Transformed by Renewing Your Mind

Okay, this is December the 29th, Romans chapter 12, and I want to begin, I want to focus on verse 14 of chapter 12. Whenever you read the book of Romans, so much of the arguments in that book seem profound and they are, and they seem complicated and they are. But all of this book that Paul writes in from chapter 1 through chapter 11 are in preparation for what he's doing from chapter 12 on. Because Paul always does the same thing in all of his letters. He begins with a discussion of the doctrines of the faith. And then when he finishes discussing the doctrines of the faith, he makes application to the church concerning the issues that he sees in that congregation. He does not answer whenever he has a question in the church or someone writes him, he doesn't start off saying, well, you wrote me this letter and here's your answer. Paul always, when he gets an answer, goes back and says, here are the truths of the Christian faith. And since these are true, here is the way this should impact the issues that you have in your own congregation. All of Paul's answers to their questions about how to live and behave are drawn out of biblical concepts about the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of the church, and the nature of the mission the church has. What Paul is writing to a church he's never been to, the church in Rome, this church appears to be filled with people who are both Gentiles and Jews. And Paul is drawing together on how the basic doctrines of the scripture make it possible for Gentiles and Jews both to come to faith in Christ. And even though there is a tremendous division between Jews and Gentiles, we don't have anything in our culture that is as radical as the distinctions between Gentiles and Jews in that culture. We could say it was sort of like maybe Hispanics and Anglos here, but that's still not as powerful it was then. Maybe the black and the whites in the south was maybe this intense, but it was very difficult. They didn't have the opportunity or they didn't see a way by which you could have churches for just Jews and churches for just Gentiles. In Rome, there was a church that had both Jews and Gentiles. Paul traces the idea that everyone in the congregation is a sinner, that everyone can come to faith in Christ like Abraham did, both Jews and Gentiles. Everyone struggles with being able to put into practice these things, the truths of the Christian faith. And the Holy Spirit provides their needs. The Holy Spirit helps them to be able to put this together. And so he ends this section in chapter 1 to 11 with 12 saying, so here is the way you have to deal with this. First verse of chapter 12, therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercies to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. And what is this sacrifice? No longer, do not be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world. It doesn't matter if you're a Jew or if you're a Gentile. Don't be conformed to the pattern of your culture. If you're a regular Jew, you grew up a Jew, you'll be programmed to think in certain ways. Like you'll be programmed to think, okay, all the Old Testament says I can't even be with a Gentile because it will make me unclean for God. You have to put behind you all the Jewish stuff that was not really in the scriptures. And you must put those aside and listen to the gospel Jesus gave us. So the Gentiles on the other side who thought badly of the Jews, the Gentiles said that the Jews worshiped pigs. You know why? Because they would never eat one. So they must worship pigs. They had all kinds of negative things to say about Jews. So here they were, these believers, all in the same church. Both of them programmed with prejudices. Both of them programmed with hatred toward each other. And now they come into a common congregation and begin to live. Don't be conformed to the world and the mindset that you grew up with and that you see all around you. Instead, be transformed, changed by the renewing of your mind, by making it over again. So that you make over again the ideas that you used to think and you bring them before God and now you let them be changed. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. Is it God's will that you never sit down with a Gentile even though you're in the same church with them? Like their forefathers said? Is it necessary to hold the Sabbath as a special day when now everybody in the Gentile world is worshiping on the first day of the week? Can you turn loose of that? As a Gentile, is it possible for you to come in and sit down by someone you always thought as arrogant, who thought they were better than you, and treat them as their brother and sister in Christ? Is that possible for you? You have to have your mind changed. You have to learn to think in a different way. So I want you to be transformed and when you're transformed, you will learn what the will of God is. What is the will of God for you Jews? It is to treat your Gentile believers as brothers and sisters in Christ. To show the world the power God has to break down the walls of division so that you become one in Christ. What is this miraculous thing that God wants to do? The will of God for you Gentiles, that you would see these Jewish people as brothers and sisters in Christ, not as people that you always hated, so that the walls of separation are broken down and now you're doing what God's will is. What is God's will? Well, in the rest of this chapter, he talks about what God's will is. You must love with sincerity, in verse 9. Genuine love for other people. This is sort of like you might make a, this love with sincerity or love with genuine love might be the heading for this. And there seems to be a list of things that he's putting out as to what God's will is. God's will is to love each other. That's what he's saying. God's will is to love each other. In spite of what you've been taught in the past, to love each other. Now how do you know if you're loving each other? Well, you'll set out and you will always love what is good and cling to it as if you were married to it. That's the word he uses for cling. You'll always cling to it like you're married to what's good. You're attached to it as a permanent relationship. And you'll always hate what is evil in God's eyes. Not in your own eyes, not in your culture's eyes, but in God's eyes. You will always hate evil. You will know that the Holy Spirit is inside of you and God's love is there when you hate evil and you love what's good. The Holy Spirit causes you to do that. So whenever you find people who are prejudiced, Jews to Gentiles, Gentiles to Jews, you know that the Holy Spirit has not transformed their mind yet. Now I expect you, because of all these things I've read about how you've come to faith, to get rid of those prejudices because you will love what's good and you will hate what is evil. Now in this congregation where you are, be devoted to each other, Jews to Gentiles, Gentiles to Jews, like you were brothers born of the same mother and father. He asked them to rethink this whole thing, that the family of the church are really your brothers and sisters, not your birth brothers and sisters. I want you to think about this in a new way. We just have a hard time getting over the fact that our mother and father and brothers and sisters of flesh are more important to us than the brothers and sisters in the congregation of God. You must think differently about this thing. You must see this in not the world's way of thinking, but in God's way of thinking. And when you do, everyone around you will say, why do you love those Jews over there? Or why do you sit next to those Gentiles over there when we come to church? And you will say, that's my brother, that's my sister. We're all part of this same spiritual family. Honor other people above yourself. What do we always want to do? We always want to be important. We want to have a special place. Now among you, what you should do, is you should always treat everybody else in the congregation like they are more important than you are. You don't look down on each other. A person might not have any money, might not be educated, might not have all the things that the world would see that would make them important, but you and your own congregation, you are to honor other people above yourself. Always make sure that you treat people like they are more important than you are. Now, you must never start out in this and fall away. You must never lack your zeal. Your lack of zeal means that you have lost your picture of what God wants you to do. Why is it that people lose enthusiasm for something that they started doing? They get bored with it. They see it now not as something that is important or valuable to them. I want you not to be that way in the world. The world works that way. You have devoted your life to God. I don't want you to ever back away and say in your life, there was one time in my life I was really devoted to God. But you know, as time goes on, I've done all my work. I'm not going to do any more. I'm retired. I used to teach. I used to go visit. I used to work. But I don't do that anymore. I have a lot of reasons why I don't do those things anymore. But I've lost my passion for the things that God wants me to do. Now when you do that, you'll not be able to find the will of God. That's what he's saying. If you've written something off that you're not going to do anymore, you're not going to find the will of God because he might ask you to do that. You have to be open to what God wants and passionate about obedience to what God has. It's a new way of thinking in your life about how you're to serve and what you're to do. You're to keep your spiritual fervor. How do you do that? You keep constantly alert to your sinfulness and confess it. You're constantly alert to what God wants you to do in his kingdom and you do it. You're constantly alert to people who need to hear the message that you have in your life that is you've trusted God and he's helped you. You're constantly listening for people who are having problems that God helped you with and you're sharing that. That's how you keep your fervor. Every day you're looking for that. Every day you want to find somebody who is ready to listen. Every day you focus on serving God. You don't let things overwhelm you. You're joyful in hope that as you say the promises of God allow me to have joy in my life regardless of the circumstances I face. Why? Because I trust God. He said to me I'm going to take care of all this. In the scriptures he made a promise to me. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything you need is going to be provided for you. So when I come to times when it looks like it's not, I remember that promise and I say God told me he was going to do it even though I can't see it. God told me he was going to do this and so I have a joy. People around you say well I know some of the troubles you're going through and every day when you come around here and go to work you seem to have a smile on your face and you seem to be happy in your life. How can you do that? Well God has made me a promise and I believe that his promise will come to pass. That's your witness. And when you learn to think right about this, stop focusing on the problem and start focusing on the promise God has made about that problem, then you've changed your way of thinking. All of us love to focus on the problem. I want you to focus on the promise. That's how you're different. The old world's way of thinking is focus on your problems, focus on what's wrong, focus on what's going. You're different. Your mind is to be transformed. Every time you have a problem, you remember the promise God made to you and then you cling to that promise and you have joy in the middle of your difficulty because your thinking has been transformed in a different way. You share with people, God's people, who are in need. When you find someone that's in need, you joyously participate in whatever it is. If they need prayer, if they need encouragement, if they need support, whatever kind of need that they might have, we tend to focus on financial things rather than the things that are really critical. It's the spiritual nature of a person. So focus on that and be able to share with people in need. And be anxious to try to be hospitable. Search for us, as practice hospitality really means, is have it in your mind all the time. Does this person need something? How can I help the people around me? Now we don't take people into our homes like they did in those days, but we live in neighborhoods. What does my neighbor need? What does this neighbor need? What struggle are they going through? Learn to think, not about yourself or your own circumstances, but be looking as to how you can meet the needs of people in your congregation and around you. Now all that I get to verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Some people think that verse 14 moves Paul out of the church and into the community. Like he's saying, bless the people who try to hurt you in the church. They think that he's referring to the persecution that the Roman government or the society in which they live was bringing to them. But this is really a very powerful message that Jesus gave to his own disciples in talking to them about what he wanted them to do. Jesus brought to their attention in Luke chapter 6 verse 27 through 30. He said to them, but I tell you who hear me, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Now that's Luke's prescription. Look at that passage, how powerful that is. How contrary to human nature that is for all of us. This is what I want you to do. Love your enemies. Who are enemies? There will be people around you all the time who will treat you badly. There will be people even in the church who will treat you badly. Have you ever known someone that quit going to church because they thought someone in the church was doing bad for them? Hold your hand if you've known someone that did that. It is universal. But it is a sin against God to do it. Is it hard to do? A human being can't do it. But you see, he's asked us to renew our mind. And the way the world acts is if you go to church and somebody does something that you don't like and it offends you and hurts your feelings, what do you do? You leave. You run away. That's what every pagan in the world does. They get in a place where somebody does something they don't like, well they do. They get away and run away. Why? Because they did something that hurt me. They were mean to me. See that's the way of thinking that he's talking about. You have this impressed in your mind that's a normal way of thinking, but I don't want you to think the way the world thinks. I want you to think the way God thinks. I want you to see things in a whole different way. Love your enemies. What does he mean by this word love? You don't like them. He never says I want you to like the people that hate you. He didn't say that. You don't have to like your enemy to love them. Love is self-denying, sacrificial service to another person. If you have somebody that hates your guts and treated you in the worst way in the world and you knew that they needed something, you could take them something while being totally upset with their lifestyle, their nature, their character, and their behavior. You could. You could say that person has gotten sick and nobody is at home to fix food for them. You could say I don't like them. They've been mean and nasty to me and they probably hate me, but I'm going to fix something and take it over to their house and give it to them anyway. I don't like them. I don't want to be around them, but they need food and I can give it. That's what he means. So whenever a pagan comes across somebody that doesn't like them and treats them badly, they attack them. In the church, when you have somebody that doesn't do right that you want them to do, they didn't speak to you, they didn't talk to you, they didn't get the appreciation that they should get, your first reaction is to say they don't like me so I'm getting out of here. I want you to think differently. I want you to think these are people who are my enemies. I am going to try to do something that is sacrificial and self-denying so I can show them the kind of love God has for them. Even though they hate God, even though they've treated him nasty, I'm going to show them what God's love is really like. Is that hard? I will promise you it's impossible. But you see, I want you to take your mind and let it be transformed into thinking the way I think about things. Now he says, bless, I want you to do good for those that hate you. So then I make a list of the people that don't like you. People that have treated you badly and don't like you. Make a list of that. Now here's God's assignment to you. Right beside every one of their names, write down something good that you can do for them. In the church, especially. In the church, especially. And you start trying to be the best person that that person knows. Even though they hate you. Bless those who curse you. Now the blessing he's talking about, given in Numbers 28 in the Old Testament, the blessing that God gives. And the blessing he's talking about when he blesses, it's clear like the covenant. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. See that's the blessing we give in church sometimes, in church when they have this final benediction. The Lord bless and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. That idea of blessing another person. I want you God to do something for this person that hates me that is wonderful, that will bless their life. That will cause their life to be better than it is today. Sometimes when we say we should pray for those that hate us, our prayer kind of ends up being God I hope you'll pay them back for all the nasty stuff they've done to me. And I hope that their life is miserable as hell. What he's saying is, I want you to genuinely say God I want you to do something good for them. What's your example? Christ on the cross, Father they have done the most despicable thing possible. They are killing your son. I ask you, don't hold this against them. Think about someone that's hurt you deeply and badly. They don't deserve it. But you're saying to God, as bad as they've been toward me, I want to really ask you God to not punish them for what they've done to me. That is so difficult to do. Your mind says here's what you should do. Now, put that behind you and retrain your mind to think, I should bless the people who hate me. That's what he's talking about. He says, if someone strikes you on, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. If someone curses you, it doesn't mean they just say blankety blank you. What they're really talking about is someone who's trying to make sure that your life is worse off. See, a curse in the Bible was whenever a person would say to God, would you damn this person's life? Would you make their person's life miserable? Would you take away all their blessings? It was like asking God to come in and punish another person. That was the curse. I don't want you to curse them and instead I want you to bless them. That's what he said to them. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. What he's asking us to do is to realize you are going to be mistreated. See, a lot of people enter the Christian life and think, I've given my life to Jesus and everybody's going to be nice to me. And the worst thing is they say, I've given my life to Jesus, I've joined the church and all these people are going to be nice to me. Well, do you know every person in the church is bound for hell before they join the church? There's still some of that in them. They don't know how to turn loose of it. It's got a grip on their mind and heart. They still aren't able to break free from that. And what our job is in this fellowship of believers is to recognize that there are people there who are going to mistreat you. This is really a hard thing for church workers to get into, pastors especially, you know. Because they just don't, people in church don't treat you right. Because they haven't learned to have their mind transformed yet. So they think of church like a business. I go to church and I go down to the store and they give me what I want and they treat me nice and everything's exactly the way I want it. They come to church, I want everything exactly the way I want it. And Sunday school for my kids and the church and the music service and all these other things, I want everything like I want it. And they won't do it. Well, what he's saying is you shouldn't look at things whenever it's not like you want it and get upset. You should say this is the great opportunity I have to show people what living a life under God's control is really like. And so what I'm going to do is I'm instead of running away from this, I'm going to pray for the person who mistreats me that God would bless them. That they would have a great life. That everything in their life that they need would come to them. That God would not mistreat them as they've mistreated me, Jesus on the cross. That's what he's talking about. And this is important to understand. You know, the church here is expected to be a community where people knew each other. It's not like you go into the 22,000 people in the building and you say, well, this is my church. You don't even know most of those people. He's talking about the small group that you're in where you know everybody there. He's talking about the small church where you know everybody there. And you know what's wrong with everybody there. And there's something wrong with every one of us. But when you see that, it is the opportunity for you to be what you ought to be. Don't run from it. Embrace it. Hold on to it. This is what we have to give to the world. Vengeance, getting even, the world knows all about that. We're amateurs at it. We can't do that. But what we're experts at is returning good for evil. What we're experts at are blessing people who hurt us and hurt us deeply. God is trying to build in this community of faith something entirely different than what's found in the rest of the world. Now you see in Matthew chapter 5, verse 44, he said the very same thing to the people of Israel, or to the disciples who are listening to him. Verse 44, chapter 5 of Matthew, you've heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. See, that's what Paul is getting at here. That was the foreign way of thinking. He's talking about don't be conformed to your world that you're in. Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world. Jesus said it in just a little bit of a different way. You have heard that it was said by the world around you, he's implying, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. That's the way you do it. But I tell you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Now flop that. If I don't do that, I am not a child of God. This is not simply oratory. He's giving us instructions that are necessary for a person who's controlled by the Spirit of God. And if we're not willing to do that, we're not controlled by the Spirit of God. These are not, I can do this if I want to, it's not I can do it if they're mad enough at me or if they're not so mad at me. We don't have choices about this. If the God's Spirit takes control of our mind, we are doing the things Jesus tells us that we ought to do. And this is the way we live. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. You see, what the Bible is interested in is not how big our church gets. What it's interested in is how much we live in obedience to God. Paul's idea and Jesus' idea was, if I can get you to do what God wants you to do, you will change all the people around you. And all of these things he's asking of us are not simple requests. He's saying, if the Holy Spirit is in control of your life, this is what will happen to you. Now, we had Christmas and we had a bunch of balloons at our house. You know what happens when you take a balloon and you blow it like that? Does anybody know what happens? Pardon? You blow, it gets bigger, doesn't it? If I were to blow in it, it's going to get bigger. If the Spirit is in you, this is going to happen to you. Now if I put the balloon in my mouth and I blow and it stays the same size, what would you guess is happening? There's a hole in it. What if there's no hole? And I put it to my mouth and I say I'm blowing in it. I'm not really blowing. And if you have this life and say the Holy Spirit is in charge of your life and this is not happening to you, you are fooling yourself. You're fooling yourself. You can't live with the world's way of thinking the life that Christ wants you to live. If you're not living the way you're supposed to, then something is wrong. Your mind is still captivated by the culture in which you grow up. It is not transformed into the way of God's thinking. This is what is supposed to be the changing experience of being a follower of Christ. And our witness is, this is the way I used to do it when people got mad at me and didn't treat me right. Now this is the way I'm doing it. How can you do that? Well, God has made me able. And so Father, we ask that you would show us when our minds are still controlled by the world's way of thinking. And we ask that you transform us into this new way of thinking. In the name of Jesus, we pray. And without Jesus and the power of your Spirit, this is impossible. Show us when we fail to do this, that we might become more like you. In the name of Christ, we ask it, Amen. The other ones are... My sister, Thelma, they're on the roof. And my brother, he's in Salt Lake. That's him, Jermyn. Yeah, Mark. Mark, come on.