Romans 12:1-2 • By the Mercy
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask you to look in your Bibles at Romans chapter 12. Romans 12, as we'll be looking at the first two verses, and maybe just to prepare you a bit for what is there, I brought something with me right after the Cardinals won the World Series.
You knew I was going to work that in, didn't you?
The very next day for my boys who are out of town now, I went and bought the special edition.
So it's the extra, and you see what it says across the bottom here in large letters?
Champs.
You know, when I got this paper, it actually reminded me of another. It's old now, it's yellowed, it's in my attic, and it's very brittle.
My mother gave it to me years ago.
And if I tell you what the headline is in large six-inch type, many of you will know immediately when it was printed.
The letters across the top say, "Victory."
When World War II ended, my mother says that newspaper was printed in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, and she said the day it was printed, the people of Knoxville poured out into the streets and danced.
Even my mother, who was raised old school Methodist, said she danced.
I had trouble envisioning that, but I understand.
When the war was won, when the dying was done, victory came.
And with it such joy that could not be contained. You had to dance.
Something very similar is happening here in this passage of Romans. The apostle has spent 11 chapters talking about the war, the war of Christ over Satan and our sin. And now he says, "Victory has been won. The dying is done.
Liberty opens before us, and that has to compel you. The joy must overwhelm you. The mercy of God toward his people must be their motivation."
And that's why he now writes at the beginning of Romans 12 of what should motivate us as well. Look at the words.
Romans 12, 1 and 2, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
This is the Word of God.
Thanks be to God.
A friend of ours took her children to a nearby park to break the summer monotony. You know it. Kids home all day, every day.
She took them to the park to break that monotony and instead broke her heart.
She was there watching her kids play. Another car came into the parking lot, ground to a quick stop in the gravel, and a young woman with a beaming smile virtually leaped out of the car and skipped to a picnic table at an adjoining lake in a secluded spot.
The imagination of our friend, the young mother, began to run away with her. Who could this attractive young woman with this beaming smile be skipping to meet with such enthusiasm? Was this a long overdue meeting with an over-busy husband?
Was this a lunch date with a good friend?
Or was this a tryst with a secret lover?
Our friend, the mother, decided she would watch very carefully to see who got out of the next car that came into the parking lot.
But no one arrived for a few minutes and so she got distracted playing with her kids. And after several minutes, when she finally looked back at the young woman at the secluded picnic table, what the mother saw made her heart hurt.
Because the young woman at the picnic table was with her Bible.
The person that she had skipped to meet was the Lord.
And the woman who had watched her go with an aching in her heart now began to weep because she recognized it was an enthusiasm for God she no longer shared. She could remember when Jesus was just another name for joy. When there was this warm, bright enthusiasm for the things of God. When Jesus was one who was such an advocate for you that when you prayed to God it was as though he actually listened and when you asked forgiveness you actually knew your guilt was away. But that warmth, that closeness with Christ was long ago, clouded by a dry dust of arid years of dreary duty, doing what Jesus says you got to do. Somehow he had become this bystander on the periphery of her life frowning just to see whenever she got out of line.
And she knew she would not skip to meet him anymore. She had lost something wonderful and right there in the park she wept for her loss.
Some of you know the loss of which I speak.
What it means to look back perhaps to a young time in your marriage, perhaps even to your teenage years and remember when Christ was so close, when your heart was warm and it's affection for him, when it just beat the things of the gospel and you loved that.
But it may seem so distant.
What the apostle is doing in this passage is he is giving us a path back. He is saying this is the way to that warmth, to that goodness, to that zeal, to that enthusiasm for the Lord. You can find it again but to find it you have to be willing to ask yourself a question. It's just this simple.
Why do you do what you do? Oh there is so much to do to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. If you were to just track through this passage you would find that in the first part of Romans 12 the apostle begins to describe our corporate responsibilities. Then he describes our individual responsibilities. You go into chapter 13 he describes our civil responsibilities and the last half of that chapter our moral responsibilities. There is so much to do.
But before you would do any of it the apostle says make mercy your motivation. You know these words, I appeal to you therefore brothers. By the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice to think of the import of those words you have only to consider the words that could have gone in their place.
Think of it. What could the apostle have said? I appeal to you brothers in view of the guilt you will feel if you don't. I appeal to you brothers in view of the shame that you will face if you fall.
I urge you brother in view of the rejection that is yours if you fail.
He says none of that. Instead he says in view of the mercy I appeal to you by the mercies of God to do all of these things.
It's not just special wording it's even special numbering. Depending on the translation that you're looking at that word mercy may be differently translated. I read from the ESV I urge you therefore brothers by the mercies of God.
Some of you are looking at the NIV it says what? I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy. Hear the singular?
The translators aren't struggling to know what the actual word is. They're struggling how to communicate the concept. What is this mercy that's being talked about? We don't have to guess. If you just back up into the preceding chapter you'll see all that's being prepared. If you look at the 11th chapter of Romans and the 27th verse the apostle is beginning to describe the mercy of God and he first applies it toward the Jewish nation. This is what he says the mercy verse 27 this is my covenant with them. When I take away their sins God looked upon humankind and recognized rebellion sin weakness
and to display his grace he said I will make a covenant with the Jewish nation and I will take away their sin the evidence of my mercy.
But not all went well.
In verse 30 of the 11th chapter he describes what happened as the apostle now turns to addressing the Gentiles at Rome. He says in verse 30 just as you who are at one time disobedient to God have now received
mercy as a result of the Jews disobedience so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy toward you for God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy upon them all. Here's the image. God looks upon the world. He sees waywardness and sin and so he provides this stream of mercy from heaven itself. It comes upon the Jews as the great evidence of the grace of God. I will make a covenant with them to take away their sin.
But they turned away from the mercy and so God turned his mercy stream upon the Gentiles saying I will extend my grace upon all nations but even in turning the grace upon all nations he said this is done so that the Jews and their disobedience may yearn for may be jealous for my mercy again and the mercy as they seek it now will come to them once again.
Now think of it. Here is the stream of mercy. It turns one way and then another way and then back another way. Is that one mercy or is that many mercies?
It's a trick question.
It's a mercy of mercies. It's the wide, vast heart of God saying I will make a covenant with my people across the nations, across all the world, across time by which their sins may be taken away. This is what I will do. This is the mercy and when you serve me don't make me this frowning bystander on your life. Remember the mercy. Keep it in view.
If you will keep the mercy in view it will change everything you see.
I can remember some years ago I was in a church service like this but seated in the balcony with my family and my oldest son whom Mark mentioned, Colin, began to cough.
He wouldn't stop.
We had to leave the service. It took him home through the afternoon. It settled for a little while but then in the evening he began to cough again. His temperature spiked and I can remember sitting beside him on his bed trying to comfort him and patting his back to try to settle him a bit and as I patted his back I felt something and I knew that a word was about to be applied to one of my children that I never wanted to be applied to any of my children.
The word is asthma.
I grew up with asthma.
I knew the medications that seemed to be endless, the innumerable trips to the doctor. I know what it is to prepare for a sports event for months, only the night before to have breath and the ability to compete taken away from you and what my son did as I patted his back was he rolled his shoulders.
I had done it a thousand times. The thing that an asthmatic automatically does just to get a little more expanse in your rib cage so that your lungs can just get another milliliter of oxygen in.
He rolled his shoulders and as he did so and I heard the air coming through his pursed lips, his agony was not greater than the agony in my own heart as I thought to myself, oh my child.
Now I wish I could spare you what I went through.
And it was then that I thought of the mercy of other shoulders rolled against the wood of a cross, of nail pierced hands and feet, nailed to that cross of his bending his shoulders just so that his lungs could take another breath, all of this for you and for me so that from his lips in heaven could come the words, oh my child, this I do to spare you what I go through. Behold what manner of love he has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God and that is what we are because of his mercy. He gave himself for us his dying for our living, his suffering that we might be free of the consequences of our sin. He was willing to do this and when God now approaches us with all the things that we would do to walk in newness of life, to walk the safe path of his commands, to do those things that bear witness of the gospel in our lives, he says why do you do this?
Remember the mercy.
Remember how much I love you. Remember I gave myself for you. Remember the mercy. Make mercy your motivation.
As easy it is for me to say that to you, I must tell you there are times in my own life when I know that mercy gets out of you that the things of the world eclipse it.
Both churches that I have pastored have been over a hundred years old and the longevity of the church wasn't sometimes what would bother me but the fact that generations upon generations of believers so much struggle at times to do the things that the word of God said, I mean I don't mean the things everybody knows.
I mean Christians in my churches knew the code of conduct. Everybody knew. You don't drink to excess. You don't smoke in the sanctuary and you don't cuss when the preacher's around.
I mean everybody knew the code of conduct.
It wasn't those things. It was love and joy and peace and forgiveness of one another that sometimes seems so far from us.
I'll tell you there were times I used to get so mad at those people.
Until I began to discover the problem wasn't so much of them as it was me and preachers like me because people tended to commend my preaching. I don't know that I began to hear myself saying anything wrong in the pulpit. It was more in the quietness of the counseling room that I began to hear the things that I was saying to people. I might deal with a young man struggling with immorality and I would say things like, you know, if you expect for God to love you, you got to straighten up.
I might deal with a couple whose marriage was coming undone and say if you expect for God to be gracious to you, you got to change your behavior.
Did you hear it?
Listen, if people expect their behavior change to make them right with God, who are they trusting to make themselves right with God?
Themselves.
As a result of my great counseling, people were in some measure further from God than when I started because I had driven the wedge of human works into the relationship with God. I was saying your relationship with God depends upon what you do. What does the Bible say? Their relationship with God depends on what Christ has done. Remember the mercy?
In view of God's mercy, serve Him. It is this magnet to God, this wonder, this awesome privilege that God gives us to recognize He has been so good that we long to be close to Him. We long to walk with Him that ultimately the Bible itself says, Paul and Romans 2, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. That when we've begun to discern that this God is not somehow on the side of our lives frowning, please somehow He can punish us when we get out of line. That He is saying, my child, I'm for you.
I gave my son for you. Remember how much I love you?
And so even when we experience the discipline of life that may be because of our sin, He's saying, I don't love you any less. Even the discipline is turning you back into my arms so that you may experience the wonders of my life and I treat you with love always because of the mercy. Remember?
Remember the mercy. It will change everything. We don't just make mercy our motivation. Ultimately what the apostle is calling us to do is to make mercy our power.
Do you see it? It's first just the power of encouragement. I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to do what? To present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
Now, you'll not get the encouragement if you read that verse the way I did much of my life.
Here's the way I read it. See if you've read it this way. I read it this way. "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice and then you'll be holy and acceptable to God."
Is that what it says?
Isn't that the way you've read it?
You be a good living sacrifice and then you'll be holy and acceptable to God.
The word holy should have been a cue.
Could you make yourself holy to God? Could you ever before God have done enough to make yourself holy to a truly holy God? How is it that you would ever be holy to God?
By His mercy.
This statement, "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God," is not a statement of what you will be. It's not even a command of what you should be. It is a declaration of what you are.
You are holy and acceptable to God. "But God, don't you know my sin? Don't you know my weakness? Don't you know my...?" God says, "But you are holy and acceptable to me. Not because of your work, but because of my mercy. I have robed you in a righteousness that's not your own. I have caused your sin to be as separated from you as far as the east is from the west. That is my mercy toward you. And when that mercy now becomes our encouragement that I know I fell down," and God's saying, "Get up.
I messed up," and God's saying, "I'm still for you."
It's the very thing that makes us get up again and strive again and want to be with him again.
My friend Paul Koistra, who's the head of Mission to the World, talks about a time he was teaching in Mississippi.
And in that little school district, there was a remedial reading program that was facing a problem. Everybody who got into the program never got out.
The very program that was supposed to get you back on par of reading level instead became kind of this academic whirlpool that just sucked people down.
Except for one girl.
Her name was Edie.
And because she was good at track, they called her Speedy Edie.
Speedy Edie got out.
And now you know what all the administrators do. They go to her teacher and say, "What did you do different with Edie? Did you give her different books?" "Well, no, I didn't give her different books. Did you spend more time with her?" "Well, no, I didn't spend any more time with her in class." "Well, you must have done something different."
Said the teacher, "Well, you know, Edie's good at track."
"Yeah, we know all about Speedy Edie."
Said the teacher, "I went to her track meets and I cheered for her.
And that was the difference.
That's what got her up. That's what got her going. That's what gave her strength and her power. And here is God saying to us, "Remember the mercy.
You are holy to me. You are acceptable to me." Some translations just say, "You are pleasing to God."
I love it. I watch my wife do it. She's better at it than I do. She can deal with a child who's discouraged or even rebellion. And I'll watch my wife say to a teen, "Honey, you please." "You please me."
And I can just watch a teenager melt. "Oh, Mom."
It's supposed to work that way. That when our backs get stiff, when we become hard against the things of the Lord callous to the Scriptures, that He says, "Remember my mercy. You are holy and pleasing to me. In all your weakness, in your sin, in your rebellion, I still look at you who please me because of my mercy toward you."
And when we're broken in that way, the gospel doesn't just become the power of encouragement. It becomes actual strength.
The apostle says it, verse 2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is."
Now listen, lots of us have heard sermons in different places in our lives about this renewed mind, that we're supposed to, you know, not go to bad movies and read good books and fill our minds with Bible verses. And listen, there are lots of passages in the Bible about purity of mind.
This is not one of them. That's not what's being talked about here. The apostle is drawing a contrast for what's supposed to be in these Roman Christians' minds and what was in the Jewish mind. You want to see it? It's the beginning of chapter 10, just the first three verses. I'll just look at it real quick. Here's what the apostle says, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God is for the Israelites, that they may be saved.
For I can testify about them, that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge." There's something wrong with their minds. What's wrong with their minds? Verse 3, "Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." What's problem? The problem is they're saying, "I've got to make myself right with God. I've got to do enough that He'll love me. I've got to make things right so He'll be right with me."
And Paul says that's defeating. That will take power of the gospel out of your life. Instead, he says, "You'll be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which is the knowledge that the righteousness comes from God and not from you. In fact, the very reason that you can be righteous is because Christ is filling you. He that gives you life is the same one that raised Christ from the dead, and He will give life to your mortal bodies."
This same God is not only merciful to take away your sin, but to fill you with the righteousness
and the power of Jesus Christ. He the resurrected one fills you by His Spirit so that you are able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will. This God has not only taken away sin, not only claimed you as His own, not only encourages you, but empowers you to do His will by the resurrection power of Christ that's in you by His Spirit. I think I can't help it. I can't stop. I can't fix this. He says, "You're right, but Christ who is in you by His power will enable you to live out the life that God is encouraging you to live." It's the wonder of the gospel that when we have failed, when we have no strength left in us, when we cannot do anything that is required, He is saying, "I'll love you still,
and love you enough to give you new life, and a new start, and a new way."
And that's the path back.
The young mother I told you about a few days later after her experience in the park, again to break the summer monotony, took her kids to vacation Bible school.
And when she came to pick them up, the Bible school had run a little bit late, and so she sat in the parking lot, turned off the engine.
And in the quiet there, she could hear the kids in the sanctuary singing. You know how that works, the end of vacation Bible school, all the routiness, all the songs, the competition.
They were singing with such joy, with such happiness.
But as the sound of that joy came into the car, instead of it making her happy, it pricked her melancholy again.
And the tears came again.
And her head fell to the steering wheel with a long, silent sigh.
She could remember when she felt that way.
But it wasn't true anymore.
And in the silence of that sigh, she could begin to hear what the children were singing. It was their marching song now, the song that was to take them with strength out into the world. They were singing, "I will sing, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing, I will sing."
They came out of the sanctuary now and into the parking lot, they were still singing. She said it was like this lightning bolt from heaven. As though God were saying to her, "Remember the mercy. Remember my goodness toward you. Remember my love for you. Get up again. I love you still. My righteousness is yours.
Remember the mercy."
She lifted her head from the steering wheel. And as the kids got in the car, she began to sing it with them. "I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever." This was the path back. By the mercy, by the mercy, by the mercy. It was by mercy God had claimed her. By mercy he encouraged her. By mercy he would empower her. By the mercy, by the mercy, by the mercy. It is the echo of grace that makes our service sweet and our hearts strong. Oh, Christian, why do you do what you do? Do it because of the mercy. It is the joy of the Lord that is our strength. If we would serve him, if our hearts would thrill to honor him, if we would skip to meet him, it is because of the mercy. Sing it in your heart. Sing it for your life. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing.