Made to Be Different

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We’ve been talking the last few weeks about the new life that we have in Jesus Christ. And as we’ve been talking about this and as I’ve been studying what God’s Word says about it, I started thinking about these nature shows that the kids and I like to watch. And I’ve really figured out there are two kinds, I know there are more than two kinds of animal, but there are really two types of animal in the world. Some animals survive by camouflage, by hiding from things that want to eat them.

That’s how they survive. Deer are really good at that. That’s why they are so hard to catch.

There are other animals that don’t have to do that because they have nothing to be afraid of. And they survive by being visibly different from everything around them. Unless they’re hunting, lions don’t hide.

They just lay there and be lions and do lion things because nobody’s going to mess with them other than humans. But we’re talking about the animal kingdom here. The kids and I were watching a documentary a while back about frogs in the rainforest. And these snakes, I hate snakes, these snakes would slither through the underbrush and they would hunt these frogs.

And some of these frogs had to camouflage really well in order to not be eaten by the snakes. And yet the snake would get really still and quiet and evil and would listen for the sound of the frog’s heartbeat and then would find the frog in the leaf litter and eat it. That frog, his only hope was to camouflage well enough that the snake couldn’t find him even with the sound.

But there were these poison dart frogs that are sometimes bright red, almost like neon red, purple, all these weird colors that you don’t normally see in nature. And you think, well, if you’ve got that color, you’re going to stand out from everything. Everything is going to see you.

But it’s okay because they don’t have anything to worry about. And so they survive by being different and being visibly different. I mean, it’s clearly advertised to everyone in the rainforest. Eat this at your own peril, right?

And so they survive by being different. And I thought about that in the context of this new life that Christ gives us. Because the Bible makes it very clear that you and I were created in Christ to be different.

We were not created to camouflage into the world or the ways of the world. We were created to be different from the world around us. And sometimes we spend so much time worrying about, are we going to fit in?

We’re not supposed to, right? Are my neighbors going to think I’m weird? If they do, you’re probably doing something right, right?

we were created to be different. And Paul writes about how we were made to stand out from the world around us in the book of Romans. One of the places he does that is in Romans chapter 12, which is where we’re going to be this morning.

Romans chapter 12, if you would turn there with me in your Bibles. Romans chapter 12. If you can’t find it or don’t have a Bible, it’ll be on the screen for you as well.

But once you find it, if you’re able to stand without too much trouble, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. and we’re going to look briefly at the first two verses of Romans chapter 12 this morning. It’s a passage that I think is familiar to a lot of us, but I think we can still learn some things from it.

Paul 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. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And you may be seated.

This is one of many places in the scriptures where Paul and others tell us that we are supposed to be different. Christians are supposed to be different by design. We are not made to blend in.

I remember years ago when I was in elementary school, my dad was my Sunday school teacher for a couple years, and I remember him telling us about a group of Christians in Hollywood and in the recording industry who had come together to form this group where they were just, they were following Jesus and they were sort of like the, I forget what they called themselves, but they were like the resistance and they were these secret followers of Jesus Christ. And I remember thinking even then, I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. I mean, good on them for trying to follow Jesus in Hollywood, right? Somebody’s got to.

But I don’t think it’s supposed to work. Yes, I know it may cost them something to follow Christ in Hollywood, but it’s not like it’s always a bed of roses for you and me following Christ in a lot in Oklahoma either. It’s not like it’s never been without cost. We were created in Christ to be different by design.

So Paul was writing here to the church at Rome about this call to be different here in chapter 12, and he introduces it by saying, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, there in verse 1. Beseech is not a word we use a lot these days. maybe we ought to.

It’s a good word. But it’s a word that means calling. In the Greek, the word is parakaleo, which has a wide variety of meanings.

Everything from encouragement to an urging. And I think both of them are wrapped up in this meaning. He’s trying to nudge them, trying to shove them into doing the right thing.

And so Paul, when he uses this word, he says beseech. He’s urging them, And he’s speaking here with the authority of a command from God, but he’s also speaking with all the urgency of a begging man. And we need to see both of those.

Paul is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And so when Paul says, I beseech you, that is coming from God. But it’s also Paul here saying, I beg you to do this.

This is what’s right and it’s what’s good for you. And these Christians that he’s writing to at the church in Rome in particular, I mean, the whole Roman Empire was this way, but they were sort of in the belly of the beast. They lived in the midst of a culture that was foreign and was hostile toward the things of God, toward the commands of God. And Christians were different from the culture because of that.

They were supposed to be. They couldn’t be. The same is true for us.

If you think there is some form of Christianity that will let you get by without ever having to confront the culture around you, or ever being confronted by the culture around you, you’re mistaken. It doesn’t matter how loving we are, and we should be loving, it doesn’t matter how kind we are, and how gracious we are, just for believing things that the world system does not approve, eventually we are going to be confronted. And they refused to worship Caesar, because they recognized they owed their highest allegiance to Jesus Christ. And so not only did they not fit into the religious system of the Roman society, but they also were outside the political system because you were seen as un-Roman.

Maybe in our terminology you were seen as unpatriotic because you were supposed to worship Caesar like a god. And the Romans, I mean, they were tolerant. They didn’t care who you worshipped.

You could worship a loaf of bread as far as the Romans were concerned. As long as you worship Caesar, you could worship anything you wanted to. As long as Caesar is in the mix.

And the Christians were saying, no, we only worship Jesus. We’re not bowing down to some man and pretending he’s God. And so they were seen as un-Roman.

They were misunderstood because of some of the things that they did believe and practice. The practice of the Lord’s Supper, where we talk about the body that was broken for us and the blood that was shed for us. And Jesus said, take, eat, this is my body.

Drink this. It’s my blood that was shed for the remission of sins. They did that, and the Roman culture at large misunderstood and accused Christians of cannibalism.

Add to that, you know, the way we refer to each other as brother and sister. I read this week that sometimes in Roman culture they were accused of incestual relationships because they were taking it literally that everybody was brother and sister in the churches. The Christians in Rome, they disrupted the social fabric.

They disrupted the way that the culture thought things were supposed to be. Because Christians at Rome, Christians throughout the Roman Empire, took God at His word and believed that women, just like men, were created in the image of God. Now, people today will try to tell you that Christianity demeans women.

No, no, no. Jesus Christ elevated women in a way they never had been before. They were not mere property. And yes, men and women clearly have different roles biblically, but we are equally created in the image of God and equally valuable in His sight.

and Christianity said that. The Roman culture said, no, women are just a step above property. And so the culture didn’t like that challenge.

Not only that, but within the church, slaves were treated as equals in the sight of God. The poor were seen as equals in the sight of God. There are entire chapters of the New Testament that deal with how we are not supposed to have favoritism among believers.

We’re supposed to see each other as equally valuable in the sight of God, and the Roman culture didn’t like that. The fact that we would see one another as image bearers of God was disruptive to the social fabric, where if you were not part of the rich class, if you were not in a certain part of the hierarchy, you were nothing. And contrary to the lie we are being told today, Christianity was not a force of oppression.

Christianity has not been a system that has kept people down. Christianity says the ground is equal at the foot of the cross, And we are all sinners in need of His grace and mercy. So the Roman culture didn’t like that.

They didn’t like that the Christians refused to participate in pagan sacrifices and rituals. They didn’t like that the Christians refused to participate in the rampant sexual perversion that went on throughout the empire. And they didn’t like that Christians didn’t participate in infanticide and all sorts of other evils that the Roman Empire perpetrated.

By the way, not just the Romans. These things have gone on throughout human history. but if you start to look at it in some ways it’s very similar to our day because we still believe and teach at least in this church we believe and teach that the bible says there is right and wrong when it comes to the way we treat one another there is right and wrong when it comes to how you run a society there is right and wrong when it comes to sex and marriage and gender there’s right and wrong when it comes to life we stand on these things and the culture is not going to like it and we’ll either get over it or we won’t.

They’ll either get over it or they won’t. What God says is true is true, and we are supposed to be different. And by the way, that doesn’t mean we hate anybody.

That doesn’t mean we’re mad at anybody. It just means we believe what God says. Don’t like it, take it up with him, right?

I didn’t write the book. And so there was this tremendous pressure on these people that Paul is writing to at Rome because they refused to join their neighbors in things that were displeasing to God, and they were often open about their reasons for refusing. And so it frequently happened at great cost that Christians would not join in in the pagan rituals and the pagan sacrifices.

And it would cost them something. It would cost them their livelihood. Sometimes it would even cost them their lives, and yet they were willing to pay that price.

Sometimes they were even joyful. If you can imagine this, they were joyful at the privilege of being able to suffer for the cause of Jesus Christ, for the name of Jesus Christ. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I would like to be someday. To look at suffering as a joyful thing.

And so Paul’s looking at this, these people that are different, who are different, and yet they are under tremendous pressure to conform to the world around them, as are we. And he gives them the encouragement to continue being different. And he doesn’t tell them to be different for some trivial reason.

Sometimes people like to be different just to be different. I worked around high school students enough to know sometimes people say things just because they want to be different. He doesn’t want them to be different just to be different.

We don’t, as Christians, want to be different just so we can say, we’re not like you. There’s a reason here, and he says he urged them by the mercies of God in verse 1. Now that word by is the Greek word dia.

It can mean several things. It can include by. It can mean because of.

I think a good translation of this, a good understanding of what he’s talking about here, is Paul tying the mercies of God in verse 1 to what he’s calling them to do rather than the way he’s calling. It’s not that Paul says, I, by the mercies of God, am calling you. I’m calling you to do this because of the mercy of God, I think is what he’s saying.

Because you look at God and you see His grace, you see His faithfulness, you see His goodness, You see who God is, and because of that, I’m calling you to do what He’s asked you to do. I’m urging you to embrace a different way of life because you have experienced the mercies of God. It is far too difficult for us to stand against the waves of culture breaking on the shores of our lives constantly.

It’s too difficult for us to withstand that pressure just to do it for no reason. But if we have experienced the transforming mercy of God in our lives, it ought to motivate us to want to be different because He’s called us to be. And in fact, Paul says here that it only makes sense that if we have received the mercy of God, that we have experienced the grace of God as we profess, that we would want to be different the way He desires us to be.

He says that only makes sense. That’s the only logical conclusion here. That’s why he says, which is your reasonable service.

He says it’s only reasonable. We look at the call to be different, the call to follow God when it’s difficult. We look at the call to be holy, and we think, well, that’s just, that’s going above and beyond.

That’s taking extra steps. That’s being one of the super spiritual people. Paul says, no, it’s only reasonable.

That’s the least you can do. This is your reasonable service. And so this difference that He’s called us to, it arises in us.

It’s not something that you and I can fabricate. It’s not something that you and I can just wake up one morning and say, I think I’m going to be a better person today. That rarely lasts, right?

But it’s something that comes up within us. It arises out of a new priority and a new perspective that we’ve been given in Jesus Christ. He tells us in verse 1 to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Now, the people in the church, both from Jewish and pagan backgrounds, would be familiar with the concept of sacrifice.

Because all of them practiced it. It was the idea of offering something on the altar to make peace with God. Paul tells them here to be the sacrifice themselves.

Not that they are making peace with God. Jesus has already done that. But he’s talking about in the sense of doing something that pleases God, be the sacrifice.

And when he tells them to be a living sacrifice, He’s telling them to put their entire being on the altar, dedicate their entire lives to the service and glory of God. And when he calls this sacrifice living, we’re not talking about a dead animal, but we’re talking about a spirit that God has made alive in Jesus Christ. We’ve spent these weeks talking about new life in Jesus Christ. And it’s not new life we’ve been given to go out and use for our own purposes, but it’s a life that he has given us that we get to offer back to him in gratitude. He says that the sacrifice is supposed to be holy.

This means that it’s dedicated to God rather than for worldly common purposes. You and I are not our own if we belong to Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to be dedicated to Him. And acceptable to God means the idea of something being pleasing to Him.

And the Old Testament talks about the sacrifice as being a sweet smell to the Lord. And you know, you barbecue an ox, it probably is going to smell good. But I think the reason he says it’s a sweet smell to him is it’s the sacrifices of his people.

It’s the obedience of his people. So when you and I offer our whole selves to him, again, this is as believers, people that already trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior and have been given this new life, when we offer that life back to him as an offering of thanks, it’s acceptable to God. It is pleasing to him when we do that.

So Paul says to do that, and he says, do not be conformed to this world in verse 2. And that word that we see there that is translated as world is ion, where we get the word, you know, we say, oh, it’s been eons since such and such happened. It means the age.

It doesn’t just mean the world around us. It means this time in history. And I thought that was really interesting.

Because how many times have we said or heard somebody say, well, this is what God’s word says. And somebody will come back with, well, this is 2022. Or, you know, the big thing used to be, get with the 90s.

God has a calendar. God knows what time it is. God knew what time it was when He said it, and He hadn’t changed His mind.

So this idea that God’s Word came with an expiration date, I don’t know where people get that idea. But this idea that we’re supposed to change our understanding of what God says with the times. I believe it was Billy Graham, somebody accused him after preaching one day of, you’re going to set Christianity back 50 years.

And his response was, I aim to set Christianity back 2,000 years. That should be our view. And I’m not saying we have to do things the way we did 50 years ago.

I’m not saying that our practices and everything that they, anything that’s outside of scripture, I’m not saying it has to look like 50 years ago or that we can only come in and sing Gregorian chants, but I’m talking about the things we believe don’t have to be updated every generation. We don’t have to figure this out for ourselves. We just have to believe what God says.

And we can reason through it and we can seek to understand it. We can ask questions. All those things are good.

But I’m telling you, we don’t have to change just because the world says so. Just because the world has moved on from God’s truth doesn’t mean God has. One of our ladies here at church sent me a text this week with a link to a news article and said, please tell me this is not true.

And so I clicked on the link and I went and read the article and I did some digging. What she had sent me was, and I don’t know if this is a derogatory term or not, and I don’t mean any offense, but it’s what they called themselves. It was an article about a church that had done drag queen story time as their children’s sermon on a Sunday morning.

I said, I don’t know. So I went and looked up the church. Sure enough, they had a video right there on their website.

This pastor, if you want to call it that, invited the children of the church to come up on stage and hear a message from a man dressed as a woman who is also a candidate for ordination in that same church. And in fact, has a ministry based on the concept of preaching in women’s clothing. And honestly, no, I didn’t feel hate.

I didn’t feel anger. I couldn’t look away though. I kind of ended up, I told her later, she came in the office, I said, I wish you hadn’t sent me that article.

I didn’t mean to say, no, I went down the rabbit hole. I spent too much time trying to process and understand what’s happening here. But I tell you this because it was either that children’s message, I’ve lost track of all the stuff I listened to in relation to that.

But it was either in that children’s message or one of this person’s other videos where they were talking about Romans 12, 1 and 2. And I thought, that’s weird. That’s what I’m preaching on Sunday.

And they were talking about this idea of not being conformed to the world but being transformed by the renewing of your mind. And their message was, you don’t have to think what’s always been thought. God says here it’s okay to change your mind.

As the times change, your mind needs to be renewed. And I’m listening to that having researched what he’s saying here about not being conformed to the world, not being conformed to the age, and just thought, I beg your sweet pardon, that is the opposite of what the Apostle Paul is saying. I mean, I love you, but you’re wrong.

He’s saying the opposite. You don’t be conformed to this age. I don’t care if we’ve come to a point where the world says anything.

If it’s against the Word of God, it doesn’t matter what the year is. He says, don’t be conformed to that. And again, lest you think I’m picking on men who dress as women.

Anything, you name it. Anything that God’s Word says that the culture says, no, that’s fine. It does not matter that it’s 2022.

He says, do not be conformed to this age. So just because the world has grown up and thinks it’s outgrown God’s Word doesn’t mean that we are required or even allowed to go along with it. He says, do not be conformed to this world.

It not our job to adapt our morality or our understanding of truth to the 21st century. It is specifically not our job. Now there may be times where our worldview and a secular worldview may overlap on some things.

You know, Christians like pizza, pagans like pizza. It doesn’t mean we have to avoid pizza, all right? I’m talking about, when I say be different from the world, I’m not saying we have to shun everything the world likes.

I’m talking about being different by taking a stand on the word of God. We should not conform to the world in contrast to God’s world and should not be driven by what the world is doing. Instead, he says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

This doesn’t mean change the way you think. According to what the world says, he’s talking about having a new mind, a new way of thinking. And this ties into what Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 about having a new mind in Christ. He says, but the natural man, that’s us before we come to Christ, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

Sometimes when you talk to somebody who’s not a believer, and we both look at each other like we don’t understand what the other one is thinking, there’s a reason for that. The Bible says here that the things revealed by the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man. So when they think you’re an idiot, it’s okay.

God said it was going to be that way. The world was going to look at us and think we’re foolish. It’s okay.

Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned, but he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that they may instruct him? Here’s what I want you to see.

We, but we, have the mind of Christ. Doesn’t mean we’re better than them. As a matter of fact, we ought to love them all the more, love them all the harder, and plead with them to come to Christ. But the difference is when we come to Christ, he transforms our mind. The Holy Spirit gives us the mind of Christ where we begin to see things from his perspective.

By the way, that’s the only reason we believe things that are countercultural. In the world we live in, wouldn’t it be easier? Wouldn’t it be easier to say, oh yeah, anybody can marry anything? It would be a lot less trouble, wouldn’t it?

It would be a lot less trouble to say, get your abortion, that’s fine. You get a lot less flack for it from the culture at large. We believe these things, though, because we’ve been given the capacity to think about things from Christ’s perspective, not because we just want to believe these things.

And so for him to say, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, we’re supposed to be transformed just the way he has transformed our thinking. And this is a poetic way, really, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It’s a poetic way of telling us to think about things the way Jesus would think about them.

Because God has given us the ability to do that. We should all probably start wearing bracelets that say, what does Jesus think? You know, WTJ, I don’t know, it’s not as catchy as the bracelets we all had 20 years ago.

But he said, do this. Think about things the way Jesus thinks about things. By the way, it does not matter what Jared thinks about things.

It matters what God’s word says. He tells us to think that way. And here he says in verse 2 that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

The word prove here means to demonstrate, not to demonstrate, but to discern. Sometimes we say, well, prove it. Prove that you’re here right now.

Prove that 2 plus 2 is 4. You can sit and do the addition. That’s not what we’re talking about demonstrating.

We don’t have to prove God’s will. When he says prove, he’s talking about discerning. In the old-fashioned sense of the word, like testing something.

Of us being able to navigate this world, do you not find it difficult sometimes to figure out what the right thing is to do in a particular situation? It can be difficult sometimes. But he says we have been given the mind of Christ. Our minds have been transformed.

Or we’ve been transformed by the renewing of our minds. so that we will be able to prove or discern what the will of God is. This renewed mind means we’ll be able to discern God’s will.

We’ll be able to know what’s right. We’ll be able to know what’s pleasing to Him. We’ll be able to know what’s best for us.

These things are not mysterious. They’re written down in God’s Word, and He’s given us the Holy Spirit so that we can understand with this renewed mind. And all of this means, together, that we are supposed to be different because of Him, And that He’s given us the tools that are necessary to navigate this world in a way that is different.

And in a way that brings Him glory. Because if He just said, be different, you and I would be stuck out there in the dark, groping around, trying to find our way to what’s right. What does He want us to do?

What does He expect? But no, He’s given us the new mind. He’s given us the Holy Spirit.

He’s given us His Word. He’s given us the tools we need in order to live a life that glorifies Him. In spite of the challenges.

Am I telling you it’s going to be easy? No. And it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a Christian.

It never becomes easy. Some challenges get easier, but then they’re replaced with new ones. But he’s given you all the tools that are necessary.

You look at this and say, but it’s so hard. It’s scary. It’s unpleasant.

We’re human. We all have those feelings. But he’s given us all that’s necessary.

And our job is to rely on him and do what he’s called us to do and trust him with the outcome. But this difference here is not something we can produce, but it is something we should pursue. See, this comes on the heels of Paul’s presentation of the gospel in Romans 11.

And that means that what happens in Romans 12 is the result of Jesus saving us. This is not a formula here of saying, be different, and you’ll be right with God, and you’ll go to heaven. It’s not what this is saying at all.

But this is saying, if you have already been saved by Jesus Christ, if you’ve already trusted in Him as your Savior, and He’s already done this work in you, then embrace the things that He’s already doing in your life. Everything we’re supposed to do here is tied to something He’s already done. If you’ll notice in verse 1, by the mercies of God, or because of the mercies of God, leads directly into presenting our bodies a living sacrifice.

We can only do the presenting because of the mercy. In verse 2, the renewing of our minds leads to the not being conformed, but being transformed. We can only be transformed and resist the conforming because he’s renewed our minds.

He’s done the work in us to make us different. He’s done the work in us to make us who he wants us to be. Our calling is to embrace the change.

Only he can make us holy. That’s his job. But we can either get in the way or we can get on board.

And some of you who’ve been believers for many years know that. Because we go through seasons where we’re on board, and we go through seasons when we get in the way. Guilty.

But here we’re called to embrace what it means to be radically different in the service of our Lord. He’s called us to be different. Not because we, again, not because we hate anybody.

Not because we’re better than anybody. Not because we want to put anybody down. That’s not what any of this is about.

This is about faithfulness to our Lord and showing the change that He can make. Because our goal is not just to condemn the world around us. Our goal is to show the world, is to show the world around us what Jesus can do when He gets hold of a wretched sinner.

and he cleans us up from the inside out and he changes us and begins to mold us and shape us into what he wants us to be. Which, by the way, I’m not a finished product and neither are you. But we show the progress of what he’s done in us until we see the final fulfillment of it.

And when we do that, we glorify Jesus Christ before a watching world, but we also show them what he’s capable of doing and the transformation he can make in them through the gospel. We demonstrate the power of Jesus Christ. And so he’s called us to be different. But that difference starts with him transforming us spiritually.

And in order for that to happen, we have to understand that we are sinners. We have to understand that we are separated from God because of our sin. And it doesn’t matter if you’re involved in what we would call a big sin or a little sin.

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