Romans 12:1-2 • Transforming Mercy

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 It's really so much where we find ourselves in the book of Romans as we continue looking in Romans 12, Romans 12 verses 1 and 2. We are at a very pivot point in the book of Romans.



 Everything to this point has been the apostle building up the glory and the wonder of the grace of God. He began by assessing the condition of humanity apart from the grace of God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. After that assessment, the consequence, the wages of sin is death, the escape.



 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.



 Who does that apply to?



 Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for there is no distinction, Jew or Gentile. All will be saved by the mercy of God.



 Having explained that big picture, the apostle gathers together this great message of the mercy of God that is so expansive and large and dense it can deal with even the wages of sin that are death for Jew and Gentile around the world that the apostle now wants to motivate us, fill us with the light and the glory that comes from understanding the mercy of God. Saying to us, what will be the consequences of this great mercy that you have perceived? Let's stand as we see the apostle pivot on the mercy of God to call us to honor him in all that we say and think and do.



 The apostle writes in Romans 12, "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." Let's pray together.



 "Father, make us discerning of your word and will this day so that we might be able to do what is pleasing and acceptable to you. But do so not because we are seeking to gain your mercy, but rather because we are responding to it. You who have been so great and gracious now call us to your endeavors by mercy alone. So work in our hearts to receive it and act upon it, responding to grace in Jesus' name.



 Amen." Please be seated.



 By the privilege that you extend to me this past week, I was teaching in a school that primarily ministers to Hispanic students, hoping not only to influence Hispanic culture with Bible-believing preachers, but to take a great number of Bible-believing preachers into Latin America as well. As a consequence in that class of training pastors, one of the men that I was training is a Miami police officer.



 And he was also training to be a pastor. And one of his assignments was to give his testimony.



 He began in a way that would not surprise you. The life of a police officer representing Christ in difficult situations with difficult people is not easy.



 But he said this, "My hardest time of the year is a particular holiday where every police officer knows the street celebrations will result in stabbings and shootings, robberies,



 and assaults of every kind.



 With the violence, there's a loss of inhibitions. There is a loss of self-respect, lost of any standard of conduct that is normal.



 No one seems to have any compunction about doing anything with their bodies that would honor God."



 He said, "I enter every one of those weekends with a sense of revulsion, not just as a police officer, but as a Christian. I think to myself going into those weekends, I don't belong here because inevitably I am shocked even as a police officer of what people will do to others and to their own bodies when our society says, you can do whatever you want."



 Now, how do I say to you?



 A class training preachers, a police officer, we know some of that life. Everything I just said to you, we probably expected him to say.



 I face a lot of sin, evil, and immorality as a police officer, and even while training to be a pastor, I know that I will have to deal with such things.



 We did not expect him to say what he said next.



 He said, "Even though I know I do not belong there and am shocked at the beginning of each weekend of that celebration by what goes on, by the end of the weekend, I am no longer shocked.



 I find myself comfortable.



 I'm not even calloused.



 I find that I have conformed my mind to the world."



 As he said that, the man who was strapping tall, strong, I saw his shoulders droop, his head go down. It moved from testimony to confession, and I looked at a man in defeat. I recognize I have just conformed.



 But I recognize it's not something he himself would confess.



 It's something many of us feel as we examine entertainments or habits on our smartphones



 or patterns in the workplace or among our peers, where as we think back a year or two or five, we find ourselves in patterns that we would never have thought we would be regularly involved in. And when we think of it now, what shocked us we are comfortable with.



 And despite the revulsion once upon a time, we find we have conformed more than we ever thought we would to the world.



 What will change us? You have to recognize, of course, what the Apostle Paul is facing as he is dealing with Christians from former Jewish culture where they tried to establish their own righteousness and former pagan culture where it was no holds barred. You could ever, you could do everything you wanted.



 How do you motivate people no longer to be comfortable with the world, no longer to be conforming with it, but to be transformed in a new way? The Apostle starts in what may seem to us even now to be a strange place, telling people you have to be motivated by the mercy of God.



 I mean, recognize it's so plain where he begins in verse 1. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." It's not that the claims that we are to follow the commands are unclear or pushed aside. It's just that we recognize the motivation is put first. Often when we are in circles where much is made of the grace of God or the mercy of God is the motivation for holiness, there is a concern that the commands, the imperatives, the rules will be pushed down, pushed aside, disregarded.



 Nothing could be more unfair to characterizing what the Apostle says. He is actually saying, "I urge you to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God." And that notion that you are to present your very body as a sacrifice to God, that it's not just this Christian thing, something spiritual that's removed from what we say or do or have our hands involved in or our eyes involved in, our minds, the bodies that we embark on, the bodies that we engage in, the bodies that are part of our everyday existence are being called to purity before God.



 We can be quaint about that.



 Tell the preacher stories about the time that the ushers were passing the offerings down the pew and at the end a little girl who had no money put the offering plate down on the floor and stood in it. What are you doing?



 Well, I don't have any money to give, so I give myself to God.



 I like it, but I recognize we can in the cuteness sweep it right aside.



 The apostle is saying something profound.



 Offer your bodies as living sacrifice. This is your spiritual worship. As though our spirit and our bodies are entwined, they are irreducible to one or the other, that what the body does has an inevitable effect upon the spiritual relationship that we have with God. And for that reason, we are being called to holiness. The apostle Paul in another place will actually say to those engaging in immorality, "Do you not know that a person who commits immorality sins against his own body?



 Every other sin than that which unites a man with a woman in immorality is against the spirit, but this is against the body itself which affects the spirit." As though the apostle is recognizing that as much as we may be willing to bifurcate, to kind of say, "Over here is the spiritual stuff. Over here is the real world, the body world, the material." The apostle says that's not the case.



 Your body is involved in your spiritual worship, so much so that he will actually say in another place, "Do you remember?



 Chemistry, material things do not explain enough. Do you not know?



 That your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you. And you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body as well as in your spirit."



 We want to think I can just worship God in my spirit, in my mind, in church. And what happens in other places doesn't count because my spirit is united in God. And Paul says, "No, do you not recognize that body and spirit in this place are put together and you have been purchased, body and soul, by the blood of Christ, not only purchased, but purified by the blood of Jesus Christ, body and soul." It doesn't make any difference to recognize this body, this physical thing that's engaging us in the world is actually the temple of the Holy Spirit and that we are to guard it



 and that we are to purify it for the purposes of glorifying God.



 I've told you before about the short story by Flannery O'Connor, who writes about girls in a parochial school whose teacher becomes concerned that the boys are getting too active and close. And so the teacher spends a class hour instructing the girls saying, "Now girls, when the boys come around, when the boys get too close, I want you to remember that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.



 So you should remain poor, pure, not poor, but pure, and apart from the boys."



 The teacher, the young nun, is sincere, but as the girls leave, they begin to smirk and chortle.



 "My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Well, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit."



 And they mock her, except for one.



 A young girl who has already been molested by the boys, who walks apart and considers what the teacher has said with tears of joy.



 Regardless of what I have done, regardless of what has been done to me, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. I have been purchased and cleansed and purified by the blood of Jesus Christ. I am precious to God. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And that reality that we have been purified by the work of God, that our bodies, not just our spirits, not just our minds, not just our thoughts, not just what happens in this sometimes artificial environment, that everything around us has been purchased by the blood of Christ. "Taid right with God by the sacrifice of Jesus is in itself to be motivating power." I am right with God, not because of what I have done, not because of my actions, not because of my activities, but because of the mercies of God. "I appeal to you," says the apostle, "by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to him." And the beauty of that mercy is what he begins to unfold in such a way that we find it so precious and powerful, it becomes the greatest motivation of our lives.



 Mercy is not mentioned for the first time in the first verse of chapter 12. The apostle has been building the case for mercy throughout this entire book as though he's got this wheelbarrow, he's taking through the chapters of the Bible. Do you not recognize every personal nerve has been affected by the sin of Adam?



 And the creatures begin to make idols of themselves and the things in the world rather than the Creator. And that's not just true of some people, that's true of everybody. There's none righteous, no not one. And despite the fact that there is none righteous by their own doing, God recognizing that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory God sent his son to be born of a woman to live sinlessly, become a perfect sacrifice for us. And if you would confess that, that Jesus is Lord, that he died for your sin and rose from the grave, you would be saved. It's as though the apostle is at this point kind of gathering it all up and taking this huge ball of mercy. I want you to recognize how much this can weigh upon your heart and life to motivate you to leverage you for the purposes of God.



 He's actually described this endless ocean of mercy that is the fountain from which we can drink to understand how great is God's grace toward us. That mercy was described in chapter 11 starting at verse 27 as the apostle described a covenant that God made with his people to forgive their sin. Do you remember? That was the covenant made with Abraham that he would be a father of many nations saved by faith in God's provision, not by what Abraham did.



 But what happened?



 Says the apostle again in Romans 11 verse 30, "For just as you," that is Gentiles, "were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of there," that is the Jews' disobedience, "so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy, for God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on them all." Now I know the words are going by fast, but here's the picture.



 Here's God saying, "I am going to save people from their sin." And the way he does that is making a covenant with Abraham, the Jewish people, to take the message of salvation by faith to the nations. But at some point, that river of mercy that's coming out of the ocean of grace gets rejected by the Jews. They do not receive the Messiah that is sent. And so the river is diverted onto the Gentiles so that they now begin to receive the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, but not all of them receive it. So the Jews now, seeing what God is doing through the Gentiles, become jealous for Jesus, and the remnant turns back to the river again. So that ultimately what God has done by this plan through the ages is He extended mercy to all nations, all peoples, by His covenant that was established with Abraham. It's this amazing plan of mercy that God has given so much so that verse 33 of chapter 11, the apostle says, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.



 How unsearchable are His judgments? How inscrutable are His ways?" Here's just this amazing plan from the dawn of creation through our very moment now.



 God's saying, "I'm not going to stop coming after you.



 Here comes my mercy. It's washed over you. Regardless of what's been done in your body, to your body, by your body, here now comes the mercy of God."



 And when you begin to perceive its beauty, you're supposed to perceive its effect upon you.



 That effect is in the second half of verse 1. We read by it very quickly. Paul says, "By the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."



 Now, the effect that is intended by those words, you will miss if you read this verse the way that I did much of my life far into my adult years.



 Now, when I was a kid, I memorized this in the King James, the way some of you may have, and so I have to get it going that way. Do some of you know how that works, you know? "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to him, which is your reasonable act of worship."



 See, I can just kind of get it going.



 Now, that's what the verse said, "But I must tell you it's not what my ears heard."



 Here's what I heard.



 "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, and then you'll be holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship." Is that what it says?



 No.



 Isn't that what you heard?



 That this verse is like a wagging finger at you. You be a good living sacrifice, and then you'll be holy and acceptable to God.



 But you must recognize, holy and acceptable are not descriptions of what you will become.



 They are declarations of what you are. You in all your weakness and sin and frailty and fault are holy and acceptable to God. Wait, wait, how could that be? How could I be holy and acceptable, pleasing God? I know my sin. I know my weakness. I know the fault of last week. I know the fault of this morning. How could I be holy and acceptable to God?



 In view of God's mercies. That's where it all began. It's the apostle making sure that before we embark on any of the commandments, the rules, the imperatives that are about to follow, and boy, there are a bunch of them, that we start from the place of recognizing who we are. My identity is one who has been redeemed by the Savior, washed by the blood, made holy and acceptable to God. The word holy should have been a cue. Are you ever going to do something that's going to make you holy? No, our best works are filthy rags to God. If we've been made holy, it's because of something that Christ has done. And that reality that we've been made holy and acceptable to God, that that is my identity now, and your identity now, is what precedes all the commands that are about to follow. We are right at this pivot point.



 Everything has been building the message of mercy so that now the commands will follow. But right here at the pivot, Romans 12, 1 and 2, the apostle is saying, "Don't you dare pursue the commands until you're being motivated by the mercy that is establishing your identity." You are holy and acceptable to God. And it's that identity that's supposed to drive the imperatives.



 Now it's easy for me to say this. Let me tell you, I say it a lot. I say it in this ministry. I say it in this place to say that the rules that we follow do not gain us grace. After all, if you had to gain grace, it would not be grace.



 Grace is always a, excuse me, the rules and our obedience is always a response to the grace that God has supplied. But what difference does it make?



 And Kathy and I were young parents.



 As we were thinking through the gospel, as it was changing us, as I was in my own ministry crushed by a message early on that said, "You'd be good and God will love you for that."



 Until I found I couldn't be good enough for such a God that was holy and had to depend upon His holiness. How do we say this to our kids? There was a time I would say to my oldest son, Colin, something like this. I would say, "Colin, you're a bad boy because you did that."



 Now, it's very common. It's very easy to say.



 But think through what you just said.



 "Colin, you're a bad boy because you did a bad thing." In which case your identity, who you are, is based upon what?



 What you do, your actions. The gospel is exactly the opposite.



 The gospel says you have been made right with God. Therefore, live as children of God. Be what you are. You've been made right. You've been made holy. How do you express that to your child? And you may think it's silly. But Kathy and I found ourselves putting ourselves under the discipline of saying to my son something like, "Colin, don't do that.



 You're my son and I love you.



 I want what you do to be based upon our relationship. I don't want our relationship to be based on what you do because that's the opposite of the gospel." And it's not just the way that we talk to our children. It's the way that we deal with our spouses. You know, I'm a North American male of a certain generation that means my natural heroes are either John Wayne or Harrison Ford, right?



 You know, the men who kind of take charge and, you know, ain't scared of nothing and never cry, you know.



 But what that means is when there is, when there's tension between Kathy and me, my temptation is to take charge by responding in anger, but I can't do that because I'm a preacher. And so the alternative is to get really quiet.



 She'll figure out what she did.



 Now, some of you are looking around for Kathy. She's not here today.



 My temptation is to treat her according to her actions. But according to Scripture, we are heirs together of the grace of life. We are in a covenant relationship that is not established by our actions, that is established by a prior commitment to one another put before God. It is that covenant relationship that establishes who we are. Are there things to work through? Of course there are things to work through. With love and respect and regard for my sister in Christ who is my spouse under a covenant



 that God Himself is established by His grace not on the basis of her actions or my actions.



 How do we deal with each other in the church?



 What's my humanity say? You fire at me? What's my temptation?



 Fire right back to treat you according to your actions toward me. But if what I perceive is that you are holy and acceptable to God, if you are my brother or sister in Christ, then behind the eyes that are shooting darts at me, if I can perceive there is Christ by His Holy Spirit indwelling you, then I am bound not to treat you only by your actions, but to treat you as my brother or sister in Christ. Are there still things to bring to the table? Of course.



 With love and respect and humility because the gospel requires us to treat people according to relationship first, not according to actions first.



 Actions are the result of relationship. Relationships are not dependent upon actions. If that is not the case, the gospel we ourselves attest will no longer be anything we ourselves can bank upon because we will recognize our actions have failed our Lord. It is ultimately the earnestness of the apostles' words that begin to make you feel the weight of this mercy that's supposed to be behind everything that we do, everything we say, everything that's motivating us in the Christian life. I mean, just the opening words of verse 1, "I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God." I just did a quick survey of the various translations that we use to think, how significant are those words?



 The appeal to your language is the ESV. Some of you have the NIV or the NASB, the New American Standard Bible. Both say, "I urge you, brothers." The King James version that I mentioned earlier says, "I beseech you, therefore, brothers." The New Living Translation, "I plead with you, brothers."



 Woos says, "I beg of you, brothers."



 But maybe nothing is more important than just recognizing the word behind the pleading. It's paracallo from which we get the word paraclete, which is what Jesus identified as the Holy Spirit, the one who would come alongside us. And here's the apostle who knows the paganism of the Gentiles that are in the church, who knows the persecutions of the Jews against He Himself. And he says, "I beg you, my brothers," as though he's bringing them right alongside,



 dealing with them as though they are holy and acceptable, not just to God, but to Him, because he knows that expression of the gospel is what's confirming it to his own heart.



 A few weeks ago, I was ministering in another city, and I knew I was going to be in a place where there had been a man that I had known for a lot of years, some years before. He is a man who identified himself as my friend, and I will tell you he did tremendous damage to my family.



 Knowing I was going to be in that city, I arranged to meet with him.



 Now, I'm just going to tell you straight up, I don't think much that I said to him at any impression on him now, any more than it did years ago.



 But I began our conversation just by saying, "Listen, before we talk about anything, I want you to know that you're my brother in Christ, and I will love you."



 Does that sound crazy to you?



 I mean, he hasn't turned around, he hasn't flipped, he hasn't repented, he hasn't done none of that.



 But why do I need to say, regardless of what you do, I will love you?



 Because of what's affirming to my own heart that my God is not waiting for me to fix the problem before he will love me, that he has established a covenant that he has initiated by his mercy. And he is looking at people with all kinds of weaknesses and flaws and faults and saying to them, "The mercy of the blood of my son covering your sin comes upon you by faith alone. Not by your fixing things, not by your turning around, not by your making it right. I will love you. And I need to hear those words coming out of my mouth at times because it's changing my heart even if it's not changing somebody else's heart."



 What God is doing in this tremendous passage is telling us by the earnestness of the words of the apostle how important it is that we recognize mercy is not just some motivation back there somewhere for, you know, holier people than thou.



 It ultimately becomes the fuel, the actual power of the Christian life to understand how great is God's mercy toward you. After all, if you begin to grasp it, you are holy and acceptable to God.



 You know all the things by which you betrayed him and done wrong and he's still able to say, "You're my child.



 And you please me when you come to me."



 And even though you've been a long way off and you think I went somewhere else, you turn around and I'm right there in your footsteps says the Lord, right there, right there.



 Because his love did not go away. How does that change you?



 The apostle wants you to know because he actually takes the mercy and begins to use it as fuel. Verse 2, "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. Do not be conformed to this world."



 I think of my friend, the policeman in the class, and just look at the defeatedness as his shoulders fell and his face fell and his eyes went down just to say, "I know I've been conformed to the world." And how he would love to know there was another answer, another way, something would help, something that would keep him from being conformed, that he would be transformed.



 Just my friend, the policeman, I think the challenges all of us face in school and places of work, you know, I said in the first service, I recognize for young people today, I think your being transformed and not conformed to the world is harder than it was for me. I look at a generation older than I where men went off to war totally unaccountable, where every sin was available to them as well as the violence that sometimes calloused them to everything good and holy.



 And yet I look at young people in high schools and college campuses today who are facing just the availability of temptation and the urging of peers in ways that I have no parallel to in my life.



 And I have to tell you how much I respect and admire people who are saying, "I will be a believer in this age. I will not be conformed to this world. I will be transformed. I will live differently."



 But even as much as I admire you, I think what's going to equip you, what's going to enable you to live that kind of life.



 And the Apostle says what it is, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind."



 Now if there is a verse in Scripture that is misinterpreted, I will tell you in our circles, I think this is one I have heard misinterpreted more than any other.



 Because so often this verse gets interpreted as meaning the way you're going to be transformed with gospel power is you need to renew your mind.



 So read good books, be among good people, don't go to bad movies, read the Bible a whole, whole lot, and you can renew your mind so that you will be ready to be transformed.



 How do I say this to you? If you're transforming your mind, who is your Savior?



 You are.



 This is not concentration on your activity to transform you. The reference to the mind here is not the first place in this passage. Just remember, the Apostle began talking to Jew and Gentile in Romans chapter 10, saying to the Jews, "Receive the new people." Then saying to the new people, "Honor the older people."



 And now having covered that territory, he returns to the mind problem that he began addressing in chapter 10, the first three verses. Do you remember? Paul is speaking about his Jewish brothers who he said, "I'd even give up my own salvation for them."



 But what's their problem? Romans 10, 1, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Jews is that they may be saved.



 For I bear them witness."



 They have a zeal for God. Boy, they really work hard at it. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.



 There's something wrong with their minds, their thoughts. What is it? Verse 3, "For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." What was God's righteousness? Not just his good rules, but his good heart.



 That God was saying, "I must supply your righteousness. I must make you right with myself." But the Jews in there, zeal, said, "I'll take care of that. I'll fix that. I'll make myself right with God." That is zeal for God. But it came out of a wrong mind, out of ignorance about improper knowledge. Now says the apostle, "You, those of you who have perceived the great mercy of God, you don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds about what?



 About the mercy of God that makes you holy and acceptable to him, not based on what you do, but upon what he has provided. Then you can, by testing the end of verse 2, discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Now listen, there are going to be all kinds of rules that now follow. The apostle is going to talk about our corporate responsibilities, our individual responsibilities, our civil responsibilities, our moral responsibilities, the chapters that are about to unfold. But he says, "You will not properly discern what the will of God is if you're not being motivated by the mercy of God." It is that mercy of God that has to be behind all of these things. Why?



 Because the right things for the wrong reasons are wrong.



 If you do all these things, even with the zeal of the Jews, but out of a heart of self-justification, out of a heart of comparison to other people, out of a heart of, "I'm going to qualify for the grace of God," if that's why you're doing it, you're going to bribe God with your goodness,



 then you can do the right things for the wrong reasons, and you will actually be objectionable to God by doing the very things that you think are making you acceptable to Him.



 Remember the people in the Old Testament? God said, "Offer sacrifices," and they do.



 And God says to them, "Your sacrifices are a stench in my nostrils." Why?



 Because you're trying to bribe me to be nice to you. You're depending on your actions rather than my mercy. You're not saying the sacrifices is representing the grace of God toward you. You are trying to pay me off to be nice to you, in which case you make me the ogre in the sky who's paid off by your filthy rags that are filthy to me because of how you're using them.



 How many people in the church are reading their Bibles, going to church, praying longer, getting up earlier, to make God be nice to them? I'm going to pay Him off, because if I knew that, the ogre in the sky is going to get me. No!



 "Beseach you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as what's already whole and acceptable to Him." And when you know that He is saying, "I look at you and I'm pleased with you, and I've sent my son for you, and you're my child," then you're not trying to pay Him off. You are loving to live for Him.



 I've said to you before that one of my great friends is the mission leader, Paul Koystra.



 And Paul, before he became a missionary statesman, was a teacher in a school district. And he talks about a time that a particular school district that he was in was trying to find a way to help disadvantaged kids. And one of the things they discovered was so many kids were having trouble reading on a grade level that they had to create a separate remedial reading program to try to get the kids back up on par.



 Great plan.



 One little problem.



 It never worked.



 It seemed like the label of being a problem reader was more powerful than the program designed to help problem readers. Nobody who went into the program ever got back up on par. It was like this academic whirlpool. Once you got in, it just dragged you down.



 Except for one young lady.



 Her name was Edie.



 And because she was good at track, they called her Speedy Edie.



 Edie got out.



 And of course, all the administrators go to the teacher and say, "How did that happen? I mean, did you use a different curriculum? Did you have her for different hours? Did you use different readings?"



 She said, "No, no, no. Well you must have done something different."



 Said the teacher, "Do you know Edie runs track?"



 "Yeah, we know all about Speedy Edie."



 Well, sometimes I went to her track mates and I cheered for her.



 And that was it.



 That Edie knew there was somebody for her. Beyond just the mechanical requirements of the classroom. Beyond just trying to meet the accreditor's standards. That there was somebody who was absolutely for her, who would expend themselves for her sake. And it was that that made her want to achieve, want to respond to that great grace that had been given to her. It's the very thing the apostle is saying to you and me here. Once you begin to understand how great is the mercy of God for you, it's that and that alone that becomes the motivation behind living for the Lord. I think of the difference it made even in that one week of my friend. I can't even fully describe to you what it was like to see this strapping, strong police officer stand before us in that classroom and say, "By the end of the weekend of those activities I have conformed to the world." Just watch his shoulders slump, his head down, the tears come. And then as we talk more and more through the week, how does mercy change people? How does the grace of God motivate people? How has God claimed you beyond your weaknesses and sin and conformity? How is God changing you by His grace, not your goodness? It was just physically fun to watch.



 As through the week he just stood straighter.



 Shoulders back, head up. By the end of the week I could hear him laughing at his conversations with his friends. I could see the gleam in his eyes of the joy of the Lord. And I remember the simple truths of the gospel, the joy of the Lord is our strength. How many people think the grace of God is going to somehow undo obedience? No. By the great mercies of God, we are motivated with power to live for Him because we say, if He has loved me this much, then I want to live for Him.



 It's the testimony of the men who talked today who were baptized. It's the testimony of every heart who has found solace from their own sin in the gospel. If He loves me that much, I will live for Him. It's the message He has for you. I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as living sacrifices that are holy and acceptable to Him. This is your spiritual worship. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind and then you will really discern what is God's good, pleasing and perfect will because His mercy will be your motivation and your profound power.



 Father, so work the gospel into our hearts, we pray, that this grace that is so good, almost beyond our believing how good it is, the world says it can't be that simple. We say it is not only that simple, it is that powerful. That when hearts acknowledge to you that we need Jesus, you pour out the mercy and whatever is past that's been done to us or by us, you purify, call us to yourself, claim us as your own, and commission us to live for you. So Father, work in us even now that we might not be conformed to this world, but transformed by mercy for the God we love. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.