The Church: God's Divine Construction Project, Part 3 (Romans 11:33-12:2)

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The Church: God’s Divine Construction Project, Part 4 (Romans 12:3-10; Acts 10:34-43)

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Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Let's get started in our Bible study this morning as we return to our little four -part study on the church,

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God's divine construction project, which we're going to kind of reach the halfway point today, three -fourths point today, and then we'll finish it up next week.

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And after next Sunday, Jim asked me to remind you that we're going to go back to the study of God wrote a book.

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So be sure to bring your notes for that. So before we jump into God's word this morning from the book of Romans, let's commit our time to him in prayer.

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Father, thank you for this opportunity that we have to be together, to fellowship with one another, to gather in the name of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And in this time, Father, to look into your word, we ask that you would bless our time, accomplish your purposes through the study of your word in every heart and mind here, and be glorified in all things.

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And we just thank you in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. If you remember last time, we talked about the church as it moved out in power, empowered by the

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Holy Spirit, as we looked at the progress of the church. And that progress in the book of Acts, and we just did a real flying trip through the book of Acts, and we saw that Luke, through the

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Spirit of God, highlighted the progress of the church through those progress reports that are scattered throughout the book, ending with, of course, the

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Apostle Paul in Rome, teaching and preaching the kingdom and teaching the

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Jews and everybody that came to him, because he was in house arrest, about the kingdom of God and the gospel.

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Well, this morning, we're going to kind of turn a corner a little bit. And we're going to be talking about the purposes of the church.

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And basically, as we said, we're sort of boiling things down to the essentials. This of course is not a fully -orbed systematic study, but it does take a fully -orbed systematic study in order to know what all the parameters are, so that you can kind of boil things down to the essentials.

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So that's what we're doing this morning, is we start looking at the master builder's purposes. What is the purpose of the church?

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Another way you might say that is, what is the church supposed to do? And of course, if you did a survey out there of the general population, you would get a wide range of answers to that.

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And even if you surveyed within evangelical Christianity, you'd probably get a very wide range of answers to that question.

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But we're going to just take our lesson from the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans this morning. So I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 12, and we're going to see

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Paul just basically walk us through the purposes of the church. Starting in chapter 11, verse 33, we're going to start there, and then we're going to see the first purpose of the church is worship.

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It's worship. And as you know, in Romans, Paul has laid out a very, very detailed theological treatise to answer the question, how can a sinner who is spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, stone -cold dead in their sins, be declared righteous by a holy

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God? How can that happen? And we know that being declared righteous is what we would call being justified.

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How can a sinner be justified by a holy God? And he answers that throughout the book of Romans. And when he gets to chapter 11, he concludes that chapter by going back to the covenant promises that God has made that are still in place, still in force, and he ends that chapter in verse 32 by sort of a summary statement using these two, the term all there.

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God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.

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And we know the all there is not all without exception, but all without distinction because he has shown that God is still, by his covenant promises still being in place, going to bless both

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Jews and Gentiles, and the gospel is going to move from the Jews to the Gentiles, and we saw that in the book of Acts.

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And then he expresses his absolute wonder at what

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God has done in doing that, starting in verse 33 where he expresses this great doxology.

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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

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For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

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For from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever.

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So at the top of your notes there, page five, worship must glorify God alone. That's the starting place.

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We know that the glory of God is a good, I think a good working definition is the sum total of all of his attributes, the sum total of all of his attributes, and he wants to display the sum total of all of his attributes.

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And so worship must glorify God alone. When the

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Bible, and we'll just do a very brief run through a few of the Psalms, listen to Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

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From Psalm 50, the heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge.

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Psalm 89 .5, let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.

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Psalm 97, the heavens proclaim his righteousness and all the people see his glory.

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And even people who were the crowning achievement of God's creation were designed to put on display the glory of God because he created man and woman in his image.

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And so Genesis 127 says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

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Male and female, he created them. So the glory of God is the starting point.

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And the revelation of God in creation as we have seen is so clear and so obvious to every human being that they will be held accountable for that revelation before God and their rejection of him.

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We know that from Romans chapter 1 and we know that in John 1 14, that Jesus Christ is the fullness of the manifestation of God's glory.

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He's the fullness of the revelation of God. So John says, the word became flesh and dwelled among us and we have seen his glory.

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Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. And then a great summary statement from the apostle

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Paul in 1 Corinthians 10. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

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And this would certainly include worship. And of course, that's where Paul starts. You may be thinking, okay, worship, are we talking about instruments and lighting and music and electronics and all that?

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Well, that certainly is important. That comes under, of course, the overarching rubric of worship. But as you're going to see, it's more holistic than that.

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We'll save that for another day. And I'll also let somebody else argue about those issues because they're really not part of the text.

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But what Paul does here is start out with the worship of God. And worship must glorify

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God alone. And then he just moves right in. We're going to jump right over that great big black 12 right there.

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See that big black 12? Now that wasn't part of the original text. I'm glad those are there.

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I'm really thankful for the chapter breaks and the versification that we have. But sometimes you need to just move right through because that's what

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Paul does. He says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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When Paul says, I appeal to you, brethren, a very common word in the New Testament, parakaleo, it means to call alongside.

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Basically it means to call alongside to speak to someone to produce a particular result.

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And it can have a wide range of application. Oftentimes it is translated as the word comfort in English.

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And so we kind of, maybe it's sort of a contemporary modern day understanding of that word comfort.

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It's like, we need comfort. It's more of a psychological approach. But even the

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English word comfort is a transliteration of the Latin word comforte, with strength.

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Now you musicians know the word forte, right? Strength. And so really it doesn't even mean in its original

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Latin and even English term to comfort in the way to give psychological comfort.

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It can have that meaning, but it is definitely not limited to that. And Paul says,

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I appeal to you. He's actually urging them. Maybe a better understanding.

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Some of your translations might say, I urge you therefore. And he's urging them and he says, brothers, by the mercies of God.

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Worship must glorify God alone and worship is made possible by God's mercies, mercies.

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It's plural. It's an interesting word. It's a word that, it's one of the words, common words used for mercy in scripture.

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This particular one is always plural. It's always plural. It's always speaking of the mercies of God.

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For example, Paul again uses it in 2 Corinthians. He says, blessed be God, even the father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies. Basically all the mercies that we have come from God, the father.

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It's a word that speaks of the deep compassion of God, pity, sympathy for those who cannot help themselves and a readiness to help them.

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And he's just developed the truth that man is helpless to help himself throughout Romans, right?

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He's dead in his sins and dead people can do absolutely nothing. He even develops that in 1

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Corinthians 2, speaking of the unregenerate man as the natural man. He says the natural man, the things of the spirit to him are foolishness.

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He hears them and they go into his mind and his ears, but to him they're foolish.

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Why? Because they're spiritually discerned and he's spiritually dead. Absolute inability, but God has compassion on those people.

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And so it is by the mercies of God that he then moves into this command, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

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This is an act of worship. He's obviously playing off his reader's understanding of the sacrificial system because when he uses this term, present or offer, and then a living sacrifice, he's using their knowledge of the sacrificial system in order to say that's one kind of sacrifice, but God wants you to use yourself as another kind of sacrifice, present, offer yourselves.

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A Hebrew mindset and Hebrew understanding of the word body would have seen the body holistically. In other words, a person's body represents the whole person.

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Paul is urging Christians to present their whole selves to God to serve Him and our lives are to be holy.

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In other words, set apart for God's use, acceptable to God. How do you become acceptable to God?

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Well, he's just spent 11 chapters talking about being justified, cleansing, washing of regeneration by the

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Holy Spirit at salvation. So worship must glorify God alone.

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Worship is made possible by the mercies of God, all of the mercies of God, and worship involves all of life.

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So you can see it's a very holistic, all -encompassing act of presenting yourself.

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He goes on to say, which is your spiritual worship.

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Now that's the ESV. There's probably better ways to render that.

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ESV in Holman, your spiritual service, numerical standard, your spiritual service of worship.

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The word actually is the word logikos. It comes from the word logos, the word for word, and if you can hear, we have transliterated that very word into English, logikos, into the word logic.

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It's your spiritual worship, but it's also logical. It makes sense.

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Even King James, your reasonable service. It makes sense that if God has called you to himself through Christ, and in light of the manifold multitude of mercies that we have in Christ, and what he has done for you, and not to mention what you will experience eternally, right, does it not make sense, is it not reasonable to you that you would present your body as a living sacrifice to him, to serve him as an act of worship?

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That's his argument here. It only makes sense. The Apostle Paul understood who true

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Christians were. In reaction to the carnal teachings of the

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Judaizers, of course, no, he did battle with them all the way along. In Philippians 3 .3, I think it's one of the best definitions of what a true

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Christian is. He says in 3 .3 of Philippians, we are the circumcision.

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It's not the ones who are urging a physical circumcision in order to be somehow brought into an external relationship with God.

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We are the true circumcision who worship in the spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.

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And the context there is circumcision, a fleshly act, an external religious ritualistic act.

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Paul says, no, it's all about internal spiritual reality. We are the ones that worship in the spirit of God, and glory in Christ, not in some external religious ritual.

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It's exactly what the Lord told the woman at the well in John 4, remember he had that discussion with her, he's moved over, and here again we have the movement of the gospel from Judah to Gentile.

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Where is he? He's in Samaria. That is a very significant transition. He moves, walks, goes over into Samaria, what's waiting there for him?

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Jacob's well. Jacob's, the word is actually fountain, Jacob's fountain.

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And he has this encounter with the woman at the well, takes her through a discussion there. Eventually she realizes he's talking about spiritual things, and she does what a lot of people do when you talk about spiritual things, they get religious.

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Have you ever noticed that? Yeah, you've noticed that, you talk about Christ and all of a sudden they get religious real quick.

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Well, that's what she does. She tries to make a distinction about location, right?

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And as you know, the history of the Jews and the Samaritans, Samaritans were a mixed breed because they had been overrun in the north by the

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Gentiles way back when, had intermarried and so forth, and so they were just considered absolutely unclean to the

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Jews. So there was a history of hatred and animosity all through the years. Listen to what she says to him when she gets religious, our fathers worshipped upon this mountain but you, and by the way the you there's plural, you people, there's a racist statement.

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You say that in Jerusalem is a place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father.

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You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the

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Jews, but the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth.

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For the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

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And there you see the spirit and the word together, spirit and truth, always together, always together in scripture.

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The spirit never functions apart from the word of God, ever. When you hear people make that dichotomy and say, well, you have the word but we have the spirit, that's a false dichotomy, it's untrue.

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Spirit and truth. So the first core purpose of the church, glorify

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God through worship and it starts with the offering of our whole selves to God as a living sacrifice.

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That's going to move us right into the second purpose of the church, transformation. But first,

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I thought I'd see if there are any questions, questions or comments. I used to have a teacher that said, any questions, comments, or smart aleck remarks?

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He knew us, he knew us pretty well. Okay? Well, again, that's a very overarching kind of a view but it starts with the glory of God and worship involves the whole person.

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Now, transformation, and we just move right into verse two. Paul says in verse two, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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Purpose of every New Testament church, one of the purposes is the transformation of its members. And it fits right in with the disciple -making process.

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You remember the Great Commission, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded. Churches are to have a teaching ministry and of course, the teaching, the subject is the

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Word of God. That obviously, depending on what you look at is all over the map as to what people teach but that is what we are to teach, all that He has commanded.

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And so, every true church and the strongest of churches are going to have a strong teaching ministry, transformation.

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Now, you may have seen some of these purposes put in a little different form, for example, worship instruction.

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Okay, I've seen that. It would go worship instruction, fellowship and evangelism. And that's very convenient because it forms the acronym

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WIFE, okay? Very fits right into the imagery of the churches, the Bride of Christ. And that's good.

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I just kind of went with transformation because I wanted to sort of look at the end result of what's supposed to happen and that's also the word that Paul uses here.

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God wants to transform lives by bringing them to faith in Jesus Christ and then to begin the process of transformation into the likeness of Christ.

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He wants to reverse the effects of the fall that took place in the garden and once again display

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His glory through His people. We know from Romans 8, 29, it talks about that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

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That's why God saved us. And some people say, well, it sounds like this is a process.

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Well, yeah, it's a process. You may have heard the phrase, progressive sanctification.

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And you say, well, could God do this without the progress? I think He probably could, but the problem is, and this is just my opinion,

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I think if He sanctified us instantly, it would kill us. The shock would kill us. So that's just a guess.

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That's not based on anything from the text of Scripture, but it is a process. We enter into that growth, spiritual growth, we would call it sanctification process.

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So the question we want to ask is, how? How does God do that? And Paul tells us here, if we're to be transformed to the image of Christ, how is that to be accomplished?

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Paul says here, don't be conformed to this world. So the first step is, when

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God wants to transform us, is that when we decide to stop being shaped by the world.

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Interesting use of words there by Paul. Commonly translated world. Actually, the word is, the

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Greek word is aion, it's commonly translated age, okay, age. It simply speaks of the wisdom of the world, the kind of understanding that's acceptable out there, and that type of thing.

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When we decide to stop being shaped by the world, God begins to conform us to the image of His Son.

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And it's a very interesting pair of sentences here. It's actually a negative command to stop doing something.

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But it's in the present tense. Simply it's, don't get tangled up in the jargon, but it's continuous action, or habitual action.

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But it's passive. It is not active, it's passive. But it's also a command to stop doing this.

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So we could say, stop letting yourself be continually conformed to this age.

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Stop doing that. Now, implied in that, of course, is before you were saved, that's all that was going on, is that you were being conformed, you were being squeezed, pressed into the image of the world, of the age that we live in.

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The Germans have a word, zeitgeist, zeitgeist, it means spirit of the age, and that's exactly what he's talking about here.

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If you wanna know what that looks like, just turn on your news. All out there, those people are doing what their minds are telling them to do, okay?

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Simple as that. They're following after their thinking. We must obey, do not be conformed.

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Why? Because the world system is operated by, undergirded by Satan, the devil.

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We could go to Ephesians chapter 2 very quickly. Just listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 2, and he just captures it.

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He's talking about what was going on in these people's lives before they were saved. He says, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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The natural state of man, dead in his sins, subject to the world system, subject to Satan, and subject to the flesh.

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And of course, as we know, those still, even though you're saved, they still remain the enemy, right?

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We battle. We battle the world system, we battle Satan and his minions, and of course, we battle the flesh until God takes us out of this world.

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So Paul says, we must obey, do not be conformed because of the world system operated by, undergirded by the devil, the world system that tries to press us into its mold.

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And he says, that's gonna happen by the renewal of our minds. He says, be transformed.

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Very strong word, contrasting term there, but. And so if you were to line these up in parallel, you could see, stop being continually transformed by the world system, but be transformed in its exact same structure.

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Be continually transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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Very interesting word here, again, metamorphosis, metamorpho, it's the word that, of course, you hear the word metamorphosis, and we get that from this.

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Be transformed, be changed by the renewing of your mind. The mind is absolutely critical to discipleship and to anything.

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And so it's an appeal to us to obey what we couldn't possibly obey before.

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I like what Paul says, beautiful statement, 2 Corinthians 3, and you hear this same thing here.

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He says, we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the

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Lord, are being transformed. There it is, metamorpho, into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

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For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Again, it's spiritual, it involves the

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Word of God, and it's progressive from one form to the other to the other. Yeah, Rick?

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2 Corinthians 3. 2 Corinthians 3 .18, transformed, same word.

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Same word used in John 17 .1, the Mount of Transfiguration.

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Jesus was transformed. He was changed. He was metamorphosized,

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I guess you could say. But our minds are the starting place, really, really, really critical. The Bible talks about the mind before we're saved.

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Paul refers to it as a reprobate mind in Romans 1, Jude 10. He talks about people, they're apostates.

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He called their unreasoning, their unreasoning in their minds. And of course, we talked about 1

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Corinthians 2 .14, the natural man. Paul says, neither can he know spiritual things.

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And that devastating verse from Romans 8, anybody that thinks that they have a free will,

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Paul says, the mind set on the flesh is death. The myth of the free will is not just a myth.

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That is absolutely counter to what Scripture teaches. Those people need to do a little study on the difference between free will and free agency.

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Only God has a free will. We have free agency. We can make decisions unimpeded or unhindered by other people, but we always do what we want to do.

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The problem is, what do we want to do, right? The natural man will only want to do things of the flesh and so on, and the things that reflect the will of the world.

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So Paul says, we're going to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We must obey, do not be conformed, and we must obey, let yourselves be transformed.

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Our minds are the starting place. The means, this is down in Roman numeral 2c in your notes, the means

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God uses to transform us, it should say, are His Word and His Spirit.

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His Word and His Spirit. Once again, it's the Word and the Spirit working together to transform believers into the image of Christ.

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And Paul says, we will discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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We'll have discernment into His will. His will is good. His will is acceptable, and His will is perfect.

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This is Paul's teaching about how the Spirit of God progressively sanctifies us.

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It follows right out of worshiping God in order to glorify God, and it is done through the

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Word and the Spirit. Don't miss the connection there. Remember back up in John 4?

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Worship in Spirit and truth, right? And our

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Lord also in that great high priestly prayer from John 17, that's at the bottom of page 5 there, He's praying to the

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Father, sanctify them, and that's what we're talking about, being progressively set apart for God's purposes, sanctify them in the truth.

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Your Word is truth. Probably the greatest definition of the

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Word of God in the entire New Testament, I think, by the Lord Himself. And there again, you could just draw a circle around that, right back up to John 4, truth, truth, the

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Word of God. So first two core purposes of the church, worship

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God in order to glorify Him, and then be transformed by the renewing of your minds as a part of a holistic teaching ministry in obedience to His command, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded.

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Okay? Do you have any questions about what we've seen so far? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

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Yes. Yes. It is.

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Her question was, is obedience a form of worship? Obedience is essentially equated with worship in Scripture.

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In fact, this idea of serving, it's almost an interchangeable concept.

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If you worship an idol, you're serving that idol. You are the slave of that idol.

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But if you worship God, you are serving Him, and we know that we are called the doulos of Christ.

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So, yeah. Yeah, that word, and pretty interesting word, conformed, sus schematizo.

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Together, you hear the word schema in there? We have the word scheme or schema, schematic, all right?

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It has to do with a diagram, you know? Don't let the world press you into its form, its shape.

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Every time I read this, I think of, just me, a pasta machine.

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You know a pasta machine? It makes different shapes of pasta, you know? It can make all different kinds of pasta.

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I always think of that, I guess. I don't know if my blood sugar gets lower. I just never met a pasta I didn't like, but I always think of that, you know?

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It presses it into various shapes. Well, the world tries to do that to us, and we have to resist that.

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And thank God, we are able to do that by the power of the Spirit. And with the Word of God informing our minds.

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Everybody hear that? Obedience is better than sacrifice. Because they were just practicing rote obedience.

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It was external religious ritual without internal spiritual reality.

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That's really the dividing point. I hope everybody could hear that, the difference between conform and transform.

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And really, the main difference is the power doing it. The power that's squeezing you into its mold.

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And we know that we're transformed internally by the Spirit's work. Through the

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Word of God. So again, it's kind of that dichotomy between external religious ritual and internal spiritual reality.

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I think there was one or two more questions or comments or anything? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the

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Christian life. Cornell, did everybody hear that? He's addressing brethren here,

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Christians. And the commands are to Christians. To stop allowing this and start allowing something else, something new.

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And again, we compare that to the natural man. What good would a command be for him?

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It'd just right over his head. It'd be foolishness to him. He can't do it. But the believer now is empowered, which we saw last week.

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Day of Pentecost. Remember, you will be empowered to go out and do what I command you to do.

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And so, yeah, and the Christian life is repeatedly in Scripture.

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Paul's big on this, calling it a fight. It's agonizmo, he says.

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It's an agonizing fight that we have. We fight against the world system. We fight against the flesh.

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We fight against Satan and his demons. And we have to do it in the right way, of course.

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But the empowerment is the Spirit, and the main tool is the Word of God. I keep coming back to that because it's so basic, so fundamental.

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And as Cornell said, there are churches, to the degree that their ministries put them in the

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Word of God and put the Word of God in them, those, to that degree, probably they will have success in carrying this out.

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The fact that you're sensing a spiritual struggle tells me that the

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Spirit of God is at work in your life to help you grow. If you were that natural man, you wouldn't even be thinking in those terms, right?

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You'd be talking about something else. How about those cowboys? Think they'll get another coach? But your concern with spiritual issues is a really good sign.

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It's a sign of spiritual growth. That's kind of counterintuitive to what the world thinks in many churches, you know.

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Well, I feel really bad about my sins. Oh, you don't want to feel bad about yourself. You should feel good. Here, let me get you a trophy here, right?

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Well, that's the work of the Spirit of God in people's lives, to move you from there to confession, repentance, and so on.

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And if you short -circuit that by some sort of a humanistic sort of a band -aid or a therapeutic kind of a ministry to help them feel better about themselves, don't you just short -circuit the work of the ministry of the

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Spirit in that person's life? I think you do. Any other thoughts you might have?

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Cornel's pointing. Oh, yes. 1

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Samuel 15, 22 and following. Okay? Anything else?

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Next week we're going to be looking at the final two in our list.

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Fellowship, again, from Romans chapter 12. Paul just moves right through. And then we're going to look at Acts chapter 10 concerning witness or evangelism.

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It's another way of looking at that as well. Okay? Let's close in prayer. Father, we do thank

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You for our time in Your Word. Thank You that we have Your Word and Your Spirit. And we thank

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You that without that ministry in our lives, we would be chasing after the world system.

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We would not even be redeemed apart from Your Spirit's work in our hearts. And so we just thank

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You, Father, based on the multitude of mercies that we have through Christ, even too many to enumerate.

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We know they come from You. We know that it's by Your grace. And we just thank You for each one. Help us to grow.

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Help us to grow spiritually, each one and as a body. And now, Father, as we gather to worship

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You and to hear Your Word preached, we pray You would give us hearts to hear and minds quick to obey what we hear.