Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
broadcast today. I'm glad you could join us, and I hope and
pray that as we study the Scriptures, the Bible, that the Lord will
bless you in this study and give me the right words to say from
His Word. I know if I preach from His Word,
I'll have the right words. The message today will be taken
from Romans chapter 12, verses one and two. I started this message
last week, and so this is part two, and I'll conclude it today.
It's entitled Motivated by Mercy. Motivated by Mercy. And what
I'm talking about is the motivation of Christian obedience, that
which drives us. You know, a lot of times in the
Bible, It'll speak of God, from his word, testing the reins of
people. R-E-I-N-S, the reins. And of course, you know, if you
think about a rein, you think about a bridle on a horse. The
rein, you know, is what tells the horse to go right, to go
left, and all of that. And the reins has to do with
the heart motives of the people. What drives you? to obedience,
to try to be a good person. If you're a believer, to try
to be like Christ. That's the ultimate for a believer,
isn't it? I want to be like Christ. The
Bible talks about how we're predestinated to be conformed to the image
of Christ. And that's what predestination
is all about. And of course, we know God's
predestinating purpose is to glorify himself, in the salvation
of his people, sinners saved by grace, based upon the blood,
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all of
grace. It's all by God's mercy. That's what Paul writes here
in chapter 12 of Romans, verse 1. He says, I beseech you, or
I beg you, therefore, what is that therefore, therefore? He's
referring back to everything that he had written from Romans
1 up to Romans 11 concerning how God saves sinners by his
grace, conditioned on Christ. Not conditioned on you, not conditioned
on me, but conditioned on Christ, and Christ did all that God required
to ensure the salvation and final glory of all of His people, the
ones who God gave Him before the foundation of the world.
He called them His sheep, called them His church, the redeemed
ones, the called out ones. And so, the death of Christ is
not just a blanket pardon that is left up to the volition of
a sinner as to whether or not he wants it or not. By nature,
none of us want it. The scripture says that. The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.
The preaching of the gospel is foolishness to them who believe
not. So it is God who gives us a new heart in the new birth
and makes us willing in the day of his power to receive Christ.
But all of salvation, Salvation in its beginning, and listen
to me, salvation in its continuation, and salvation in its final culmination
in glory is all conditioned on Christ and made sure in Christ. He's the surety of his people.
That means all of their sins, all the sins of God's chosen
people were imputed charged, accounted, credited to Christ. That's why he went to the cross.
That's why he had to die. This is God's plan from the very
beginning before this world even began. It's not plan B. It's not a contingency. It's
not God saying, well, I tried it by the law. Now I'm going
to do it through Christ. No. It was always set forth from
God. in the very beginning, in the
everlasting covenant, is that Christ would come and do for
his people what they could not do for themselves. And that is
establish a perfect righteousness that would enable God to be just
and justify them. And so salvation in its beginning
is all conditioned on Christ. Salvation in its continuation. These people who say, well, you
can be saved and lost again, you know why they say that? because
they believe that at least the continuation of salvation is
conditioned on what they do. That's legalism. That's a false
gospel. God saves us by His grace. He
preserves us by His grace. And then He'll bring us to glory
by His grace. It's all of grace. Somebody says,
well, Then what about people who are Christians and then who
leave the gospel, leave the church? My friend, they were never Christians
to begin with. and their leaving is what manifested
that, made that known. In 1 John 2, the Lord, through
the apostle John, talks about that, where they went out from
us, but they were never of us. Had they been of us, they would
have no doubt continued, remained with us. But they went out from
us, that it might be known. Well, that grace that reigns
through righteousness, you can read about that in Romans 5.21,
that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness into eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. That grace that reigns through
righteousness, that mercy that God shows towards His people
in Christ, that's the motivation for obedience. And look back
at Romans 12.1. I beseech you therefore, based
upon this, brethren, talking to believers, by the mercies
of God. I'm encouraging you, he says.
I'm trying to inspire you, trying to guide you, to present your
bodies, your whole person, that's what that means, your whole person. It's not just the outward man,
but the inward man. The inward man is the heart.
And if God has given you a new heart, you'll understand this.
present your bodies a living sacrifice. And I brought this
out last week, that's the same as what Christ said, take up
your cross and follow me, deny yourself. We all, even believers,
have a sinful human nature that kicks and wars against the Spirit
of God who indwells us to motivate us to obedience. The flesh, that's
what that's called, the flesh lusts against the spirit and
the spirit against the flesh. It's a warfare. And so we have
to war, we have to engage ourselves in this war to be, to present
our whole persons as that which, as to the things that honor,
obey, that praise God and not self. And so in my sinful self,
you see, I have sinful desires, but I have to deny those. Now, I cannot do it perfectly. I cannot be perfect in my obedience. Even our prayers, the prayers
of a believer, They are accepted by God through Christ, the great
high priest, washed in his blood, clothed in his righteousness.
That's what I am. And that's my acceptance before
God. So present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, and I brought
this out last week, not in order to be holy, but because you already
are holy in Christ. You're set apart in him by the
grace of God, by the mercies of God. acceptable unto God,
acceptable unto God in the Beloved, who is Jesus Christ. Do you realize
that it's not my prayers that make me acceptable to God? It's
not my works. It's not my giving. It's not
my preaching that makes me acceptable to God. It's Christ. There's
a great example of that in Matthew chapter 7, the Sermon on the
Mount, where Christ, in verse 21, when He said, not everyone
who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but he that does the will of my Father. And what is the will
of the Father? That we believe on the Son, that we look to Christ
and rest in Him, looking unto Him, the author and finisher
of our faith. And they said, well, Lord, Lord, haven't we
preached in your name? Haven't we cast out demons? Haven't we done many wonderful
works? You see, they did all of that.
And he says to them, depart from me, you that work iniquity. I
never knew you. And why is that? Well, somebody
says, well, they were not sincere enough. Well, you tell me where
it says that in the Bible. And again, tell me this, how
sincere must you be? What degree of sincerity is enough? And let me ask you this, do you
think you're sincere enough? Are you always sincere? Or even
does your, we should be sincere people. I don't wanna be a hypocrite. But is my sincerity in what I'm
doing, is it enough, now listen to me, is it enough to equal
the perfection of righteousness found in the law, required by
the law, but found only in the Lord Jesus Christ? Does my sincerity
equal Christ's sincerity? Does my love for God equal His
love for God? Does my love for my neighbor
equal His? No, it'll always fall short. Over in Psalm 130 in verse three,
the psalmist asked this question, and I believe this is the Psalm
of David. A believer, a man after God's
own heart, and he says, Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldest mark
iniquities, who would stand? Well, not me. I thank God that
I have Christ and I'm washed in his blood and I'm clothed
in his righteousness. That's the mercy of God. And understand this, there's
no mercy from God outside of Christ. In salvation, that is. No grace outside of Christ. Well,
he says, this is your reasonable service. It's only right and
reasonable that a sinner saved by grace who has been given all
of salvation, sure and certain, all the promises of God, which
are yea and amen in Christ, 2 Corinthians 1 20. All the inheritance of
grace, which is incorruptible and reserved in heaven for me
because I didn't earn it and it's not conditioned on me, it's
all in Christ and he's my surety. It's only right for me to seek
to honor and obey God. even though I cannot do it perfectly.
And it's not that where I fail Christ makes up the difference.
No. He is all my salvation. He is all my righteousness before
God. It's His righteousness imputed
which God has enabled me to receive by faith. I look to Him. He's
the Lord my righteousness. Now look at verse 2. He says,
and be not conformed to this world. A true believer who's in conformity
with the world, in agreement with the world, you might say
even in a contract with the world, in a covenant with the world,
that just doesn't wash. That's a contradiction. But now
let me give you something to think about. And before we go
on in that verse, turn over to Romans chapter seven. and I wanna
read a passage with you. When you think of the word world,
what do you think of? All right, I'm a believer, and
I'm not to live like the world or be conformed to the world.
Christ told his disciples, you're in the world, but you're not
of it. Often in the book of Revelation,
it talks about the world or those who are tied to the world. This
world is their home. But what do you think of when
you hear the word world? Do you think of just the immorality
that men and women judge in the world, like the drug addicts,
the alcoholics, the pornographers, the robbers, the murderers? Well,
I agree with you, that certainly is worldly behavior, and certainly
believers are not to be in agreement with those things. Anybody who
claims to believe salvation by grace and uses that as an excuse
to engage themselves in an immoral way, they don't know the grace
of God. The grace of God is not just
a doctrine of the head or something we say with our lips. The grace
of God is a dynamic power in the heart. And that's why he
says it's your reasonable service. So those who use grace as an
excuse to sin, they don't know grace, they don't know Christ.
They've never been saved. And those who deny grace because
they see no motivating principle or power in it, they don't know
Christ either. I've had people tell me, say,
well, if I believed what you believed, I'd just go out and
do what I want to. And I ask them, I say, well, what is it
you want to do? You claim to be a Christian.
Are you wanting to do something that is totally opposite of that? Well, we have a sinful human
nature. We still have the flesh and it
brings up in us sinful desires. But my friend, we have another
principle and power of grace that causes us to desire to be
like Christ. And that principle is motivated
by mercy. It's motivated by grace and love
and gratitude, not by legalism or mercenary promises of earned
reward. So when you think of the world,
yes, if we're believers, we are not to be in conformity with
the immorality of this world. We're to stand apart from it.
We're to call it what it is, it's sin. We're not to do it
self-righteously now, as if we were better in the sense that
we earn or deserve any of God's favor, because we don't. It's
mercy, but it's still sin. And so, we understand it. But now, the word world, also
in the Bible, refers to the world of false religion. It refers
to the world of works-oriented salvation, salvation by my works. Listen, think about Cain and
Abel. When Abel brought his offering,
the blood of the Lamb, he was showing forth the grace of God
in his own salvation, looking forward to the promised Messiah,
which that animal blood typified. When Cain came to worship God
based on his works, the fruits of the field that he worked hard
for. He was being worldly. You understand that? False religion.
People, here's a person who's doing the best they can to keep
the Ten Commandments in order to be righteous with God. That's
worldliness. Do you understand that? They
may call themselves a Christian, but they're worldly. We'll look
back at Romans chapter seven in verse four. I want to read
three verses here that shows the motives, how God's people,
true believers, are motivated by mercy, motivated by the assurance
of salvation and the security of salvation based upon the grace
of God through the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
he says in verse four of Romans 7, wherefore my brethren, You,
now again, now this is to believe. This is not a descriptive of
everybody without exception. And people have that in their
minds, you know. They go to the passages that talk about blessing.
They say, well, that's everybody. And they go to the passage that
talk about condemnation. Well, that's not me. No, now
listen to me. He says, wherefore my brethren,
brethren in the faith, you also are become dead to the law by
the body of Christ. Now, what is it to be dead to
the law? Well, it means the law cannot charge you with sin. You've
already died. The penalty's already been paid,
in other words. The law cannot even charge you,
the law cannot condemn you. Now, do I deserve to be condemned
because of my sins? I deserved it and I've earned
it, but the law cannot condemn me. Why? Because I'm dead to
the law. Now how did I become dead to
the law? How did my penalty, my payment, my sin debt get paid? By my works? No. By my believing? No. Must we believe? Yes. Must we work? Yes, but not
for that reason. You see the difference between
motivated by legalism and motivated by mercies? How did I become
dead to the law? Well, he says it. Underscore
this in your Bible. By the body of Christ. Now what happened to his body
on that cross? He died. His humanity. Now he is God in human flesh. He's God-man. And he never stopped
being God-man after he took into union with his deity, that perfect
sinless humanity. But the death is to be attributed
to his humanity. Now, he died in his whole person
and I can't explain that, but it's attributed to his humanity
and we believers become dead to the law by the body of Christ.
In that, or in order that, you should be married or united to
another. Now, who are we united to if
we're believers? Even to Him who is raised from
the dead, Christ, in His resurrection, that we should what? Bring forth
fruit unto God. Now, what is that fruit unto
God? It's the fruit of faith. It's the fruit of repentance.
It's the fruit of praise and worship and obedience motivated
by mercy. And look at verse five. Now,
he says, for when we were in the flesh, now believers are
not in the flesh, but the flesh is still in believers while on
this earth. So in the flesh means an unbeliever. When we were unbelievers,
the motions or the passions of sins, which were by the law,
did work in our members, our bodies, the human body, to bring
forth fruit unto death. the passions of sins, which were
stirred up by the law." So he did work in our bodies to bring
forth what kind of fruit? Fruit unto death. Now, think
about it. The passions of sins stirred
up by the law, I believe, works in one of two ways. It either
is apparent in those who are just absolute rebels who are
so rebellious and hateful that they want to break the law. You
cross that line, they're going to cross it. The jails are full
of people like that. But mainly, the passions of sins
which are stirred up by the law is false religion. Getting people
to be better, to be good, in order to be saved. And both of
those situations bring forth nothing but death because they
all fall short of the perfection of righteousness that can only
be found in Christ. When I find the perfection of
righteousness in Christ and rest in Him, that's when the motivation
of mercy steps in, is sealed in my heart. But look at verse
six, but now we're delivered from the law. My debt's paid.
I have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law, therefore
I cannot be condemned, that being dead wherein we were held, that
is under the law, that we should serve in newness of spirit and
not in oldness of the letter. Now the oldness of the letter
is legalism. Mercenary promise of earned reward. Newness of the spirit is motivated
by mercy. Now go back to Romans 12 in verse
two. and be not conformed to the world, see? But be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind. Now this being transformed, by
the renewing of our minds is a continual operation of the
grace of God through the Spirit by the Word of God, continually
teaching us, continually motivating us by the mercies of God, motivated
by mercy, to learn and grow and to obey and praise God, not in
order to make ourselves righteous, to be saved, but because we already
are. And it's part of the warfare
of the flesh and the spirit. I'm in a continual daily warfare
that will not cease until I die and go to be with Christ. And
he says, this transformation, this transforming, this continual
transformation by the renewing of our mind, continually teaching
me in the word of God, continually inspiring me and motivating by
the mercies of God, The reason that this is so is that you may
prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. What
is he talking about? How do we prove What is that
good and acceptable and perfect will of God? Believers are sinners
saved by grace and they're trophies of His grace. They're testimonies
of His grace. It's like in Matthew 5, 16, when
it says, let your light shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Now
that verse does not teach that I'd rather see a sermon than
hear one. That verse does not teach that you're the only Bible
some people read. The preaching of the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation to them that believe, because
that's in the power of the Holy Spirit. Faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God, not by looking at me. That verse
is teaching that the light of the gospel has to shine on us,
even our works. to show the glory of God. The light there is not my works.
The light is Christ. The light is the gospel of God's
grace. And I'll give you an example
that I've used on that quite often. If a person sees me do
an act of charity, feeding the hungry or giving them clothes
or housing them, And they were to come to me and they'd say,
now, Mr. Parker, I know you're a Christian
because I saw you do those acts of charity. You know what I wanna
do? And what I will do? I'll look at him, I'll say, oh
no, oh no, that's not what makes me a Christian. And then I'll
begin to preach the gospel. It's Christ's work, it's his
blood, his righteousness, his death, burial, and resurrection.
I'm saved by the grace of God and not by what, not by that
act of charity that I did. I do that because I'm motivated
by mercy. I'm not trying to make a show.
That's not my witness. My witness is the gospel. And
that's what it is to be motivated by mercy. That's what it is to
let your light shine before me. That's what it is to be a good
and acceptable, to be a proof of the good and acceptable and
perfect will of God. to be a trophy of His grace,
to be a testimony of the grace of God to the world, that my
salvation is not based upon my works. Should I be working? I should be working hard. But
it's all based upon the grace of God in Christ, motivated by
mercy. Hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
by phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.