Avoiding Worldly Drift

Our gracious Heavenly Father, you have given us every reason to praise. You have saved us out of the miry clay, away from your own wrath and eternal punishment. You have given us life in the sun. Thank you, Lord.

We praise you for this indescribable gift. Help us now, Lord, to think with sober judgment, not to think too highly of ourselves. We ask for the renewing of our minds, that our minds would be more consistent with the mind of Christ.

Teach us, Lord, to test what we hear, to be good Bereans, to have discernment through the washing of the water of the word. This morning we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. John MacArthur said that the greatest problem the church is facing is the lack of discernment.

Drifting Away from Christ Through Distraction

When I grew up in Florida, we had cousins who lived in Indiana, and once a year they would come down to visit, and all of us cousins would go to Clearwater Beach. Clearwater Beach didn't have the massive waves like New Jersey, it was a little bit calmer, and there was not like a marked off area where you were allowed to swim, the whole thing was open.

So we would go out in the ocean, me and my nine cousins, and we would be throwing a football, we would be body surfing on the water, and we had dunk wars. Those were the funnest, where you try to stay up and your cousins are trying to dunk you under the water.

It was a blast. We would be out there for 10 minutes, 20, 30, until we were ready to come back to the shore and get some grape soda. Anybody here know what I'm talking about, grape soda? That was the best back in the day.

And when we would come up to the beach, coming out of the water, we would look for our family. We'd look to the left, we'd look to the right, and suddenly we couldn't find them. They had moved. Where are they?

We would look up, and then sure enough, 100 yards up the beach, there they were, exactly where they were before. You see, when we were in the ocean, when we were playing around and distracted and having fun, roughhousing, we were focused on one another, and we didn't realize that we had drifted.

The undertow, the current, had moved us along the beach, in and out of people, and before we knew it, we were 100, 200 yards down Clearwater Beach without even knowing we had moved. Church, isn't that a great metaphor for the Christian life?

When you first get saved and your eyes are set on Christ and you have the joy of your salvation, your first love, and you're thinking about Christ and your eyes are set on Him in His Word, you never imagine that there could come a time in your life where you drift.

Away.

And you never mean to drift away. It's by distraction with the things of this world, as the world moves us along and pulls us and presses us into its mold, that at times, we have a tendency to drift. Did you hear those words in that song?

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. We have a tendency to drift. This morning, turn with me to Romans chapter 12, and you will be relieved to find out we have only two verses today.

Romans 12, one and two, but they're so important to study as a unit because this is a summary of everything that's going to come in chapters 12 to 16. This is the banner over the imperatives of the text.

When Paul writes a letter, he always begins with theology and then at the end of the letter, he addresses practical living. So in Romans, he'll get into interpersonal relationships and spiritual gifts and how to relate to government and the freedom of the Christian, all of these amazing topics in Romans 12 to 16.

But here he is transitioning into that section in verses one and two. Let's read it. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So John MacArthur says that the greatest problem the church is facing is a lack of discernment.

This word discernment in verse two is the great need of the hour. Discernment is the pressing need of the hour because Christians, even sincere ones, are prone to drift away from the standard, to be conformed to the world, to be pressed into the world's mold.

I was watching a preacher on TV, TBN. Anybody here a big fan of Trinity Broadcasting Network? No hands?

That's probably good. That's probably good.

There might be, like David Jeremiah is on there, and I think he's a respectable preacher. There's probably a few others, but one of the things you'll frequently hear on TBN is that it is always God's will to heal.

God always desires to heal. How could someone say it is always God's will to heal? Those who proclaim this believe in a Wesleyan theological tradition that came into America through the second great awakening, which separates the will of God into two categories.

On one hand, you have what is called the perfect will of God. On the other hand, the will of God could be described as the permissive will of God. On Trinity Broadcasting Network, when someone says it's always God's will to heal, they're referring to the perfect will of God, God's will, which is always right, good, and perfect.

But the problem is God has what is called a permissive will, and that can sometimes cramp God's style. That can sometimes stymie him, keep him from doing his perfect will. So if by the permissive will of God, somebody lacks faith, they're not able to drum up enough faith to be healed, God might be bound by the lack of faith and therefore not do his perfect will.

This Wesleyan tradition that came into America is not only in Methodism, but it is also in a number of other denominations in America. In fact, it is the majority view. Perfect versus permissive will of God.

The Bible teaches no such thing. Here we're going to begin in Romans 12 .2 with this phrase, the will of God. Let me ask you a question. How would we decide what the will of God actually is? What do we use to interpret Scripture?

Scripture.

Very good, Kristen.

Scripture interprets Scripture. So the first question we should ask is locally within the book, how has Paul used the term.

Here?

And then broader, how is the term used in the New Testament? So let's do a short word study on this word thelema. Make note of it in your mind or even in notes app on your phone. The word thelema, T-H-E-L-E-M-A, thelema.

It means will.

The will of God. It is used six times in the book of Romans before we get to Romans 12 .2. And it will show us that the dichotomy is not between perfect and permissive, but secret and revealed. And it's a vast difference between the two.

You have this dichotomy in Deuteronomy 29 .29, remember from last week? The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us that we may do every word of his law.

The secret will of God is God's decree. Theologians call it the decretive will. It's what God has planned to happen. Whether I will ever visit China or Turkey. I did visit Turkey and that was within the secret will of God.

The prescriptive will or the revealed will of God is what he commands for us to do. All of the imperatives in the text from Romans 12 through 16, the commands of God, the law of God is the will of God.

Not what he secretly plans to do, but what he has revealed for us to do. Secret revealed. Now, let's look at the first use in Romans 1 .10. And as you find it there, before I tell you, see if you can figure out, is Paul referring to a secret will or a revealed will?

Romans 1 .10, Paul says, always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will, the New Testament author will speak of, if it be God's will, I will do such and such. I will carry on business in this place or that.

If it be God's will. Here Paul prays, if it by somehow be God's will that I may at last succeed in coming.

To you.

He's referring to the secret will of God. Paul hopes to make it to Rome. Agabus has taken Paul's belt and tied him up, himself up to prophetically declare that he would be arrested in Jerusalem. Paul doesn't know for sure if it will be God's will for Paul to ever make it to Rome.

Right?

But who does know that?

God.

God's will, his Thelema, is secret to Paul, but known to God. Second usage, chapter 2, verse 18. Here the will of God refers not to the secret will of God, but to the revealed will. In Romans 2, 17, a Jewish person relies on the law.

Make note of the law. That's God's revealed will. The Ten Commandments are God's will for you to do and not to do. It is the law. And in verse 18, it is called the will, to know his Thelema, his will.

So here Paul is not referring to God's secret will, which can't be known, but what can be known, what is revealed, to know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from what?

The law.

The law is a revelation of the will of God, of how man is to behave vis-a-vis God vertically and toward one another horizontally. The first four commandments are vertical. The next six are horizontal.

How do you behave in life? How do you treat one another? It is revealed in his will. Next, Romans 8, 27. Here again, we have the secret will of God. A bit of Trinitarianism. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each person equally God, sharing all the divine attributes.

So the Son of God knows everything, as the Father does, and who else knows everything? The Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is omniscient, and here in Romans 8, 27, the Spirit knows the will of God. He who searches hearts, referring to the Holy Spirit, looking deep into your thoughts, dividing and understanding and knowing us better than we know ourselves, he also knows what is the mind of the Spirit.

The Father knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to what? The Thelema. Is the Spirit interceding according to something that he learns, or something that depends on us, or something that he knows?

Something he knows, and that is the secret will of God. God's intentions, his plan. This is the secret will of God. Now lastly, the final three all occur between 916 and 918. The first use of Thelema in 916 is referring to human will.

Did you know that you have a will? You have a mind, an intellect, a soul, a spirit, the immaterial part of you, but in that you have a will. You make real choices to do this or to do that. But in 916, your will is negated.

It is not instrumental in this verse. In fact, it says, so then it, referring to whom God will compassion or whom he will mercy, it does not depend on Thelentos, which is a cognate from Thelema. The willing.

It does not depend on the willing, or Traikontos, exertion, which means running. Salvation does not depend on anything from within yourself to decide in will, or anything that you do externally. So what does it depend on?

Well, that comes next. But on God who has mercy, verse 17 uses Pharaoh as an example, and then verse 18, so then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. That is within the secret will of God, God's decree to send the gospel to you.

When the gospel came to you, and you were dead in your sins, was there anything within you or in your exertion that earned anything from God? No, it was God's secret will to send the gospel to you and then open your heart the way he did Lydia's heart in Acts 16, that you would believe.

It is his mercying grace. And here, notice the word Thelema is very important. God wills to do as he chooses. It's his will in focus. Now we can understand Romans 12 too. There are many translations of Romans 12 too that put the adjective perfect just before will, the good, acceptable, perfect will of God.

And from that, Wesley wrongly deduced that this is a category of the will of God, namely a perfect will, which is sometimes thwarted by this imaginary permissive will. But that is not what the text is saying.

In fact, the English Standard Version, the ESV, groups good, acceptable, perfect as a description after the will of God so that you wouldn't be confused by wrong theology. I think it's a better translation for that reason.

It's an editorial decision because the adjective could come before or after in the Greek. But here, will of God is shown as what it is. And is it referring to the secret will of God or the revealed will of God?

It is the revealed will of God. God has prescribed in his word, in the Bible, what is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect. Now, we don't have time to look broader in the New Testament to study the word Thelema throughout the New Testament.

But I will say that what Paul does is not idiosyncratic to himself. Peter does the same thing. Peter will use the word Thelema four times in 1 Peter. And he alternates between secret and revealed. 2 15, 3 17, 4 2, 4 19.

He refers to suffering if it be God's will. Suffering for doing righteous things if it be God's will. That's his secret will. But he refers to obeying government and obeying living by the book as the revealed will of.

God.

Four uses in Peter. In two cases, it's secret. In two times, it's revealed. This is very important because this actually shapes your entire worldview. If you take a view of the will of God in the Wesleyan sense, you will live hoping that the permitted things do not thwart the plan of God.

You will have no security. You will have no peace at night. You will be unable to sleep because you cannot trust that even the bad things, even the sufferings are part of God's plan, which he will work all things together for your good.

You see, God becomes subjective to the decisions of man if you get this wrong. But if you come to understand that God has a secret plan that he will perfectly work out in time, then all you have to do, church, not knowing who's elect, not knowing what will come, will you make it to Rome?

Will you get that job promotion? Will you get to do the things you hope to do? Not knowing the secret will of God, you can live your life by the revealed will. So important. Then come what may, the sufferings in this life, part of his plan, they will not throw you off your game.

They will not destroy your faith. You will not slink off in disbelief because you have a category for the secret will of God and what you are to do is the revealed will. This is Paul's point. What is good and acceptable and perfect.

Now look at verse one. It says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers. This is an appeal to you and more deeply than your own hearing and your brain, it's appealing to the deepest part of you. It's an appeal as in a pleading to your will, to your thelema.

And the question is, wait a minute, how could Paul now appeal to your will if he said earlier, it's not of him who wills or of him who runs? The answer is that all of us are born dead in our sin, slaves to sin.

Our will is enslaved, not free. Because sin has infected even our thinking and our willing to do. But when the mercy of God in his kindness comes to you, the slave is set free. Your will is no longer bound in sin.

But in the forgiveness of your sin, when sin was propitiated, not only was sin propitiated, but you were set free. You were given the freedom of will in Christ as a brother to operate according to this decision or another decision.

He's appealing to your will. So two questions come to mind. To do the good, acceptable, perfect will of God, what's my motivation? And then secondly, what is the will of God? And those are the two things that Paul will address.

The Mercies of God as the Motivation for Holiness

How can a Christian avoid the worldly drift? We're all prone to wander. We want to wake up in the morning and read the Bible and pray and go evangelize and do well. We want to do those things, but sometimes we don't do the things we want to do because we lack motivation.

What is the motivation according to the text? I appeal to you therefore, look at verse one. Brothers, that's key. The adelphoi, he's referring to save people now, not unregenerate, but referring to you in your new nature, redeemed, regenerated.

He says, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. An animal sacrifice would be a dead sacrifice. It comes living, it leaves dead. But this kind of sacrifice continues on living.

How now shall we live? Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Spiritual worship is not just Sunday morning. It is every breath you take, everything that you eat, every choice that you make, every conversation that you have.

Your worship is your life presented to him in all its fullness. This is the spiritual worship. So what's the motivation? How is it that some exert this will to follow hard after God and other Christians tend to drift along?

The answer here is in the phrase, by the mercies of God. By the mercies of God. That term, the mercies of God, is how Paul summarized salvation. Look at the end of Romans 11, 30 to 32. He refers to the Gentiles as at one time disobedient to God, but they have received what?

Mercy in verse 30. In verse 31, the Jews too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. And then verse 32, for God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.

The mercying here is a verb, as it was in Romans 9. God mercies, it actually is a verb in Romans 9, having mercy on all. Now listen, what Paul is doing is he's summarizing all of this theology from Romans 1 to 11, and he's saying, think about these things.

It left Paul just marveling at the things of God. How inscrutable are your ways and beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? And then he's in doxology, he's praising God from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever, amen. What has captured this man's mind? It's the very words he wrote in Romans 1 to 11. How does he endure 40 lashes minus one on his back five separate times? It's Romans 1 to 11.

How is he shipwrecked? How is he stoned and left for dead? How does he carry on when he is rejected everywhere he goes? How does he suffer for Christ? It is by Romans 1 to 11. He summarizes that as the mercies of God.

So he's referring back to Romans 1 16, the summary statement of the whole book. I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Paul doesn't see himself as a slave.

He sees himself as one set free and he believes the power of God in the gospel has released him from the entanglement of sin and he remembers Romans 1 18 to 3 19. How he himself had exchanged the glory of God for a lie.

Worshiping and serving created things rather than the creator who is blessed forever. He himself was given over to unnatural passions had he not been saved. Romans 1 applies to Paul and to each one of us but for the grace of God there go I.

The Jew is no better though they have the law. They're condemned by the law. The Gentile who doesn't have the law has the light of conscience. Romans 2 14 and 15. So all are together guilty and in Romans 3 Paul remembers the description of who he really was.

Think about that.

A throat like an open tomb. The poison of asps on his lips. Without fear of God and condemned to eternal punishment. He remembers who he was before Christ and he thinks about his total depravity. How he brought nothing to salvation but for the grace of God go I.

So he thinks of himself like that and then he remembers Romans 3 20 but now a righteousness from God is revealed. That is by faith. And how God made propitiation for sins on the cross displaying Christ publicly.

The wrath of God poured into the Son of God to turn away that wrath and now the sinner goes free. No reason to boast. It eliminates boasting and Paul is remembering this gospel and he remembers Abraham to whom it was credited righteousness on account of belief not on anything he did and in Romans 4 he remembers David as well.

Blessed is the one whose sins are forgiven whose transgressions are not counted against him and here's Paul delighting in that. My sins are forgiven. God does not remember the many times that I have transgressed his law but like David I'm washed and he thinks about that love in Romans 5 that while we were yet sinners.

What?

Christ died for us. While we were sinners that is love. He thinks about sin coming in the world through Adam but Christ is the new Adam at the end of Romans 5 and Romans 6 the baptism being washed, buried with Christ, raised to newness of life.

The principle of the spirit and he knows himself in Romans 7. What I want to do I don't do. What I don't want to do that's what I keep on doing. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord.

He's delighting in Jesus the Savior and then Romans 8 victorious Christian living. The spirit of life conquering the principle of the law of sin and death. A new creation coming. A golden chain of redemption that all of this was the work of God not the work of man and the love of God that will never let Paul go at the end of Romans 8.

What can separate us from the love of God? Tribulation, sword or famine or persecutions?

No.

In all these things we are more than conquerors.

Do you see how Paul thinks?

What we've read from him is his mind. How he thinks about his own salvation. Romans 9 the election but Romans 10 the compatible will that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved and the great thing that's coming in the history of the world that Israel who rejected their own Messiah will one day be grafted back into that olive tree and so all Israel will be saved.

No wonder by the end of Romans 11 he is exalting in the theology of God. Guys we studied Romans 1 to 11 didn't we? We took our time. But this ought to be something that we each go back to a couple times a month.

You can read the book of Romans in a short sitting. Keep coming back to this theology. If you want to be motivated to put your life on the altar to be willing to be a living sacrifice all you need to do is celebrate salvation.

To think about who you were outside of Christ what Christ has done and how you've been born again. Go back to these saving doctrines. That's the first thing. Now the first part of verse 2 is a countervailing force.

So the force that's motivating you to do God's will is the salvation we have in Christ the mercies of God in summary. But the beginning of verse 2, Romans 12 to 2 do not be conformed to this world. The world pressures the Christian's creaturely will to drift away from doing God's will.

So your will is within you. God has revealed his will for you and there's two competing forces. You're motivated by the mercies of God but the world is trying to press you into its mold. That's what that word conformed means there.

To press into a mold. It's only used two times in the New Testament. Here and also in 1 Peter 1 .14 listen to this. As obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Like some kids at the beach that are just drifting along.

They're being carried by a current. The world, the spirit of this age the world here, that word is age. It's moving you along without you knowing it. It's a force that you don't feel half the time. Over at Bill Luebkeman's church they had a seminar by Brad Huddleston and it was called Digital Detox based on the book Digital Cocaine.

The point of the seminar was to say that the digital age in which we live our devices, our cell phones, iPhones and all the social media is like cocaine to the brain. And it's a scientific seminar and the book is scientific showing how the same dopamine effects that drugs induce in the brain can be brought about by electronic media.

Which is why you gotta be careful with how much time you spend. But how much of the digital input that comes into our minds is causing us to drift away from God. It's a new technology but it's an old principle.

The world, the age, the spirit of the age is moving us against God. Or here, pressing us into the mold. Anybody here still make cookies? You bake cookies and you use a cookie cutter and stuff like that?

Normally we just buy them from ShopRite and just throw them on the pan. But if you still use a cookie cutter picture the dough. You're the dough, you're the clay. And the world is trying to press you into the cookie cutter.

Trying to shape you and make you look like a certain way. That's the force that is against you. Do not be conformed to this world. We don't realize how affected by the culture we really are. Did you know our church recently ceased being part of the Evangelical Free Church of America?

The Free Church took a good and strong stand against homosexuality. They were right to do that against gay marriage. And they wrote articles and they supported the conservative position on that point.

But you want to know what else they said? They supported side B gay Christianity. And the idea of Rebecca McLaughlin and Sam Albury, Preston Sprinkle and a number of other teachers within this movement is that a person can embrace a gay identity as long as they don't practice it.

They can identify as gay, retain gay mannerisms and gay lisps and things like that as long as they're not physically active in behaviors. They even go so far to say two men who are identifying as gay can cuddle together as long as they don't touch inappropriately.

This kind of side B gay Christianity.

Is still gay.

And it is still an affront to God. Jesus said if a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart, he's violated the deeper meaning of thou shalt not commit adultery, even at the heart level. And I want to ask you guys a question.

Is there power in the gospel to change the attractions, the feelings of a Christian? Yes, there is. In fact, I know a missionary who came back from Irian Jaya where his parents were in the jungle and they reached an entire tribe in Papua New Guinea.

When he came back, he was gay in his orientation and in his behaviors. He was a male prostitute for years back in the States. But when he for himself believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, he was completely set free, utterly set free.

He got married, he had kids, and he lost all those mannerisms, all of those behaviors were changed, and he was changed and renewed from the inside out. 1 Corinthians 6 says, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were cleansed in the name of Jesus.

Do we still believe that? And so I took a stand against Side B gay Christianity and all of that, and also the demeaning of the police in the Black Lives Matter movement. No due process, and yet the police were vilified because of these incidents with Michael Brown and such.

You know, I was treated as if I was the villain in the denomination. Spurgeon wrote in 1882 about Annas. He was the one who put Jesus on trial, and he pointed out, if I read or write that the character of this man, Annas, he was one of the Savior's bitterest enemies, he was a Sadducee.

Is not this the liberal side? Spurgeon asked the question. The liberal side is latitudinarian. It is liberal. Anything goes. You want to do this? Do this. If you want to do that, do that. It's latitudinarian.

But how did Annas treat Jesus? Where was the liberality in Annas' trial against Jesus? Spurgeon went on to say, the free thinker, with all his profession of liberality, usually displays none of it to the followers of truth.

And I testify that that is true. The only people who will be tarred and feathered in our culture is those who claim that the truth can be known, who have certainty over the word of God, and proclaim the word of God without compromise.

Without that, you will never face persecution. And this brings us to the last point. The word of God can be known when it says, do not be conformed to this world. That's the pressure of this world.

But be transformed.

That's a complete overhaul of how you think. It is to be brought into submission to God's word, not one's own. And that is the great battle from the Garden of Eden. God's word, man's word. Which will be supreme?

Who is God in this universe? The God who speaks, or man who would reign supreme over himself. It says, be transformed by the renewal.

Of your mind.

That by testing, that's a key word. Because when someone comes proclaiming some new idea, some doctrine in the church, some missional movement, or this movement, or that movement, whatever comes, we must test it.