Sermon Title: The Image of Christ:
Subject: The Concept of Biblical Change
By: Pastor Tony Rivers
Date Presented: June 8, 2003
Biblical Text: Romans 12:1-2
I beseech you therefore,
brethren,
by the mercies of God,
(that) you
present your bodies
a living sacrifice,
holy,
acceptable to God,
which is your reasonable service.
(And)
do not be conformed to this world,
(but)
be transformed by the renewing of your mind, (that)
you may prove what is
that good and
acceptable and
perfect will of God.
Romans 12:1-2 NKJV
Introduction:
Perhaps I have sparked your interest with the box of Lipton Tea bags that have been sitting here on the podium since before the service. Allow me the opportunity to give each of you one of these Tea Bags. While I am doing so, turn to Romans 12:1 in your Bible.
(Pass a tea bag to each member present)
Today, we are going to be talking about change. Now I know that 50% of you will automatically turn me off when I say the word ‘change,’ because it conjures up all sorts of images. So, to put you at ease, I am not talking about putting the piano at the back of the church, or changing the choir robes to purple instead of blue. I am not talking about a change in the way we do church. Instead, I am talking about a personal change. This is a change that takes place in each of us individually.
Perhaps you have found yourself discontent with your life.
Maybe you have had feelings of doubt or feelings of inadequacy.
Do you ever ask yourself if maybe you are missing God’s best for your life?
Do you wish that you were a better person and a better Christian?
Perhaps you have found yourself asking questions like,
“Why am I going through so many trials and temptations?”
Maybe you are feeling defeated in your Spiritual walk.
Has God given you a command that you absolutely could not obey?
Are you experiencing trials that just don’t make sense?
We are going to look at these questions Biblically, today and in the next few Sundays to follow. But first, we need to understand the Biblical Concept and Necessity of Change.
What does God mean by change?
Why do we need change?
What does God expect of us?
And what can we expect of God?
Let’s look at Romans 12:1-2 and see what the Bible has to say about change.
(Read Text)
Our text suggests that the Process of change is progressive and on-going and it tells us why we need to change as well as what our responsibility is in the change process. Today, we are going to look at the Process of change (or Progressive Sanctification), the Purpose of change (The why-ness of sanctification) and the Persons of change (man’s responsibilities and God’s responsibilities in the process).
First Statement:
The Process of Change is a progressive process initiated at the new birth and completed after our physical death.
We will begin by looking at the Process of change. Hopefully, all of us are Born-Again Christians and we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. At the moment that we believed that He died for our sins and we confessed Him as Lord, there was an immediate change that happened in each of us. We died to the Old Self (the flesh) and we became a New Creation. This change was instantaneous. We believed by faith, and the Holy Spirit did the work of recreating us into a living spiritual being that was justified before God because of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. But that was the beginning of a lifetime effort to become increasingly more like Christ.
We find ourselves now in a unique situation. The flesh is still present and it is constantly battering its head against the new spiritual being that we have become. So for the remainder of our lives here on earth, we are continually seeking to become more like Christ, while engaged in a battle against our flesh.
Look at this tea bag that you are holding in your hand. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, what you do is open the outer wrapper of the tea bag to expose the actual tea bag itself. Next, you put the teabag into a cup and you add hot water. As the teabag sits in the hot water, the flavor of the tea seeps into the water. The longer the bag sits in the water, the more of the flavor that will be drawn out and exposed into the water. If you taste the Tea and you don’t like the flavor, you don’t change the type of water. If you want a different flavored tea, then you must use a different teabag. The hot water is merely the catalyst for drawing out the flavor of the teabag. The contents of the teabag determine the flavor of the tea.
Our Christian lives are like that in some respects. God allows Hot Water experiences to surround us and draw out the flavor of the heart. As we find ourselves in difficult or strange situations, God shows us who we are and what we need to change about who we are. God reveals the true desires of our heart. He illuminates unbiblical thinking. He exposes un-Christ-like thinking. His expectation is that we will learn from these situations and be transformed into a Christ-like humble servant. But how often do we miss the point?
Let me give you an example. Maybe you have had the opportunity to work with pigs. As a child, my grandmother had pigs. I will never forget how muddy and disgusting the pig-pen was. The pigs loved rooting in the mud and wallowing in the mud. Grandma even had a slop-bucket. We would take the scraps from our breakfast plates, lunch plates and dinner plates and scrape them into the slop bucket. At the end of the day, someone would have the pleasure of taking the slop-bucket out to the pigpen and we would slop the hogs. We would pour the contents of that bucket into the hog feeding trough and the pigs would battle it out to see who could get to the trough first. Now let’s suppose a farmer had some pigs and one day he decided to take one of those pigs and change it into a clean pig. He leads the pig up to the house where he washes it off with a hose, then scrubs it with soap and a scrub-brush. Finally, he perfumes the pig, buts a bowtie around its neck and even puts a little pig suit on the pig. He takes the pig inside and sets it on his Lazy-Boy recliner and gives it the remote for the TV. Now for an instant, the pig is clean but it is still a pig. If you give it the first chance, it will take off and head straight to the first mud puddle that it can find and it will roll around and root in the mud, becoming just as dirty as it was before being cleaned. The problem is that the pig is still a pig. The change that was desired will come only if the pig can lose its pig-ness.
Suppose that tomorrow morning, you go out to crank your car and the car starts clanking, sputtering and blowing out blue smoke. You realize that the car needs a change. It needs to be repaired. So you take you smoking car down to the auto body shop and they paint it a nice new shade of candy-apple red. They detail the car, put some new rims on it and some Goodyear Aquatreds. They even have a guy come out to detail the inside of the car. When you arrive to pick up the car, you are impressed with the color and the quality of the paint job. You sit in the car and deeply inhale the ‘new-car’ smell of this fine automobile. Sure enough your car has been changed. But as soon as you crank the car, you hear that same old clanking and sputtering and the air is filled with a huge cloud of blue-smoke. The car needed change, so you sought change. Indeed you changed the car. But you missed the point of the symptoms that made you realize that the car needed change. The car looks brand-new, but it still has the same internal problem that existed before you began working on it. The engine is bad.
Don’t you see a parallel? God puts us in ‘hot water’ circumstances to expose our need for change. God draws out the contents of our heart as we are placed in these ‘hot water’ circumstances to show us that change is needed in order for us to be useful to Him. God sees the blue smoke and hears the clanking and the sputtering and He knows that we need some engine work in order to be reliable and worthy of joining Him in his work.
The author of Romans is trying to capture this point for his audience. That audience spans the distance of time, making this message just as relevant to us today as it was for the first century Christians.
“Do not be conformed by this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Rom 12:2
Warren Wiersbe points out in The Bible Exposition Commentary that:
This is the fourth “therefore” in the letter. Romans 3:20 is the “therefore” of condemnation, declaring that the whole world is guilty before God. Romans 5:1 is the “therefore” of justification, and Romans 8:1 the “therefore” of assurance. In Romans 12:1, we have the “therefore” of dedication, and it is this dedication that is the basis for the other relationships that Paul discussed in this section
The book of Romans shows us first that we are condemned, then that we are justified by Faith in Jesus Christ’s work on the cross. Thirdly, it points out that nothing can pluck us from the grasp of God’s hand and finally, in chapter 12 and beyond, it points out the lifetime change needed to be useful in the Kingdom of God. It is at this point in the book of Romans that we have the subject of continual change.
Our text suggests that change is continual and it also suggests the purpose of change.
Second Statement:
The purpose of this change is to make us suitable for God’s uses in His work.
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Why do we need to change?
Romans 12:1a “urges” us to do so.
“I beseech (urge) you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present yourself a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your Reasonable service.” Rom 12:1
Romans 12:1b tells us that it is our “reasonable (or rational) service.
Romans 12:2a issues a command that we be not conformed, but be transformed.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Romans 12:2b tells us that God wants us to change so that we “may prove what is
that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
The Biblical goal of change is Christ-like humility. Jim Berg, author of Changed into His Image, rightly notes that, “While living on this earth, Jesus Christ exemplified the characteristics of a man controlled by the Holy Spirit and in perfect fellowship with God.”
God uses circumstances in our lives to humble us. He wants us to be Christ-like Humble Servants. Then he can use us to join him in His work.
We need to understand that as a part of our human nature, we are self-centered and self-righteous in our thinking and in our actions. Often times, we ignore the fact that God has been at work throughout history. What we see is only our lives and we feel as if we have to do God’s work or it won’t get done. The fallacy in this thinking is that we believe that God ‘needs’ us to accomplish anything. This simply is not true. God has been working eternally. He never stopped working. We just simply have been out of tune with God, and therefore, we haven’t seen him at work. Today, across the globe, God will be working in church services, at jobsites, in the lives of many people in many cultures. God is at work and He will accomplish His plans. But, God has chosen to use human agents in His work. While He doesn’t need you to do His work, He does want to use you in His work. He will accomplish His purposes with or without you, but He would prefer to do so with you. Therefore, we should seek to understand where God is at work and ask for the privilege to join Him in His work.
As we are faithful in the small things, He prepares us for larger things. As we continue to Grow, He begins to show us areas in our life that need to be addressed. God is merciful in that He forces us to change at a pace that is not overly-burdensome to us.
Rev. Charlie Orr uses the example of an onion. As you peel the outer layer of an onion, you find another layer underneath that is thicker and sometimes harder to remove. God works with us to remove those layers of sinfulness and wrong-thinking one layer at a time. Sometimes, he has to go through three or four layers of wrong actions and wrong attitudes to get to the one thing that is really stifling our usefulness to Him. That is part of the progressiveness of change into a humble servant of God.
Third Statement:
The persons of change describe both man’s part (surrender) and God’s part (salvation).
Now, we get to the meat of what we are to do.
Romans 12:1 tells us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, and 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. 12:2 also tells us that we are to prove what the will of God is.
These verses show us three facets of our life that we are to surrender to God.
First, God wants us to surrender our bodies to him. Second, God wants us to surrender our minds to Him and thirdly, God wants us to surrender our will to Him.
I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice to God, which is your reasonable service. Rom 12:1
Before we became a Christian, we were self-centered in our actions. Our bodies were for our glory and to bring us satisfaction. If it felt good, we did it. If it seemed right to us, we did it. Our number one priority was to ourselves. Now God tells us that He wants that to change. We as Christians are urged indeed commanded to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
What is a living sacrifice? Well, Isaac was brought to the altar by Abraham to be sacrificed, but just before being slain, an angel of the LORD stopped Abraham and provided a ram to be sacrificed instead. You could say that when Isaac got up off the altar, that he was then a living, walking, breathing sacrifice. A more appropriate example could be Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, was crucified on a cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and who was subsequently raised from the dead. Jesus is now a living sacrifice. The term is probably one of the most difficult to understand in all of the New Testament. Given the amount of time we have allotted today, we will have to go with the simply explanation that a living sacrifice means that we come to a point where we are totally sold out to God. We offer our bodies now for whatever service God might see fit to use them for.
It does not mean that we totally throw away our reasoning abilities. It does not mean that we become a carpet for just anybody to walk over. No, God gave us a mind and he expects us to use it. But we must always temper our reasoning abilities with the word of God. It must make since in light of what God has revealed to us. God doesn’t expect us to allow ourselves to be run over by everyone. But we must be willing to lie down and die should God require that of us.
The thought being expressed is that we commit our bodies once and for all. Why? Because this is our reasonable service. This is our worship experience. We worship our God every day by offering our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice to be used by Him, however and whenever He desires.
Rom 12:2 tells us that we to be transformed not conformed.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Rom 12:2
The point here is that God doesn’t want us to be conformed or shaped by this world. We have the choice of allowing the world to shape who we are and to some extent, we all are shaped by our culture. Everyday, we are being programmed by TV commercials and TV shows. We are told by magazines that we need to accept our bodies that we need to be sexier, smarter, richer, liked by all those around us. These things do shape who we are. Our text tells us that we need to recognize that the world is trying to shape us and instead of allowing the world to conform us to its image, we should instead allow God to transform our minds. God wants us to surrender our minds to Him.
We renew our minds by reading the Scriptures, meditating on them, memorizing them and applying them to life situations.
The word transform is the same word used to describe the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. We are to be transformed or transfigured, changed into another being. Instead of allowing the world to shape our flesh, we are to allow God to change us into a new creature and we are to do so by renewing our minds. Dumping out the garbage and junk that our society throws at us and filling our minds with the things of God.
Thirdly, we are to give God our will. Jesus told us that when we pray, we are to pray ‘not my will, but thine.’ God wants us to surrender our will and instead adopt His will. Seeking to join Him in His agenda. Romans 12:2b tells us that we offer our bodies, minds and will, “that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
God’s part in the process is to save us. When we come to the realization that Jesus Christ died for our sins, we choose to believe on him and we confess him as Lord, then the Holy Spirit changes us into a new creature. As we surrender our bodies as a living sacrifice, he shows us where he is at work and He invites us to join Him. The Holy Spirit enables us to accomplish those things. He renews our minds as we seek him through the Scriptures, through prayer and through service to Him.
God has called us to God-sized tasks. If we join Him in those tasks, then He will enable us to accomplish them. We will know going in that only God can accomplish this. We will know while in the middle of that task, that only God can accomplish this. And we will know when the task is completed that only God could have accomplished such a thing.
If only we as individuals and we as a church would sell out totally to God, surrender everything to God and allow Him to use us. I am telling you that God could touch the world through this small congregation.
Conclusion:
The Biblical concept of change takes into account that change is ongoing, the goal of change is to become a Christ-like humble servant to be used by God to accomplish His will, and our part is surrender of our body, mind and will while God’s part is justification and sanctification.
We are placed in hot water situations to draw out the undesirable flavors in our lives. This is not the action of a cruel God, rather this is the action of a just God who loves us and wants to give us a more abundant life. We choose how to react to those situations.
Just a few weeks ago, my daughter came crying to me and told me that her brother had made her mad. I asked to tell me what he had done to make her mad. She said that he had called her a funny name. I asked her what that funny name was and she told me, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I looked at her and I called by the same funny name. Then I asked her if she was mad at me? She said no. I said why not? She said I don’t know. So I offered to assist her in understanding. I told that I had said the same thing that Jordan had said, she was mad at Jordan but she wasn’t mad at me. Right. So just calling you a funny name is not enough to make you mad. Uhh, right. So when you hear a funny name, you have to decide whether or not you are going to get mad. Sir? In other words, Jordan didn’t make you mad, you chose to get mad. She wasn’t pleased with this answer, but she realized that I was right.
Last week, my youngest son came with a similar complaint about the same child. Jordan had made a funny face at him. I made the same funny face at my youngest child and said, "Does that make you mad." He looked earnestly at me and finally said, “Oh, buther! I know what you are gonna say. I choosed to get mad.”
I believe my children finally got the point. How about you? When God puts you in hot water situations, what do you choose? It may be the loss of a loved one, the loss of some of your faculties. Maybe you are started to come to grips with the aging process. Perhaps you have recently experienced trauma in your life. Maybe God has allowed you to enter a dry spiritual spell. Do you choose to acknowledge that God is trying to draw out the flavor of your heart or have you chosen to become resentful? Are you throwing up your fists to God in anger? Have you decided to take action on your own not seeking the will of God?
Friends, God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you in order that you may live, but now he wants you to become the living sacrifice. He wants you to allow him to transform your mind. He wants you to adopt His will and seek His kingdom. Are you up for the task? Will you surrender your all to Him? Will you allow God to use this congregation to touch our world? I pray that you do.
Father, thank you so much for your Word. Thank you for offering us the privilege to be involved in your kingdom’s work. May we see the hot water experiences of life as opportunities for you to change our flavor. In the bold, strong, beautiful name of your son, our savior, Jesus the Christ.
