Let us turn again in the word of God to Romans chapter 12 and verse 1. Romans 12 verse 1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. We shall consider these words as the Lord is pleased to enable us. In the Western churches, for a few hundred years after the death of the Lord, up to about 400 AD, at the end of the service, The minister would say in Latin, missa estis, you are now sent out into the world. If you think of that word missa, a letter, you are now sent out into the world. And that means that you have to live out the life which Christ has put in you. Having been to the Lord's table, You are now to go out to bear witness to the one who bore witness in you. Now, there's a difference between a religious life and a Christian life. And nowadays, despite the criticism of having doctrine without practice, we're living in days of practice without doctrine. There's a lot of activity, but there's a zeal without knowledge. While the law is not the condition for life, it is the rule, the guide for how you are to live your life. The curse, the condemnation of the law has been taken away, but it's still there. But there are many today who are rather like the ship, which has powerful engines, but the steering has gone wrong. And there's a lot of activity, but there's no direction. It goes all over the place. So what has happened in today's world? Why has there been such a decline, misdirection, deviation? Well, it all comes back to missing out one word. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, miss out the word therefore. And you've lost your motivation, your power, and the direction for your life. It's as if people started reading Romans from chapter 12 instead of chapter 1. Therefore, always point you back to what came before. Now, there are 11 chapters there, and it's all about the mercies of God. God has revealed himself to sinners and in such a way as to save sinners. You miss out what goes before, all you have then is morality, your own opinion or religious opinion. You've lost your motive, your aim, your power. It's the mercies of God. Thomas Chalmers came to Kilmarney He was a minister, he wasn't converted. And he knew what a good life was and he started preaching morality, morality. Stop this, start doing this, enough of this. Things got worse and worse and worse. Then Thomas Chalmers was converted and he started preaching the mercies of God. and then godly lives began to appear. You see, the law never brought anybody to Christ or to follow Christ. It's the mercies of God. This is what attracts the sinner. The sinner by nature is afraid of God. You go near God, look out. But the mercies of God that Christ is willing to receive any sinner that comes to him, well that really is an eye opener for the sinner. But the first thing the Holy Spirit has to do is to empty you of yourself and take away all your hopes except one, one, Christ. And people go out into the world and they're exploring the world Because they know very well there's something missing in their life. And they're trying this new thing and this new thing to try and fill up this void within them, and they end up as empty as ever. And then they go on to the next toy the media brings out for your attention, and it fails as well. But Christ attracts sinners by his mercy. The law drives them away. The law asks you to do more and more and more. And the poor soul dies thinking, have I done enough? Have I done enough to please God? Have I done enough to escape hell? You can never do enough. But he said what he has done is a finished work. And the gospel presents to sinners a finished work. The old covenant of works, of course, was this do and thou shalt live. But the new covenant is rather like Christ will do and thou shalt live. There was a man in one of the eastern mission halls in Aberdeenshire, and he was convicted of sin and his need of Christ during the sermon. And he waited till the end, and he came out to the minister, and he said, well, tell me what I have to do. Tell me, I'll do anything, just tell me what I have to do. He said, you're too late, too late. What do you mean? You're a minister, tell me what I have to do. He said, you're too late. What do you mean? It's all been done. You're not asked to make the atonement, you're called to receive the atonement according to Romans chapter five. So the mercies of God is the doctrine revealed to sinners. That's your motivation and your power and the driving force of your life. Abraham Lincoln, lived in the border of one of the slave states before the Civil War, and they used to have auction for black slaves, and he saw a girl for sale, and he was rather horrified that this was happening, so he bought the girl, and he said to the girl, Now you're free. You've been bought. And she said, I don't want to go free. I want to serve you, the one that bought me. You see how Christ has done something for the sinner. And when that comes home to the heart, you're not going to anybody else. You want to follow him and wherever he goes, you want to go there too. And that's why Paul says, Christ our life, and Christ our life shall appear. And it all comes from the mercies of God. And we saw something of the mercies of God this morning. It all goes back to the cross. Therefore, what God has joined together, we should not separate. The apostle, before he comes to exhorting them to do things, he said, by the mercies of God, keep that in mind as your motivation. You can't earn it, you can't pay God back. You've received mercy. And his thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift. Unspeakable means that we don't have the words. to express our admiration or adoration. And that's why we have to keep coming back to the word of God, not only to see what he has said, but to see what we are to say in return. Too many nowadays put the morality first, but it's unguided morality. We need to come back to the mercies of God, and as we'll see, it's your reasonable service. In other words, if you want to know how to please God, you have to go to him first. God knows how he wants to be worshipped. He's told us. Christ knows how he wants to be followed. He's told us. Some people say, well, I think we should do this, or the Holy Spirit moved me to do this. Check the word of God. We're not aware of the Holy Spirit contradicting, moving someone, and then saying something against the scripture. If he moves us, it's to be in harmony with what he has said in the scriptures. He does not contradict himself. So this is the true motive, and it's to be the pattern, the foundation of a life in Christ. And it's Paul himself, remember, writing this down. He has the experience. When Christ met him, he said, who art thou, Lord? And then he said, what wilt thou have me to do? He didn't say, I'll serve you this way, I'll do this for you, but what will thou have me to do? And of course, after that, the Lord revealed by word what he had to do. And he also told him through Ananias, not only he was a chosen vessel, as all God's people are, but what great things he must suffer for my name, he said. Now, God doesn't just command. The command comes in the law. You'll notice in the gospel here, I beseech you. He could have said, I demand that you do this, but he said, I beseech you. I exhort you, I encourage you. Why? Well, think of the mercies of God. The more you're aware of what God has done for you, the more you will be moved to serve him better and more than you do. God has the right to demand from every creature obedience, but the gospel is gentler than the law. I beseech you, therefore, just like us, brethren, by the mercies of God. It was the same mercy that saved Paul as saved us. Is it not a fitting, reasonable return for all his benefits? David says, and forget not all his benefits. He said, it's reasonable. It's for your good. Many a person has started off well and then thought they would go their own way and still be committed to God. But by that, you may be giving up the next world for this. There is a path to heaven, but there's only one path, and it's well laid out. If you think, I can serve God my way, you've been off the path. David was so suspicious and distrustful of himself, he said, make me to go in the path of thy commandments, for therein do I delight. It's reasonable. It's reasonable to suffer obeying Christ in this world because of what awaits the saint in the next world. Look at Demas, started out so well. He only seemed to do well, though, when he was in the company of the apostle, or Luke. There came a point when he thought, I'll try my own way. And Paul said, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. How many sinners are giving up the eternal next world for a few years here? A few years soon pass and there's nothing you can take with you. And the world keeps you from thinking about that. The media is employed by the devil to keep you absorbed in the present, in the visible. It doesn't want you to think of the invisible and eternal. That might make you afraid. Well, fear is a good motive if it brings you to Christ. Remember, the jailer came that way, trembling. There had been an earthquake. It was now finished. The trembling was now in him. And he came in and said, as every sinner does, what must I do to be saved? And the reply basically Paul gave was, you do nothing. You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is not a work of ours. It is a saving grace. And if it's grace, it's not according to works. It's not even according to the law. It's a righteousness which is apart from our keeping of the law. Reasonable, brethren, God calls us through here to make a living return for all that he has done for us. It's the same word for grace that makes the word gratitude. That's why you say grace before a meal, it's gratitude. And if you have grace, you must have gratitude. What God gives to us in the heart, it comes back to God from the heart. And that's why the Lord looks at the heart whenever we're doing things. It's the motive in ourselves or the mercies of God. Now if you're thinking about the mercies of God, you're thinking about eternity. And you know how some people say, oh, heavenly minded, no earthly use. It's the heavenly minded that are effluent. If you go back in the history of Christianity, who brought in the first schools? Who brought in the first hospitals? It was Christianity, it was the church. So the first point here is, the obedience of faith in everyday life, it has to come from this motive. the mercies of God. If you're using every other motive, it's not going to work. And you'll still fail to achieve what you wanted to. But if you think in the mercies of God, well, can you do enough? You'd be like the Macedonians. They first gave their own selves to the Lord and then to us. Notice the first table of the commandments. comes before the second, to the Lord and then to us. Now, what is this service here, secondary? You are to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Now, to present means you're bringing something forward. You're in motion. To present means that there must be some resistance. If you're called to present your body's living sacrifices, you must need that exhortation. There must be something in you that's holding you back. Even in the Christian, sin is like gravity. It keeps our minds down on the earth. But for the non-Christian, it's even worse. People make all kinds of excuses for not coming to Christ. They forget the greatest reason is their own sin that has dominion. How can we prove that? Well, it's like this. If I were to say to everyone, come to Christ, if you had no sin in you, you would come just like that. It's your own sin that keeps you back. But it's also our own sin as Christians that keeps our minds earthly. Think of the mercies of God, where they come from, where they're bringing us to, and how all of this suffering in this world and hardship and discontent and disappointment, it will evaporate. One second after we get into the next world, it's all gone. How difficult it is to think about that. There are so many things which are visible to us. In one sense, a blind person has a kind of advantage. They're not disturbed by the things which are seen. They're only thinking about the things which are not seen. And that, of course, is the invisible God. Paul himself said, I obtained mercy. And he said that he was a pattern for all those who believe. and see what that giving of mercy produced in the Apostle Paul. In labors more abundant, he said. In stripes often, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, left for dead at Lystra. There was a preacher in Constantinople, and he was so impressed with the Apostle Paul It's called Chrysostom. He said, the man Paul, then he paused, if he was a man. It's as if he had done so much, he seemed to be more than a man. But he was a man. But when he thought of Christ and what Christ had done for him, well, he could do what many other men could not do. People think, of course, that's a poor motive. because they think you should have some great reward, some great prize dangled in front of you. It's like those two that Bunyan's pilgrim met on the way to Mount Zion. He asked them, where are you going? He said, we're going to Mount Zion for praise, for praise for God, praise of themselves they meant, of course. Maybe you've heard of the Moravian Mission. It all began about 300 years ago. There was a man called Count Zinzendorf. He lived in Moravia, which is Czechoslovakia now. He was a Christian, but he did the minimum. Did the minimum as a Christian. And one day he was visiting a friend another noble. He had a little castle. He went into the hall, and as they did in those days, there was a cross on the wall, and he saw there was something written underneath. And he went over, and below the cross was written, all this I have done for you. What have you done for me? and that had an effect on him, so much so that those who were like-minded, they were sent out as missionaries all over the Western world, even to America. Some of them contacted John Wesley on a ship. He was coming back from America. They were on the ship, and it looked like the ship was about to go down, And Wesley saw these two Moravians, and they were praying, and they were singing a psalm to God. And he thought, they have something that I don't have. And at that time, Wesley was preaching the gospel. He wasn't even converted, you see. But perhaps the most memorable thing that they did was two of them went to Hawaii, and there was a leper colony on Molokai. They put all the lepers onto one island. And these two Moravians saw that these lepers were not getting the gospel. So they went in with the gospel. And of course, they knew they would never come out. All this I have done for you. What have you done for me? The Moravian mission. So he says, present. Go forward, watch the hindrances. Your bodies, he said, not just your minds, your bodies. Theology is practical. It is the doctrine according to godliness, and the godliness according to doctrine. Therefore, looking back, now forward, present, your bodies, not just your thoughts. Thomas Chalmers preached a great sermon. He came down from the pulpit. His elders said, wonderful sermon. Chalmers said, maybe, but what did it do? What did it do in the people? Not the thoughts only, the body. Now remember, the Holy Spirit, if you're a believer, has your mind. He also has your body. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. A living sacrifice. You know, in the Old Testament, to be a sacrifice, you had to be dead. You had to be a dead sheep, or lamb, or goat, or bullock. But in the New Testament, it's living sacrifices. Paul talks about the calves of our lips, the praise going up to God from the lips. Alive in Christ Jesus. First, you're made alive, and then you offer yourself. That passage in Psalm 110, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. That word willing can be referring to the free will offering, a willing sacrifice. Not taken by someone else and laid upon the altar, but like the Macedonians, you give yourself to the Lord. You're better being in his hands than in your own hands. Living, holy, that means you're set apart from God, not for anybody else, but for God first. Another word for that is, of course, consecration. Holy, acceptable. Now, without faith, whatever you do, It's not acceptable to God. It's quite clear in Hebrews 11 that without faith it is impossible to please God, verse six. And that's why the apostle Paul, before his conversion, although he was zealous, outstripped all his contemporaries and his studies, would do anything for the high priest in the Sanhedrin, give me letters, I'll go to Damascus, I'll imprison them, Gave his vote against him, which proves he was a member of the Sanhedrin. Put him in the dungeon, held the courts while they stoned Stephen. That was his idea of serving God. All that changed. Now he was a living sacrifice. And you might say he burned out on the altar of his devotion. Now he says it's reasonable. It's a logical necessity that if we're God's creatures, we belong to him, we should serve him. But that's not enough for the unconverted. The fact that God has a right over us. But for the Christian, God doesn't just assert his right, he asserts his mercy. The mercy goes forth from heaven, from the throne of grace, and brings the sinner to the throne of grace. He doesn't just say the words and keep himself out of it, though. He says the words and he wants to practice what he's saying to God. And there's where we all come short, of course. And that's when we have to look at the other sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ Jesus. Look unto me and be ye saved. Look at yourself and you will find every discouragement under the sun. But look to him, the mercies of God, there's your motive, there's your comfort, there's your power. Reasonable, acceptable, service. Ask for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. Whenever there was a conversion in the head of the family, the whole family joined in serving the Lord. Even Lydia's household, they served the Lord. The jailer's household, they served the Lord. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. The Christian, when converted, realizes He's not just a citizen of this world, he's a citizen of another. Your citizenship is in heaven. You're going towards that city that God has built. It is your home. And in God's house, my dwelling place shall be. And it will be forever this time, and not in a temporary house we set up in this world. But your first loyalty is surely to above, to heaven. And where the government authors are against the laws of heaven, well, you follow the laws of heaven for life on earth. If you don't, you either damage or you lose your conscience. Better to have peace with God than die in peace with God. than to sell your soul for a few years of conformity to this world and its standards and its laws. Be not conformed to this world, it says here. Do not let it squeeze you into its mold. That's why the Covenanters were killed, remember, for Christ's crown and covenant. Oh, they said, you can't say that. They still said it. and they were imprisoned for saying it, and some were even killed for saying it. Now, if we are living sacrifices, surely that's visible in our lives. Surely other people would say with the early pagans that they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. Now, Christians are not perfect. I once saw a sticker in the back of a car window, and it said, Christians are not perfect, comma, only forgiven. Only forgiven. But that's the life, you see. Not perfect, but only forgiven. The temptation is, of course, to think, I will never be able to keep the law. And you're tempted to lower your standards, your ideals, and your aims. But if we read the New Testament correctly, even although you cannot be sinlessly perfect in this world, it's still your aim and your ideal and your purpose and you're restless until the souls of believers at their death are made perfect in holiness. But people go astray when they lower the standard and the ideal. Just because we can't attain to it, there's nothing wrong with it. The weakness is in our own selves. So to sum up here, faith, receiving the mercies of God, is the motive to action in the Christian life. It is reasonable, it is guided. Our reason is, it's written in the word of God. That should be enough for us. The motive, the mercies of God, especially seen at the cross. Was there any suffering like to that suffering? Was there any love like to that love? We're living, we're serving here in newness of life, Grace means thankfulness. It's a thankful life, a dedicated life, a life devoted to Christ. After all, if he gave his life for us, is it not reasonable to give our life to him? Is it safer anywhere else except in the everlasting arms? Our lack of motivation means brethren that we're not thankful enough. We don't look at him enough. We're not absorbed enough in what he has done for us. The greater your sense of gratitude, the more you will give of yourself to Christ in devotion. A living sacrifice. Remember Count Zinzendorf. That reading, that sense of motivation, it accomplished so much. Think highly of also the Apostle Paul. What was his great motive and power in life? He never forgot. He loved me and he gave himself for me. May the Lord bless his work.