“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
-Did you ever think what that means?
-We are asking God to forgive us in the same way that we forgive others.
-Ah, shoot! We are in serious trouble!
-If you forgive people the way that I do, we are in some deep kimshe.
-You’ve probably heard this one before. From James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
-Have you ever read this passage of scripture from 1 Peter 3:7, “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers..”
-Do you see the theme here?
-Our relationships with others have an impact on our relationship with God
-I’ve heard people say that they can stay at home and worship God there. That’s true if you are incapable of gathering together for health reasons. However, we do have commands from God to assemble together. And we also miss out on the fellowship and encouragement of the other saints that join with us.
-See, Paul refers to the Christian church as a body. Together, we form one body. Does a body without hands work at its peak? How about one without feet or eyes or ears or without a mouth? Do they function properly?
-Obviously not!
-We need all the other parts of the body to function to its utmost capacity.
-We need each other.
-In a way, our relationships form a cross. We have our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with other members of Christ’s body. One without the other is incomplete just like if you were to take the cross away from Jesus - His mission is incomplete. {PAUSE}
-So what’s the solution to our problem? Look at verse 1.
-It says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
-First, Paul helps them to remember what God has done for them.
-He has shown them mercy by sending Jesus to be the sacrifice for all of their sins
-Jesus allowed His physical body to be beaten, spit upon, scourged, and crucified so that His spiritual body (you and me) wouldn’t have to be.
-He, even though He was God, did not think more highly of Himself than us. He did not think more highly of Himself than His oppressors. In fact, from the cross, He asked God the Father to forgive them.
-He was willing to do all that so that your difficult relationships with others wouldn’t hinder your relationship with God
-Paul urges them and us in light of that fact to offer ourselves
-He uses the verbiage and imagery of the sacrifices offered in the temple in Jerusalem that many of the Jewish Christians would have been familiar with
-What made an animal that was to be sacrificed acceptable to God?
-First, it had to be unblemished
-As Christians, we are unblemished
-Sure, we sin but God declares us to be righteous, holy and perfect, without fault
-That’s why the Psalmist can say in our responsive reading for today, “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have led a blameless life.”
-For, in Christ, we are blameless
-Second, they are available
-We must allow ourselves to be available, able to be moved by God where He would like us, not hindered or constrained by our own agenda {PAUSE}
-You’ve done it! I know you have. Don’t worry, I’ve done it too.
-Have you ever been so caught up in what you wanted to do that you forgot about what God wanted for you.
-When I got out of the Army in 1995, I had no intention of ever going back. I had to finish up three years of National Guard or Reserve time so I took care of that but I wasn’t really into it. I got out of the guard because I didn’t want to put in the time while I was going to seminary. I almost applied for the chaplain candidate program twice but backed out because I didn’t want to go back into the military.
-I really wanted to do mission work so I enrolled in the newly formed missionary formation program at my seminary. I really enjoyed the studies and their application. I sought out a call to start a church somewhere in the U. S.
-I interviewed with a number of districts and decided that Des Moines was a good fit. They seemed to think so too.
-After moving there and getting a lay of the land, we started doing some of the initial tilling of the soil and planting of the seeds of the gospel
-After some of my initial ideas didn’t work out exactly as planned, we finally started heading in a positive direction with the mission.
-However, at the same time, some of the members from our partner congregation kept encouraging me to be a chaplain
-We resisted the encouragement.
-I did not want to go back into the military.
-Finally, God made it clear to us that we had taken the church plant as far as we were supposed to take it and had us pass the baton to another leader.
-Now what?
-I finally remembered what the parishioners had been saying, picked up the phone and called our Ministry to the Armed Forces office. The secretary, a former Army dental assistant, encouraged me to join the Air Force.
-God finally got me to do what He had been trying to get me to do but with much more travail than He had originally intended.
-I had to learn again that God’s plans are better than our plans. {PAUSE}
-Last, you have to die.
-Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
-Martin Luther, picking up on Paul’s words from Romans 6, said that as Christians we must drown our old sinful nature in the waters of baptism every day. You see, the baptism you received as an infant or teen or adult is still working today. God is still working through your baptism to forgive your sins even today. He is using it to continue to strengthen your faith in Him. God is continually using your baptism to kill your old nature and bringing you to new life again through His Son. {PAUSE}
-We have another tool in our tool belt to use in order to kill the old nature and bring new life – It’s God word. It works through our baptism, but it also works as we read it, study it and hear it read and preached
-Instead of being taken in by what the world wants us to believe on TV and in magazines and books, God wants us to not conform but instead allow ourselves to be transformed.
-How different is transformation? A little change? The Greek word transform is a form of metamorfomai. From which we get the English word metamorphosis. How much change is inherent in a metamorphosis? Think a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. Major change!
-How are we to be transformed?
-The renewing of our minds. The word renew is a composite word in Greek. It is a form of the word anakainw. Kainos is the Greek word for new. So anakainw means to make new again.
-And our text says that when we are transformed by the renewing of our minds then, and only then, will we be able to test and approve what God’s will is.
-We have some work to do. Let’s get after it. God’s word is waiting.
