If you have our Bible, turn to Romans 12. We will be camping out in verses 1 and 2 this weekend. Now while you're turning there, I have to tell you that you take a great risk by coming here this weekend. Because King Jesus takes the liberty of taking any man and claiming him as His own. If you're not saved, you take a great risk. You don't get to call the shots. But whether you get to stay lost or saved, King Jesus gets to call that shot. And if you come here tonight and you listen and the Holy Spirit attends to the preached Word like it says in 1 Peter 1, and you were born again through the Word that was preached, that's on Jesus claiming you as His own. He has a right to do that. He created you. And He can come and He can rob from the strong man anytime He wants to. And our prayer is that He does that tonight. So kids, listen up. Because this is for you. Not just for daddy and those who are older. And you're not just here to shoot the guns and things of that sort, you hear? Because Jesus created you and put you here. Now Romans 12, verses 1 and 2 is a very, very pivotal two verses in the book of Romans. And Paul says in verse 1, he says, Now I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And he gives a negative in verse 2 and he says, "...and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." If you are a Christian and you claim to be a Christian, according to verse 2, you are to lead a transformed life. It's normal for you to transform. Let me tell you what is not normal for you to do is to conform. And we'll get to that tomorrow. But tonight, we want to look at this whole idea of this transformation aspect of what it means for us to be a Christian. If your life isn't changing, you're not a Christian. 2 Corinthians 3 is very clear. Paul says in that chapter, he says, we behold the glory of the Lord and we're transformed as we behold His glory. We go from glory to glory in beholding His glory. A Christian has the eyes to see the glory of Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about something mystical. I'm talking about when we get into the Scriptures and you start seeing the value of Jesus Christ. You're like that man in Matthew 13, verse 46. He's a merchant in pearls. That's all he does. He trades and he buys, sells, and sells pearls for a living. And then he comes across the pearl. And he sells his entire stock. He liquidates his entire stock of pearls to get the one. That's a Christian. That's not the super-duper Christian. That's not the guys who are in ministry. That's not the guys who go to seminary. That's you. And that's you, kids. I want to be a Christian, Dad. That means I've seen something about Jesus Christ. And I've seen His glory, His value. A good car salesman knows how to sell a car because he knows all the good details and benefits of a car. You go there, you look at it, you know, four wheels, you need to kick the tires a little bit. But if he's really good, he'll pick apart that car and show you the great value of that car to the point that you've got to have it. I've got to drive this car. Well, as a preacher and as a Christian sharing the glories of Christ is what we do. We say, look, you've got to understand who Christ is. when Paul is talking to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5. And he talks about this whole idea of being an ambassador. And what it means to have this new life. Old things have passed away. New things have come about. One of the things he talks about is that we recognize no man in the flesh. We do not recognize Jesus in the flesh. What he means by that is we don't address Jesus as some carpenter from Nazareth. That's not how we look at Him anymore. He's King of kings and Lord of lords. And so the point is I'm bringing out in the introduction here is that if you are to have a transformed life, you're going to have to see Jesus with a new set of eyes. Nothing fancy-dancy about my preaching is going to give you a new set of eyes. If Christ doesn't give you those eyes, you're not going to see anything except some guy out here blustering about something. That's what you'll hear. But in Romans chapter 12, let's break this thing down, kind of unpack it a little bit. When he talks about a transformed life, he talks about two things in specific. He says in verse 1, he wants you to present your bodies a certain way, and then he wants you renewing your minds a certain way. If you renew your mind a certain way, it leads to something when it comes to God's will. You get to prove it. You get to test it. You get to appraise things that says, hey, now that's God's will. That's what a renewed mind looks like when it's renewed. Now, in verse 1, he says, I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to do what? Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. Acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. So he's interested not just in your mind in verse 2, but he's interested in your body. Now why in the world would he be interested in our bodies? Disease ridden, overweight, full of problems. Nope, he's interested in your body. That very body in Romans 8 that's not redeemed, he says. Yep, he's interested in your body. Which means this, it's not just the flesh and blood he's interested in. He's interested in your body, in its appetites. Like He says in 1 Corinthians 6, you've been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your bodies. Now the reason why I know it's the appetites is because of what He says in Ephesians 4. He makes a very similar statement when it comes to This whole idea of a renewed mind and transformation. He says that he doesn't want them walking like the Gentiles walk. Kind of like that, don't be conformed to the world. In the futility of their mind. So in the futility of their mind, he says in verse 17, they're darkened in their understanding because of the ignorance that's in them, hardness of their heart. Notice the outcome of all of that. Something happens in their body. And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality. They give themselves over to the appetites of their body. Whether it's gluttony, sexual immorality, a wayward libido, whatever else it might be, it's not by mistake people are given over to those things in our culture. And if you're given over to those things, you need to back up and think, There's something bigger here that I need to think about. I don't have some sort of problem with this or that as if it's compartmentalized and it's just my body. See, the world wants you to think in terms of addictions. Go to your concordance. You won't find the word addiction in the back. Because the word addiction is not in the Bible. It's a nice, sanitized word for idolatry. That's what it is. So if you have an addiction, you have an idolatry problem. If you have an idolatry problem, that's a God problem. And if you have a God problem, it's because you have a transformationalist problem. Which means it goes back to this whole idea of renewal of the mind. And it goes back to the presenting of my body. So if you have an idolatry problem, if you have an addiction problem, you have a worship problem. Because our bodies are meant to be given to the Lord in worship. Now, mentally, you think about, okay, like in the Old Testament when they would worship God, they would bring an animal. They would bring it to the altar. And the priest would take it and slit its throat. And the blood would go around the altar and things of this sort. And they would offer that to God so that they wouldn't have to slit your throat. The animal would take your place. But this is a living and holy sacrifice you're to present. You're to present, you're to bring yourself and all of your bodily appetites and all the things that you would want to crave that the world says you should be craving. No, I want to worship you with what you've given me to give to you. Now in saying that kind of as a foundation, how do you accomplish that? How do you do that? It's not some sort of formula. You get out there and say, okay, I'm going to bring my body to God. Okay, God, I hear my body. Okay, great, I'm worshiping You with my body. That's not what Paul says. He starts off the way he starts off in verse 1 for a reason. And this is what we're going to look at. We're going to go a little deeper and look at the motivation, how this transformation takes place. And it takes place as consecration based upon what he says In verse 1 where he says, I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. That means if you don't know and understand what the mercies of God are, you're not going to get off square one to do anything to present your body as a living holy sacrifice. It's going to be impossible. So what are the mercies of God? Well, we can speculate and say, well, God's mercies are new every morning. He's always kind and gracious. And we would be true with those things. But Paul has just spelled out in Romans 1-11, I talked to someone earlier about the orthodoxy that leads to the orthopraxy that starts off in chapter 12, the orthopraxy, which means practice. So before you get to the practice, you've got to have 11 chapters of orthodoxy. Those are the mercies of God. What are those mercies? What does Paul say that those mercies mean? Well, if you go back and you start reading through the book of Romans, it's not hard to figure out. One of the first ones that he brings out is this whole idea of imputation. And he really hammers it in chapter 5. But does anybody know what imputation means? Imputation, this whole idea that I credit something to your account, you credit something to my account. You get something from me, I get something from you. And something's imputed to you. So when God comes on the scene and says, okay, I am going to make you right with me, because everybody's under condemnation, chapters 1, 2, and 3. Every mouth is closed. When God saves a man, He closes his mouth. And he realizes, I'm guilty before God. Now at that point, if God doesn't save you, you can't be saved. The only person that can save you from God is God. It has to be God that saves you from Him. You can't save yourself from God. He has to save you. But if He's going to save you, listen up kids, He's going to save you His way, not your way. What's His way? Well, this is His way. This whole idea of imputation. Now, when you think about imputation, there's this Christ takes my sins on the cross, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5. He imputes His righteousness to me. Because notice, when you came into this world, you came into this world a sinner. Did you ask to be a sinner? Anybody here filled out a form to be a sinner when they got born? Well, mom and dad filled something out for me to be a sinner. We had a choice to be a sinner or a saint. They filled out to be a sinner. I don't know why they did that. Check the box for sinner or something. Nobody does that. You come into this world sinner because you're born from Adam. And when Adam sinned, God made it so that anything born from Adam is going to come into the world legally a sinner in my sight. And not just legally, They're going to actually practice sin, and you're going to see it in living color. So there's a legal condemnation, as he says in Romans 5, and then there's the practical condemnation that comes from that legal standing. Well, the same thing happens when you're in Christ. When a man is placed in Christ, there's that imputation. When Christ's righteousness is given to me because He's taken my sin. I'm legally before God, as we're told in Romans 5, we stand in this grace. I'm legally before God as righteous as Jesus Christ. Not because I've done something, but that's what that righteousness of Christ means. It means I'm as righteous as He are. Don't lose track of where we're going. I'm talking about the mercies of God so you can be transformed. If you don't understand this and you don't know this, you're going to struggle being transformed. So you have to understand what these mercies are so that the mercies lay a foundation, a bedrock, so that you can do what? I can draw upon that to say, this is who I am. See, if you don't know who you are, it's going to be hard for you to be transformed. And the Scriptures are clear. It tells us this is who you are. And so if I have the righteousness of Jesus Christ on me, that means I'm righteous. I'm as righteous as Christ. How is that possible? He gives me of His Holy Spirit. I'm regenerated. I'm born again. I'm converted. I repent. I believe. How did all that happen? Because that's part and parcel what it means to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You have that righteousness and He justifies who? The ungodly it says in Romans 4 verse 5. It doesn't justify anybody else. So you qualify. If you're ungodly, hey, you made it. You're in the category that can be justified freely. This is part of the mercies of God so that what? So that you can draw upon and be transformed, present my body as a living and holy sacrifice. So, this is what God's doing. He is overwhelming us with His mercies. Mercy upon mercy upon mercy upon mercy so that I'm overwhelmed with joy. I'm overwhelmed. with the satisfaction of how great He is and what He has done, that in my joy and in my liberty, that's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. I can worship. I can give myself to the Lord. The Lord doesn't want your legalism. Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. That's for the religious crowd. You're not a slave anymore. You're a son. And that's why Paul, when he says, when we have that righteousness from Christ... In fact, let me kind of give you an illustration. I did this one time before. And I think I kind of upset the entire church one place where I preached one time, because they weren't used to this. They had never heard this. If I was to give you a handout, I have a handout here called Your Righteousness. And basically what it does, it goes through the Ten Commandments, and it breaks it down, and it asks you questions about each commandment. In other words, you iterate yourself from one to ten, and it just breaks it down. I have always served the Lord with all my heart, mind, and soul. Give yourself a number from zero, I've never done it ever, to ten. And you put a number here. Now you would put a number for all of these, and you might come up with a score at the bottom. The problem is if you don't put a 10 for all of them, you don't have the righteousness of God. So the law does its work. It comes in and it shuts you down. It says, give me a 10 or go home. Come on, what's it going to be? And then he has, well, I'm pretty good. I'm better than that guy. I've got an 8. 8. You still didn't get 100. Christ comes and when He dies on the cross and takes away our sins, His numbers are all 10s. And here's the Gospel. God commands you to come and take His righteousness. Here's yours. Put it on top of yours. And by faith, notice what my faith is. It's none of this. It's this. Believe it's mine. That's it. And he goes to grade the papers. Okay. Yep. Romeo, I see a hundred. That's what he sees. Because why? It's Christ's righteousness. It's on top of yours. So this isn't righteousness. This is just faith. That's why you can't trust in your faith. You have to trust in what Christ has done. But faith has to be applied in order to hold it together. Make sense? Now that's a mercy, isn't it? It's a big one. So where's the works involved? There's no works involved. That's why faith is not of works. You just have to believe and trust that His righteousness He will give freely to you to all who ask and want it. You want to be saved tonight? You want to be right with God? You want to get rid of this test score? You're going to have to trust that somebody else's test score is going to be laid upon yours. And it's going to count on judgment day to be your test score. You have to believe. Well, what happens if this paper clip comes off or loose? Well, if you're of the Lord, He staples you with the paper clip. But you have the paperclip. You've got to keep the paperclip on because we persevere by faith, but we persevere. But you're kept by the power of God, says in 2 Peter, because you're stapled. But this has to stay on here. You understand? So I'm just using this as an illustration of how the righteousness of Christ is everything for you. This gives you the ability to answer the most basic of questions. Most Christians can't answer this question. I don't understand it. If you're to die tonight and you're to stand before God, And he was to ask you, why should I let you in? What would you tell him? You know what most people do? They tell me about this. Seriously? You're going to tell me about this? Well, you know, I go to church. Well, let's see, what number is that? What number do you give yourself going to church? Well, you know, I don't beat my wife like my neighbor does. Well, hey, there you go. That's worth a couple points. Seriously? Well, I don't look at porn. Well, not as much. I don't look at porn on the Internet as much. Where's that on here? See, why are you showing me this? You need to be talking about this. Well, the reason why I believe I will go to heaven is because of what Christ has done. He's taken away my sins. He's taken away my sins. See? In that case, they're covered. And He's given me His righteousness. So, I would say I go to heaven because I'm as holy as God. Now, is this as holy as God? Tens on everything? Or no? It is? But it's not my righteousness. It's somebody else's righteousness. You're going to tell me you're as holy as God. I sure am. In another man's righteousness. See, you've got to be able to articulate that. If I wake you up at 2 in the morning and say stand up on a tent by the side of your bed and tell me why you should go to heaven, you should be able to articulate that. Because that's the Gospel in its most kernel, basic form. Imputation. Somebody else's righteousness for yours. That's a mercy. Now as he continues on in chapter 6 and chapter 7 in Romans, He shows how this identity with Christ, we cannot continue in sin because of that. See, when you have this righteousness attached to you, trust me, you're going to start looking like that righteousness that's attached to you. You're going to start looking like the garments you put on. That's why when he gets to chapter 7 and he goes to this guy who's struggling with sin and everything, that guy's not struggling with sin. That guy's struggling with the law. Because the law is the power of sin according to 1 Corinthians 15. Which means this. Your obligations before God will never lead to your transformation. Let that sink in. Obligation cannot produce transformation. Obligation can produce illumination, but it can't produce transformation. Now that's where the Jews got it wrong. Because here they're thinking, I've got the law, we're special people, and since we have the law, that we're God's people. Paul comes along and says, no, it doesn't work that way. Yeah, you know God's law. You've got more illumination than anybody. You've got great benefit. You know what God loves, what God hates. You know how God wants to be accessed. You know what God refuses to be accessed by, and things of this sort, and how sin's defined. You have great illumination. But at the end of the day, according to Romans 2, you who say, don't steal, do you steal? See? The transformation's not there. Oh, you've got the illumination. Yeah, you can tell us exactly. Cross T's and dot I's when it comes to theology. Orthodoxy, you've got, but you don't have orthopraxy. Sorry, you don't. And God's going to judge on Judgment Day based on works. Oh no. What are we going to do now? And so for us as Christians, we know that those works validate who we are. They're not the basis of who we are. It's somebody else's work is the basis of who we are. But my validation through the power of the Holy Spirit shows that I'm the real deal. And that validation is a transformed life. A transformed life that is based upon the mercies of God. Now one more point with this thing because you get to Romans 7, you get to Romans 8. When he gets to Romans 8 and he talks about those who are in the flesh cannot please God and those who are in the Spirit do nothing but please God. And if you're a Christian, you're in the Spirit. You don't fluctuate between flesh and Spirit and flesh and Spirit. These are realms of humanity. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Those who are in the flesh, they're going to die. That's just how it is. And if God didn't move you from the realm of the flesh to the realm of the Spirit, you're going to die in your sins. And you're going to face the wrath of God on Judgment Day. The Spirit and the Bride say, come into the realm of the Spirit. So God is a very inviting God. God would much rather show mercy than wrath. How do I know that? Because He tells us that. He's slow to anger, which means He's quick to forgive. Quicker to forgive than you are to sin. Now you think about that for a second. John makes an unbelievable statement in 1 John 3 when he talks about how Christians cannot continue in sin. I think you know that passage where he says in chapter 3, He says, let's see. He says, first of all, he backs up a little bit. He says, everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure. What hope? Fixed on him purifies himself. This whole idea that we are now children of God. And you have this hope and it's fixed on him. So he moves on that and he says, everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. This whole idea of practicing things. And then he says, and you know that he appeared in order to take away sins and in him there is no sin. Let's get this straight. What he's going to be setting you up for is this whole idea that like in Adam, you have a legal standing, and then you have a practical outcome of that legal standing. So if I'm in Adam, and there's this cute little baby in there, and she or he is born in the hospital, we know where that baby's going to wind up. That baby's going to wind up, because it's legally condemned under sin in Adam. It's going to wind up practicing sin. The psalmist says we speak lies from the womb. We know what that baby is going to wind up doing. It's going to wind up growing up and actually practicing its legal standing and in practice it's going to sin. Now the same thing happens with Christ. Those who are in Christ and are born again and are given new headship given new title. I am now in the Spirit. I'm not a slave to sin, Romans 6. I've died to sin. I'm not a slave to obligation, Romans 7. I've died to the law. That's the first part of Romans 7. Geez, I've died to sin. I've died to the law. Why would I want to die to something that's good and holy and righteous? Because I have to die to that in the sense that not that it's bad, but when it gets with me, And I start working under obligation, I can never produce transformation. So God takes obligation off the table. It doesn't mean I don't have any obligation, it just means it's never going to be used as an instrument or a tool to transform me. So as I'm going through 1 John 3, then he says, and we know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins. No one who sins has seen him or knows him. Well, this is all or nothing here. And he says, little children, let no one deceive you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. And the one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. So here's this whole idea of practicing sin. And then he says, the son of God appeared for this purpose that he might destroy the works of the devil. And then he says this in verse nine. He says, no one who is born of God practices sin because His seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God. Now, let me tell you what that means. That means that when the Holy Spirit births you and His seed abides in you, you cannot create, manufacture sin. You can commit it just like Adam and Eve could commit it, dynamo in you to create it is gone. That's the practical implication. If the legal implication with Christ is I'm righteous in Him, the practice is going to come full force from it as well. Now, don't you think I'm talking about Christian perfectionism here. I'm not. Just like with Adam and Eve. They couldn't manufacture it, but they could sin, and they did. Which means this. Just like Paul says in Ephesians 6, your enemy is not flesh and blood. Your enemy is the evil one. Your enemy is your unredeemed body that the evil one takes a beachhead from and gets you to think about these deceitful, lustful appetites in you. So when you sin, you go against your nature as a Christian. And you have to believe a lie that your body's telling you that the devil's promoting. For example, if you have some sort of sexual thing, you find yourself being tempted, lustful, whatever it might be. Well, see, a normal libido, you're supposed to have a normal libido. You're male or female. These are normal. But demons will jump their libido on yours. Why? They're lying to you. You've got to listen to me. You've got to do this. This is you. In reality, what you're experiencing is the lying, deceptive lust that says in Ephesians 4. They're lying to you. They're lying to you saying you have to eat all the time. So they're lying to you saying you've got to be gluttonous. They're lying to you saying, oh, you have to do this, you've got to satisfy this urge. Or you've got to protect your reputation. All those things are lies. And no lies are the truth. And it's only the truth that sets you free. And Padma, you're called to freedom. You're called to liberty. Galatians 5, verse 1, that's your calling. And the Holy Spirit is going to make sure you're liberated. It sounds like kicking and screaming. It won't be kicking and screaming. Because my nature is to do the things that glorify Jesus Christ. So technically, if we took away all those demonic and sinful accoutrements of the world, your neighbors, your body, demons and everything, and left you to yourself, you'd serve Jesus Christ. It's your nature to do it. Now, I don't know why that's so radical, but when I preach that, it's like deer in the headlight looks. But that's what Christ has redeemed you to. And it's the same exact parallel with what Adam did. You have a legal... standing and you have a practical outcome. You have a legal standing with Christ and you have a practical outcome. You are going to be transformed. And you're going to be transformed from the inside out. And you're going to be transformed from the inside out based upon the mercies of God. And part of those mercies that you're going to understand is that this righteousness has been given to you freely. Simple paperclip to believe that and it's yours. And when you get it, you got the whole enchilada, not part of it. You got everything that accompanies godliness and salvation, 2 Peter says. You're a partaker of the divine nature. You're going to think like your heavenly Father. You're going to think about what is going to glorify Jesus Christ the most. You're going to think like the Holy Spirit and you're going to walk in freedom. And the things you hear about Christ, and the things you hear about His glory, and the things like a retreat here that you'll come and you'll sleep in a cabin out here, or a tent in the rain, it's because I gotta hear this. Because my ears have to hear words of life. My inner man wants to hear that truth. And you gravitate toward that. And you say, yes, more of that. I need more of that. And you'll act like those people who were violent in the Gospels. you'll tear a hole in the roof to get a guy down here in front of Jesus. I mean, I remember vividly going to Bible conferences and I had to get there. I had people say, hey, could you wait a little bit? I can't. Can I ride with you? You got to catch a ride with somebody. I got to get there. And I felt kind of bad because I kind of, you know, they needed a ride, but I kind of make sure they got one with somebody else. But it's like, I got to get there. And it's like God kind of tapped me and said, you shouldn't have to feel bad about wanting to eat manna. It's me. I'm feeding you, and you should be ravenous toward those truths. So the question tonight brought out in Romans 12 is, are you being transformed? And if you're going to be transformed, you need to know who you are. And you're a son. You're an adopted son. He loves you, like it says in Romans 8. Nobody can bring a charge against His elect, and that means you. And it starts with you. Don't go bringing charges against His elect. He'll take you down. He'll discipline you according to Hebrews 12. No. My righteousness, my son's righteousness is on you. This is what you will call yourself. And this is who you are. But I gotta tell you, if you're not a Christian, none of that, none of that applies to you. Because unless he gives you the gift of faith, I mean, how simple is that? It's like a mustard seed. How formidable is that? This thing can move mountains. But it's a gift of God. And when He gives it, it's not just positive thinking. No, no. You know specifically why He's given it. And it's attaching to something. You know something about your condition as being no righteousness. And you know something about Christ's provision. Perfect righteousness. And you say, Lord, give that to me. Help me. I don't want to be underneath Your wrath. Because if you're in His wrath, you're in the Niagara River and you know where the Niagara River goes. And one day, one day, if you stay in that river, you're not gonna be in the river anymore. You're either gonna get on the bank and be saved, or you're gonna go over the falls. You see that? That's it. There's no other choices here. And so what we do and what we preach to you is to come to Christ. I mean, look what He is giving you. A perfect righteousness, a perfect standing in His sight. He gives you of His Holy Spirit. His seed abides in you. And the very sins that you find yourself being deceived and committing, it's not like when you were before, when you could manufacture them, when you could create them. Not anymore. You feel like a fish out of water. You know, I shouldn't be looking at that pornography. It's just not the same anymore. And it shouldn't be the same anymore. Right? Because I have a new nature. I don't want to do that. I just find myself going to that. You're finding yourself believing a lie then. And I'll just make it simple. If you have an addiction problem in this area, it's because you have an idolatry grace problem over here. And so you've got to get a hold of this. God is not in the AA program. He doesn't transform from the outside. He's not into 12 steps. He's not into formulas. He's not into all that kind of stuff. It's from the inside. And that inside has everything to do with who you are in Christ. And everything comes from that point. Because all AA is going to do is make you be looking to yourself, satisfied with yourself, and that paperclip is not going to attach to anything except you. And how good is that? It's almost like a waste of time and effort. Because at the end of the day, you're still lost. Oh, OK. Yeah, I'm cleaning up a little bit. Yeah, I don't have that addiction anymore. Great. You're a nice citizen on your way to hell. Nice. You're floating better in the Niagara. You're not bumping into people as bad as you were when you're flashing around and all that. You're kind of a nice citizen now. Great. You're still going over the pulse. And that's what you don't want to do. So come to Christ. That's the basic statement. And at the same time, if you're a Christian, remember, your whole transformation depends upon, as it says in Romans 12, verse 1, upon the mercies of God. And you look at that and you say, Lord, how merciful have You been to me to give me these things, that I am righteous in Your sight, and I'm righteous. I mean, I am holy. And I'm going to become more holier in my actions and my thoughts and my deeds. Why? I can't help but. It's my destiny. I have to be. Because Christ's righteousness isn't going to be short-circuited. He's not going to be left to be a lackey or something or some sort of means to your end. He's the end. And once again, like I started off with, He has come, He has taken you, and He says you're going to be mine and you're going to be all mine. And I'm going to make you into the person I want you to be. Whether you've got three hours to live like the thief on the cross, Or you've got 75 years to live like Abraham when he walked with God. Whatever it might be, I'll determine that length. But you're going to be, and you're going to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You're going to work out that perfect righteousness that I've given you legally. Let's pray. Father, we thank You and we bless You for this time. Lord, I ask, Father, that You would send Your Holy Spirit. Father, that You would regenerate those who are not saved. And Father, cause them to cry out. Cause them to have their eyes opened and to see their great need. And Father, You would woo them as You do in the book of Hosea to his wayward wife. That You would show them the great tapestry of Christ's beauty and righteousness. We love You, we bless You, and we thank You for this time. For it's in His great name we pray, Amen. The following clip is from the next day's session and a question that was asked afterwards. Yes? You mentioned last night about manufacturing sin as opposed to once you're saved, sin kind of... What did you mean by manufacturing? Manufacturing or creating sin in the inner man is an impossibility for a Christian. And what I mean by that is that it does not originate from inside of you anymore. You can be complicit in sin. You can commit sin. But simply because you commit something doesn't mean you manufacture that sin. The manufacturing of it comes from outside of you. Kind of like the best example is Genesis 3 with the serpent and Eve. She doesn't manufacture sin. She doesn't wake up and say, think I'll sin today. Or think I'll rebel against the God today. She doesn't have that capacity to manufacture it in her inner person. But she can commit it. And she did. And so did he. So to understand the difference between the two really doesn't take makes anything different in your warfare or in your overcoming sin or overcoming the world, just places the emphasis where it should be, which is your warfare is not against flesh and blood when it comes to yourself. And it also elevates the work of Jesus Christ and what He has done legally and practically by giving you the Holy Spirit that you have, like it says in Peter, you have everything pertaining to life and godliness. No temptation has overtaken you, 1 Corinthians 10.13. Which is common to man. God is faithful. Who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able. So you can overcome every single temptation. You can't say, well, you know, I've got that old sin nature. I'm kind of prone to do this. That's buying into a lie. And you're buying into, well, I can't help it, victim mentality. Can't do that anymore. That's been taken away. You've got all the resources to overcome and fight sin. If you fall, it's because you believed a lie. And I've got to tell you, the devil's biggest tool in propagating lies to you is to discourage you, get you in the greenhouse where you're discouraged. Because when you're in the greenhouse and you're discouraged, you're more open to bigger and badder lies. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Having that joy is huge. Because the opposite of that is being discouraged. Not that you can't walk with God when you're discouraged. We see the psalmist does that many times. But he's also open to greater temptations to sin, which is lies. Because when you're in a discouraged state, you are open to hearing lies in a greater way. So that's why going back to Hebrews 3 again, it's important that you get encouraged every day by brethren. What they're trying to do, the opposite of discourage, it's encourage, is to fortify you, strengthen you, build you up so that you can do what? Fight lies with more of a peace, a joy, in the love of the Holy Spirit. So that would be my answer on the difference between manufacturing or creating sin. You used to. Before you were regenerated, that's all you could do. That's why it says in Ephesians 2, remember, it talks about how we're children of wrath even as the rest. We were sons of disobedience. The Prince and the power of the air that resided in us. Remember when Jesus called those Pharisees? You know, you're just like your father the devil. He was a liar from the beginning. You're going to do exactly what your father does. He lies. And you like lying, and that's all you can do is sin. Now think about it. If you cannot manufacture sin and create sin, guess what the lost man can't do? He can't manufacture or create righteousness. And on judgment day, And judgment's going to come. And judgment's going to be based on works. But those works aren't going to be the basis of your righteousness. It's going to be the evidence that you were righteous. And those righteous deeds have to be created by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's not being created by the power of the Holy Spirit in the lost man. And it's that power of the Holy Spirit that creates those things that's going to be used and held up and say, look what my son did. enter into the joy of your Master. When did we see you naked and blind and thirsty and sick? You did it to the least of these. We're not counting our good works like those people in Matthew 7. But we did this in your name, we did that in your name. Here's my resume. Cast out demons in your name. We don't have a resume. All we know is Christ. We cling to Him. We let Him take care of those deeds that are going to be expressed on judgment day. And you're right, we'll look back and we'll say, wait, when I did that? That was something that was part of the Holy Spirit to do that? Yeah. But see, it comes natural for us as it should because we're righteous in His sight. Any other questions? Great question. Yes? I heard a pastor say recently that our hearts are idol factories. Have you heard that comment? I think I have. I can't remember who I've heard that from. Probably somebody I like, I think. Well, that's true in law state. I mean, that's all you're going to manufacture is that. Yeah, I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't agree with that. I would tend to think that you can be complicit in idolatry, but it's. complicitness based upon lies. It's not based upon who I am in my inner man. That's how I would look at that from 1st John 3.9. Yes? I had a question. Just with not manufacturing sin, I would assume it's then from our hearts. How do you reconcile that with Mark 7 where it says forth from within? out of the heart of man, and then he goes on with evil thoughts and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Yeah. I think in the context there, he's talking about man in general, which is true. And that's exactly true. I mean, Christ is trying to correct something where they're thinking, well, it's just this external stuff. Like if I just stay away from that thing over there that's contaminated, I'm good. When in reality, Christ is saying, what's drawing you to that thing in the first place? It's the stuff that's coming out of you. It's inside of you that's doing that. So probably I would look at that as a general statement about mankind. It's like leprosy. You know, we're kind of part of the leper colony. I'm still part of the leper colony, even though I'm not a leper. In other words, I'm not producing leprosy anymore, but I'm still a leper because of this body. See, Romans 8 is very clear that the body is dead because of sin. So if the body is dead and it's unredeemed because of sin, then my body is going to go in one direction, it's going to go toward the grave. But if my body could look like my inner man, it'd go on forever. It would never die. But it is. Because He's going to give us a new body. We hadn't got that yet. I've got a new inner man. But I don't have a new outer man. Anybody else? Good questions. Let's pray. Let's ask the Lord to help us. Father, we once again bless You and worship You in spirit and truth. We thank You, Father, that Christ, the great Logos, the Word, the definition, the way, the truth, and the life. Father, it's the epicenter of everything of our existence. We thank You, Father, that all definitions, all dictionaries will be destroyed on judgment day. Just one will be used and it will be the Lamb's. We're asking, Father, that when You put Your finger on us and You say You are lost, that, Father, no other dictionary, Appellate court, no other definition is going to stand. We ask, Father, that if we are lost, whoever is lost in this room, that You would send Your Spirit and show them that definition. And if we're saved, Father, that You would give us great encouragement and assurance and show us that this is who we are. Let no man call You something different. And we thank You, Father, that You and You alone call us Your children. And if You call us Your children, then such we are. And no man can take that from us. Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Who will bring a redefining of God's elect? No one. And we thank You, Father, that You love us and You bless us in Christ. Be with us now, Father, as we seek to not be conformed to the world, but to be transformed. Help us, Father, to be men who worship You with all of our minds, as the greatest commandment tells us to. And to be like the sons of Issachar, who were men who knew the times, and they knew the things they should do in light of that. We love You and we bless You. For it's in Christ's great name we pray, Amen.