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.

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 two, 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 10 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 9 .16 and 9 .18.

The first use of Thelema in 9 .16 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 9 .16, 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 thelontos, which is a cognate from Thelema, the willing.

It does not depend on the willing or tracontos, exertion, which means running.

Salvation does not depend on anything from within yourself to decide and 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.

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.

How can a Christian avoid the worldly drift? We're all prone to wander.

We wanna 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 wanna 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 one time, 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 wanna do, I don't do.

What I don't wanna 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 two 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 two, Romans 12 to two, 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 wanna 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 wanna 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 it right, 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 wanna do this, do this. If you wanna 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.

Some parts might prove true and other parts false. But it's the testing, the testing of the revealed will of God.

And notice what it says next, that by testing, you may discern. That is a huge statement.

The very ethos of our culture is that you may not discern. You can know your own truth and he can have his truth, but no one can know certainly.

That's the point of postmodernism. Everything is relative. Whatever you believe is true for you.

But what this is saying is that you may know what God says, the will of God, the

Thelema, his will regarding anything, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And the idea here is that yes, you can know it.

It's not easy to know it because we're so easily moved along by the culture, but you can know it.

Consider some verses that affirm this. Hebrews 11 .1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

It is certainty of things hoped for. 1 Thessalonians 5 .23,

we're told, may God sanctify you completely. We can have a sanctified understanding of anything and everything.

Sanctification. Ephesians 1 .1 reminds us that we are in Christ and later we have the mind of Christ in 1

Corinthians 2 .16. Ephesians 5 .17 says, we can understand what the will of the

Lord is. He does make this known in his word. 2 Thessalonians 3 .14,

have nothing to do with the ignorant. We can speak confidently. And listen to this.

1 Corinthians 6 .3, did you know this? Do you not know we are to judge angels?

How much more than the matters pertaining to this life? If Christians one day are going to judge our guardian angels,

Hebrews 1 says, are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit eternal life?

Angels actually serve us and protect us in this world. And one day

God will instrumentally use us in the judgment of angels. Not into life or to death because these are elect angels versus fallen angels.

The elect angels will somehow receive reward partly through what you judge on the other side of death.

But if that's true of what's coming in the eschaton, how much more can we know the truth in matters pertaining to this life?

We can know the truth. Every matter can be tested and discerned. Some things are difficult.

Proverbs 18 .17, if someone presents a case, until another comes to examine him.

Due process, cross -examination by the principles of the word. When you study what some theologians call theonomy, the law of God, the case laws of the

Old Testament teach us how to think rightly about any given moral situation. It guides our understanding of what's right and wrong.

We can know the truth. So let's take a couple of cultural issues. Do we know when life begins?

Psalm 139, he fashions us in our mother's womb. Life begins at conception.

Can we know how many sexes there are? Prior to 2025, it was like 150 ,000.

And now since Trump's executive order, it's back down to two. It has been two all along, according to Genesis 1 .27.

God made them what? Male and female, two sexes. Do we know to whom sexual intimacy is given?

To a husband and a wife, Genesis 2 .24. How about when taxation becomes theft?

Is Marxism and socialism right? Or is capitalism right? 2

Thessalonians 3, verse 10. How many races are there? Acts 17 .26.

Are church lockdowns acceptable? Not according to Revelation chapter 13.

And a thousand other things that have the world perplexed. We do have ethical knowledge.

How much more in the matters pertaining to church and your own family and the decisions you have to make at work.

By testing, you can discern what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect.

This is the revealed will of God. You have it. Study it, read it, learn it, know it, and live by this word.

His word is a light into our feet. It's a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.

Every word is perfect and every word is true. If you live by it, you'll experience the flourishing that comes from the word of God.

Isn't that a beautiful thing? Live by the principles of God's word and experience the joy that comes from it.

Some people never graduate from drinking milk. But solid food is for the mature.

Who by constant practice have trained themselves to discern good and evil.

Hebrews 5 .14. Discernment can be built up and we can grow in it.

We can become stronger discerners of different situations. And discernment is also a gift.

1 Corinthians 12 .10, discerning spirits. Some people are particularly gifted in discernment.

That's just one of the spiritual gifts. But remember also from Romans 12, that we should not think too highly of ourselves.

Boast in anything. If you have that gift, don't tout yourself or tell others that you do.

Just make good decisions. Discern. Application.

Worldly drift will only be avoided by those who really love the truth.

Be motivated by what God has done to save us. Develop a habit of testing everything.

Everything that you hear needs to be tested lest we be carried away.

A living sacrifice is one who asks the question, how now shall we live?

You know that book by Chuck Colson when he got saved in prison? That's the question from Romans 12 to 16.

Given all of this theology, how now shall we live? And this is, church, this is the very key to a happy life.

Theologically, the answer, the key to having a happy life is to trust in the secret will of God.

His decreed of will. And obey the revealed commands of God.

His prescriptive will. To think in those categories and to live this way results in human flourishing.

Maybe some of us struggle with big theological terms, right? Decreed of prescriptive, secret revealed.

How about something even simpler? It's an old song. Trust and obey.

That's all you need to do. In fact, the song puts it this way. When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on the way.

While we do his good will, that's his revealed Thelema, he abides with us still and with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Let's close with prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for Romans 12, 1 to 2.

And we pray that you would change us by it. Two things we ask, Lord. First, that you would motivate us by the mercies of God.

That you would captivate our hearts. That we would just marvel at salvation. Capture our hearts,

Lord. Help us to remember where we go but for the grace of God.

Total depravity. Help us to delight in all the spiritual teaching of Romans 1 to 11.

So that we would, from the heart, obey. And secondly, Lord, we ask for greater discernment.

We ask, Lord, that you would lead us into all truth. Sanctify us by the truth.

Your word is truth. Teach us how to think. Teach us how to be critical thinkers.

Not pressed into a mold. Not conformed to the world.

Not drifting along in hearsay. God, we pray in Jesus' name that you would give us, as a church, wonderful discernment.

I pray that you would give the gift of discernment to certain ones. Those who you have given that gift, maybe they haven't even known it yet.

They've always had it since they were saved. I pray that you would fan into flame that gift that is in them. That they could lead in the way of truth.

But give all of us greater discernment. Train our powers of discernment to distinguish good and evil.