So, let's turn to the Word of God. I will be reading a section of the chapter that was already read to us, chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Please give attention to the public reading of God's inspired word. Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing, and perfect will. Holy bodies transformed minds. Some people believe that Rome collapsed because of lead poisoning. But in 1776, actually they believe that because the pots they use were made of lead, and so apparently there was a consistent lead poisoning going on. But in 1776, while his English cousins in the colonies, namely you, were being rebellious, bringing about the fall of the British Empire, of which I'm still a proud member, Edward Gibbon wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon argued that it was moral poisoning and decay that did Rome in. I don't know whether you realize what was being lived out in Rome. 40% of the population were slaves that served the other 60% hand and foot day and night. There were some families that had thousands of slaves. 135 days were devoted to public games, intoxicated by leisure and entertainment. Sloth and moral disintegration surely caused Rome to implode. And eventually that empire turned in certain ways to the gospel. Augustine is an example. He came under the conviction by seeing the holy life of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. And then by reading in the epistle to the Romans in chapter 13, quote, not carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy, Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. Well, he was under conviction reading that verse, but his conversion occurred when he confessed his sins. He said, the streams of my eyes gushed out in an acceptable sacrifice to thee when I cried to thee, Lord. And thou, O Lord, how long, how long, O Lord, will thou be angry forever? Oh, remember, not against us our former iniquities. He came to understand that the only gospel that can save, as Paul says to the Romans in chapter 1, verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. That powerful gospel, of course, has enormous implications. And you'll notice that the two verses I read, which begin chapter 12, have a therefore as the beginning word. And, of course, that therefore is tied to everything else that Paul has said in Romans of a doctrinal nature regarding the gospel. So, there are obviously implications for this life-changing power of God in the gospel. In the light, therefore, he says, of what's gone before, what are the implications? These two verses are very interesting. The first verse is about holy bodies, and the second verse is about transformed minds. The first verse takes virtually everything it says from the Old Testament. And we'll look at that in a moment. The second verse uses three verbs that you don't find in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament because Paul is actually using modern terms of his day to apply what he believes to be transformed thinking. But you see, this is a programmatic statement it seems to me of what Paul believes is needed for these Roman Christians as they face the pagan world all around them. And you know, I don't know whether you feel this too, but there is an inkling, at least in my soul, that the Roman Empire is coming back in enormous power. So that these verses that Paul spoke to the church at the beginning have a particular implication and emphasis for us. They ask us, you see, to have a holistic view of ourselves, a unity of body and mind, of thoughts and acts, of deeds and creeds, as we seek to develop both our understanding and our consistent living. Even the Romans knew this in their famous phrase, Sanus corpus, Sanus mentis. You'll have to ask Bob Godfrey what that means. I'll tell you. Healthy bodies, healthy minds. But that's what Paul is saying. We need holy bodies and transformed minds. Now, we Calvinists have certainly understood this. The conclusion to the canons of Dort is a wonderful statement. This synod exhorts all their brethren to conduct themselves piously and religiously in handling this doctrine for holiness of life. Doctrine and living go together. So, let me look first at holy bodies and then at transformed minds. It's a very simple sermon, two points. It will hardly take any time at all. this is Paul's recipe for survival in the pagan world and a world that is very intimidating as you well know so holy bodies therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy verse 1 to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship holiness is a heavy burden for us who live in an unholy world it seems to me we live in an unholy world of public deviance shameless debauchery unbridled lust and the glorification even moralization of sexual perversion pornography is all around us and indeed when you read some reports apparently many ministers have been affected by it some of the radical feminists call for discovering the consciousness of the sacred prostitute i didn't expect i would ever hear people talk this way in christian america how do we capture what's happening in our time seems to me is helped by understanding what was happening in Rome at the time that Paul wrote this letter. I've never seen the movie Federico Fellini's Satyricon. I want you to know that, but it was made in the late 60s, a sexual extravaganza based on the work of Petronius, a Roman courtier at the time of Nero. And he wrote a play containing episodes of Roman debauchery, including prostitution orgies, homosexual and hermaphroditic trists or trists, even gay marriage and pedophilia. And he wrote and produced his play. Nero was burning Christians, using them to light up his garden sueries on poles. At this time, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul wrote Romans, Neru was marrying two men, Sporus as his wife and Dorophorus as his husband. You see, there's nothing new in the world of perversion. And especially in paganism is this to be seen. And as our world becomes more and more like this ancient world, It seems to me that we need to hear what Paul is saying with great interest. But here's the problem. Can we live with holiness without coming over as moralists, as merely judgmental, holier-than-thou kinds of people? It seems to me that we can do this if we truly understand the gospel. If you come over as a moralist, you will indeed be silenced. You will be anyway, but people will at least have to listen to you. Because Paul does not present this challenge of holy bodies in a sort of harsh rule-giver. He begins by saying, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God. Our response of holiness is because of God's mercy, as Psalm 51.1 says, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, block out my transgressions. Augustine understood that. So that's the basis of holiness. But of what does it consist? When you look into this first verse, as I mentioned, all the terms come from the Old Testament system of the priesthood. I wonder why Paul chooses this idea. And it seems to me it's because the Old Testament priests were separated to be entirely devoted. That's what holiness means. And that's what it means, apparently, as Paul says, for us. We are to be like the priests of the Old Testament, entirely devoted to living under God in this world. To be separated out is really the basic notion of holiness. And the priests, of course, were the only ones who could enter into the temple because they had been consecrated. That is set apart. So the priests are holy, not because of unusual moral efforts, but because of an act of God placing them in a particular role. I think we need to see our holiness that way. And the terms Paul uses here are taken from this priestly system. When he says present your bodies, Deuteronomy 17.12 said the priest who presents himself to minister before the Lord, a living sacrifice, obviously comes out of the Old Testament. Numbers 29.39 says these sacrifices you shall offer to the Lord, acceptable to God. Another phrase of verse 1, the Old Testament sacrifices had to be acceptable to God. And then Paul talks about priestly service, and that's the term it's used in 1 Chronicles 28.13, where David gave Solomon a plan for the division of the priests and Levites and all the work of the service in the house of the Lord. So we must think of ourselves as full-time in this business of holy living, the way the priests were in the Old Testament, set apart for that calling. But here's the problem. This acceptable living, this sacrificial living, concerns our bodies, our flesh and blood bodies. Well, you say, Lord, what about my dreams, my aspirations, my higher self, my spiritual better me? And God says, I want your body. What about my imagination, my good intentions, my plans, my vast vision for God's kingdom? No, I want your body, says the scripture. I wonder why. Well, of course, we all hate hypocrites who say one thing and then in secret in their actions do the opposite. So that our body language must fit our public speech. But the other thing why the Lord wants our bodies as sacrifices is because our bodies actually witness to the person of God himself. We are not Gnostics. Indeed, the Gnostics, you see, rejected the body. And they said it didn't matter how you lived. But the reason why they did that was not so much because they wanted to enjoy an immoral kind of living. Some of them were ascetics also, and they didn't do anything to the body, but it's the same kind of thing, because they rejected God, the Creator. And one of the Gnostic texts actually tells us that Sophia, the goddess of Gnosticism, at the end of time throws Yahweh into hell. You see, your bodily living in holiness is a witness to who God is as the Creator. and so we as christians affirm and witness to what the apostle paul says in first timothy 14 everything god created is good and as you read the scriptures of the new testament you realize to what extent the actual physical body of jesus is essential to our christian faith it is through the body of jesus that we are saved take eat this is my body they couldn't find the body at the time of the resurrection and then we are reminded that our future will involve the redemption of our bodies and so we witness in our bodies to God as savior and but also as creator because we must all appear says Paul before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done, where? In the body. So that we may say at the end, with Paul, it is my eager desire that with full courage, now as always, Christ be honored in my body. So we're supposed to present our bodies holy. Now, I've intimated already what I mean by this, or what I believe the Apostle Paul means by this, but how do we get a handle on holiness? Is it a sort of moralism of obeying rules just to look good, to be sort of not rocking the boat? I'm sure you young people are tempted by the modern view of things to want to all get along and to be part of this new culture that's arising. And the intimidation factor is enormous. In my generation, it was easier to conceive of holiness as a moralistic notion And where we were, we used to call ourselves holy huddles. But that's not the basis of holiness. Holiness has first and foremost to do, not with morality, not with do's and don'ts. But how the world is intentionally structured by God. So holiness is not as such a series of moral commands that you obey. But it is the way the world is built. And it's the way God built the world in holy structures that actually give rise to ethics. As I said, the root meaning of holy is to set apart for a specific function in a specific place. That's how we can say that God is holy. In a certain sense, it doesn't make sense to say that God is ethical. That almost goes without saying. But to say that God is holy means that God has his own place. That's what Jesus means when he says to us how to pray. Pray, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed, that is holy, is your name. You see, it's the place of God as distinct from the creation that renders God holy, having his own special place. And if that's true for God, of course, then it's true for us. And God, who is separate from us and holy in that sense, when he creates, you notice what he does. He makes things for special functions and separates things out. He separates the day and the night, the land, the dry land, and the waters. And in a certain sense, you see, God is sanctifying what he's already made. And finally, God creates male and female as holy structures of existence. Now, how do we live this out? Well, I'm going to pronounce the four-letter word, submission. Everyone must submit. Everybody actually gets to submit. We don't just apply this to married ladies. And I've gone through the New Testament. It is amazing. We must submit to magistrates, to church leaders, to employers, to husbands, to parents, to Christ, to God. Because, you see, the cosmos is made up of structures that God has ordained, and they are holy. So, we need to hear this message as a message, obviously, of requiring a certain kind of moral living, but greater than that, as an expression of the work of God in creating the world as it is. This, I think, should help us, especially some folks who are tempted by sexual temptations of all kinds in this new world. The Apostle Paul says, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But sexual immorality, a person sins against his own body. In our times of weakness, let's remember that this is God's will that we reflect how he made the world. And it is a beautiful world. It is a holy world. And if we do not remember that, we will ruin ourselves, our wives and our children. What are the reasons for this holy living? Well, it's a necessary implication of who we are. As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. You see, we're being called to reflect the holiness of God who himself is distinct from what he made and he makes us in distinct, specific ways for specific roles. It is also a noble calling. Do you want your life to have real significance? You're called to reflect to the world who God is. The cherubim cry out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And there's a call here for us to reflect that glory in the whole earth. But, of course, how do we get to the sense of the nature of holiness as structured in the world without what I've been calling a sort of a moralism or judgmentalism? And I believe it's attached to the second element that I find in verse 2, which is transformed minds. It's our minds that can transform us into thinking and living in the way required. So, let me read verse 2. Do not be conformed, and you get the impression that I'm halfway through my sermon. This is my second point. It's probably far too long already. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Well, here's another big issue. I believe these two notions really are programmatic, if you like, for us. And they're programmatic in the sense of when Paul is coming to the end of Romans and he says, therefore, he wants to establish the two fundamental things that will put everything he's been teaching into practice. And I believe this discourse of a transformed mind will allow us the freedom to live in holy ways. The attack on clear thinking is evident in our time and especially in clear thinking with regard to what is right and proper. Much of what I hear in the news I'd call spin. We are told that good thinking today is cutting-edge, late-breaking visions of a progressive future and that we have to be in this vanguard of going forward. And as Christians, we tend to fall into this unfortunate frame in which we're placed that, you know, the world has this forward-looking view of things and you folks out there are all old fogies. And you're going backwards, you see. And you don't know what's up and what's down. You must be progressive, future-tending, forward-looking, not repressive, backward-looking, old school. You find this, I read the LA Times every day, I must confess, They said about Prop 8 that those supporting that were guilty of, quote, prejudice hiding behind piety. So you obviously can't take a position on homosexual marriage with any intelligence. You are just full of prejudice hiding that behind the so-called piety. The president said to a group of homosexuals in the White House in 2009, that the foes of homosexuality are holding on to, quote, worn arguments and old platitudes. You see how the Christian faith is being framed as going backwards. Of course, that is spin, because all these folks going forward are only appealing to the gurus of Eastern spirituality that go back at least to the 6th century BC or to native spirituality of Native American Indian worship. I love what Gresham Machen said in a sermon in 1925, Quote, our enemy who prides itself on being very modern, nothing's changed, is as old as the hills. And from the very beginning, the Christian church has been menaced by all-embracing paganism. However, and I address especially the young people here, the intimidation factor is absolutely enormous in our time for you to not want to be associated, Obviously, at least, with this gospel. The intimidation factor is massive. And if you don't fit with this politically correct, feministic, multiculturalism, you are denounced. And in certain places, you can lose your job. And we do see a temptation to conformity in certain parts of the Christian church. I know not here, and I pray God that our churches will stand firm in tough times. But you can see a fear of the culture produces a kind of soft sell about the gospel. I know one well-known student Christian ministry now calls itself a hospital for hurting people. It used to have speakers come and preach the gospel. It doesn't do that anymore. So we're fearful of the culture. We seek the approval of the culture. And so we have to modify our message. Our problems are self-imposed because we have the gospel all wrong. So we have to tweak our message and bring it up to date. So we have to eliminate the cross. And anything that smacks of judgmentalism. And we have to get involved in the compassionate care for the earth and its inhabitants. And then we'll show that we're truly Christian. It can go all the way to assimilation into the culture. Where you make the culture actually describe the agenda for the church. One radical emergent in Great Britain talks about the essential goodness of the culture. And he goes on, quote, we need to completely rebirth the church into the culture. We must open ourselves to it and adapt to it. We must resist the idea that the main goal of the church is getting people saved. So a total acquiescence to what the culture is saying. And this appeal is being made to young people. Barna says, young people have graded Christianity and so far the grades aren't looking good. The majority of American young people describe Christianity as, quote, judgmental, hypocritical, anti-homosexual, and many in the Christian faith don't even want to call themselves Christian because of the baggage that accompanies the label. So, when Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, you can see how easily, in an intimidating situation, that conformity can take place. Paul is not blinded to what the culture actually says. He calls it the present evil age animated by Satan. His recommendation is to clear thinking. Paul does not say adapt to the culture. He says you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. So, how do we stand against this powerful intimidation, this temptation to conform to this present world? Well, it's, I hope it's obvious, it's by the transformation and renewal of our minds. We avoid conformity by thoroughly understanding the nature of the gospel as transformative of our minds. Paul uses a term that really evokes a massive transformation since he uses it in 2 Corinthians 3.18 recalling the experience of Moses on the mount. We all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed. So, get ready for a major transformation of the mind. Calvin, in his commentary on Acts, says about Lydia's conversion. By the word heart, Scripture sometimes means the mind, as when Moses says, Deuteronomy 29, 4, until now the Lord has not given your heart your heart of understanding. So also in this verse, Luke, says Calvin, means not only that Lydia was moved by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to embrace the gospel with a feeling of the heart, but that her mind was illumined to understand. Well, what does Paul mean by a renewed, transformed mind? He doesn't go into it in this verse. But he does indicate what he means when he uses the term in verse 2, The term discern, so that you might be able to discern, he says. A transformed mind to discern. Now, it's interesting that he will compare this transformed mind that is able to discern what is God's will with undiscerning thinking. So, if you look at what Paul says about undiscerning thinking, you get some impression of what he means by discerning thinking. And guess what? In Romans 128, with regard to sexual perversion, he says, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge, literally to discern God, God gave them up to... Now, you need the Greek in front of you, and I know only 50% here do have the Greek text in front of them. God gave them up to an undiscerning, and it's often translated as debased. But it is, again, undiscerning mind to do what ought not to be done. So you really cannot miss the parallelism between Romans 12.2, a discerning mind, and Romans 1.28, which is an undiscerning mind. so I propose to discover what Paul means by a transformed mind by going to what he says at the beginning of Romans and that is to look very quickly at Romans 1.25 I believe that this is the transforming mindset of which Paul speaks in my humble opinion these 25 words change the world here Paul's pen is filled with kryptonite his writing explodes off the page both in complexity and simplicity they're comparable to the words of Moses in Genesis 1.1 Moses stands up and declares In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In a world of paganism, Egyptian, Canaanite, that only believed that nature was divine. The shattering truth of that statement in Genesis 1.1, we don't quite get. We're so used to it. The same way here, Paul stands up in Rome and says the words that really change everything. He says, they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. This is an amazing statement. I compare it to Genesis 1.1, to Descartes' Cogito Ego Sum, and to Einstein's E equals MC squared. You will not find a statement of more power and profundity and yet simplicity, I believe, than what Paul says here about the truth that needs to be proclaimed in the pagan world of who God is. Essentially, Paul is saying in Romans 1.25, there are only two kinds of minds. There are only two kinds of thinking possible. The transformed mind understands and worships God, who is the personal transcendent creator, and everything else follows from that. The undiscerning mind makes nature God and worships and serves the creation and builds a worldview on that. See, that's what we're seeing today in one so-called Christian America. We are seeing a confrontation of these two worldviews. And one will only undo us. The other will bring us wisdom and a life pleasing to the Lord. It's really Paul asking the essential question that philosophers have always asked. It's the most essential question I suppose you could ask, to get the mind to ask. Does the world create itself, or is there a creator, personal transcendent, different from the world, that creates the world? You don't get much further than that in terms of thinking. Now, if you opt for the world creating itself, which takes a lot of faith, it seems to me, Then you begin to construct a worldview, a mind, that will totally undermine everything that the worldview of the Bible is affirming. I like to call this kind of worldview one-ism. I just do it because I have a simple mind, and maybe some of you have simple minds. And if you can count from one to two, you can do theology. One is a means that everything can be explained by everything else without any reference to the transcendent Lord, creator of heaven and earth. Think of a circle. Everything is within the circle. Rocks, trees, planets, human beings, and God. God as the energy, the power that animates everything. But there's nothing outside. And so if you want to find out what truth is, what spirituality is, Where do you go? Well, you know, you go within. The deeper in you go, the more you find out about the truth of the worship of nature. And Paul works this out in Romans 1. As he shows in his introduction to Romans, the kind of spirituality, the kind of thinking, the undiscerning thinking that marks the pagan Roman Empire. God is nature. That's worked out in 18 through 21. People refuse to recognize God the creator, and yet they will worship creation. What are they doing? They're stating that nature is divine. And then spirituality. Of course, if nature is divine, then you will worship everything within it. As I said, rocks and trees are, as Paul says, animals and four-footed beasts and, actually, and oneself, because you are a part of nature as well. What do we see today? People are into yoga, mysticism, dekecology, interfaith communion. All kinds of mystical approaches to get in touch with one's higher self. This is just paganism coming from millennia ago. And, of course, this is progressive forward-looking thinking, by the way. And then, of course, in verses 26 and following, Paul talks about what happens when you worship nature in relationship to sexuality. If there's no creator, then there's nothing that is unnatural. Everything is fine. And we're seeing that today in our world. And I'm afraid we will pay enormous consequences. Now what Paul affirms, on the contrary, is what I like to call two-ism. Two-ism is the affirmation that there are two kinds of existence. The creator, and then everything else is creation. You see that? You cannot blend those two things. God is separate than we are. He is other. and everything else is created. And the difference is that God isn't, and we are. And we have to respect the nature of God. But he is the personal source of a moral universe. He is the transcendent Lord, says Paul in Romans 1.20, revealed through nature. In spirituality, you see, we don't worship nature. We praise God, but we live out a faith in his goodness as creator and redeemer through the ordinary means of grace, of preaching and the sacraments. And we affirm the celebration of what Paul calls the natural, the heterosexual. Here are two worldviews, you see, that have always been on offer and are now entering into our 21st century with enormous power, especially what I call one-ism. I came across the power of this in reading a book a few months ago called American Veda, V-E-D-A, which is Indian philosophy, where this ex-Jewish thinker shows to what extent America has become Hindu. And his argument is that Hindu spirituality now determines so much of what Americans think. And the key phrase, it's interesting, of Hindu spirituality that he underlines is the Hindu term Advaita. Advaita, you wonder what it means. It means not to, not to. So here you have the conflict between the Bible's affirmation that there are two kinds of existence and that that flows into everything we think about in terms of the creation and this ideology which is deliberately rejecting any notion of trueness. Well, how do we respond? I'm almost at the end. That, I believe, understanding the power of this kind of thinking that Paul presented to the church in Rome will transform us and transform how we speak about the gospel in our time. But, how do we actually do it? We could go out of here and you would all feel guilty that you were not living holy lives and your explanation of the gospel wasn't that clear. And I'd like to tell you that we can't do it. Because we come here with sin-stained bodies and screwed up minds. We need to be washed and renewed in order to serve God in the world. We long for purity. We yearn for wisdom. But when we look inside, we only see filthy rags and folly. I suppose we all like to see people get their just desserts. And notable sinners, well, perhaps under our breath we say they deserved it. But, you know what, we all deserve it. And when you read in Romans chapter 1, three times God gave them over to their sins. You sort of say, well, they got what they deserve. Justice is applied. But as a matter of fact, I would apply that verse to us. God has given us over as well to our sins. But the note of glory in Romans 1 is amazing. This same verb, and I can testify that the verb to give over or give up is the same verb that Paul uses in Romans 8.32 when he says this. God did not spare his own son, but gave him over for us all. He gave him over for our trespasses and raised him for our justification. This is really transforming. God himself, in the person of Jesus, bears the curse of the evildoer. And that's the message that we take to this sinful world. This is the glory of our story, the vicarious atonement of the God-man Jesus, which, by the way, is unique in the annals of religious history, so that the denial of the cross is a stake driven into the heart of the gospel message. But when grace vanishes our prideful hearts, And humbles us by the truth of God's love for his creatures. We can use our minds for his glory and offer our bodies to serve him as living sacrifices. We cannot do it alone. And sometimes in this new world of honest, politically correct thinking, it's intimidating. But we have the holy body of Jesus and the mind of Christ. And so I want to leave you with Paul's exhortation to the Philippian Christians, which I'd like you to receive as yours. Your attitude, literally have this mind among yourselves, should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Namely the mind of Christ, who being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross. This is his holy body being sacrificed. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, says Paul, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. And to him be glory forever and ever. Amen.