Well I want to look with you
this week at the first two verses of Romans chapter 12 and by implication
all the rest of Romans that remains to be looked at but that we don't
for the sake of time. You can read it for yourself,
you can look at the detail for yourself. But we've looked at,
we've tried to be clear about what is the gospel that saves
sinners from their sins. and gives them eternal life,
and secures their position for eternity, for that blessed hope
and glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we will
be taken to be with Him, out of this world of sin, out of
this situation, and into eternal bliss and glory. As I said in
my prayer earlier, we don't know what it is, but it is bliss.
This is how the Scriptures describe it, eternal bliss and glory,
with no sin. Now, when you preach the gospel
as I've sought to preach it in recent weeks, and mostly from
the book of Romans, because the Romans is so clear as to what
the gospel is, the gospel is all of Christ. And it's summarized
in Philippians, where Paul talks to the Philippians about believers. Who are the true believers? He
says we are the circumcision, not the Jewish religious folks
of their day or any other religious folks of our day. We're the true
people of God. He says we worship God in the
spirit. This is what, this is it, you
know, what marks out a true Christian? We worship God in the spirit.
We rejoice in Christ Jesus, right? Why do we rejoice in Christ Jesus?
Because we see what he's done for us. We see where we are in
him. We see what is our eternal state
by union with him. And we have no confidence in
the flesh. None whatsoever. Not a smidgen
of confidence in the flesh about what we are. Are we better than
we were? We have no confidence in the flesh. Now then, when
you preach a gospel like that, there are those that say, If
you go preaching that, you know something, people will think,
oh, well, I can do what I want, I can sin all I want, and it'll
make absolutely no difference, because, you see, what I am and
what I have done doesn't make any difference to my standing
before God. Hey, so, do you know something? We can go and get
drunk and party all the time, we can go and live sexually immoral
lives, we can go and be corrupt, it doesn't matter if I cheat
on that at work, it doesn't matter if I'm deceitful about such,
because Jesus has died for my sins. So, well, you see, that
is called antinomianism. The word means against law. That's strictly what it means.
You're living as if there is no law. You're living as if you
can do exactly what you want. Now, there was a famous preacher
in London for many years in the last century doctor martin lloyd
jones in fact christine and i heard him preach he was an old man
but we heard him preach in welling in about nineteen seventy five
something like that he's long since dead but he was a very
powerful preacher There were lots of things that he said that
I wouldn't today necessarily agree with, but he also said
a lot of things that were very good, and here's one of them.
And if you look in your bulletins, the article is a piece taken
out of one of his books, and it's very relevant to this. And
in that article, Lloyd-Jones says this, He says, if your presentation
of the Gospel does not expose it to the charge of antinomianism,
you are probably not putting it correctly. This is a man who
is a famous preacher, well known. Evangelical, Reformed, Orthodox
people regard him as right up there on the pinnacle of the
great preachers of the last century, if not the greatest preacher
of the last century. and that's what he said he said
if when you preach the gospel religious folks don't accuse
you of being an antinomian the problem is probably that you're
not preaching the gospel properly because if you do preach the
gospel properly you will be accused of being an antinomian now isn't
that an interesting thing Paul was charged with being an antinomian
The gospel that Paul preached opened him to that charge. In
chapter 3 and verse 8 of this very book, he says, as some affirm
that we say, what did they say about you, Paul? He said, they
say that we teach, let us do evil, that God may come. You
know, Jesus has saved us from our sins, therefore let us do
evil, that there'll be more and more grace abounding, you know,
let us do evil so that we can make the most of this salvation,
and he says it's slander. He said it's completely wrong.
He doesn't preach that at all. You see, this is what Lloyd-Jones
went on to say. Most so-called evangelical preaching
today is, that's my words, as he said, this is what it's like.
This is how Lloyd-Jones paraphrased, and you'll see when I say it,
this is true. They say, now, if you live a
good life, and if you don't commit certain sins, and if you do good
to others, and if you become a church member and attend regularly,
and you're busy and you're active, you'll be a fine Christian, and
you'll go to heaven. Lloyd-Jones said, that is not
the gospel. That is not the gospel. It isn't
the gospel that justifies you before the law of God, before
the offended justice of God. That is not the gospel that makes
satisfaction for your sins before the justice of God. That isn't
the gospel that declares the payment of the purchase price
of you from your sinful state. That is not the gospel that establishes
the righteousness of God, not at all. And there's so much preaching
of that nature. That's it in a nutshell. You
know, just be a good person, be busy, come to church, become
a church member, you'll be a fine Christian and you go to heaven.
No. The true gospel is all of Christ. That's it. That's the
message. All of Christ. in his election,
the election of God the Father before the beginning of time,
putting his people into union with him, of him coming and with
his people in union with him, him being obedient in every respect
of the requirements of God, of him being obedient, as Philippians
says, how far? Even unto the point of death.
What sort of a death? The death of the cross, the shameful
death, to pay the penalty for the sins of his people. united
with him in his resurrection from the dead. So that we have
the guarantee, we have the first fruits, that as he rose from
the dead, so shall we rise from the dead. There's a verse in
Timothy, 2 Timothy 1 verse 9, that he has abolished death. Abolished death. That's a bold
statement in the scripture. And glorification, in union with
him. You see, The Scriptures tell
us, this book again, I have to keep referring to it, Romans
chapter 8 and verse 29, for whom he did foreknow, that means chose,
so it doesn't mean looked in his crystal ball, that means
he knew before beginning of time, he knew in a loving, electing
way. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his son, that his son might be the
firstborn among many brethren. Many brethren, that's his people.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Not only
called with the gospel call, but called in eternity with the
name. This is the marriage union between
the people of God and the Christ of God. He called them with his
name, and whom he called then he also justified by Christ's
coming. And whom he justified, then he
also glorified. Now, as I say, religionists will
say if you preach that gospel, you're tending towards antinomianism. I'll give you an example and
it's a long time ago and it's back in the 1980s and I remember
Bill Clark standing up at a preaching conference and preaching this
gospel and saying the liberty that there is in Christ, oh wow,
all the religious hierarchy were absolutely up in arms against
him, absolutely wanted to silence him, accused him of antinomianism.
We know that antinomianism was never, ever, ever on his lips
or in his mind. No, they say that we say it doesn't
matter what you do in the flesh, Christ has redeemed us from all
sin, past, present, and future. And as this epistle again says,
they say, let us sin that grace might abound, but nowhere in
the Bible, nowhere, and especially in the New Testament, nowhere
does it leave us thinking that being freed from the curse of
the law Right? Being freed from the curse of
the law, we have license to flout God's law as if it doesn't exist
and doesn't matter. But what will keep us from flouting
it? What will keep us? Some say it's
being under the Mosaic law. It's being under the Ten Commandments. It's having the law as the believer's
rule of life. That's what they say. It isn't. It isn't. We've seen that in
recent weeks. What will keep us from flouting it, though we're
always sinful, but what will keep us, what will motivate us,
is being under what I might call gospel law, the law of Christ,
under law to Christ, what J.C. Philpott called gospel precepts. Gospel precepts, principles of
how to live. And Romans 12 and the rest of
this epistle and all the other epistles have got these gospel
precepts in there. Now then, I want to look at these
to remind us that preaching the true gospel absolutely does not
mean that we're antinomians. It does not at all. It does affect
the way, if it doesn't affect the way you live, you better
look and wonder have you got the right gospel. Because whilst
the way you live makes no difference to your standing with God, if
you're a true believer, if your standing with God is right, you
might not see it, but others will see that there's a difference
in the way that you live and your attitude to things. So let's
look at these first two verses of Romans chapter 12. There's
a gospel exhortation, there's a gracious motive for compliance,
and there's a practical response. The gospel exhortation then,
and it's in the first few words, I beseech you therefore brethren. I beseech you therefore brethren. Beseech, beseech. Do you know,
it's not a word that we use very often these days, is it? I presume
some of you know what it means, but I'll try and explain to those
of you that don't what beseech means. It's plead with you. Encourage you. I warmly plead
with you. You know, I don't strictly shake
a finger at you with a threat. I warmly plead with you, I beseech
you, come on, I beseech you therefore brethren, I encourage you to
willingly volunteer, fellow believers, is what he's saying. You fellow
believers, I encourage you to willingly volunteer. You see,
he doesn't give a legal command. He doesn't. He doesn't. Not a
legal command. I beseech you therefore, brethren. Next word, therefore. It's logical. It's logical. I remember doing
my A-level maths at university years ago and proving things
used to be a key part of advanced mathematics, you know, they would
say, the question that you got in the exam would say, given
this, that and the other fact, to prove that such and such a
thing therefore must be the case, and you have to go ahead and
given the facts that they've given you, you have to prove
that that is in fact the case, mathematically. Given to prove
proof, is what we used to say. Well, this in a way is a bit
like that. It's a logical response. I beseech
you, therefore, therefore, therefore. You've been given something,
therefore, work it out. Something that's gone before,
therefore. What has gone before? In this epistle to the Romans,
we have the gospel laid out more clearly than it is in any other.
Every other one is the word of God, it's all got the truth in,
but in the epistle to the Romans there is a logical presentation
of the gospel of God's grace that is clearer than anywhere
else it stands out as a pinnacle and you know how people of the
past have summarized that gospel and please this is not scripture
but it's a very good way of remembering do you remember tulip remember
the word tulip yeah which is a summary of the gossip it's
mnemonic the letters stand for aspects of the gospel. In Romans
1 to 3, Paul established the total depravity of mankind. The sinfulness, the total opposition
of the nature of fallen rebellious man as we are, all of us, all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Total depravity. Compared with the holiness and
the majesty and the awesome holiness of God who made us and who is
our judge and who upholds all things and who is interwoven
with this universe in a way that we cannot choose to ignore his
rules. Totally depraved is what we are.
And then Paul goes on in Romans 3-5 to unfold the unconditional
election of God, you, unconditional election, and limited atonement,
how he died for his people, how his salvation is a salvation
of eternal purpose. And then in Romans 6-8, his irresistible
grace is set forth. And then in Romans 8 to 11, the
perseverance of the saints, amongst all the other stuff about Israel,
the sum total of it is the true Israel of God preserves to the
end. Tulip, that's what it is, it's
the gospel in summary in the book of Romans. The gospel of
effectual saving grace in a nutshell. Now then, let me ask you a question.
Have you, by faith, received this tulip promissory note? Because the gospel in Romans
1 to 11 is effectively like all the rest of the scripture. It's
a promise note that God has written to his people. promising them
eternal life through the doing and the dying of his son, who
is God, who became man, that he might redeem his people from
their sins. Have you, by faith, received
this tulip promissory note, this gospel promise of salvation? If you have, everything is different
now. I used to like watching a program,
I used to do exercise on the machine upstairs in the office
and I used to like watching the television to make the 30 minutes
pass, because it's very boring. I find it much more interesting
walking the streets these days, but sitting on a machine, working
out for 30 minutes can get very boring. So I used to have a television
on, and if I did this exercise in the morning, there would often
be one of those daytime TV programs on, and one that I used to like
was called Air Hunters, H-E-I-R Hunters. looking for the heirs
of an inheritance. So, the theme goes like this. Somebody, some lonely person
has died and has left a significant amount of money. It might be
a few thousand pounds, it might be hundreds of thousands, it
might be millions of pounds, but there's no immediate relatives.
to inherit it. He had nobody, he just had a
few friends. And so the laws of the land say
you must find the relative. So these air hunters, they get
to know about this and then they do a lot of investigation and
they go down blind alleys, oh they thought it was that person,
no they weren't related and then they go for another John Smith
in this place over here. John Smith would be a very bad
name wouldn't it because there are so many of them. That's why
it's a good idea to have a fairly rare name. But eventually, they
find the person who in probate law is entitled to inherit. And
the cameras are there, and they go up and they knock on the door.
Yes, who are you? And they say, are you such and
such? Yes, I am. Well, we believe we've
got some good news for you. Sad in a way, but your great
uncle Bulgaria, three generations twice removed, died. Oh, never
heard of him. you're the one person that we
can find who is entitled to inherit, and you're due to get a million
pounds. Can you imagine the shock? Can you imagine the shock? From
that moment onwards, is not everything going to be different for that
person? Well in the same way, that is how dramatic the gospel
is when it comes to you when it comes to you and you see it
in its glory that's how dramatic it is to know that this tulip
promissory note of the gospel has been written to you and all
things are changed all things are changed everything about
it is changed nothing's ever the same again i beseech you
therefore there's a good reason everything's changed because
of this gospel that's gone before and I beseech you therefore,
brethren, brethren, brethren. Do you know, in the so-called
church, there are so many people who like to lord it over others. You know, they like to put themselves
up on a pedestal, but not the Apostle Paul, and nor should
we. The Apostle Paul didn't lord
it over these people to whom he wrote brethren, he called
them, brethren. Because at the end of the day,
as he wrote in Galatians, we're all one in Christ Jesus. There's
no male or female or rich or poor or anything, Jew or Greek
or anything. Those distinctions matter nothing
at all. In heaven, there's one qualification
for being there, and that's the doing and dying and love and
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he doesn't lord it over them.
And he says, brethren, what does it mean, brethren? The same father,
the same heavenly father. Do you know when you meet fellow
Christians, the young couple that came to us a couple of Sundays
ago, how long did it take us to be in easy conversation with
them? Answer, no time at all, instantly. Why? Because they've
got the same heavenly father as those that believe. They've
got the same elder brother in the Lord Jesus Christ. They've
got the same spirit of God from on high, who gave them the new
birth. You must be born again. That's
the wind blows where it listeth, says Jesus in John chapter three.
The same spirit has been born in them as in you. You're members
of the same family. Brethren, brethren, brethren. I beseech you, therefore, brethren."
That's a gospel exhortation. It's not a legal threat. It isn't
a legal command. It isn't an order from on high. It's a beseeching. I beseech
you, therefore, brethren. And then there's a gracious motive
for compliance to this. I beseech you therefore. The
therefores, yes, all these are good reasons, but he goes a bit
further. He says, by the mercies of God. I beseech you by the mercies
of God. There's a gracious motive for
compliance. This is the motive for the exhortation. What should encourage you, believer,
to listen and resolve to respond positively? It's not the threat
of law and justice, it's not the fear of punishment or loss,
but the fact that the God of all grace is merciful and has
been merciful to such as we. Is that not right? That's it.
By the mercies of God, the God of all grace has been merciful
to his people. That's a motive for complying.
How has God been merciful to his people? How has he? What
did the rest of Romans tell us? In eternal election, he's been
merciful to his people. In predestination, he's been
merciful to his people. In adopting his people into his
family, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. We're accepted in the
beloved. We have received the adoption.
What a glorious thing it is. You know, you hear of social
care cases where poor individuals, you know a family is a most blessed
thing to grow up in, it really is and those that have had no
family or a broken family it's such a hard thing to bear and
for such who perhaps are in care and that you know perhaps even
orphans the idea of being adopted into a loving family is a most
lovely prospect, a most comforting prospect a prospect for which
you hear the testimony of people like that who were adopted as
a child into a family that was genuinely loving and cared for
them. And they've got nothing other
than praise and thanks for the parents that adopted them. And
they took on in that adoption every privilege that the natural
born children would have in that family. Every privilege. And
that's what it is. We're heirs of God. and joint
heirs with Christ, by belief in Him, by faith of Him. So then,
He's been merciful to us in that election and predestination and
adoption, but also in redemption. Is that not the greatest of mercy,
that Christ has come to redeem and atone for His people's sins,
and give His Spirit to regenerate us, and of justifying us before
the justice of God? and the Holy Spirit coming and
quickening and calling and giving us, you know, the gift of repentance. Is it because you're the right
sort of person who naturally feels remorseful? No, repentance
is a spiritual gift. It comes from on high. The Spirit
of God causes you to see something of what you are by nature and
what God is by nature and how big is the gap and how you need
to repent of what you are. and turn to the Living God, and
how the Holy Spirit gives that gift of repentance and faith
to believe and conversion As Paul says to the Thessalonians,
he says, when we preach the gospel to you, how you turn to God from
your idols, from your idols of the false thinking in your mind.
Everybody's mind is full of false thinking by nature. But he says,
when we preach the gospel, you turned away from those false
idols, you turned away to the living God, the true God, you
turn to him for salvation. and he keeps you. How has he
been merciful? In providence, is he not? Every
day in providence, in protection, in the promises he gives us of
eternity and resurrection and taking away the fear of death.
He does that, he takes it away. in Hebrews chapter 2 about verse
where is it 14 somewhere around there those who through all their
lives through fear of death have been subject to bondage oh I'm
not frightened of dying yeah they say it with bravado but
when it comes to it the person who has no faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ no living faith no hope without Christ and without
God in this world when it comes to that moment when they're passing
from this life, oh, let them tell me then, I am unafraid. I am unafraid. Through fear of
death, all their lives subject to bondage, but in Christ, in
the mercy of God shown to us, that fear is taken away because
we are indeed blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. Now then, That beseeching and
that motive for that beseeching, then he goes on to say, what
does he beseech us to do? A call for a practical response. And there it is in verse one,
that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable service. That's what it is. What
does that mean? I can only put it like this. total commitment. I beseech you
that you respond to what you know and what you've learned
with total commitment of all that you are to the worship and
service of God. When I say the worship of God
I don't mean constantly being in church services, I mean a
life which is lived. How do you worship God in your
daily life? You are constantly aware in everything
you see there is a God in heaven. is a God who upholds all things,
to whom I am accountable, but to whom I have been brought by
the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ to see him as my
Lord and King and Husband and The one who is the most blessed
thing to my soul, to know the living God, to know him and to
walk in his, that's to live a life worshipping God. And worshipping
him, to serve him. To see our lives as an opportunity
to serve this God. Why would you not want to? why
would you not want to? Think about a marriage you know
when there's so many marriages of pure convenience and society
and wealth and other things that are not marriages at all but
think of a real marriage where there's utter love and devotion
between a couple and they come together and when they're together
The one party wants to do nothing other than good to the other,
and vice versa. Nothing is withheld in this,
that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, with nothing
held back. Oh, I'm going, yes, I'll serve
God at this time, but that's my time, that's me time. Do you
know, whenever I hear that, I know what people say, you need a bit
of a rest from the hassle of life, but honestly, it's one
of those phrases I don't like. I don't like me time. Me, me,
me, me, me. I don't like, I like serving
God time. That's how we should have an
attitude. You know, like the Old Testament bond servant. Do
you remember the law of the Old Testament bond servant when it
was given? That, you know, that after a certain period of time,
People were not to be slaves forever. We still hear about
modern slavery today, don't we? They were to be released. After
so many years they were to be released, and the seventh year
they were to go free. There were all these rules about
keeping a bondservant, but if a bondservant came to love his
master, and the master says, right, you can go free, and he
might say, but I don't want to. I love it here. I love serving
you. I want to be with you. I want
to serve you. And so, it sounds a bit brutal,
but they took his ear, and they got an awl, which is a thing
that punches holes, and I know some of you girls have had your
ears pierced, and you say it can be a bit painful, but other
times it isn't painful, but they would punch through, and put,
I guess they'd put a stud or a mark in to say, I belong to
him, and that's, I voluntarily, I have made myself a servant
of this person. Like an army recruit who's a
willing army recruit. They give their lives entirely
to the service of that situation. And Jesus said in Luke 14, if
you look there, he said, you can't follow me. If husband or
wife is more important than me, you can't follow me. That sounds
harsh, but it's not. Read it in its context. Turn
it the right way round. He must be first. If the husband and wife relationship
is to be really good, Christ must be first. In every relationship,
servants, masters, employers, employees, Christ must be first. Think how willing we are to devote
ourselves to certain causes. You know, you might commit to
a sports team. And, oh, every waking minute
is taken up with trying to be the best for that team. Or we
might commit to a choir, and we're gonna be the best one,
you know, going for competitions and the like. Or a social club,
or whatever it is. Well, is it not reasonable for
the apostle to call for our bodies to be presented as a living sacrifice? Because it's our reasonable service.
Why is it reasonable? Therefore, remember, The fourth
word, therefore, because of what's gone, because of the gospel that
saved you. Because of the gospel that saved
you, is it not perfectly reasonable that your life should be a living
sacrifice, your body should be a living sacrifice to God? So this is a call for a living
sacrifice, not a dead one. For Christ is the end of all
dying sacrifices, in that he died once for all. Romans 6 verse
10, he died for his people, once for all, and it's an ongoing
living sacrifice that he calls for, that you present your bodies
a living sacrifice, an ongoing living sacrifice. So Paul is
exhorting believing people to an ongoing attitude, right? an ongoing attitude, not to a
one-time religious act. So much of religion is full of,
oh, what a lovely service that was, let's have this one-time
religious act, and this one-time religious act will do it for
us. No, no, Paul is calling for a living sacrifice, an ongoing
attitude of service towards God, of worship towards God. And he
says, it's holy. Present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, a holy sacrifice, in that it is dedicated to the
daily service of God. That's the respect in which it's
holy. In the Old Testament temple, All of the artifacts, long word,
artifacts, the vessels, the cups, the candlesticks, the showbread,
all of those things were sanctified, symbolically. Sanctified, made
holy. Why were they made holy? They
were for the service of God. What the priest did was a picture
of salvation and of the gospel of grace. And those things were
made holy. They were sanctified. And so
he says, your body should be holy. Your body should be holy. Because believers' bodies, believers'
bodies are the temple of the living God. Take that in. Believers' bodies are the temple
of the living God. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 19. What, says Paul, What? Don't you know that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost? The temple in Jerusalem was the
building in which God symbolically lived. His presence came down
there in a special way. The Shekinah glory, the fire
and the cloud, it was there in the temple in Jerusalem, was
the place where he would meet with his people. The reason why
the sins of Jeroboam are such as they are, when Israel split
from Judah, was that Jeroboam thought he could set up his own
private worship with God and not go to Jerusalem. But Jerusalem
was where the presence of God was. It's like Christ and the
Gospel is where the presence of God is. You cannot meet with
God, you cannot worship God outside of those things. No, your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have
of God. And you are not your own. You
belong to God. He's bought you with a price.
And in a mysterious way, despite the ongoing sin of the flesh
because if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and
the truth is not in us even the best of God's saints have been
sinners even the best even Enoch was a sinner He walked with God. He knew God, but he was a sinner
who was saved by grace. Job, who as far as man was concerned,
there was never a more righteous man until the righteousness of
God was put against him. You know how something looks
white, a polar bear looks white. I remember, well, it was only
a couple of days ago, I heard something on a wildlife program
where the guy was saying how amazing it was, how yellow the
polar bears looked. when you see them against a summer
background where there's no snow they look shining white, you
see them in the zoo but he saw them against the frozen arctic
wastes of whiteness and he said how dirty yellow these polar
bears looked and that which we regard as pure white holiness
in people it's dirty and defiled when it's put against the brilliance
of the holiness of God In a mysterious way, this sacrifice
of dedication, of all that we are to the service of God, it
is, he says it here, it's acceptable to God. It's your reasonable
service. The doing and dying of the Lord
Jesus Christ sanctifies even deficient works. Do you remember
that verse we saw a few months ago in Ecclesiastes? Go thy way,
eat thy bread with joy, drink thy wine with a merry heart,
for God now accepteth thy works. In Christ, God accepts the works
of His people. Christ's people are accepted
in the Beloved. He is well-pleasing to God. This
is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased, sounded out from
heaven. In Him, We are practically and experientially delivered
from the power of darkness in Him. We're delivered from it,
we're delivered from sin, for sin shall not have dominion over
you, says Romans 6.14. And it's reasonable. You can't
argue effectively against it. Here's why. You are bought with
a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. Now none of this,
we know, is possible in the power of the flesh, because even the
flesh of a saved person is exactly as weak through sin as anybody
else. It's not possible in the power
of the flesh. Law cannot constrain flesh. The law is weak, not in that
the law is weak, but it's weak through the flesh, because the
flesh is weak. Only by faith in Christ can we do this. For,
without faith, the scripture tells us, Hebrews 11 6, without
faith it is impossible to please God. Oh, I did some good works.
Did you have faith? Because without faith, it's impossible
to please God. He goes on to say, and I must
close, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. Be not conformed to this world.
Only faith in Christ is that conversion which transforms how
we think and what we are. If any man, 2 Corinthians 5,
17, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things
have passed away. Behold, all things have become
new, as I said right at the start. We live in the world, but we're
not of the world, because the world, even in its best form,
don't forget, don't forget, it's the kingdom of Satan, and of
Antichrist, as we saw in Revelation, and of the beast, and of the
false prophet, all with its New Age morality. Don't be yoked
together with it. You know, if you were ploughing
a field with oxen, you'd try and get two oxen that were pretty
much of the same size, stature, power, because otherwise they'll
get out of step. One will be stronger than the
other. The one won't walk together evenly with the other. Don't
be yoked together with the world, says Paul here. Live at peace. Cause no offense other than that
which people will take at the sound of the cross, But in everything
else, Paul commands that believers allow their thinking and their
acting to be molded by God's spirit through his word. Be transformed
by the renewing of your mind. What is it that renews the believer's
mind? It's the principles, the precepts of the gospel of grace
declared in the word of God. You can work it out in the rest
of this chapter and the rest of this book. Did you notice
when we read the chapter earlier all about the use of gifts there's
no hint of law in that present your bodies a living sacrifice,
loving, not slothful in business, but diligent, rejoicing in hope,
patient in tribulation, generous, distributing to the necessity
of the saints, blessing those that pursue, not getting back
at them, blessing them, rejoicing, showing empathy, sympathy for
others, being of the same, trying to walk in the same way together
in the truth of the gospel of grace, Not repaying evil for
evil, but repaying evil with good. living peaceably with all
men, not avenging yourselves. If your enemy hungers, give him
something to eat. Don't be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good. Be a good citizen, chapter 13.
Be a good citizen. Take your responsibility. It's
not right for you to say, ah, well, I'm not of this world,
therefore I'm not going to abide by its rules. Be a good citizen.
Obey the laws of the land. Live right. Pay your taxes. Do all those things that are
right. render therefore to all their dues. And all of the commandments
it says, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill,
you shall not steal, all of them, is summed up in this, love is
the fulfilling of the law. That's what Paul is talking about
when he says, 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. What might we lose? You know, there's all the things
that the world has to offer. All of life stretched out before
me. Am I not going to lose a lot of things if I go along with
this? Is it not something that is going
to cause me great loss? Do you remember that Peter said
to Jesus when they were with the disciples, he said, Lord,
we've left everything and followed you. What shall we then have?
And Jesus said to him, those that have left everything in
this life to follow me, you will have in this life homes. and mothers and fathers and brethren
and brothers and sisters. In this life, in this life. And
then, in eternity, life forever in heaven. Is it not true? If
you truly know the gospel of grace Some of you have been to
America this year, to brethren over there. Were you not immediately
a member of the family in the house which was yours to go in
and be in? Is that not the experience? That's
what Christ promised to Peter. You won't lose anything. Don't
think of the loss of the things of this world. Think of the loss
of the blessing here and now, plus the heavenly treasure. Let
religious folk call our gospel antinomianism if they want. but
it's the true gospel and this alone establishes and fulfills
the end, the objective of the law 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse
5 the end of the law, the objective of the law is Love. That's the objective of it. Romans
3 31. Do we then make the law void
through faith? No, rather we establish the law.
Romans 13 verse 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.
Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.